20 ms·

Obamacare Calorie Count Rules Ushered In

28 points by mgdo 8y ago

s73v3r_ 8y ago
As someone who is starting to watch what they eat, and try to watch calories as well as other nutrition things, I'm glad this is happening, but I wish it was possible for it to apply more broadly, too. For that, I guess, it would need to be easier/cheaper to get the nutrition of a recipe than it is now.
- sbenitoj 8y ago
  Congrats on starting! That’s the hardest part. As someone who helps people lose weight professionally, I’m curious to hear what program, if any, you found and how did you decide to do it? (I’m not selling anything, just curious).
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    I had been going to the gym, but I was frustrated with the crappy heart rate monitors on the cardio machines there. I was also looking for a replacement for my Pebble Time, so I got the new Fitbit Versa. It works pretty well, and has a nice feature of giving me a "calorie budget," telling me about how much I can eat. So far, though, the hardest part is estimating how many calories are in something, and how much of something I'm eating.
    - sbenitoj 8y ago
      If you stick with properly raised proteins, healthy fats (no trans fats), and low-carb veggies you don’t have to keep track of anything, the calories take care of themselves. Limit starchy carbs and treats to one meal after your workouts. People love to downvote me on this thread but that advice is essentially what people pay me thousands of dollars to get them lean.
airstrike 8y ago
> Restaurants will also have to provide on-site additional nutritional information, such as fat and sodium levels. Can we please talk about sugar? It's objectively worse than just "fat" as not all fats are created equal and certain kinds are actually really important.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  Sugars are really important too, if that's your metric. That's why they taste good.
  - alextheparrot 8y ago
    Lead tastes good too, taste is not equivalent to importance.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      But it remains true that 1. Sugars are extremely important to your basic biological functioning. 2. Their extreme importance is the reason they taste good.
      - grzm 8y ago
        Many people get by on diets with very little sugar. In the past when calories were harder to come by, the sweetness made sense as it indicated calorie-dense food. The sweetness is a proxy for calories. It would be more accurate to say that calories are extremely important. You can get calories from a variety of sources (starches, fats, and protein), however, not just sugar.of calories
        thaumasiotes 8y ago
        You get calories from starches by metabolizing them into sugar.
        8y ago
keithnz 8y ago
In new zealand we have http://www.foodstandards.govt.nz/consumer/labelling/panels/Pages/default.aspx http://www.foodstandards.govt.nz/consumer/labelling/panels/P... and Mcdonalds for instance... https://mcdonalds.co.nz/sites/mcdonalds.co.nz/files/Nutrition-Information-2-May-2018.pdf https://mcdonalds.co.nz/sites/mcdonalds.co.nz/files/Nutritio... which is great if you care about it. But generally if you care about such things you have a pretty good idea for most foods anyways. Though, there are a few foods that it's not entirely obvious there's lots of sugar in them.
- keithnz 8y ago
  Maybe it's just me because I don't know how the US works, but when trying to find the official information for this, it seems like none of the news agencies I found via googling reference official information, they just reference their own news about things officials said. Eventually I found a reference to a fda document. Seemed painful to find though. https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/UCM461963.pdf https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/Guidan...
- pkaye 8y ago
  The USDA already keeps a publically available food database (https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list) of most of this information. Its just that now restaurants need to make it more prominent at the time of order.
- PinkMilkshake 8y ago
  Yeah, I remember when US products like Dr Pepper first started showing up in NZ they would have a sticky label over the top of the nutrition info with a more compliant one.
mnm1 8y ago
Having nutritional information available is government overreach? And we wonder why people are so fat and sick in this country? Having stupid attitudes like that seems to be a much bigger contributor than sugary drinks.
sbenitoj 8y ago
As someone who helps people lose fat professionally, I can say with near 100% confidence this will have almost zero effect on the vast majority of people. People were lean long before calorie counts were readily available, the problem people have is NOT lack of awareness of the number of calories in their food. The problem is philosophical — if you think all edible substances qualify as “food,” you’re never going to lose weight and keep it off. If you think you should only be consuming whole foods the VAST majority of the time, then you will lose weight and keep it off relatively effortlessly.
- danhak 8y ago
  As someone who has lost 20 pounds since the new year, I can say with near 100% confidence that it would not have happened for me without obsessive calorie tracking. Can't recommend MyFitnessPal enough.
  - sbenitoj 8y ago
    It won’t last, calorie counts are not reliable indicators of how many calories you’re actually digesting (look up the thermic effect of food), and long term you will not keep it off if you focus solely on calories, quality whole foods come first.
