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I wonder if there's a relationship to the obesity epidemic, especially since it's not just humans that are getting larger but also lab animals, pets, and wild a

I wonder if there's a relationship to the obesity epidemic, especially since it's not just humans that are getting larger but also lab animals, pets, and wild animals living close to humans [1]. What if we're compelled to eat more calories when we're not getting enough nutrients in our diets? This would impact any animals consuming lower quality fruits and vegetables. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2010.628 https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2010.628

nerdponx 5y ago
Anecdotally, this has been my personal experience. I have gone through phases of my life where I ate a lot of junk food. I would feel constantly hungry during those phases, until I ate something nutritious, green and easily-digestible, like steamed broccoli or green peas.
- pembrook 5y ago
  This doesn’t make any scientific sense. Study after study has shown that protein and complex carbs are what reduces feelings of hunger, not vegetables. This makes sense when you consider most green vegetables like broccoli are 90% water. A meat like chicken, after cooking is only about 60% water. So if you eat 400g of broccoli vs 400g of chicken, the one that will make you feel more full is obviously the protein. What’s more likely, is due to marketing we’ve associated anything that is green in color with being “real, nutritious food” and have convinced ourselves that is what makes us feel full. It’s like people who claim they “feel better” after eating a salad. The average iceberg lettuce has near zero nutritional value and is 96%+ water. The only way you’d feel better after eating one is if you were dehydrated. -- *edit - people seem to be misunderstanding. I'm not saying fast food is healthy. I'm simply refuting the idea that green vegetables are the key to feeling full. If you wanted to feel satiated, green vegetables would be one of the most inefficient ways to do so--due to their 90%+ water content.
  - shakabrah 5y ago
    Or…you know…vegetables have fiber and meat doesn’t?
    - pembrook 5y ago
      Fiber is certainly important, but try eating a diet of only broccoli one day vs a diet of only chicken the next. You’ll likely feel normal on the chicken day. On the broccoli day you’ll feel like you’re fasting (because on a calorie basis, you literally will be unless you eat 5-7X as much broccoli as you do chicken).
      - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
        You’re being disingenuous. The conversation started about nutrient depleted junk food vs whole foods. And now you’re comparing two different types of whole foods.
        pembrook 5y ago
        The comment I directly replied to here suggested fiber was the reason for feeling full. Fiber can certainly help with feeling full as it takes longer to digest, however fiber alone cannot satiate. Meanwhile, a diet completely devoid of fiber can still make you feel full.
  - orwin 5y ago
    > Study after study has shown that protein and carbs are what reduces feelings of hunger Proteins and fat you mean? Also, incidentally, water do quench hunger as well. My trick to eat less when i was overweight was to drink a lot during meals.
    - adrian_b 5y ago
      Also in my experience, proteins & fat reduce the feelings of hunger, not carbs. If I eat at breakfast in the morning 140 g turkey breast + 70 g cashew nuts + 3 sweet potatoes + 1 bell pepper, then I feel perfectly satiated and I feel no hunger until late in the evening, when I have next meal. Deleting either the turkey breast or the cashew nuts from that breakfast menu, makes me hungry much earlier. On the other hand, if I eat just bread, I have to eat a very large quantity, e.g. 1 kilogram, until I feel satiated due to the full stomach, and then after a few hours I feel hungry again. There are many kinds of food, like bread, vanilla or cocoa cream and many others, which I like very much, but which do not satiate me unless eaten in huge quantities, so I have given up on eating those kinds of food, because it is much easier to not eat them at all than to stop after eating just a small quantity.
  - failwhaleshark 5y ago
    Salad (nothing but vegetables) has the effect of increasing mechanical fullness before a meal. Plain, boiled potatoes cause the most satiety. Oranges and oatmeal are also good.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    I did clearly state that it was an anecdote, with a sample size of one, myself. Also I think you're being extremely reductionist here. I'm not claiming that I never felt the sensation of fullness in my stomach. Of course I did. Maybe I should rephrase, that I constantly felt like I was craving food even though my stomach was full. Moreover, to suggest that our brains somehow only understand macronutrients when it comes to regulating our sense of hunger, is ridiculous. You really think that people feeling better after eating broccoli is because they have been brainwashed by the marketing of the vegetable-industrial complex? is it really that outlandish to hypothesize that eating nutritious food makes you feel better? Of course it would be fallacious to generalize my experience to other people, if only because I myself hardly understand what was going on. But it would be equally fallacious, not to mention arrogant, to dismiss that such an effect might exist, on the grounds that we did some controlled studies and found that hungry people feel more satisfied after eating something substatial.
    - raducu 5y ago
