9 ms·

I'm the opposite - I want my food to match my biological expectations, one of the largest being sweet = I just took in quick calories. Not for any grand reason

by meroes 4y ago

I'm the opposite - I want my food to match my biological expectations, one of the largest being sweet = I just took in quick calories. Not for any grand reason other than I let my hunger and energy levels guide my food choices. I find that the best way long term. I don't have a strong biological instinct of discerning corn syrup from "natural sugar". That is something reading labels helps me with. But I can't fight the biological urges the same way. Empty calories are still somewhat beneficial. I eat a lot of fruit for energy, but sometimes I just want something even quicker and easier to digest and process for my calories, like jelly beans or something. And fruit is more expensive.

eldaisfish 4y ago
The important piece here is context, as it always it. One example - i grew up eating bread that used no sugar or very little sugar. North American bread tastes too close to cake. Many North Americans don’t share my opinion because their baseline is different. Almost all food is a combination of flavours and it is not easy to spot added sugar. The idea of « sweet » is a lot more difficult to use in the real world.
- tracker1 4y ago
  Go carnivore for a week, and you'd be surprised how overly sweet everything tastes after... until you get used to it again that is.
  - CyberDildonics 4y ago
    You don't need a "carnivore" diet for that, you just need to avoid sugar and adjust to it.
    - tracker1 4y ago
      Avoiding sugar may still include very sweet fruit varieties, or juice that can still prevent such adaptation... otherwise, sure, you can do similar without full on carnivore. All said, it was an example.
      - throwway120385 4y ago
        A lot of the problem I have with fruit now is that it's picked so early that it's virtually flavorless. Fuji apples for instance have this beautiful floral/tangy/fruity flavor when they're allowed to ripen on the tree. But go into a supermarket anywhere in my neck of the woods and they're these green things that are just beginning to turn red, and they just taste like fresh leaves with sugar in them. And the supermarket is charging like 4 dollars a pound for the lowest quality crap fruit they can get.
        raegis 4y ago
        The trick for me is to get them from a grocery store with a huge selection. Among a hundred or so apples, there's usually 2 or 3 red ones. The flavor is amazing.
    - throwway120385 4y ago
      In my early 20's I made it a point to stop drinking and eating garbage like Starbucks frappucinos. After a period of 3 years I found myself in a place that only sold the pre-made frappuchinos and some other drinks, but no water or water-like drinks. So I bought one. And in the intervening years it had become disgustingly sweet. Like so sweet that I almost threw up and had to throw away half the bottle. So yes, avoiding sugar will change your tastebuds.
      - jay_kyburz 4y ago
        I used to have a can of coke for breakfast every day. I improved my diet a few years ago. I still enjoy the first few sips, bit I can't drink a whole can anymore.
        yamtaddle 4y ago
        A 12oz bottle for my rare (these days) soda indulgence is usually about four ounces too many. Dunno how a 20-ouncer ever seemed like a single serving to me, but it did. I think free soda refills in restaurants becoming normal in the 90s is an under-appreciated contributor to American health & diet problems. There were Big Gulps and such before that but giant 32+oz soda servings weren't as common as now (have you seen how huge the medium cup is at some fast food joints now?), and most folks had maybe two glasses of soda when eating at a restaurant, if they really liked soda. Suddenly, with free refills and a server constantly topping you off, it's almost natural to become accustomed to downing huge amounts of the stuff.
        jay_kyburz 4y ago
        We have these little 250ml cans in Australia now, I think that's ~ 8oz. I have one once in a blue moon at the beach or on some outing when I feel like something more that water.
        tracker1 4y ago
        I really like/appreciate the little 6-8oz cans here myself. Juice, as an example, when I was little was a serving of 4oz, and one wasn't meant to have it more than a few (3-4) times a week, as explained by my grandmother (when I was little) and definitely not meant to have a giant fruit juice smoothie every day. One 12oz can of soda is the recommended daily sugar limit for an adult male. How many people consume way more than that every single day. And it's been hidden in so many products over the years. Now it's almost worse using artificial sweeteners and sugar alcohols that have varying affects person to person. Like gluten intolerance (celiac at ~1% and intolerance at 3-4%), may foods and combinations only affect a small piece of the population, but with processed franken-foods it's possible to affect much larger portions in varying ways. And it can be temporary or cumulative, such as with histamine intolerance, which is probably the issue most people who think they may have gluten problems lay.
