5 ms·

Calories Do Count

27 points by robg 18y ago

taw 18y ago
No kind of dieting work in long term. People have very limited self-control over what they eat, and if they eat less than their organism thinks they should they will suffer, feel like shit, and finally give up. There are ways that seem to work - drugs (the best ones are stimulants like amphetamines and ephedra, and are obviously all illegal; there are some semi-decent appetite blockers like fen-phen, but surprise surprise - they're also illegal now), serious physical exercise (of boot camp kind; not of half an hour at the gym twice a week kind), gastric bypasses. Somehow none of them is very popular, and everybody gets fatter and fatter, and keep fooling themselves with the latest diet fad.
jbert 18y ago
So, are mandated calorie counts on foods, (evil) government intervention in the free market or a useful boost to creating an efficient market by trying to help create that essential prerequisite, the informed consumer? Or both, I guess, since free market (buyer+seller do what they want) is perhaps only tangentially related to perfect/efficient market (actors all rational, perfect information). Are their any parallels in the tech world (perhaps minimum specs/compatability or age/content labelling on some software, i.e. games)? Would it be useful if there was more pre-purchase consumer-level information on software or tech products?
- Alex3917 18y ago
  "Are mandated calorie counts on foods, (evil) government intervention in the free market or a useful boost to creating an efficient market by trying to help create that essential prerequisite" A good example of orientalism.
  - jbert 18y ago
    "A good example of orientalism." Could you elaborate? Is it because I'm being dualistic in my apparent mindset? Surely that's more occidental? (Actually it was on purpose, but never mind).
    - Alex3917 18y ago
      I meant because you are imagining this platonic ideal of the free market and then going out and trying to compare how real world systems sync with that ideal. In any event the justification behind the free market being the best economic system is that it is the most efficient way to allocate goods and services to the people who want them the most. So asking whether or not this reform interferes with the free market doesn't make much sense in this case.
- tocomment 18y ago
  I consider myself a libertarian on most issues, but more of an agnostic on how well the free market works, and what the role of government should be there. Issues like this are really tough for me to decide.
- robg 18y ago
  I don't see why this type of government intervention should worry anyone. It's about information transparency. Can anyone seriously argue that ingredient labels are anti-market? There are also shelf tags, in supermarkets, dictating price per quantity. How do any of those measures hurt the free market? If anything, it forces food vendors to better evaluate their products in contrast to their competition. And that seems to be exactly what's happening. A little bit of transparency goes a long way. Seems to me, that's a perfect role for government. The government argument for me isn't all or none. It's: How much?
  - jbert 18y ago
    > Can anyone seriously argue that ingredient labels are anti-market? Well, it's fairly close to an issue which has been controversial: whether to require the labelling of GM milk. Personally, I'm happy for there to be a goodly amount of regulation about consumables. I don't think a raw free market (if you sell food which makes people sick, your brand will suffer) provides enough protection in that case. I was really trying to think about the benefits+costs of forcing sellers to give more information to consumers, and how that might translate to other products. (Warning: - this program is written in C - it may suffer from buffer overruns. - this program is written in .NET/java - it may require a huge download in order to run - etc) Slightly more seriously, how about a govt regulation which required showing typical working set size of your program in operation in Mbytes? How about being required to notify users that your software patches system-level functionality? (no more DRM "rootkits" )?
    - cstejerean 18y ago
      If I could create backup copies of myself and/or run copies of myself in a VM I wouldn't really care about labels on food, medicine or even FDA approvals.
      - jbert 18y ago
        You might, if you find out too late that your liver has been compromised and rolling back to a previous snapshot means you're not married anymore.
- danielh 18y ago
  If it is evil government intervention, what about warning labels on cigarettes?
- orib 18y ago
  Take this with a grain of salt, since I am not an economist. However, I think that Government intervention isn't evil. For the free market economy to work, a number of assumptions are made in the model. For example, we assume that consumers are well informed, and make judgements on the product's attributes. We also assume that there are no significant externalities, and all costs are actually exposed to the companies. Labelling the foods with their actual properties, testing them for safety, and other similar government intervention can actually bring things closer to the ideal free market economy where the consumers know what they're buying, and the costs of environmental cleanup are passed on to the companies causing the damage.
kingkongrevenge 18y ago
I don't think people should count calories. Your sense of hunger and satiety accurately tells you how many calories you need if you're eating properly. If you eat a 1,900 calorie lunch you're just not going to be hungry in the evening and things will net out. The main reason hunger as a guide breaks down and people feel the need to count calories is a poor diet, usually heavy with starch and light on saturated fats. You also see a lot of people religiously following a meal schedule. If you're not hungry, don't eat! Skip meals occasionally. People just don't listen to their bodies.