      There's more to it -- there's a considerable delay between your stomach being full to your brain telling you you're full. I can eat one pound of icecream in one go before I feel that I'm done, or 1/3 of that, tell myself I can eat the rest in 15 minutes IF I still feel the need to at that future time, and I usually don't -- sort of like the reverse of telling myself I'll only work 5 minutes on that boring task I don't want to, but usually I work through it all. My unscientific point being, there's no way the brain can tell I've eaten 1/3 meat and 2/3 salad vs 3/3 meat in the span of 15 minutes; sure, it will digest the salad much faster, but by that time I'm already doing other things that don't involve me stuffing my face with food; I've found that with food, if you can resist the urge to eat more for 15 minutes, and don't have snacks just laying around you, you actually solved 90% of your overeating problem. SO in my experience, eating broccoli/salad, or just drinking water, absolutely do work to make you full/less hungry, for a short while at least, but that short duration should not be underestimated, because a lot of times is all that is required for one to stick to a caloric limit.
      - nerdponx 5y ago
        > there's no way the brain can tell I've eaten 1/3 meat and 2/3 salad vs 3/3 meat in the span of 15 minutes Again, I think this is trusting too much in "today's science". Who's to say that your body/brain can't detect whether a food is nutritious? For all we know, some trace nutrients are subconsciously detectable in taste and smell, even if heuristically. I'm not saying that is what happens, but I don't think we know nearly enough to dismiss such a possibility.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
    Just quietly, you need to update your knowledge. Look in to, at the very least, how chromium and molybdenum help regular homeostasis via insulin sensitivity and macronutrient metabolism.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    Yes, proteins and carbs reduce feelings of hunger. But nutrient deficiencies cause food cravings. That's why people who eat high-calorie meals with few vitamins and minerals tend to overeat, they satiate their hunger but the cravings remain.
    - pembrook 5y ago
      If that were true, you could solve your cravings by taking a simple multivitamin. Which just isn’t the case unless you’re critically deficient in something (which, most 1st world people aren’t). Eating fast food 3 meals a day but taking a multivitamin will change nothing about your feelings of hunger. What’s more likely, is fast food doesn’t make you feel full because its low in protein (the most expensive ingredient typically, so fast food skimps on it) and high in simple carbs.
      - tekknik 5y ago
        But since when are multivitamins the same as the real thing? Study after study show that multivitamins don’t do much if anything so your idea here is flawed.
        nerdponx 5y ago
        Isn't that (at least partly) a problem of bioavailability?
      - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
        You can't model a complex biological system as a simple flow-balancing problem of a few substances that have no effect on one another.
  - tgb 5y ago
    > most green vegetables like broccoli are 90% water. That's super misleading. The nutrition facts for broccoli here [1] gives 89% water but actually over 1/3rd of broccoli by mass is carbs, fats, proteins or fibers. And comparing raw broccoli to cooked chicken is deceptive - cooking broccoli obviously gets rid of a lot of it's water depending on how you cook. Moreover, comparing gram-to-gram, I'm sure broccoli is less filling, but a lot of people care more about calorie-to-calorie. [1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/broccoli#nutrients https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/broccoli#nutrient...
    - pembrook 5y ago
      Raw chicken with skin on is 66% water, so I wouldn't call it super misleading. I simply mentioned "cooked" because almost nobody eats chicken raw. Lots of people eat raw broccoli. Boiling or steaming broccoli does basically nothing to its water content. Baking it may reduce by 10%. So still 20% more water than the protein. Anyways, the water point was brought up to give something intuitive to grasp on to. As said, the main reason eating one chicken breast makes you feel more full than multiple servings of broccoli, is the 55g of protein. So adding broccoli to your fast food won't suddenly make you feel full. Dumping the fast food altogether and eating a chicken breast instead might.
      - tgb 5y ago
        I was saying that "90% water" stat is super misleading because it makes it sound like <10% is anything of value, but that's off by a factor of 3. Baking absolutely makes a bigger than 10% water loss by mass in broccoli, and that would of course double the non-water fraction even if it were only 10%. But the point is, it doesn't matter how much water there is. No one is wondering whether they'll feel more full on 100g of chicken or 100g of broccoli. Anyone trying to control weight would ask about 100 calories of broccoli versus 100g of chicken. I don't know what the answer there is, but they're probably comparable. A head of broccoli is just 205 calories but still contains 17g protein and 16g of fiber. Equivalent calorie chicken breast would be like 40g protein and no fiber. Both are healthy food choices unless you deep fry them or something. You're making lots of fast-and-loose comparisons here that are simply misleading. (Why is the comparison broccoli + fast food versus just chicken? Why do you suddenly switch to talking about iceberg lettuce? Why pretend that broccoli isn't a healthy food that is substantially more satiating than fast food - as is chicken?)
  - thatcat 5y ago