    - miriam_catira 4y ago
      Seconded - I stopped drinking anything sweeter than kombucha about 10 years ago, and now soda is utterly disgusting. My coffee and tea are unsweetened, and if I drink orange juice, I water it down to 1 part juice, 3 or 4 parts water. Sugar no longer tastes like a pleasurable treat, it's cloying and unpalatable. Even sweet food is gross - especially candy. Chocolate has to be 65% or darker. The intersting part is, since we rarely have candy or sweetened foods in the house, my 5 year old child actually prefers popcorn to ice cream, and likes plain cereals like Smart Bran and Ezekiel. He has a bucket of candy from Halloween this past October and he hasn't eaten more than 2 pieces of it. He like his chocolate at least 72% dark. You can get used to not consuming sugar, it just takes effort to find products without it.
      - tracker1 4y ago
        The biggest change for me, is actually liking Walnuts now... where I really never liked them before going low carb (mostly carnivore).
- jrockway 4y ago
  What is "North American" bread exactly? I bake my own bread and use a tablespoon of sugar; the bread does not taste sweet. But if you buy like Wonder bread in the stores, that's intentionally sweetened to taste like cake. I have never seen anyone buy that stuff, though.
  - tstrimple 4y ago
    You've never seen anyone purchase the best selling brand of white bread in the US?
    - QuarterReptile 4y ago
      Surely we're not surprised how detached, on this site, we mostly are from common consumption behaviors?
  - ryeights 4y ago
    Stroll through the prepackaged bread aisle of any U.S. grocery store and look at the sugar content on the nutrition labels. At my local Safeway, the generic brand 100% whole wheat bread contains 4g of sugar per slice. With 16 slices in a pack, that’s a third cup of sugar per loaf. The ingredients? Whole wheat flour, water, sugar, wheat gluten, honey, brown sugar, yeast, oil, salt, …
    - paiute 4y ago
      I enjoy converting g to number of sugar packets which is about 3g. So that's 1 packet per slice (which the yeast might eat). When you say that a coke has 10 packets of sugar it makes you gag a little.
      - drekk 4y ago
        When I bake bread I use a pinch of sugar for an entire loaf. The yeast are just fine eating the flour. Thinking of a packet of sugar PER SLICE is insane to me. Especially for whole grain
  - deleted 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
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- autoexec 4y ago
  > American bread tastes too close to cake. I've heard multiple people from other countries say the same thing. It seems crazy to think about people using cake for bread in sandwiches, but I can see why they'd think that. Even the packaged lunch meats sold in stores have sugar added to them for some reason, I wouldn't be surprised if the deli meat did too. The only thing without added sugar in a sandwich might be the lettuce!
tracker1 4y ago
I'm mostly inclined to agree... I try to keep my total carbs below 50g/day and net carbs under 20g/day, I'm diabetic and prefer to minimize my use of exogenous insulin. The cap on the total, is because there are definitely affects from fiber, sugar alcohols, etc that aren't accounted for otherwise. Too many people will turn to the alternatives as an all you can consume buffet and not realize that what is being consumed still has 40-60% of the effects that sugar does on glucose control alone. And that doesn't cover the effects on gut flora. I'm not fond of the vegetarian push in TFA though. I think animal products are perfectly natural and generally good nutrition sources and that the refined fats and sugars are far more dangerous generally speaking. Fruit juice in quantity being as or more dangerous as soda. Fructose does everything bad to the liver that alcohol does without the negative reinforcement of a headache after.
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  > Fructose does everything bad to the liver that alcohol does Does the alcohol itself not add to the damage?
  - tracker1 4y ago
    Sure... but you don't need alcohol... just fructose will do it. The point is that most people don't know that fructose alone will cause liver damage in anything resembling significant quantities... eg: more than 100g HFCS or table sugar a day, which many western people regularly consume... especially if they think that fruit juice smoothies are healthy.
    - ed123 4y ago
      [dead]
      - tracker1 4y ago
