6 ms·

I grew up in Vietnam. There were similar positive attitudes towards overweight bodies. The country was ravaged by wars and famines. Overweight bodies mean prosp

I grew up in Vietnam. There were similar positive attitudes towards overweight bodies. The country was ravaged by wars and famines. Overweight bodies mean prosperity. It's changing now in Vietnam, however. They're converging to views of other countries. One thing to note is the way people acquiring body fat was somewhat different. They don't consume sugar and highly processed food. They eat a lot of normal foods. They have body fat but often strong and muscular.

nwienert 6y ago
Side note but I found out recently Vietnam has the lowest rate of obesity in the world, far less than many poorer nations. I attribute it partially to their cuisine which has tons of flavor with herbs, not much fried overly fatty/carby foods.
- nordsieck 6y ago
  > not much fried overly fatty/carby foods Maybe not fatty (I couldn't say either way), but definitely carby. It's possible that Vietman's single most recognizable cultural export is rice noodle soup.
ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
This has more to do with far less sedentary lifestyles than sugar and processed food. A calorie is a calorie. You can’t get muscle unless you move.
- grawprog 6y ago
  >A calorie is a calorie. Not true. There's a difference between complex carbohydrates provided by fruits, vegetables meat and other unprocessed food. Simple carbohydrates like are shorter and break down faster providing less energy per food unit consumed. Complex carbohydrates are longer and take longer for our bodies to breakdown giving more energy over a longer period of time.
  - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
    Nope. That’s not how it works. It’s easy to find out with a simple internet search. https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/79/5/899S/4690223 https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/79/5/899S/4690223 But keep the downvotes going since it insults you so much
    - kirkouimet 6y ago
      Foods types have different hormonal impact on our bodies. Lots of variables at play. So if you eat pure fat vs. protein vs. carbs you are going to get different outcomes in the body.
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      The paper you linked does not say what you think it says. It merely claims that, due to a lack of proof otherwise, calories don't evade thermodynamic laws. It also says the exact opposite of what you seem to believe, which is that diets with different macronutrients compositions have different weight outcomes despite having the same number of calories.
      - bena 6y ago
        But the paper is clear to state that only about a third of the difference can be attributed to composition. And that difference is basically how hard the body works to break down the nutrients. There is no magic food that makes it impossible to gain weight. And at the end of the day, a calorie is a calorie. Want to control your weight? Control your intake.
        klmadfejno 6y ago
        I don't know what you think you're saying. A third of the total effect size is a lot. Nobody denies that the volume of food is going to be a significant driver of your weight change. The issue being debated is that the composition matters, and it does. And for what its worth, I'd imagine the effect size to be even stronger for weight gain.
- majormajor 6y ago
  But you can fuck with your metabolism and microbiome with certain sorts of calories. And that can get you into a lot of trouble, weight-gain wise.
- pengaru 6y ago
  > This has more to do with far less sedentary lifestyles than sugar and processed food. A calorie is a calorie. This antiquated trope is like HSV; it just won't go away. Edit: To clarify; consider the effects of {hypo,hyper}thyroidism, which include weight-gain and weight-loss, respectively. Regardless of diet. Now consider the fact that what you eat affects how the endocrine system functions, similar to how thyroid disease wreaks havoc with it. That's just one example, and I'm no expert, but have read some books on the subject. Another I vaguely recall is the pituitary gland getting damaged or otherwise malfunctioning causing uncontrolled weight-gain regardless of diet. It's these edge cases of malfunctioning human bodies that helped illuminate how its energy storage is moderated with hormones. It didn't take much to confirm different foods trigger different hormone responses once scientists knew what hormones to look for.
  - nradov 6y ago
    That's not how it works. Due to the laws of thermodynamics, people don't gain or lose weight "regardless of diet". Some medical conditions can reduce metabolic rate or increase hunger, but even so for every person there is a calorie intake threshold below which they will lose weight.
    - eitland 6y ago
      Completely agree. This is a very succinct summary of the situation. I've written it down in some more detail, including why it might feel like it what GP says (summary: many people consume way more calories than they use, but they mostly leave the body undigested and when they cut down on calorie intake they doesn't cross the threshold you mentioned.) Here's my attempt at explaining it a few months ago: https://erik.itland.no/dieting-a-small-but-important-detail-that-seems-to-be-overlooked https://erik.itland.no/dieting-a-small-but-important-detail-...
    - pengaru 6y ago