    Phytochemicals found in some veggies and spices increase immune and other functions. Even if it's 90% water, there are still many functional compounds that aren't found in meat.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Mushrooms are a fascinating bunch to look at regarding this. There are many chemicals in them that are being studied around the immune system, anti-tumor properties, and health in general.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> So if you eat 400g of broccoli vs 400g of chicken, the one that will make you feel more full is obviously the protein. The idea under discussion is that the thing that will make you feel more full is the food that has what you're deficient in. That makes sense, and evolution tends to do things that make sense.
  - kaitai 5y ago
    Volume is important for feeling full. For sure protein really helps, that's well-studied. But low-calorie-density high-nutrient density foods (like veggies) can really hit the spot and help satiety. And yes, people do get a lot of water from veggie intake, actually!
  - lumost 5y ago
    The human body is complex and ultimately poorly understood. These studies typically focus on short-term hunger cues which aren't necessarily indicative of why someone can happily eat 1 meal a day and someone else feels compelled to eat mcdonalds 3x per day. Anecdotally, If I have a deficiency I'll keep snacking/eating until I've found something that satisfies the deficiency or I'm completely full. Eating to fullness 3x per day or more is a great way to gain a ton of weight.
  - rorykoehler 5y ago
    Far satiates much more than carbs
- techbio 5y ago
  Sibling poster is unnecessarily certain. Craving and satiety is not going to be well covered by macronutrient RDAs. There are interactions in the small intestine related to digesting plant fiber that produce serotonin, for example. I could find details on request.
- daddylongstroke 5y ago
  Pretty widely known effect of sugars on the body. The more simple, processed carbs you eat, the more hunger you feel. Easy enough to test out: stop all simple carbs for 2-4 weeks, observe the results. If you're deep into carbs or junk food, there will be withdrawal symptoms from the sugar addiction. After a month, you'll notice you don't crave any sugars, and you'll feel significantly less hungry on a regular basis.
anfilt 5y ago
Like that could be contributor, but also don't forget how many calories some refined and processed foods can have also while either being sweet or fatty/savory. Does sound like interesting hypothesis though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
wombatmobile 5y ago
> I wonder if there's a relationship to the obesity epidemic You don't have to wonder. Read the inside story of that epidemic in this beautifully researched history by Michael Moss: Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giats Hooked Us by Michael Moss https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797397-salt-sugar-fat https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797397-salt-sugar-fat
alaffere 5y ago
> What if we're compelled to eat more calories when we're not getting enough nutrients in our diets? From what is starting to be known about hunger drives from animal studies [1] this is essentially correct. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214574517300317 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221457451...
- stuaxo 5y ago
  Completely unscientific - but when you see programs on TV about people that eat a lot, the food tends to be highly processed and low in nutrients, I've been wondering the same thing.
  - brandonmenc 5y ago
    > the food tends to be highly processed and low in nutrients This type of food is - coincidentally - always extremely high in calories. But the relationship is orthogonal. You can make processed non-nutritious food that is low in calories, and you can make healthy food that is high in calories. The former happens rarely.
    - adsfasdfadsf222 5y ago
      this is wat I eat, high calory, cheap, and very nutritious: breakfast: 6 raw eggs lemon juice (1 lemon, squeezed) 378 calories in total, of which 227 are fat and 144 protein. just enough sugar to help you digest it without bloat. awesome anabolic effects from the eggs. lunch: 6 raw eggs 200ml whole unhomogenised milk (raw if possible) similar effect but even more anabolic dinner: 200-300g of fresh steak (beef) cooked blue. can be replaced with lamb or other nutritious meats, but certainly not chicken breast which has nearly no nutritional value whatsoever compared to something like sardines
      - jjeaff 5y ago
        Where do you get your eggs? Or is the salmonella part of the weight control?
TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
I’ve been saying this since my nutrition lecture said it in 2003, and he’d been saying it for at least two decayed before that. If you don’t get enough chromium and molybdenum your body can’t properly regular blood glucose control via insulin sensitivity, protein, carbohydrate, and lipid metabolism.
cabalamat 5y ago
It seems highly plausible to me that that's part of the story. Another part of the story is that modern food is designed to be super-tasty: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html
- handmodel 5y ago
  >That's why I don't have an iPhone, for example; the last thing I want is for the Internet to follow me out into the world. I wonder how long that lasted
treeman79 5y ago
I was fat and had serious joint and muscle pain and major migraines. I started taking high levels of magnesium. My joints and muscles improved drastically. Migraines cut in half. I became able to exercise a lot more. I’m still fairly fat because I eat to much. Plus side effects of other medications. But I’m a lot stronger now since I can work out so much more. Best trick of all. Stop eating sugar / carbs.
- QuantumGood 5y ago
  That's great! Re: "high levels" Specifically how much?