    - Latty 8y ago
      That just makes no sense, unless you are suggesting that we magically generate matter, calorie counts are an upper bound on how many calories you are actually digesting.
      - sbenitoj 8y ago
        That’s not what I’m suggesting. Certain foods generate more heat while being digested (like protein) than others (like sugar and white flour). Consuming 100 calories of protein results in fewer calories digested than consuming 100 calories of sugar.
drak0n1c 8y ago
As a skinny young man with a big appetite I've found myself using these calorie counts as a way to maximize calories for the lowest price.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- josephorjoe 8y ago
  I use to be like that (the snickers bar had the best calories/price ratio in the office vending machine), but I'm not any more (the popcorn has the lowest calories in the office vending machine). Something very unfortunate happened to my metabolism in my 30s... do enjoy it while you can :)
- themodelplumber 8y ago
  As a formerly obese person and big loser with almost infinite capacity for stress eating, I love the calorie counts for all of the times they've helped me when I've been in calculation mode (which is healthy, for my personality dynamic). Sometimes a vague-sandwich is all it takes to get off the rails and put my old, bad habits in the driver's seat again. BTW back when I weighed around 300 lbs. I remember buying a box of Little Debbie's peanut butter snacks for the exact reason you stated (and eating it all). Major calorie density for cost. That became a sort of pornographic activity for me, building up energy stores outside of any real energy-risk context.
  - sbenitoj 8y ago
    This is the point I made below, whole foods are superior to calorie counts No one eats a grass-fed steak and goes into a downward spiral. Tons of people spiral out of control if they consume even small amounts of junk food. WHAT you eat matters more than HOW MUCH you eat long term. Calories matter, but different foods affect your body differently!
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      As another former >300lbs man, let me politely suggest that you are completely full of shit. Calories are by far and away the most important metric when losing weight. Controlling food addiction is an issue too, but you're not going to solve it by eating "whole foods".
shawn 8y ago
The most effective labels we could have are "Added sugar" and "Added corn starch". If you show exactly how much extra sugar and corn starch you're consuming, it's much harder to get fat by accident.
- jonknee 8y ago
  Do you mean added corn syrup? Cornstarch is useful in the kitchen, but isn't super common in processed food (I assume they have better thickeners!).
  - shawn 8y ago
    Eh, if we're being precise: dextrose, maltodextrin, pretty much anything that's -ose or dex-, corn starch, corn syrup, added sugar, wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, legumes, dairy. I cut all of those and ended up losing weight without exercising. YMMV. A decent rule of thumb is that if a 5yo can pronounce all the ingredients, it's probably ok.
- Latty 8y ago
  Calorie counts are all that really matters when it comes to "getting fat" - while obviously that doesn't mean healthy - sugar isn't any more relevant to getting fat than anything else. Now, there are easy wins from sugars - particularly if you are drinking lots of regular soft drinks, you can reduce your calorie intake relatively easily by cutting them out, but everyone's diet is different.
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    >sugar isn't any more relevant to getting fat than anything else. That's not quite true. High sugar intake results in an insulin spike, which in turn results in more fat being stored than would be had you eaten the same number of calories in the form of e.g. protein. Sugar also results in more net calories per calorie as it takes very little energy to digest. From a behavioral perspective (this matters!), sugar does not leave you feeling full. You can talk calories all day, but when it comes to weight loss you have to factor in how people actually work. A full person is less likely to overeat than a hungry one.
sundvor 8y ago
Outsider's view: As a Norwegian, when I visited Boston in 1999 for an Allaire dev conference I saw more grossly fat / obese people in the _hour_ spent switching flights at Newark airport than I had in my (then) home country in the preceding year. I was really taken aback. There's clearly a lot of things the US is not doing right on many, many levels. This could help chip (sorry) away at that.
gremlinsinc 8y ago
> "Daren Bakst, a fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the law equates to government overreach. 'It’s not up to the government to influence what people eat — that should be left up to each individual,' he said." I wonder if he has the same 'feels' about legalizing all illegal drugs? Seems most conservatives only support laws that fit their 'narrative'.. I'm obese, I sit and code all day, and I don't think people 'should' do lsd/weed/heroine/etc... but I don't think they should go to jail if they end up in the rat-trap of addiction. It's a mental health issue, and the distribution lines should be only ones policed imho.. But why is the DEA not government overreach for enforcing 'possession' but listing calorie counts so people can purposefully limit intake is?