      > Due to the laws of thermodynamics, people don't gain or lose weight "regardless of diet". Some medical conditions can reduce metabolic rate or increase hunger, but even so for every person there is a calorie intake threshold below which they will lose weight. No, AIUI there are metabolic syndromes where instead of losing weight, they'll just get sicker and die, even while gaining weight. My understanding, based on stuff I've read and talks by the likes of UCSF's Lustig on youtube, is that in some cases people can be effectively starving themselves to death internally while gaining weight eating a normal diet because most the energy consumed is being stored in fat. When you lower the caloric intake, they don't lose weight, they just keep getting sicker and can eventually die without the appropriate hormonal medication. If memory serves, one extreme example of this was a young girl with a small brain tumor whom after having it removed started putting on weight with nothing changed in her diet or lifestyle, no matter what they changed she wouldn't stop getting fatter - she just got weaker/sicker if they removed calories, while still getting fatter. They determined a region of her brain was damaged in the operation, IIRC it was the pituitary gland, and started medicating her with the necessary hormones to take its place and everything was back to normal. I'm pretty sure it was covered in one of the Lustig talks on youtube. These are really fascinating failure modes that illustrate how the body has complex control systems for energy storage and energy release. The orthogonal thing to appreciate is that what foods you consume influence these control systems without removing the relevant organs. We can look at the extremes of brain damage and organ removal to see how the hormones have the final say over where the energy goes for better or worse. The more complicated part is figuring out which foods have what effects. Currently fructose seems to be the primary concern. A calorie is definitely not a calorie; fructose calories appear to be toxic. Just watch a talk by Dr. Lustig, literally any talk will do. This one is pretty recent, and while it's more focused on linking sugar with cancer it still touches on the same general information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpNU72dny2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpNU72dny2s My bandwidth is severely limited where I'm at, so I can't easily go digging through youtube videos to find the other I mentioned with the brain tumor patient. All of Lustig's talks have been insightful in the past however FWIW.
- PeterStuer 6y ago
  Of course "a calorie is a calorie". That is how the unit is defined. Nobody is disputing the laws of thermodynamics. That doesn't mean each calorie in what we call 'food' is as accessible to the body's metabolic processes as a calorie in other food. If i wrap a pellet of food inside a non-digestible shell, it will still burn in a bomb calorimeter or will still have about the same caloric measurement in constituent macro-analysis. This doesn't mean calories are a useless model of energy uptake from foods, just that they are not perfect. We also have to take into account that the food industry has not been exactly neutral with regards to this metric. If calorie counting is a thing, then they will game the imperfectness of the metric in any way possible to get the desired 'low' score on the label while still maximizing your addictive consumption cravings regardless of how fat it will or will not make you. So we can/could expect the 'calorie' as a unit of measure to become less and less acurate as a result of this gamign of the metric. But, again, this still doesn't mean that there is no relation between food intake, energy expenditure and weight gain as some would like to portray. If your consumption pattern is making you fat, reducing consumption while changing nothing about the diet composition or timing (yes, when and how you consume also has an influence on your metabolism) will still make you gain less weight or even make you lose weight depending on the ratio change. The reason that previous obvious statement is still vilified is that there is an enormous industry around consumption and managing consumption. It is not by coincidence that the advice from last century about consumption moderation 'eat less' has largely been replaced by an 'eat different' message. Finally, there is an enormous hypocrisy in creating a 'market' system that evolves through rewards the most ferocious and amoral predators that can push whatever 'food' optimized for maximal consumption addiction, and then turning around to the 'consumer' and proclaiming 'personal responsibility' and 'moderation'.
- beagle3 6y ago
  A calorie is a calorie only in the tautological sense. Paper and wood pulp are carbohydrates, but you cannot get any energy from eating those. Petrol is 12kcal/g, more calorie dense than fat at 9kcal/g, but you can't get any energy from eating it. "Ah, I mean the digestible things" I hear you say; well then - we've already established that "a calorie is not a calorie" if you need to add exceptions. But, with this exception: Different kinds of foods have a different calorie extraction/absorption profile. paper/petrol have 0; pure sugar has 100%, most things defined as "food" are high on that scale, but usually not 100%; It also takes nontrivial energy to digest some foods. This is often lumped up into "atwater factors", the values of which seem to vary by 20-80% among different individuals and the same individual at different times. The statement that "a calorie is just a calorie" is incredibly useless in the context of human metabolism.
bamboozled 6y ago
I guess this view was just a lack of education about nutrition? One can get super fat from the cheapest things imaginable. Sugar and carbs. I guess in hard times even that was difficult to come buy. Wouldn't a sufficiently nourished body look strong? Plenty of lean muscle mass, low body fat?
- GuiA 6y ago
  Look at sumo wrestlers for a striking example of muscle mass and high (subcutaneous) body fat.
  - nradov 6y ago
    Sumo wrestlers are certainly strong. However the extra bulk causes a significantly increased risk of many health problems.
- Maakuth 6y ago
  Even the cheapest things are, by definition, not available in famine. Being fat is pretty clear indicator that you have not been recently suffering from famine.
- watwut 6y ago
  You can be malnutrished and fat, but that is different situation. War and famine typically means it is impossible to find enough calories no matter what source. It means that sugar is expensive and so are carbs.