- robg 18y ago
  Someone who's fifty pounds overweight still has strong biochemical urges to eat though they may not need to. Aren't they listening to their bodies? More problematic is the evidence that suggests that eating changes the brain. Sure, some of that is cultural. But most of that is physical including emotional needs.
  - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
    They have the urge to eat to excess because: their endocrine system is all wacked up from too much starch and from a lack of fasting periods (they eat too frequently; the body is meant to go the odd 12 hour stretch without food), mineral and vitamin malnutrition create hunger, and sedentism. If you fix the diet appetite will usually work fine. A pure calorie counting approach is surely doomed to failure, anyway. Hunger is far too powerful a motivator. You have to fix the appetite first.
    - robg 18y ago
      Right, I agree. I was just disagreeing with the "listen to your body". That won't work if your body is out of whack and has been for years. I'm a big believer in my nutritionist. But calorie information is very helpful and it seems profitable. I don't see anyone advocating a "pure" calorie counting approach at the expense of what you're eating.
    - mlinsey 18y ago
markessien 18y ago
Maybe it's just me, but I really think people should focus more on just eating more naturally and walking instead of driving or taking the train. When I say natural food, I mean that you should avoid things like: - Cow Milk and diary products. It's for cows, not for humans - Fruit Juices/Soda and other sources of unnatural sugar - Oil Stick with naturally human stuff like - Meat - Leaves and stuff made of leaves - Fruits (not fruit juice) - Nuts I think one should just think before eating : if I were a caveman, how easy would it be to make this thing? And if it would be pretty hard, then treat it like a luxury, and eat sparingly. For example, chocolate.
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  > Milk ... It's for cows, not for humans This is one of the stupider points I keep seeing. At least some human populations have been eating dairy products for over ten thousand years. That's a serious chunk of human evolution. Only certain people should avoid diary, but more commonly they'd be fine with fermented products and should just avoid straight milk. > Oil Again, thousands of years of healthy people eating lots of olive and coconut oil.
  - speek 18y ago
    For most of my life I wasn't Lactose-intolerant... In the past year or so I've somehow managed to convince my body to start mutating the shape of those oh-so-wonderful lactase enzymes. Now, I don't _have_ to drink lactase-added milk, but it certainly helps those who are around me. I can still do cheese and yoghurt, but its only straight-up milk that irks my stomach. "Good" oils are very good for people. "Good" oils raise HDL levels in people. They lubricate blood vessels and do amazing things for your body. Generally, the only things you need to stay away from are hydrogenated things and things that don't occur in nature. +Fish oil -Partially Hydrogenated (insert plant name here) oil +fat (I never understood why people were so obsessed with fat-free stuff. Fat is good for you. It's satisfying, yet has a delayed glycemic index response.) +fiber +protein -simple carbohydrates +exercise = health
  - icey 18y ago
    What are your dietary credentials? Every time there's a remotely food related post, you come in banging the "NO STARCH MOAR FATS" tambourine, and I'm curious where your data comes from.
terio 18y ago
Check this talk about obesity and nutrition. Perhaps calories are not all the same, depending on the source and how each different body metabolizes it. http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=21216 http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=2121... You can also research related subjects like glycemic index (or glycemic load), metabolic syndrome, paleolithic diet, protein diets. I have been avoiding concentrated carbs (bread, rice, potatoes, grains) for 2 months, with the occasional exception of dark chocolate bars, and I shed 10 pounds quickly. My weight stabilized already, I am lean, and my blood chemistry is fine. I have a friend that has been the same for about the same time with similar results. My girlfriend also has shed some pounds although she is not that strict. I have craved bread a couple of times. I avoided eating it and the craving went away after eating. A warning. Changing my life style this way has been a challenging at times. Sometimes it is difficult to get enough of the stuff I eat in a regular serving at public places. My meals are generally more expensive (health is expensive), but I also eat nicer food.
- jeremyw 18y ago
  Glad someone pointed to Taubes. What saddens me about the (reported) response to calorie transparency's backlash is uniform fat reduction, instead of menu options for different kinds of metabolism. My weight, for instance, happily drops with insulin control. Without carbohydrates, I simply can't gain pounds.
wallflower 18y ago
Some of our ancestors had a meat-and-potatoes type diet and some of us still eat the same. However, a lot of our ancestors worked in the fields and did physical labor (to burn off those calories)
maximilian 18y ago
I count calories in the opposite direction. I usually buy the things that are more calorie dense. Like I usually buy clif bar and related clif products because they pack a lot of calories per bite with a relatively good effect on my blood sugar. I've started eating extra pb&j's at school/work to make it through the day. I struggle to eat enough good food because of my demanding days and low student income. It can be difficult to pack 500+ calories of snacks to make it through a long afternoon. Do other people have this problem?