        I'm mostly referring to juice (called out smoothies)... also, specifically referred to HFCS and Table Sugar (about half Fructose). Worth noting a serving of juice is about 4oz (125ml) and should only have 3-4 servings of juice a week... not a massive fruit juice smoothie. With fruit, will depend on the fruit and fiber content... most berries are much better (lower GL, higher fiber) than an orange, pineapple or grapes. But higher sugar content fruits with lower fiber content or very high quantities can still be problematic. https://www.dietdoctor.com/fructose-fatty-liver-sugar-toxin https://www.dietdoctor.com/fructose-fatty-liver-sugar-toxin https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-high-fructose-intake-may-trigger-fatty-liver-disease https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-hig... https://openheart.bmj.com/content/4/2/e000631 https://openheart.bmj.com/content/4/2/e000631
deleted 4y ago
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lo_zamoyski 4y ago
> I let my hunger and energy levels guide my food choices. Perhaps "inform" (as in a signal that does not determine decision) might be a better approach. Hunger is not strictly correlated with need. That is, hunger and appetite are also subject to habituation. If someone is accustomed to eating three large meals a day with snacks in between, they will likely feel hungry when one of those meals is eliminated, or even when snacks are reduced. We hardly need as much as we generally consume, and the last thing we need is to be led around by our appetites. Like children, they can tell us what they want, but it is we who must assess what is actually needed or within healthy limits. Lack of hunger should also not form the basis for not eating. I suspect that's why you included "energy levels" as another signal. If you're not merely hungry, but feeling weak, and you know you haven't eaten in a while, then you could probably use some food. I would argue that adopting a schedule and using fasting to reduce intake and "noshing" and conform hunger reoccurrence to this schedule are a good approach. Fasting also has the benefit of helping us discipline our appetites, something people are generally miserable at unless they practice self-denial or have them disciplined by outside causes. Disciplined appetites sharpen the mind and strengthen the will and contribute to virtue and therefore true freedom (in the classical sense, not the liberal sense which is a recipe for enslavement). This latter benefit is more important than the first. Furthermore, human beings are animals, but we are not beasts. We do not merely guzzle slop from a trough. We eat meals. Meals are not merely about obtaining nutrition.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > Disciplined appetites sharpen the mind Do you have a source for that? To what extent is the mind "sharpened" by putting off snacks?
- meroes 4y ago
  You’re right on many points. And yes I did say energy levels to account for not relying solely on hunger. You’re using the “through disciple -> freedom” idea from Aristotle I think. And you’re using what is needed. I agree for your conception of humans we need the regimen you lay out. I don’t argue with that. But how do you fill your plates? With discipline you count each asparagus frond, weigh each food group, count every calorie? No, at some point we are listening to ourselves. Since we are already doing that, why not skip many of these middle-practices? I am very present taking in food and assembling my meal. Why do I need Greek philosophers to tell me what I already know? Eating is for ourselves. Not everything is so selfish and personal, but it is one case where listening inward is the primary focus. Contrast to listening to the needs of others in order to be happy. Maybe that’s another discipline, to be present and listen inward. And not appeal to principles of others. I also arrived at this stage by failing with other diets over 7 years or so. It’s not like I had some grand principle at the beginning. I could not do certain things I like to do with fasting. I hike and stretch every single day as physical therapy for an injury. Fasting would wreck me.
Alex3917 4y ago
> I want my food to match my biological expectations, one of the largest being sweet = I just took in quick calories Except for that your biological expectations should be that sweet foods are relatively slow calories. We've co-evolved over millions of years to get sugar from fruit and other complex carbs. Refined sugar has only existed for a couple thousand years, and has only been ubiquitous for a few hundred years. To the extent that your body is expecting a quick rush of calories after eating something sweet, that's only because your body is very reactive based on your prior eating habits, not because that makes any sense from an evolutionary perspective.
- meroes 4y ago
  I’m talking in terms of carbs as fast vs fat and protein as slow. Not the different type of carbs. I should have been more precise.