nwienert 6y ago

Side note but I found out recently Vietnam has the lowest rate of obesity in the world, far less than many poorer nations. I attribute it partially to their cuisine which has tons of flavor with herbs, not much fried overly fatty/carby foods.

nordsieck 6y ago
> not much fried overly fatty/carby foods Maybe not fatty (I couldn't say either way), but definitely carby. It's possible that Vietman's single most recognizable cultural export is rice noodle soup.

ulisesrmzroche 6y ago

This has more to do with far less sedentary lifestyles than sugar and processed food. A calorie is a calorie. You can’t get muscle unless you move.

grawprog 6y ago
>A calorie is a calorie. Not true. There's a difference between complex carbohydrates provided by fruits, vegetables meat and other unprocessed food. Simple carbohydrates like are shorter and break down faster providing less energy per food unit consumed. Complex carbohydrates are longer and take longer for our bodies to breakdown giving more energy over a longer period of time.
- ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
  Nope. That’s not how it works. It’s easy to find out with a simple internet search. https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/79/5/899S/4690223 https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/79/5/899S/4690223 But keep the downvotes going since it insults you so much
  - kirkouimet 6y ago
    Foods types have different hormonal impact on our bodies. Lots of variables at play. So if you eat pure fat vs. protein vs. carbs you are going to get different outcomes in the body.
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    The paper you linked does not say what you think it says. It merely claims that, due to a lack of proof otherwise, calories don't evade thermodynamic laws. It also says the exact opposite of what you seem to believe, which is that diets with different macronutrients compositions have different weight outcomes despite having the same number of calories.
    - bena 6y ago
      But the paper is clear to state that only about a third of the difference can be attributed to composition. And that difference is basically how hard the body works to break down the nutrients. There is no magic food that makes it impossible to gain weight. And at the end of the day, a calorie is a calorie. Want to control your weight? Control your intake.
      - klmadfejno 6y ago
        I don't know what you think you're saying. A third of the total effect size is a lot. Nobody denies that the volume of food is going to be a significant driver of your weight change. The issue being debated is that the composition matters, and it does. And for what its worth, I'd imagine the effect size to be even stronger for weight gain.
majormajor 6y ago
But you can fuck with your metabolism and microbiome with certain sorts of calories. And that can get you into a lot of trouble, weight-gain wise.
pengaru 6y ago
> This has more to do with far less sedentary lifestyles than sugar and processed food. A calorie is a calorie. This antiquated trope is like HSV; it just won't go away. Edit: To clarify; consider the effects of {hypo,hyper}thyroidism, which include weight-gain and weight-loss, respectively. Regardless of diet. Now consider the fact that what you eat affects how the endocrine system functions, similar to how thyroid disease wreaks havoc with it. That's just one example, and I'm no expert, but have read some books on the subject. Another I vaguely recall is the pituitary gland getting damaged or otherwise malfunctioning causing uncontrolled weight-gain regardless of diet. It's these edge cases of malfunctioning human bodies that helped illuminate how its energy storage is moderated with hormones. It didn't take much to confirm different foods trigger different hormone responses once scientists knew what hormones to look for.
- nradov 6y ago
  That's not how it works. Due to the laws of thermodynamics, people don't gain or lose weight "regardless of diet". Some medical conditions can reduce metabolic rate or increase hunger, but even so for every person there is a calorie intake threshold below which they will lose weight.
  - eitland 6y ago
    Completely agree. This is a very succinct summary of the situation. I've written it down in some more detail, including why it might feel like it what GP says (summary: many people consume way more calories than they use, but they mostly leave the body undigested and when they cut down on calorie intake they doesn't cross the threshold you mentioned.) Here's my attempt at explaining it a few months ago: https://erik.itland.no/dieting-a-small-but-important-detail-that-seems-to-be-overlooked https://erik.itland.no/dieting-a-small-but-important-detail-...
  - pengaru 6y ago
    > Due to the laws of thermodynamics, people don't gain or lose weight "regardless of diet". Some medical conditions can reduce metabolic rate or increase hunger, but even so for every person there is a calorie intake threshold below which they will lose weight. No, AIUI there are metabolic syndromes where instead of losing weight, they'll just get sicker and die, even while gaining weight. My understanding, based on stuff I've read and talks by the likes of UCSF's Lustig on youtube, is that in some cases people can be effectively starving themselves to death internally while gaining weight eating a normal diet because most the energy consumed is being stored in fat. When you lower the caloric intake, they don't lose weight, they just keep getting sicker and can eventually die without the appropriate hormonal medication. If memory serves, one extreme example of this was a young girl with a small brain tumor whom after having