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Of course it is a puzzle because if the answer were simple it would be common knowledge and no one would be obese. Portion sizes shouldn't matter because the e

Of course it is a puzzle because if the answer were simple it would be common knowledge and no one would be obese. Portion sizes shouldn't matter because the eater's metabolism should kick in at "full" and larger portion sizes should mean more food waste or leftovers. Portion sizes grew but also "healthy eating" pushed things overall "healthier". The McDonalds my parents experienced as kids used more "high calorie" lards and beef fats on things like the fries, whereas today things use more "low calorie" vegetable oils. Among other changes. There's no "smoking gun" for why obesity is such a crisis. Current generations are overall eating much "healthier" than past generations under many current metrics (whether or not you agree that food Calories are a terrible metric) and ideas of "healthier eating" but fighting more obesity. It is counter-intuitive, an incredibly complex puzzle, and either what we think of "healthier eating" is extremely wrong and/or something has broken people's metabolisms in ways we don't currently know how to fix.

danaris 3y ago
But part of the question genuinely is, "were those animal fats less healthy than the high-trans-fat alternatives they were replaced with?" Our collective understanding of what various kinds of dietary fats do to our bodies has changed several times over the last several decades, and some people have simply refused to update their understanding, while others have a financial motivation to ignore certain updates.
- smileysteve 3y ago
  I have found it extremely difficult to convince parents in their late 70s, and/or small town restaurants to stop purchasing margarine with partially hydrogenated oils. Similar with whole milk versus 2%. and same with, "no, we don't need bread or white rice with this meal"
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  I do think we are finally seeing some good macronutrient research on things like animal fats versus trans-fats. It's definitely slow. I think a factor in updating our collective understanding that is both tied to "people simply refuse" and "financial motivation" is that we have outdated metrics that desperately need a shakeup and there are too many vested interests in them and too many decades of momentum. The hydrogenated (high-trans-fat) margarine has fewer calories than full fat butter. Numbers are "easy" and people follow the metrics you give them. Food calories are a metric of heat particles (Phlogiston) that burn away when you incinerate food in a furnace. It's obviously biased against many understandings of macronutrients: we used to make candles directly from animal fats, we all know how easily they burn, high calories shouldn't be surprising. The fact that trans-fats take much more effort to burn may be a sign that we should trust them less, because fats probably should burn easily. If a metric is giving us funny biased-looking results, maybe we should reevaluate the metric? A lot of diets are based on calorie counting and several of those diets are run by big for-profit companies. If their systems actually worked they likely wouldn't remain profitable, would they?
InSteady 3y ago
>"high calorie" lards and beef fats on things like the fries, whereas today things use more "low calorie" vegetable oils. This is nonsense. All fat is high calorie at roughly the same rate, 9 calories per gram (unless there are other additives, like we find in butter and margarine). There might be a few percentage points difference in calorie per unit mass from fat to fat but this is negligible when you're talking about a class of foods that all contain around 100 calories per tablespoon. If you read the paper the linked article is based on, found here [0], fructose indeed appears to be the smoking gun that connects several different partially correct, but fragmented explanations for the prevalence of obesity in modern society. [0] - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0230 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.023... Edit - you also state below that hydrogenated soybean oil (margarine) has fewer calories than butter. A quick web search disagrees, putting hydrogenated soybean oil at 884 calories per 100 grams, margarine at 719 calories per 100 grams, and butter at 717 calories per 100 grams. I'm sure it all depends on the brand and processing techniques, but overall the concept of low calorie fat is hugely misleading. Otherwise we can compare butter to ghee and determine that butter is a low calorie fat, which is more nonsense.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  I find it hard to call that paper a smoking gun. It makes a great case and offers testable hypotheses but does not indicate that those hypotheses have been tested yet. It was also just one of 16 very different theories submitted to the same meeting: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2023/378/1885 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2023/378/1885 What I skimmed of the other 15 all had similarly great cases, despite very different thinking, and similarly untested hypotheses. I don't think there is a single easy answer here. Certainly there are a lot of offered "easy" answers, among the 16 above, and all the more you see in threads around here. Again, this seems too complex a puzzle in general and the more pieces we find the more questions we have and hypotheses to test. (Whether or not you agree with my skepticism of calories and belief that they are an outdated and uselessly unscientific metric.)

danaris 3y ago

But part of the question genuinely is, "were those animal fats less healthy than the high-trans-fat alternatives they were replaced with?" Our collective understanding of what various kinds of dietary fats do to our bodies has changed several times over the last several decades, and some people have simply refused to update their understanding, while others have a financial motivation to ignore certain updates.

smileysteve 3y ago
I have found it extremely difficult to convince parents in their late 70s, and/or small town restaurants to stop purchasing margarine with partially hydrogenated oils. Similar with whole milk versus 2%. and same with, "no, we don't need bread or white rice with this meal"
WorldMaker 3y ago
I do think we are finally seeing some good macronutrient research on things like animal fats versus trans-fats. It's definitely slow. I think a factor in updating our collective understanding that is both tied to "people simply refuse" and "financial motivation" is that we have outdated metrics that desperately need a shakeup and there are too many vested interests in them and too many decades of momentum. The hydrogenated (high-trans-fat) margarine has fewer calories than full fat butter. Numbers are "easy" and people follow the metrics you give them. Food calories are a metric of heat particles (Phlogiston) that burn away when you incinerate food in a furnace. It's obviously biased against many understandings of macronutrients: we used to make candles directly from animal fats, we all know how easily they burn, high calories shouldn't be surprising. The fact that trans-fats take much more effort to burn may be a sign that we should trust them less, because fats probably should burn easily. If a metric is giving us funny biased-looking results, maybe we should reevaluate the metric? A lot of diets are based on calorie counting and several of those diets are run by big for-profit companies. If their systems actually worked they likely wouldn't remain profitable, would they?

InSteady 3y ago

>"high calorie" lards and beef fats on things like the fries, whereas today things use more "low calorie" vegetable oils. This is nonsense. All fat is high calorie at roughly the same rate, 9 calories per gram (unless there are other additives, like we find in butter and margarine). There might be a few percentage points difference in calorie per unit mass from fat to fat but this is negligible when you're talking about a class of foods that all contain around 100 calories per tablespoon. If you read the paper the linked article is based on, found here [0], fructose indeed appears to be the smoking gun that connects several different partially correct, but fragmented explanations for the prevalence of obesity in modern society. [0] - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0230 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.023... Edit - you also state below that hydrogenated soybean oil (margarine) has fewer calories than butter. A quick web search disagrees, putting hydrogenated soybean oil at 884 calories per 100 grams, margarine at 719 calories per 100 grams, and butter at 717 calories per 100 grams. I'm sure it all depends on the brand and processing techniques, but overall the concept of low calorie fat is hugely misleading. Otherwise we can compare butter to ghee and determine that butter is a low calorie fat, which is more nonsense.

WorldMaker 3y ago
I find it hard to call that paper a smoking gun. It makes a great case and offers testable hypotheses but does not indicate that those hypotheses have been tested yet. It was also just one of 16 very different theories submitted to the same meeting: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2023/378/1885 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2023/378/1885 What I skimmed of the other 15 all had similarly great cases, despite very different thinking, and similarly untested hypotheses. I don't think there is a single easy answer here. Certainly there are a lot of offered "easy" answers, among the 16 above, and all the more you see in threads around here. Again, this seems too complex a puzzle in general and the more pieces we find the more questions we have and hypotheses to test. (Whether or not you agree with my skepticism of calories and belief that they are an outdated and uselessly unscientific metric.)