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About 15 years ago, I stopped drinking soda. Not out of a desire to be healthy or loose weight but simply because it dawned on me that for the same amount of su

About 15 years ago, I stopped drinking soda. Not out of a desire to be healthy or loose weight but simply because it dawned on me that for the same amount of sugar in one soft drink that I drink without any afterthought, I could enjoy a really good pastry that I can slowly savor. I do the same for fats. The way I look at it, I want to maximize the "enjoyment per kcalorie". :) More recently, I'm starting to apply this to meat as well. I really enjoy meat, but I'm not one for quantity since I'm on the skinnier side. So I'm trying to enjoy meat more, and in doing so, get better quality, prepare it better, etc. while at the same time eating less of it. This is still a work in progress, and eating in restaurants can be challenging as they usually favor quantity over quality—except for the very high-end & costly places.

BigGreenJorts 2y ago
I knew a guy who did this with chocolate. He used to get a candy bar from the vending machine at work like every day, but something happened, I think he either got a health scare or saw a documentary or maybe a combo of things and was like, "Gotta stop eating these shitty chocolate bars every day." Started setting aside the coins he was using at the vending machine and at the end of the week would get a bar from a higher quality brand at the grocery store. Learned he really liked dark chocolate. Started upgrading to nicer and nicer chocolate. Last I heard from him he was going to some of the bougie chocolate shops downtown every few months.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
Good for you. I think for meat especially, there's a difference between the stuff people talk about (like premium steaks they almost never eat) and the reality of what ends up on their plates which is a lot less glamorous. A typical fast food burger just isn't that great in terms of texture, taste, looks, etc. and IMHO almost always disappointingly unsatisfying and slightly uncomfortable afterwards. I'll eat that once in a while; usually because there's nothing more convenient and never because I crave one. For me the cheap and nasty stuff is easy to skip on a daily basis and it's not like I eat the expensive premium stuff that often anyway. I love a good steak, but I don't splurge on paying 3x the other items on the menu when I'm at a restaurant typically. Which is what it takes typically to get a nice premium cut of meat. I do enjoy cooking with meat but I'll make an effort to make the most of it. E.g. I made a nice beef stew over the weekend. That's a bit of of work and a humble/affordable cut of meat. And very tasty. If you like Indian food, try having or making a dal. As it turns out, Indians know a thing or two about making very tasty vegan food from cheap/simple ingredients. And this can as nice as some chicken curry with a few chunks of cheap chicken that is maybe a bit overcooked and dry (I've been served that in many Indian restaurants). Those curries actually still taste fine if you don't eat those chunks of meat. And the whole point of heavy spicing in countries with warm climates like India was historically to mask the flavor of cheap cuts of meat that were maybe a bit past their prime. Which is possibly also a reason why vegan food is popular in India. Fridges are a fairly recent novelty too. And the meat doesn't even add a lot of flavor; they just add it last minute typically. Lots of Indian restaurants usually have vegan or vegetarian versions of most of their curries where they toss in some tofu or paneer instead of meat. The only difference between eating meat or vegan in such places is literally what protein is added to the dish at the last minute. The rest is basically vegan or vegetarian by default. Anyway, I skip sugary drinks mostly. And I've cut down on my alcohol intake as well. Most of what I drink has basically very little or no calories. Most of my remaining food challenges are unhealthy snacks, unnecessary carbs and the temptations of unhealthy restaurant food, or late night shopping in super markets and the associated bad decision making. Restaurants bulk out their dishes with carbs and they make things taste good by adding salt and fats. It's hard to eat healthy in restaurants. So, I try to limit my restaurant food intake. And like with meat, most of the restaurants people visit aren't actually that great anyway. At least where I work, Michelin stars are not a thing for the typical lunch options. Quite the opposite actually. I'm only an OK cook but I can cook tastier/better versions of a lot of the shit I get served in places like that. It's not that hard. I recently actually started just skipping lunch entirely at work mainly for this reason and I'm training myself out of having a Pavlovian craving for food just because the clock says so. I don't actually need the calories. Or the post lunch dip in productivity. I especially don't need the lousy food choices imposed by that one person that wants to go to the burger place. There's a lot of group thinking inspiring unhealthy choices around lunch time. I took part in that for years. It's stupid when you think about it and I've suffered the health consequences as well. There's a cumulative effect if you do that for a few decades.
- throwup238 2y ago
  > Restaurants bulk out their dishes with carbs and they make things taste good by adding salt and fats. Anthony Bourdain wrote in Kitchen Confidential: “If you eat at any good restaurant, assume you've eaten a stick of butter.”
  - aziaziazi 2y ago
    My brother worked for multiple (very) good restaurants here in France. I’m always super chocked when I see him throwing a good portion of the butter brick in almost any meal. His dishes are super delicious. His current restaurant is a a very good vegan one and he does the same with plant butter.