by meroes 4y ago

eldaisfish 4y ago

The important piece here is context, as it always it. One example - i grew up eating bread that used no sugar or very little sugar. North American bread tastes too close to cake. Many North Americans don’t share my opinion because their baseline is different. Almost all food is a combination of flavours and it is not easy to spot added sugar. The idea of « sweet » is a lot more difficult to use in the real world.

tracker1 4y ago
Go carnivore for a week, and you'd be surprised how overly sweet everything tastes after... until you get used to it again that is.
- CyberDildonics 4y ago
  You don't need a "carnivore" diet for that, you just need to avoid sugar and adjust to it.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    Avoiding sugar may still include very sweet fruit varieties, or juice that can still prevent such adaptation... otherwise, sure, you can do similar without full on carnivore. All said, it was an example.
    - throwway120385 4y ago
      A lot of the problem I have with fruit now is that it's picked so early that it's virtually flavorless. Fuji apples for instance have this beautiful floral/tangy/fruity flavor when they're allowed to ripen on the tree. But go into a supermarket anywhere in my neck of the woods and they're these green things that are just beginning to turn red, and they just taste like fresh leaves with sugar in them. And the supermarket is charging like 4 dollars a pound for the lowest quality crap fruit they can get.
      - raegis 4y ago
        The trick for me is to get them from a grocery store with a huge selection. Among a hundred or so apples, there's usually 2 or 3 red ones. The flavor is amazing.
  - throwway120385 4y ago
    In my early 20's I made it a point to stop drinking and eating garbage like Starbucks frappucinos. After a period of 3 years I found myself in a place that only sold the pre-made frappuchinos and some other drinks, but no water or water-like drinks. So I bought one. And in the intervening years it had become disgustingly sweet. Like so sweet that I almost threw up and had to throw away half the bottle. So yes, avoiding sugar will change your tastebuds.
    - jay_kyburz 4y ago
      I used to have a can of coke for breakfast every day. I improved my diet a few years ago. I still enjoy the first few sips, bit I can't drink a whole can anymore.
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        A 12oz bottle for my rare (these days) soda indulgence is usually about four ounces too many. Dunno how a 20-ouncer ever seemed like a single serving to me, but it did. I think free soda refills in restaurants becoming normal in the 90s is an under-appreciated contributor to American health & diet problems. There were Big Gulps and such before that but giant 32+oz soda servings weren't as common as now (have you seen how huge the medium cup is at some fast food joints now?), and most folks had maybe two glasses of soda when eating at a restaurant, if they really liked soda. Suddenly, with free refills and a server constantly topping you off, it's almost natural to become accustomed to downing huge amounts of the stuff.
        jay_kyburz 4y ago
        We have these little 250ml cans in Australia now, I think that's ~ 8oz. I have one once in a blue moon at the beach or on some outing when I feel like something more that water.
        tracker1 4y ago