28 points by mgdo 8y ago

As someone who is starting to watch what they eat, and try to watch calories as well as other nutrition things, I'm glad this is happening, but I wish it was possible for it to apply more broadly, too. For that, I guess, it would need to be easier/cheaper to get the nutrition of a recipe than it is now.

sbenitoj 8y ago
Congrats on starting! That’s the hardest part. As someone who helps people lose weight professionally, I’m curious to hear what program, if any, you found and how did you decide to do it? (I’m not selling anything, just curious).
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  I had been going to the gym, but I was frustrated with the crappy heart rate monitors on the cardio machines there. I was also looking for a replacement for my Pebble Time, so I got the new Fitbit Versa. It works pretty well, and has a nice feature of giving me a "calorie budget," telling me about how much I can eat. So far, though, the hardest part is estimating how many calories are in something, and how much of something I'm eating.
  - sbenitoj 8y ago
    If you stick with properly raised proteins, healthy fats (no trans fats), and low-carb veggies you don’t have to keep track of anything, the calories take care of themselves. Limit starchy carbs and treats to one meal after your workouts. People love to downvote me on this thread but that advice is essentially what people pay me thousands of dollars to get them lean.

airstrike 8y ago

> Restaurants will also have to provide on-site additional nutritional information, such as fat and sodium levels. Can we please talk about sugar? It's objectively worse than just "fat" as not all fats are created equal and certain kinds are actually really important.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
Sugars are really important too, if that's your metric. That's why they taste good.
- alextheparrot 8y ago
  Lead tastes good too, taste is not equivalent to importance.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    But it remains true that 1. Sugars are extremely important to your basic biological functioning. 2. Their extreme importance is the reason they taste good.
    - grzm 8y ago
      Many people get by on diets with very little sugar. In the past when calories were harder to come by, the sweetness made sense as it indicated calorie-dense food. The sweetness is a proxy for calories. It would be more accurate to say that calories are extremely important. You can get calories from a variety of sources (starches, fats, and protein), however, not just sugar.of calories
      - thaumasiotes 8y ago
        You get calories from starches by metabolizing them into sugar.
        8y ago

keithnz 8y ago

In new zealand we have http://www.foodstandards.govt.nz/consumer/labelling/panels/Pages/default.aspx http://www.foodstandards.govt.nz/consumer/labelling/panels/P... and Mcdonalds for instance... https://mcdonalds.co.nz/sites/mcdonalds.co.nz/files/Nutrition-Information-2-May-2018.pdf https://mcdonalds.co.nz/sites/mcdonalds.co.nz/files/Nutritio... which is great if you care about it. But generally if you care about such things you have a pretty good idea for most foods anyways. Though, there are a few foods that it's not entirely obvious there's lots of sugar in them.

keithnz 8y ago
Maybe it's just me because I don't know how the US works, but when trying to find the official information for this, it seems like none of the news agencies I found via googling reference official information, they just reference their own news about things officials said. Eventually I found a reference to a fda document. Seemed painful to find though. https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/UCM461963.pdf https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/GuidanceRegulation/Guidan...
pkaye 8y ago
The USDA already keeps a publically available food database (https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list) of most of this information. Its just that now restaurants need to make it more prominent at the time of order.
PinkMilkshake 8y ago
Yeah, I remember when US products like Dr Pepper first started showing up in NZ they would have a sticky label over the top of the nutrition info with a more compliant one.

mnm1 8y ago

Having nutritional information available is government overreach? And we wonder why people are so fat and sick in this country? Having stupid attitudes like that seems to be a much bigger contributor than sugary drinks.

sbenitoj 8y ago

As someone who helps people lose fat professionally, I can say with near 100% confidence this will have almost zero effect on the vast majority of people. People were lean long before calorie counts were readily available, the problem people have is NOT lack of awareness of the number of calories in their food. The problem is philosophical — if you think all edible substances qualify as “food,” you’re never going to lose weight and keep it off. If you think you should only be consuming whole foods the VAST majority of the time, then you will lose weight and keep it off relatively effortlessly.

