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On the subject of diet quality, I've always been a "calories in, calories out" kind of person. There are certain foods that will make you feel satiated for lon

On the subject of diet quality, I've always been a "calories in, calories out" kind of person. There are certain foods that will make you feel satiated for longer, of course, which will increase your chances of success. But at the end of the day, it basically just comes down to how many calories you put in your body. On that note, I was really intrigued by this whitepaper I read via Zero Acre Farms that dives into obesogenic compounds like HNE and linoleic acid: https://www.zeroacre.com/white-papers/how-vegetable-oil-makes-us-fat https://www.zeroacre.com/white-papers/how-vegetable-oil-make... The paper makes some pretty big claims, and I don't know enough about nutrition to refute them. Maybe somebody here does?

bookofjoe 4y ago
>Dietary intake and biomarkers of linoleic acid and mortality: systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7326588/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7326588/
gruez 4y ago
> But at the end of the day, it basically just comes down to how many calories you put in your body. What about this study[1], which fed twin pairs a carefully controlled diet, but nonetheless resulted in huge variances in weight gain ("The mean weight gain was 8.1 kg, but the range was 4.3 to 13.3 kg") between twin pairs? Surely if your body weight was determined by CICO, we'd expect everyone to gain the same amount of weight given the same calories/diet? [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199005243222101 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199005243222101
- 0x5345414e 4y ago
  I don’t see how this challenges the CICO argument at all. Weight gain is just a function of calories absorbed and calories burned. You can dig into the details of what those two numbers might be for different people but it doesn’t change what the function is. That being said, CICO is bordering on being a truism and not really adding much to a discussion on weight gain.
- layer8 4y ago
  > Surely if your body weight was determined by CICO, we'd expect everyone to gain the same amount of weight given the same calories/diet? Only if you also control for calories out, which is difficult to do.
- tekla 4y ago
  CICO is a determination about the fact that humans obey the laws of the thermodynamics and cannot create mass from nothing. The fact that different people metabolize differently doesn't refute that. If you stop eating/eat very small amounts of food, you WILL lose weight. It is literally impossible for you not to do so. It doesn't matter if you drink pure corn syrup, eat twinkies, or Big Macs. If you limit to some arbitrary number of lets say 500 calories a day you WILL lose weight. The military has done extensive research on this because of logistical concerns, and have very well documented studies on calories required to keep soldiers active on the field. Any argument to the contrary is literally arguing that humans break physics and can get fat from nothing.
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    I think the real point is that CICO ends up just boiling away into a trivial statement yet people fling it around as some actionable mantra. For example you can’t actually calculate CI and especially not CO. You can just try to approximate them which is just “eat less to lose weight” yet people throw around CICO as if it illuminates anything interesting, especially when it seems to be brought up as a counter to eating healthier. Turns out can’t actually eat all that much of something like broccoli, so “eat healthy” remains good advice.
    - tekla 4y ago
      It doesnt illuminate anything interesting because weight loss is inherently uninteresting. There are TV shows that show people who claim they have trouble losing weight even though they diet and eat healthy, and when you see what you eat, its some ungodly amount of calorie dense food. There are athletes who plan their diets and workouts based around trying to make weight for competitions which involve planned amounts of weight drop for a target date. People who dont lose weight simply are LYING to themselves. They claim they track calories, but usually its eyed and not measured calories, they simply "forget" about the snack they had, or they "treat themselves" frequently for "good diet behavior" As a former extremely obese person, seeing people continually lie to themselves about a literal physical law about matter creation pisses me off. Losing 150 pounds was EASY the moment I realized I had to stop LYING to myself.
basch 4y ago
Isn't diet quality more than just calories? Digestibility, glycemic index, gut health, gassing, nutrient density, vitamins, minerals. The relationship with gut bacteria and hormones like insulin are going to make the "calories in" different for each person.
- testfoobar 4y ago
  This is exactly right. It is far too simplistic to model the human energy conversion and storage system as if it were a simple black box furnace - where joules of food energy are the input. Many threads on this topic here at HN over the year.
- layer8 4y ago
  Calories in being different for each person is irrelevant if the same person wants to lose weight. Calorie counting is a sure way to do so. Diet quality may influence calories in or out, or make it easier to adhere to a certain calorie count. But in the end, measuring what you eat, and reducing it (or increasing calorie expenditure) if you don’t lose weight is the one thing that is guaranteed to work, if you can stick to it.
hombre_fatal 4y ago
https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-to-seed-oil-sophistry https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-... The “Seed oil” scare cashes out into Twitter sophistry, usually in the form of mechanistic speculation since human outcome data exonerates linoleic acid and vegetable oils and may even convince you to use canola oil.
BirAdam 4y ago
This isn’t entirely accurate. I went keto and despite actually eating a higher calorie diet, I lost 40 pounds in 2 months. Over the following 6 months, I lost another 10 pounds. Not all calories are equal.
kbutler 4y ago
This paper says, " we found that dietary adherence played a more significant role than caloric restriction in distinguishing the two groups". Also, "First, there seems to be a heightened neural response to highly processed foods, which have been developed in the industry to be hyperpalatable. These foods might not be as effective in reducing appetite after eating.30,31 Second, highly processed foods tend to be high in added sugars and saturated and trans fats and depleted in most micronutrients and other bioactive compounds and fiber.32,33 This differential dietary composition might have an impact on the overall metabolism of the food, directing it into different metabolic pathways, with different efficiency.34 Third, the calories provided in highly processed foods are easier to access than those in less processed foods,35 so even if the diet provides similar calories, these are not equally available." So calorie as measured ex vivo is not necessarily equivalent to other calories measured ex vivo. The biome studies and insulin resistance/RQ differences also suggest that a calorie is not necessarily just a calorie for different individuals. So it's probably more "a calorie available to your metabolism" rather than "a calorie into your mouth."
fijiaarone 4y ago
Fun fact: AutoCAD wanted to be Microsoft Access.