nerdponx 5y ago

Anecdotally, this has been my personal experience. I have gone through phases of my life where I ate a lot of junk food. I would feel constantly hungry during those phases, until I ate something nutritious, green and easily-digestible, like steamed broccoli or green peas.

pembrook 5y ago
This doesn’t make any scientific sense. Study after study has shown that protein and complex carbs are what reduces feelings of hunger, not vegetables. This makes sense when you consider most green vegetables like broccoli are 90% water. A meat like chicken, after cooking is only about 60% water. So if you eat 400g of broccoli vs 400g of chicken, the one that will make you feel more full is obviously the protein. What’s more likely, is due to marketing we’ve associated anything that is green in color with being “real, nutritious food” and have convinced ourselves that is what makes us feel full. It’s like people who claim they “feel better” after eating a salad. The average iceberg lettuce has near zero nutritional value and is 96%+ water. The only way you’d feel better after eating one is if you were dehydrated. -- *edit - people seem to be misunderstanding. I'm not saying fast food is healthy. I'm simply refuting the idea that green vegetables are the key to feeling full. If you wanted to feel satiated, green vegetables would be one of the most inefficient ways to do so--due to their 90%+ water content.
- shakabrah 5y ago
  Or…you know…vegetables have fiber and meat doesn’t?
  - pembrook 5y ago
    Fiber is certainly important, but try eating a diet of only broccoli one day vs a diet of only chicken the next. You’ll likely feel normal on the chicken day. On the broccoli day you’ll feel like you’re fasting (because on a calorie basis, you literally will be unless you eat 5-7X as much broccoli as you do chicken).
    - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
      You’re being disingenuous. The conversation started about nutrient depleted junk food vs whole foods. And now you’re comparing two different types of whole foods.
      - pembrook 5y ago
        The comment I directly replied to here suggested fiber was the reason for feeling full. Fiber can certainly help with feeling full as it takes longer to digest, however fiber alone cannot satiate. Meanwhile, a diet completely devoid of fiber can still make you feel full.
- orwin 5y ago
  > Study after study has shown that protein and carbs are what reduces feelings of hunger Proteins and fat you mean? Also, incidentally, water do quench hunger as well. My trick to eat less when i was overweight was to drink a lot during meals.
  - adrian_b 5y ago
    Also in my experience, proteins & fat reduce the feelings of hunger, not carbs. If I eat at breakfast in the morning 140 g turkey breast + 70 g cashew nuts + 3 sweet potatoes + 1 bell pepper, then I feel perfectly satiated and I feel no hunger until late in the evening, when I have next meal. Deleting either the turkey breast or the cashew nuts from that breakfast menu, makes me hungry much earlier. On the other hand, if I eat just bread, I have to eat a very large quantity, e.g. 1 kilogram, until I feel satiated due to the full stomach, and then after a few hours I feel hungry again. There are many kinds of food, like bread, vanilla or cocoa cream and many others, which I like very much, but which do not satiate me unless eaten in huge quantities, so I have given up on eating those kinds of food, because it is much easier to not eat them at all than to stop after eating just a small quantity.
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  Salad (nothing but vegetables) has the effect of increasing mechanical fullness before a meal. Plain, boiled potatoes cause the most satiety. Oranges and oatmeal are also good.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  I did clearly state that it was an anecdote, with a sample size of one, myself. Also I think you're being extremely reductionist here. I'm not claiming that I never felt the sensation of fullness in my stomach. Of course I did. Maybe I should rephrase, that I constantly felt like I was craving food even though my stomach was full. Moreover, to suggest that our brains somehow only understand macronutrients when it comes to regulating our sense of hunger, is ridiculous. You really think that people feeling better after eating broccoli is because they have been brainwashed by the marketing of the vegetable-industrial complex? is it really that outlandish to hypothesize that eating nutritious food makes you feel better? Of course it would be fallacious to generalize my experience to other people, if only because I myself hardly understand what was going on. But it would be equally fallacious, not to mention arrogant, to dismiss that such an effect might exist, on the grounds that we did some controlled studies and found that hungry people feel more satisfied after eating something substatial.