danhak 8y ago
As someone who has lost 20 pounds since the new year, I can say with near 100% confidence that it would not have happened for me without obsessive calorie tracking. Can't recommend MyFitnessPal enough.
- sbenitoj 8y ago
  It won’t last, calorie counts are not reliable indicators of how many calories you’re actually digesting (look up the thermic effect of food), and long term you will not keep it off if you focus solely on calories, quality whole foods come first.
  - Latty 8y ago
    That just makes no sense, unless you are suggesting that we magically generate matter, calorie counts are an upper bound on how many calories you are actually digesting.
    - sbenitoj 8y ago
      That’s not what I’m suggesting. Certain foods generate more heat while being digested (like protein) than others (like sugar and white flour). Consuming 100 calories of protein results in fewer calories digested than consuming 100 calories of sugar.

drak0n1c 8y ago

As a skinny young man with a big appetite I've found myself using these calorie counts as a way to maximize calories for the lowest price.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
josephorjoe 8y ago
I use to be like that (the snickers bar had the best calories/price ratio in the office vending machine), but I'm not any more (the popcorn has the lowest calories in the office vending machine). Something very unfortunate happened to my metabolism in my 30s... do enjoy it while you can :)
themodelplumber 8y ago
As a formerly obese person and big loser with almost infinite capacity for stress eating, I love the calorie counts for all of the times they've helped me when I've been in calculation mode (which is healthy, for my personality dynamic). Sometimes a vague-sandwich is all it takes to get off the rails and put my old, bad habits in the driver's seat again. BTW back when I weighed around 300 lbs. I remember buying a box of Little Debbie's peanut butter snacks for the exact reason you stated (and eating it all). Major calorie density for cost. That became a sort of pornographic activity for me, building up energy stores outside of any real energy-risk context.
- sbenitoj 8y ago
  This is the point I made below, whole foods are superior to calorie counts No one eats a grass-fed steak and goes into a downward spiral. Tons of people spiral out of control if they consume even small amounts of junk food. WHAT you eat matters more than HOW MUCH you eat long term. Calories matter, but different foods affect your body differently!
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    As another former >300lbs man, let me politely suggest that you are completely full of shit. Calories are by far and away the most important metric when losing weight. Controlling food addiction is an issue too, but you're not going to solve it by eating "whole foods".

shawn 8y ago

The most effective labels we could have are "Added sugar" and "Added corn starch". If you show exactly how much extra sugar and corn starch you're consuming, it's much harder to get fat by accident.

jonknee 8y ago
Do you mean added corn syrup? Cornstarch is useful in the kitchen, but isn't super common in processed food (I assume they have better thickeners!).
- shawn 8y ago
  Eh, if we're being precise: dextrose, maltodextrin, pretty much anything that's -ose or dex-, corn starch, corn syrup, added sugar, wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, legumes, dairy. I cut all of those and ended up losing weight without exercising. YMMV. A decent rule of thumb is that if a 5yo can pronounce all the ingredients, it's probably ok.
Latty 8y ago
Calorie counts are all that really matters when it comes to "getting fat" - while obviously that doesn't mean healthy - sugar isn't any more relevant to getting fat than anything else. Now, there are easy wins from sugars - particularly if you are drinking lots of regular soft drinks, you can reduce your calorie intake relatively easily by cutting them out, but everyone's diet is different.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  >sugar isn't any more relevant to getting fat than anything else. That's not quite true. High sugar intake results in an insulin spike, which in turn results in more fat being stored than would be had you eaten the same number of calories in the form of e.g. protein. Sugar also results in more net calories per calorie as it takes very little energy to digest. From a behavioral perspective (this matters!), sugar does not leave you feeling full. You can talk calories all day, but when it comes to weight loss you have to factor in how people actually work. A full person is less likely to overeat than a hungry one.

sundvor 8y ago

Outsider's view: As a Norwegian, when I visited Boston in 1999 for an Allaire dev conference I saw more grossly fat / obese people in the _hour_ spent switching flights at Newark airport than I had in my (then) home country in the preceding year. I was really taken aback. There's clearly a lot of things the US is not doing right on many, many levels. This could help chip (sorry) away at that.

gremlinsinc 8y ago

> "Daren Bakst, a fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the law equates to government overreach. 'It’s not up to the government to influence what people eat — that should be left up to each individual,' he said." I wonder if he has the same 'feels' about legalizing all illegal drugs? Seems most conservatives only support laws that fit their 'narrative'.. I'm obese, I sit and code all day, and I don't think people 'should' do lsd/weed/heroine/etc... but I don't think they should go to jail if they end up in the rat-trap of addiction. It's a mental health issue, and the distribution lines should be only ones policed imho.. But why is the DEA not government overreach for enforcing 'possession' but listing calorie counts so people can purposefully limit intake is?