27 points by robg 18y ago

taw 18y ago

No kind of dieting work in long term. People have very limited self-control over what they eat, and if they eat less than their organism thinks they should they will suffer, feel like shit, and finally give up. There are ways that seem to work - drugs (the best ones are stimulants like amphetamines and ephedra, and are obviously all illegal; there are some semi-decent appetite blockers like fen-phen, but surprise surprise - they're also illegal now), serious physical exercise (of boot camp kind; not of half an hour at the gym twice a week kind), gastric bypasses. Somehow none of them is very popular, and everybody gets fatter and fatter, and keep fooling themselves with the latest diet fad.

jbert 18y ago

So, are mandated calorie counts on foods, (evil) government intervention in the free market or a useful boost to creating an efficient market by trying to help create that essential prerequisite, the informed consumer? Or both, I guess, since free market (buyer+seller do what they want) is perhaps only tangentially related to perfect/efficient market (actors all rational, perfect information). Are their any parallels in the tech world (perhaps minimum specs/compatability or age/content labelling on some software, i.e. games)? Would it be useful if there was more pre-purchase consumer-level information on software or tech products?

Alex3917 18y ago
"Are mandated calorie counts on foods, (evil) government intervention in the free market or a useful boost to creating an efficient market by trying to help create that essential prerequisite" A good example of orientalism.
- jbert 18y ago
  "A good example of orientalism." Could you elaborate? Is it because I'm being dualistic in my apparent mindset? Surely that's more occidental? (Actually it was on purpose, but never mind).
  - Alex3917 18y ago
    I meant because you are imagining this platonic ideal of the free market and then going out and trying to compare how real world systems sync with that ideal. In any event the justification behind the free market being the best economic system is that it is the most efficient way to allocate goods and services to the people who want them the most. So asking whether or not this reform interferes with the free market doesn't make much sense in this case.
tocomment 18y ago
I consider myself a libertarian on most issues, but more of an agnostic on how well the free market works, and what the role of government should be there. Issues like this are really tough for me to decide.
robg 18y ago
I don't see why this type of government intervention should worry anyone. It's about information transparency. Can anyone seriously argue that ingredient labels are anti-market? There are also shelf tags, in supermarkets, dictating price per quantity. How do any of those measures hurt the free market? If anything, it forces food vendors to better evaluate their products in contrast to their competition. And that seems to be exactly what's happening. A little bit of transparency goes a long way. Seems to me, that's a perfect role for government. The government argument for me isn't all or none. It's: How much?
- jbert 18y ago
  > Can anyone seriously argue that ingredient labels are anti-market? Well, it's fairly close to an issue which has been controversial: whether to require the labelling of GM milk. Personally, I'm happy for there to be a goodly amount of regulation about consumables. I don't think a raw free market (if you sell food which makes people sick, your brand will suffer) provides enough protection in that case. I was really trying to think about the benefits+costs of forcing sellers to give more information to consumers, and how that might translate to other products. (Warning: - this program is written in C - it may suffer from buffer overruns. - this program is written in .NET/java - it may require a huge download in order to run - etc) Slightly more seriously, how about a govt regulation which required showing typical working set size of your program in operation in Mbytes? How about being required to notify users that your software patches system-level functionality? (no more DRM "rootkits" )?
  - cstejerean 18y ago
    If I could create backup copies of myself and/or run copies of myself in a VM I wouldn't really care about labels on food, medicine or even FDA approvals.
    - jbert 18y ago
      You might, if you find out too late that your liver has been compromised and rolling back to a previous snapshot means you're not married anymore.
danielh 18y ago
If it is evil government intervention, what about warning labels on cigarettes?
orib 18y ago
Take this with a grain of salt, since I am not an economist. However, I think that Government intervention isn't evil. For the free market economy to work, a number of assumptions are made in the model. For example, we assume that consumers are well informed, and make judgements on the product's attributes. We also assume that there are no significant externalities, and all costs are actually exposed to the companies. Labelling the foods with their actual properties, testing them for safety, and other similar government intervention can actually bring things closer to the ideal free market economy where the consumers know what they're buying, and the costs of environmental cleanup are passed on to the companies causing the damage.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago

I don't think people should count calories. Your sense of hunger and satiety accurately tells you how many calories you need if you're eating properly. If you eat a 1,900 calorie lunch you're just not going to be hungry in the evening and things will net out. The main reason hunger as a guide breaks down and people feel the need to count calories is a poor diet, usually heavy with starch and light on saturated fats. You also see a lot of people religiously following a meal schedule. If you're not hungry, don't eat! Skip meals occasionally. People just don't listen to their bodies.