  - raducu 5y ago
    There's more to it -- there's a considerable delay between your stomach being full to your brain telling you you're full. I can eat one pound of icecream in one go before I feel that I'm done, or 1/3 of that, tell myself I can eat the rest in 15 minutes IF I still feel the need to at that future time, and I usually don't -- sort of like the reverse of telling myself I'll only work 5 minutes on that boring task I don't want to, but usually I work through it all. My unscientific point being, there's no way the brain can tell I've eaten 1/3 meat and 2/3 salad vs 3/3 meat in the span of 15 minutes; sure, it will digest the salad much faster, but by that time I'm already doing other things that don't involve me stuffing my face with food; I've found that with food, if you can resist the urge to eat more for 15 minutes, and don't have snacks just laying around you, you actually solved 90% of your overeating problem. SO in my experience, eating broccoli/salad, or just drinking water, absolutely do work to make you full/less hungry, for a short while at least, but that short duration should not be underestimated, because a lot of times is all that is required for one to stick to a caloric limit.
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      > there's no way the brain can tell I've eaten 1/3 meat and 2/3 salad vs 3/3 meat in the span of 15 minutes Again, I think this is trusting too much in "today's science". Who's to say that your body/brain can't detect whether a food is nutritious? For all we know, some trace nutrients are subconsciously detectable in taste and smell, even if heuristically. I'm not saying that is what happens, but I don't think we know nearly enough to dismiss such a possibility.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
  Just quietly, you need to update your knowledge. Look in to, at the very least, how chromium and molybdenum help regular homeostasis via insulin sensitivity and macronutrient metabolism.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  Yes, proteins and carbs reduce feelings of hunger. But nutrient deficiencies cause food cravings. That's why people who eat high-calorie meals with few vitamins and minerals tend to overeat, they satiate their hunger but the cravings remain.
  - pembrook 5y ago
    If that were true, you could solve your cravings by taking a simple multivitamin. Which just isn’t the case unless you’re critically deficient in something (which, most 1st world people aren’t). Eating fast food 3 meals a day but taking a multivitamin will change nothing about your feelings of hunger. What’s more likely, is fast food doesn’t make you feel full because its low in protein (the most expensive ingredient typically, so fast food skimps on it) and high in simple carbs.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      But since when are multivitamins the same as the real thing? Study after study show that multivitamins don’t do much if anything so your idea here is flawed.
      - nerdponx 5y ago
        Isn't that (at least partly) a problem of bioavailability?
    - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
      You can't model a complex biological system as a simple flow-balancing problem of a few substances that have no effect on one another.
- tgb 5y ago
  > most green vegetables like broccoli are 90% water. That's super misleading. The nutrition facts for broccoli here [1] gives 89% water but actually over 1/3rd of broccoli by mass is carbs, fats, proteins or fibers. And comparing raw broccoli to cooked chicken is deceptive - cooking broccoli obviously gets rid of a lot of it's water depending on how you cook. Moreover, comparing gram-to-gram, I'm sure broccoli is less filling, but a lot of people care more about calorie-to-calorie. [1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/broccoli#nutrients https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/broccoli#nutrient...
