3 ms·

I've been doing keto for about six weeks and following along in the community. You are correct. It's amazing. Some folks view this as some kind of evil corpor

I've been doing keto for about six weeks and following along in the community. You are correct. It's amazing. Some folks view this as some kind of evil corporate overlord thing, but I think the answer is much closer to home: we like stuff with sugar in it. So other people are going to put sugar in stuff so that we'll like it more. Sadly it looks as simple as that. I had tried low-carb before and couldn't stay on it. What I didn't know back then was that you can fall off your low carb diet without even realizing it. There are so many items with hidden sugars that it's impossible not to -- unless, as you say, you prepare all of your stuff. (My strategy is to curate items that are safe.) Carbs past a certain point are addictive, although probably at the low end of the addiction scale. I believe this is because if you live in an environment where fruit only ripens one month a year, it's important to have a biological drive to fatten up on those easy sugars in preparation for the winter months. Of course we don't live in that environment any more. And you will lie to yourself, making it even worse. I imagine what happens to most folks is that they accidentally eat enough carbs to start triggering perverse insulin responses, then "decide" to go ahead and eat one or two things that they've always loved. After all, those one or two things by themselves are fine, right? And then we've flipped over the tipping point. I am amazed at the obesity crisis in the West, although it seems like a natural outcome to so many plentiful foods. The part that amazes me is how nutrition experts consistently blew it, over and over again recommending public health policies that only worsen the problem.

jerf 8y ago
"Some folks view this as some kind of evil corporate overlord thing, but I think the answer is much closer to home: we like stuff with sugar in it. So other people are going to put sugar in stuff so that we'll like it more. Sadly it looks as simple as that." I recommend the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories". It is widely thought by people who have only heard about the book third-hand (criticizing the people who wrote their second-hand assessments of it) that it's a diet book, but the bulk of it is actually a well-researched history book on how the modern conception of "correct diet" came about, you know, the bad one that we're still oh-so-slowly extricating ourselves from. Basically it answers the question "If the late 20th-century diet consensus was so bad, how did it become the consensus?" Since I read it, my assessment of the late 20th-century diet consensus has only gone down, and the history itself doesn't change, since, you know, "not changing" is pretty much what history does. You can blip over the bits where it does try to discuss the science of proper diet; even if you're interested in this branch of scientific thought, there's more up-to-date resources now. But the history is good.

jerf 8y ago

"Some folks view this as some kind of evil corporate overlord thing, but I think the answer is much closer to home: we like stuff with sugar in it. So other people are going to put sugar in stuff so that we'll like it more. Sadly it looks as simple as that." I recommend the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories". It is widely thought by people who have only heard about the book third-hand (criticizing the people who wrote their second-hand assessments of it) that it's a diet book, but the bulk of it is actually a well-researched history book on how the modern conception of "correct diet" came about, you know, the bad one that we're still oh-so-slowly extricating ourselves from. Basically it answers the question "If the late 20th-century diet consensus was so bad, how did it become the consensus?" Since I read it, my assessment of the late 20th-century diet consensus has only gone down, and the history itself doesn't change, since, you know, "not changing" is pretty much what history does. You can blip over the bits where it does try to discuss the science of proper diet; even if you're interested in this branch of scientific thought, there's more up-to-date resources now. But the history is good.