        I really like/appreciate the little 6-8oz cans here myself. Juice, as an example, when I was little was a serving of 4oz, and one wasn't meant to have it more than a few (3-4) times a week, as explained by my grandmother (when I was little) and definitely not meant to have a giant fruit juice smoothie every day. One 12oz can of soda is the recommended daily sugar limit for an adult male. How many people consume way more than that every single day. And it's been hidden in so many products over the years. Now it's almost worse using artificial sweeteners and sugar alcohols that have varying affects person to person. Like gluten intolerance (celiac at ~1% and intolerance at 3-4%), may foods and combinations only affect a small piece of the population, but with processed franken-foods it's possible to affect much larger portions in varying ways. And it can be temporary or cumulative, such as with histamine intolerance, which is probably the issue most people who think they may have gluten problems lay.
  - miriam_catira 4y ago
    Seconded - I stopped drinking anything sweeter than kombucha about 10 years ago, and now soda is utterly disgusting. My coffee and tea are unsweetened, and if I drink orange juice, I water it down to 1 part juice, 3 or 4 parts water. Sugar no longer tastes like a pleasurable treat, it's cloying and unpalatable. Even sweet food is gross - especially candy. Chocolate has to be 65% or darker. The intersting part is, since we rarely have candy or sweetened foods in the house, my 5 year old child actually prefers popcorn to ice cream, and likes plain cereals like Smart Bran and Ezekiel. He has a bucket of candy from Halloween this past October and he hasn't eaten more than 2 pieces of it. He like his chocolate at least 72% dark. You can get used to not consuming sugar, it just takes effort to find products without it.
    - tracker1 4y ago
      The biggest change for me, is actually liking Walnuts now... where I really never liked them before going low carb (mostly carnivore).
jrockway 4y ago
What is "North American" bread exactly? I bake my own bread and use a tablespoon of sugar; the bread does not taste sweet. But if you buy like Wonder bread in the stores, that's intentionally sweetened to taste like cake. I have never seen anyone buy that stuff, though.
- tstrimple 4y ago
  You've never seen anyone purchase the best selling brand of white bread in the US?
  - QuarterReptile 4y ago
    Surely we're not surprised how detached, on this site, we mostly are from common consumption behaviors?
- ryeights 4y ago
  Stroll through the prepackaged bread aisle of any U.S. grocery store and look at the sugar content on the nutrition labels. At my local Safeway, the generic brand 100% whole wheat bread contains 4g of sugar per slice. With 16 slices in a pack, that’s a third cup of sugar per loaf. The ingredients? Whole wheat flour, water, sugar, wheat gluten, honey, brown sugar, yeast, oil, salt, …
  - paiute 4y ago
    I enjoy converting g to number of sugar packets which is about 3g. So that's 1 packet per slice (which the yeast might eat). When you say that a coke has 10 packets of sugar it makes you gag a little.
    - drekk 4y ago
      When I bake bread I use a pinch of sugar for an entire loaf. The yeast are just fine eating the flour. Thinking of a packet of sugar PER SLICE is insane to me. Especially for whole grain
- deleted 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
autoexec 4y ago
> American bread tastes too close to cake. I've heard multiple people from other countries say the same thing. It seems crazy to think about people using cake for bread in sandwiches, but I can see why they'd think that. Even the packaged lunch meats sold in stores have sugar added to them for some reason, I wouldn't be surprised if the deli meat did too. The only thing without added sugar in a sandwich might be the lettuce!