robg 18y ago
Someone who's fifty pounds overweight still has strong biochemical urges to eat though they may not need to. Aren't they listening to their bodies? More problematic is the evidence that suggests that eating changes the brain. Sure, some of that is cultural. But most of that is physical including emotional needs.
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  They have the urge to eat to excess because: their endocrine system is all wacked up from too much starch and from a lack of fasting periods (they eat too frequently; the body is meant to go the odd 12 hour stretch without food), mineral and vitamin malnutrition create hunger, and sedentism. If you fix the diet appetite will usually work fine. A pure calorie counting approach is surely doomed to failure, anyway. Hunger is far too powerful a motivator. You have to fix the appetite first.
  - robg 18y ago
    Right, I agree. I was just disagreeing with the "listen to your body". That won't work if your body is out of whack and has been for years. I'm a big believer in my nutritionist. But calorie information is very helpful and it seems profitable. I don't see anyone advocating a "pure" calorie counting approach at the expense of what you're eating.
  - mlinsey 18y ago

markessien 18y ago

Maybe it's just me, but I really think people should focus more on just eating more naturally and walking instead of driving or taking the train. When I say natural food, I mean that you should avoid things like: - Cow Milk and diary products. It's for cows, not for humans - Fruit Juices/Soda and other sources of unnatural sugar - Oil Stick with naturally human stuff like - Meat - Leaves and stuff made of leaves - Fruits (not fruit juice) - Nuts I think one should just think before eating : if I were a caveman, how easy would it be to make this thing? And if it would be pretty hard, then treat it like a luxury, and eat sparingly. For example, chocolate.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago
> Milk ... It's for cows, not for humans This is one of the stupider points I keep seeing. At least some human populations have been eating dairy products for over ten thousand years. That's a serious chunk of human evolution. Only certain people should avoid diary, but more commonly they'd be fine with fermented products and should just avoid straight milk. > Oil Again, thousands of years of healthy people eating lots of olive and coconut oil.
- speek 18y ago
  For most of my life I wasn't Lactose-intolerant... In the past year or so I've somehow managed to convince my body to start mutating the shape of those oh-so-wonderful lactase enzymes. Now, I don't _have_ to drink lactase-added milk, but it certainly helps those who are around me. I can still do cheese and yoghurt, but its only straight-up milk that irks my stomach. "Good" oils are very good for people. "Good" oils raise HDL levels in people. They lubricate blood vessels and do amazing things for your body. Generally, the only things you need to stay away from are hydrogenated things and things that don't occur in nature. +Fish oil -Partially Hydrogenated (insert plant name here) oil +fat (I never understood why people were so obsessed with fat-free stuff. Fat is good for you. It's satisfying, yet has a delayed glycemic index response.) +fiber +protein -simple carbohydrates +exercise = health
- icey 18y ago
  What are your dietary credentials? Every time there's a remotely food related post, you come in banging the "NO STARCH MOAR FATS" tambourine, and I'm curious where your data comes from.

terio 18y ago

Check this talk about obesity and nutrition. Perhaps calories are not all the same, depending on the source and how each different body metabolizes it. http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=21216 http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=2121... You can also research related subjects like glycemic index (or glycemic load), metabolic syndrome, paleolithic diet, protein diets. I have been avoiding concentrated carbs (bread, rice, potatoes, grains) for 2 months, with the occasional exception of dark chocolate bars, and I shed 10 pounds quickly. My weight stabilized already, I am lean, and my blood chemistry is fine. I have a friend that has been the same for about the same time with similar results. My girlfriend also has shed some pounds although she is not that strict. I have craved bread a couple of times. I avoided eating it and the craving went away after eating. A warning. Changing my life style this way has been a challenging at times. Sometimes it is difficult to get enough of the stuff I eat in a regular serving at public places. My meals are generally more expensive (health is expensive), but I also eat nicer food.

jeremyw 18y ago
Glad someone pointed to Taubes. What saddens me about the (reported) response to calorie transparency's backlash is uniform fat reduction, instead of menu options for different kinds of metabolism. My weight, for instance, happily drops with insulin control. Without carbohydrates, I simply can't gain pounds.

wallflower 18y ago

Some of our ancestors had a meat-and-potatoes type diet and some of us still eat the same. However, a lot of our ancestors worked in the fields and did physical labor (to burn off those calories)

maximilian 18y ago

I count calories in the opposite direction. I usually buy the things that are more calorie dense. Like I usually buy clif bar and related clif products because they pack a lot of calories per bite with a relatively good effect on my blood sugar. I've started eating extra pb&j's at school/work to make it through the day. I struggle to eat enough good food because of my demanding days and low student income. It can be difficult to pack 500+ calories of snacks to make it through a long afternoon. Do other people have this problem?