bookofjoe 4y ago

>Dietary intake and biomarkers of linoleic acid and mortality: systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7326588/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7326588/

gruez 4y ago

> But at the end of the day, it basically just comes down to how many calories you put in your body. What about this study[1], which fed twin pairs a carefully controlled diet, but nonetheless resulted in huge variances in weight gain ("The mean weight gain was 8.1 kg, but the range was 4.3 to 13.3 kg") between twin pairs? Surely if your body weight was determined by CICO, we'd expect everyone to gain the same amount of weight given the same calories/diet? [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199005243222101 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199005243222101

0x5345414e 4y ago
I don’t see how this challenges the CICO argument at all. Weight gain is just a function of calories absorbed and calories burned. You can dig into the details of what those two numbers might be for different people but it doesn’t change what the function is. That being said, CICO is bordering on being a truism and not really adding much to a discussion on weight gain.
layer8 4y ago
> Surely if your body weight was determined by CICO, we'd expect everyone to gain the same amount of weight given the same calories/diet? Only if you also control for calories out, which is difficult to do.
tekla 4y ago
CICO is a determination about the fact that humans obey the laws of the thermodynamics and cannot create mass from nothing. The fact that different people metabolize differently doesn't refute that. If you stop eating/eat very small amounts of food, you WILL lose weight. It is literally impossible for you not to do so. It doesn't matter if you drink pure corn syrup, eat twinkies, or Big Macs. If you limit to some arbitrary number of lets say 500 calories a day you WILL lose weight. The military has done extensive research on this because of logistical concerns, and have very well documented studies on calories required to keep soldiers active on the field. Any argument to the contrary is literally arguing that humans break physics and can get fat from nothing.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  I think the real point is that CICO ends up just boiling away into a trivial statement yet people fling it around as some actionable mantra. For example you can’t actually calculate CI and especially not CO. You can just try to approximate them which is just “eat less to lose weight” yet people throw around CICO as if it illuminates anything interesting, especially when it seems to be brought up as a counter to eating healthier. Turns out can’t actually eat all that much of something like broccoli, so “eat healthy” remains good advice.
  - tekla 4y ago
    It doesnt illuminate anything interesting because weight loss is inherently uninteresting. There are TV shows that show people who claim they have trouble losing weight even though they diet and eat healthy, and when you see what you eat, its some ungodly amount of calorie dense food. There are athletes who plan their diets and workouts based around trying to make weight for competitions which involve planned amounts of weight drop for a target date. People who dont lose weight simply are LYING to themselves. They claim they track calories, but usually its eyed and not measured calories, they simply "forget" about the snack they had, or they "treat themselves" frequently for "good diet behavior" As a former extremely obese person, seeing people continually lie to themselves about a literal physical law about matter creation pisses me off. Losing 150 pounds was EASY the moment I realized I had to stop LYING to myself.

basch 4y ago

Isn't diet quality more than just calories? Digestibility, glycemic index, gut health, gassing, nutrient density, vitamins, minerals. The relationship with gut bacteria and hormones like insulin are going to make the "calories in" different for each person.

testfoobar 4y ago
This is exactly right. It is far too simplistic to model the human energy conversion and storage system as if it were a simple black box furnace - where joules of food energy are the input. Many threads on this topic here at HN over the year.
layer8 4y ago
Calories in being different for each person is irrelevant if the same person wants to lose weight. Calorie counting is a sure way to do so. Diet quality may influence calories in or out, or make it easier to adhere to a certain calorie count. But in the end, measuring what you eat, and reducing it (or increasing calorie expenditure) if you don’t lose weight is the one thing that is guaranteed to work, if you can stick to it.

hombre_fatal 4y ago

https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-to-seed-oil-sophistry https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-... The “Seed oil” scare cashes out into Twitter sophistry, usually in the form of mechanistic speculation since human outcome data exonerates linoleic acid and vegetable oils and may even convince you to use canola oil.

BirAdam 4y ago

This isn’t entirely accurate. I went keto and despite actually eating a higher calorie diet, I lost 40 pounds in 2 months. Over the following 6 months, I lost another 10 pounds. Not all calories are equal.

kbutler 4y ago

This paper says, " we found that dietary adherence played a more significant role than caloric restriction in distinguishing the two groups". Also, "First, there seems to be a heightened neural response to highly processed foods, which have been developed in the industry to be hyperpalatable. These foods might not be as effective in reducing appetite after eating.30,31 Second, highly processed foods tend to be high in added sugars and saturated and trans fats and depleted in most micronutrients and other bioactive compounds and fiber.32,33 This differential dietary composition might have an impact on the overall metabolism of the food, directing it into different metabolic pathways, with different efficiency.34 Third, the calories provided in highly processed foods are easier to access than those in less processed foods,35 so even if the diet provides similar calories, these are not equally available." So calorie as measured ex vivo is not necessarily equivalent to other calories measured ex vivo. The biome studies and insulin resistance/RQ differences also suggest that a calorie is not necessarily just a calorie for different individuals. So it's probably more "a calorie available to your metabolism" rather than "a calorie into your mouth."

fijiaarone 4y ago

Fun fact: AutoCAD wanted to be Microsoft Access.