tracker1 4y ago

I'm mostly inclined to agree... I try to keep my total carbs below 50g/day and net carbs under 20g/day, I'm diabetic and prefer to minimize my use of exogenous insulin. The cap on the total, is because there are definitely affects from fiber, sugar alcohols, etc that aren't accounted for otherwise. Too many people will turn to the alternatives as an all you can consume buffet and not realize that what is being consumed still has 40-60% of the effects that sugar does on glucose control alone. And that doesn't cover the effects on gut flora. I'm not fond of the vegetarian push in TFA though. I think animal products are perfectly natural and generally good nutrition sources and that the refined fats and sugars are far more dangerous generally speaking. Fruit juice in quantity being as or more dangerous as soda. Fructose does everything bad to the liver that alcohol does without the negative reinforcement of a headache after.

deafpolygon 4y ago
> Fructose does everything bad to the liver that alcohol does Does the alcohol itself not add to the damage?
- tracker1 4y ago
  Sure... but you don't need alcohol... just fructose will do it. The point is that most people don't know that fructose alone will cause liver damage in anything resembling significant quantities... eg: more than 100g HFCS or table sugar a day, which many western people regularly consume... especially if they think that fruit juice smoothies are healthy.
  - ed123 4y ago
    [dead]
    - tracker1 4y ago
      I'm mostly referring to juice (called out smoothies)... also, specifically referred to HFCS and Table Sugar (about half Fructose). Worth noting a serving of juice is about 4oz (125ml) and should only have 3-4 servings of juice a week... not a massive fruit juice smoothie. With fruit, will depend on the fruit and fiber content... most berries are much better (lower GL, higher fiber) than an orange, pineapple or grapes. But higher sugar content fruits with lower fiber content or very high quantities can still be problematic. https://www.dietdoctor.com/fructose-fatty-liver-sugar-toxin https://www.dietdoctor.com/fructose-fatty-liver-sugar-toxin https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-high-fructose-intake-may-trigger-fatty-liver-disease https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-hig... https://openheart.bmj.com/content/4/2/e000631 https://openheart.bmj.com/content/4/2/e000631

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

lo_zamoyski 4y ago

> I let my hunger and energy levels guide my food choices. Perhaps "inform" (as in a signal that does not determine decision) might be a better approach. Hunger is not strictly correlated with need. That is, hunger and appetite are also subject to habituation. If someone is accustomed to eating three large meals a day with snacks in between, they will likely feel hungry when one of those meals is eliminated, or even when snacks are reduced. We hardly need as much as we generally consume, and the last thing we need is to be led around by our appetites. Like children, they can tell us what they want, but it is we who must assess what is actually needed or within healthy limits. Lack of hunger should also not form the basis for not eating. I suspect that's why you included "energy levels" as another signal. If you're not merely hungry, but feeling weak, and you know you haven't eaten in a while, then you could probably use some food. I would argue that adopting a schedule and using fasting to reduce intake and "noshing" and conform hunger reoccurrence to this schedule are a good approach. Fasting also has the benefit of helping us discipline our appetites, something people are generally miserable at unless they practice self-denial or have them disciplined by outside causes. Disciplined appetites sharpen the mind and strengthen the will and contribute to virtue and therefore true freedom (in the classical sense, not the liberal sense which is a recipe for enslavement). This latter benefit is more important than the first. Furthermore, human beings are animals, but we are not beasts. We do not merely guzzle slop from a trough. We eat meals. Meals are not merely about obtaining nutrition.

autoexec 4y ago
> Disciplined appetites sharpen the mind Do you have a source for that? To what extent is the mind "sharpened" by putting off snacks?
meroes 4y ago
You’re right on many points. And yes I did say energy levels to account for not relying solely on hunger. You’re using the “through disciple -> freedom” idea from Aristotle I think. And you’re using what is needed. I agree for your conception of humans we need the regimen you lay out. I don’t argue with that. But how do you fill your plates? With discipline you count each asparagus frond, weigh each food group, count every calorie? No, at some point we are listening to ourselves. Since we are already doing that, why not skip many of these middle-practices? I am very present taking in food and assembling my meal. Why do I need Greek philosophers to tell me what I already know? Eating is for ourselves. Not everything is so selfish and personal, but it is one case where listening inward is the primary focus. Contrast to listening to the needs of others in order to be happy. Maybe that’s another discipline, to be present and listen inward. And not appeal to principles of others. I also arrived at this stage by failing with other diets over 7 years or so. It’s not like I had some grand principle at the beginning. I could not do certain things I like to do with fasting. I hike and stretch every single day as physical therapy for an injury. Fasting would wreck me.

Alex3917 4y ago

> I want my food to match my biological expectations, one of the largest being sweet = I just took in quick calories Except for that your biological expectations should be that sweet foods are relatively slow calories. We've co-evolved over millions of years to get sugar from fruit and other complex carbs. Refined sugar has only existed for a couple thousand years, and has only been ubiquitous for a few hundred years. To the extent that your body is expecting a quick rush of calories after eating something sweet, that's only because your body is very reactive based on your prior eating habits, not because that makes any sense from an evolutionary perspective.

meroes 4y ago
I’m talking in terms of carbs as fast vs fat and protein as slow. Not the different type of carbs. I should have been more precise.