  - pembrook 5y ago
    Raw chicken with skin on is 66% water, so I wouldn't call it super misleading. I simply mentioned "cooked" because almost nobody eats chicken raw. Lots of people eat raw broccoli. Boiling or steaming broccoli does basically nothing to its water content. Baking it may reduce by 10%. So still 20% more water than the protein. Anyways, the water point was brought up to give something intuitive to grasp on to. As said, the main reason eating one chicken breast makes you feel more full than multiple servings of broccoli, is the 55g of protein. So adding broccoli to your fast food won't suddenly make you feel full. Dumping the fast food altogether and eating a chicken breast instead might.
    - tgb 5y ago
      I was saying that "90% water" stat is super misleading because it makes it sound like <10% is anything of value, but that's off by a factor of 3. Baking absolutely makes a bigger than 10% water loss by mass in broccoli, and that would of course double the non-water fraction even if it were only 10%. But the point is, it doesn't matter how much water there is. No one is wondering whether they'll feel more full on 100g of chicken or 100g of broccoli. Anyone trying to control weight would ask about 100 calories of broccoli versus 100g of chicken. I don't know what the answer there is, but they're probably comparable. A head of broccoli is just 205 calories but still contains 17g protein and 16g of fiber. Equivalent calorie chicken breast would be like 40g protein and no fiber. Both are healthy food choices unless you deep fry them or something. You're making lots of fast-and-loose comparisons here that are simply misleading. (Why is the comparison broccoli + fast food versus just chicken? Why do you suddenly switch to talking about iceberg lettuce? Why pretend that broccoli isn't a healthy food that is substantially more satiating than fast food - as is chicken?)
- thatcat 5y ago
  Phytochemicals found in some veggies and spices increase immune and other functions. Even if it's 90% water, there are still many functional compounds that aren't found in meat.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Mushrooms are a fascinating bunch to look at regarding this. There are many chemicals in them that are being studied around the immune system, anti-tumor properties, and health in general.
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> So if you eat 400g of broccoli vs 400g of chicken, the one that will make you feel more full is obviously the protein. The idea under discussion is that the thing that will make you feel more full is the food that has what you're deficient in. That makes sense, and evolution tends to do things that make sense.
- kaitai 5y ago
  Volume is important for feeling full. For sure protein really helps, that's well-studied. But low-calorie-density high-nutrient density foods (like veggies) can really hit the spot and help satiety. And yes, people do get a lot of water from veggie intake, actually!
- lumost 5y ago
  The human body is complex and ultimately poorly understood. These studies typically focus on short-term hunger cues which aren't necessarily indicative of why someone can happily eat 1 meal a day and someone else feels compelled to eat mcdonalds 3x per day. Anecdotally, If I have a deficiency I'll keep snacking/eating until I've found something that satisfies the deficiency or I'm completely full. Eating to fullness 3x per day or more is a great way to gain a ton of weight.
- rorykoehler 5y ago
  Far satiates much more than carbs
techbio 5y ago
Sibling poster is unnecessarily certain. Craving and satiety is not going to be well covered by macronutrient RDAs. There are interactions in the small intestine related to digesting plant fiber that produce serotonin, for example. I could find details on request.
daddylongstroke 5y ago
Pretty widely known effect of sugars on the body. The more simple, processed carbs you eat, the more hunger you feel. Easy enough to test out: stop all simple carbs for 2-4 weeks, observe the results. If you're deep into carbs or junk food, there will be withdrawal symptoms from the sugar addiction. After a month, you'll notice you don't crave any sugars, and you'll feel significantly less hungry on a regular basis.