it removed started putting on weight with nothing changed in her diet or lifestyle, no matter what they changed she wouldn't stop getting fatter - she just got weaker/sicker if they removed calories, while still getting fatter. They determined a region of her brain was damaged in the operation, IIRC it was the pituitary gland, and started medicating her with the necessary hormones to take its place and everything was back to normal. I'm pretty sure it was covered in one of the Lustig talks on youtube. These are really fascinating failure modes that illustrate how the body has complex control systems for energy storage and energy release. The orthogonal thing to appreciate is that what foods you consume influence these control systems without removing the relevant organs. We can look at the extremes of brain damage and organ removal to see how the hormones have the final say over where the energy goes for better or worse. The more complicated part is figuring out which foods have what effects. Currently fructose seems to be the primary concern. A calorie is definitely not a calorie; fructose calories appear to be toxic. Just watch a talk by Dr. Lustig, literally any talk will do. This one is pretty recent, and while it's more focused on linking sugar with cancer it still touches on the same general information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpNU72dny2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpNU72dny2s My bandwidth is severely limited where I'm at, so I can't easily go digging through youtube videos to find the other I mentioned with the brain tumor patient. All of Lustig's talks have been insightful in the past however FWIW.
PeterStuer 6y ago
Of course "a calorie is a calorie". That is how the unit is defined. Nobody is disputing the laws of thermodynamics. That doesn't mean each calorie in what we call 'food' is as accessible to the body's metabolic processes as a calorie in other food. If i wrap a pellet of food inside a non-digestible shell, it will still burn in a bomb calorimeter or will still have about the same caloric measurement in constituent macro-analysis. This doesn't mean calories are a useless model of energy uptake from foods, just that they are not perfect. We also have to take into account that the food industry has not been exactly neutral with regards to this metric. If calorie counting is a thing, then they will game the imperfectness of the metric in any way possible to get the desired 'low' score on the label while still maximizing your addictive consumption cravings regardless of how fat it will or will not make you. So we can/could expect the 'calorie' as a unit of measure to become less and less acurate as a result of this gamign of the metric. But, again, this still doesn't mean that there is no relation between food intake, energy expenditure and weight gain as some would like to portray. If your consumption pattern is making you fat, reducing consumption while changing nothing about the diet composition or timing (yes, when and how you consume also has an influence on your metabolism) will still make you gain less weight or even make you lose weight depending on the ratio change. The reason that previous obvious statement is still vilified is that there is an enormous industry around consumption and managing consumption. It is not by coincidence that the advice from last century about consumption moderation 'eat less' has largely been replaced by an 'eat different' message. Finally, there is an enormous hypocrisy in creating a 'market' system that evolves through rewards the most ferocious and amoral predators that can push whatever 'food' optimized for maximal consumption addiction, and then turning around to the 'consumer' and proclaiming 'personal responsibility' and 'moderation'.
beagle3 6y ago
A calorie is a calorie only in the tautological sense. Paper and wood pulp are carbohydrates, but you cannot get any energy from eating those. Petrol is 12kcal/g, more calorie dense than fat at 9kcal/g, but you can't get any energy from eating it. "Ah, I mean the digestible things" I hear you say; well then - we've already established that "a calorie is not a calorie" if you need to add exceptions. But, with this exception: Different kinds of foods have a different calorie extraction/absorption profile. paper/petrol have 0; pure sugar has 100%, most things defined as "food" are high on that scale, but usually not 100%; It also takes nontrivial energy to digest some foods. This is often lumped up into "atwater factors", the values of which seem to vary by 20-80% among different individuals and the same individual at different times. The statement that "a calorie is just a calorie" is incredibly useless in the context of human metabolism.

bamboozled 6y ago

I guess this view was just a lack of education about nutrition? One can get super fat from the cheapest things imaginable. Sugar and carbs. I guess in hard times even that was difficult to come buy. Wouldn't a sufficiently nourished body look strong? Plenty of lean muscle mass, low body fat?

GuiA 6y ago
Look at sumo wrestlers for a striking example of muscle mass and high (subcutaneous) body fat.
- nradov 6y ago
  Sumo wrestlers are certainly strong. However the extra bulk causes a significantly increased risk of many health problems.
Maakuth 6y ago
Even the cheapest things are, by definition, not available in famine. Being fat is pretty clear indicator that you have not been recently suffering from famine.
watwut 6y ago
You can be malnutrished and fat, but that is different situation. War and famine typically means it is impossible to find enough calories no matter what source. It means that sugar is expensive and so are carbs.