anfilt 5y ago

Like that could be contributor, but also don't forget how many calories some refined and processed foods can have also while either being sweet or fatty/savory. Does sound like interesting hypothesis though.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

wombatmobile 5y ago

> I wonder if there's a relationship to the obesity epidemic You don't have to wonder. Read the inside story of that epidemic in this beautifully researched history by Michael Moss: Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giats Hooked Us by Michael Moss https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797397-salt-sugar-fat https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797397-salt-sugar-fat

alaffere 5y ago

> What if we're compelled to eat more calories when we're not getting enough nutrients in our diets? From what is starting to be known about hunger drives from animal studies [1] this is essentially correct. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214574517300317 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221457451...

stuaxo 5y ago
Completely unscientific - but when you see programs on TV about people that eat a lot, the food tends to be highly processed and low in nutrients, I've been wondering the same thing.
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  > the food tends to be highly processed and low in nutrients This type of food is - coincidentally - always extremely high in calories. But the relationship is orthogonal. You can make processed non-nutritious food that is low in calories, and you can make healthy food that is high in calories. The former happens rarely.
  - adsfasdfadsf222 5y ago
    this is wat I eat, high calory, cheap, and very nutritious: breakfast: 6 raw eggs lemon juice (1 lemon, squeezed) 378 calories in total, of which 227 are fat and 144 protein. just enough sugar to help you digest it without bloat. awesome anabolic effects from the eggs. lunch: 6 raw eggs 200ml whole unhomogenised milk (raw if possible) similar effect but even more anabolic dinner: 200-300g of fresh steak (beef) cooked blue. can be replaced with lamb or other nutritious meats, but certainly not chicken breast which has nearly no nutritional value whatsoever compared to something like sardines
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      Where do you get your eggs? Or is the salmonella part of the weight control?

TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago

I’ve been saying this since my nutrition lecture said it in 2003, and he’d been saying it for at least two decayed before that. If you don’t get enough chromium and molybdenum your body can’t properly regular blood glucose control via insulin sensitivity, protein, carbohydrate, and lipid metabolism.

cabalamat 5y ago

It seems highly plausible to me that that's part of the story. Another part of the story is that modern food is designed to be super-tasty: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

handmodel 5y ago
>That's why I don't have an iPhone, for example; the last thing I want is for the Internet to follow me out into the world. I wonder how long that lasted

treeman79 5y ago

I was fat and had serious joint and muscle pain and major migraines. I started taking high levels of magnesium. My joints and muscles improved drastically. Migraines cut in half. I became able to exercise a lot more. I’m still fairly fat because I eat to much. Plus side effects of other medications. But I’m a lot stronger now since I can work out so much more. Best trick of all. Stop eating sugar / carbs.

QuantumGood 5y ago
That's great! Re: "high levels" Specifically how much?