- bitwize 2y ago
  > A typical fast food burger just isn't that great in terms of texture, taste, looks, etc. and IMHO almost always disappointingly unsatisfying and slightly uncomfortable afterwards. I'll eat that once in a while; usually because there's nothing more convenient and never because I crave one. The "Big Mac Attack" is real. I used to get one about every six months or so. Then I would eat a Big Mac, and the attack would be sated, but the GI discomfort reminded me of why I don't get Big Mac Attacks more often. These days I just avoid fast food. I live in a part of the country that's actually rather persnickety about good food, and there are much fresher options available nearby that are rather cheap. Plus I'm stocked up on low-carb soups, lunch meats, and other yummies most of the time now. > And the whole point of heavy spicing in countries with warm climates like India was historically to mask the flavor of cheap cuts of meat that were maybe a bit past their prime. My dad used to tell me stories about roadside chili houses in Texas. They kept a big pot of chili constantly going, and added whatever meat they could find, together with beans, spices, etc. to keep the pot full as the chili was served to customers. Roadkill was, supposedly, one of the most convenient sources of meat for the pot.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    The weirdest thing for me is that when I was young I used to live off fast food. A few Jack in the Box burgers and I was good to go (my girlfriend at the time looked at me somewhat strange the first time I asked her how many burgers she wanted). But now when I eat a fast food burger I just don't feel very good afterwards. Curious how many others also seem to get the same thing. I always thought I was just being a bit more snobby than when I was younger and it was some sort of psychosomatic thing.
pessimizer 2y ago
> About 15 years ago, I stopped drinking soda. Not out of a desire to be healthy or loose weight[...] Same thing happened to me at probably around the same time. I realized I could just have a lollypop, and it would be a tenth of the sugar. Most of the sweetness in soda doesn't even get a chance to touch your tongue before it's going down your throat. If I want candy, I should just have a piece of candy. If I'm thirsty, I should have a glass of water. Also, the carbonation in soda enables them to get twice the sugar into it. Drinking a flat soda is like drinking maple syrup.
- BeetleB 2y ago
  I drink 250 ml soda cans/bottles. 25-28g of sugar. Be aware that a lot of candy has similar amounts of sugar. M&M packets have even more.
  - malfist 2y ago
    The typical soda in the US is either 12oz (can) or 20oz (bottle). A 12oz coke has 39g of sugar. A 20oz bottle of coke is 65g. Coke isn't close to the worst offender and this ignores soda at restaurants when 28oz is often the smallest you can buy
    - BeetleB 2y ago
      > The typical soda in the US is either 12oz (can) or 20oz (bottle). True but you can get 250ml cans in most grocery stores. Also, there are plenty of places I shop at where the smallest Hershey's bar or M&M packet is the King/share size one. The M&M one has 57g of sugar. Difficulty in buying smaller portions is not unique to soda.
- chrisco255 2y ago
  It's probably a risky line of thinking, if you're addicted to sugar, to substitute in some other source of sugar. Best to avoid pastries, lollipops and sugary sodas.
  - 2y ago
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
When I stopped drinking soda (about ten years ago), my stomach immediately started feeling better. I will sometimes have a ginger ale, from time to time, when I'm eating out, and usually won't finish it, but I otherwise, don't drink soda, anymore.
hattmall 2y ago
In most cases you could eat multiple pastries and still have significantly less sugar than a soda.
- parineum 2y ago
  pastries also have fat though and parent was talking about enjoyment per kcal.
  - cluckindan 2y ago
    Fat is good for you, as long as it isn’t trans-fat. The common wisdom around cholesterol is false (the ”lipid hypothesis” is just that, a hypothesis).
    - parineum 2y ago
      Excess calories are bad for you, no matter what form they come in.
      - cluckindan 2y ago
        Very true. However, consuming oils and fats make one more quickly satiated compared to sugars and other carbohydrates, leading to less overall consumption of calories.
- eitally 2y ago
  This depends if you consider all carbohydrates to be sugar or not. At the end of the day, the refined flours in the pastry are also sugar-equivalent.
- trhway 2y ago
  >In most cases you could eat multiple pastries and still have significantly less sugar than a soda. yep. The can of soda has something like 10 spoons of sugar. In that volume i stop feeling the difference after 2nd-3rd spoon of sugar. I do drink soda - by diluting it about 1:5. For the pastries and other bakery products - it does depends where it comes from. The standard American bakery sill puts a lot of sugar into pastries, cakes, bread (especially the fast-rise), etc. while some of the ones trying to do European style do use sugar more moderately (they also usually use more fat like butter thus making the taste better, more balanced, and probably also thus more healthy - my personal impression/opinion - as the more balanced content (fat/carbs vs. low-fat-high-sugar approach somehow more popular in the American bakery) seems to me to be better).
zamadatix 2y ago
Not that no sugar variants of soda are exactly a shining health food staple or better than going to healthy drinks lik water but... For me I was absolutely shocked at how a soda being sugar free didn't have to imply it was like drinking horse piss. I had tried Diet Coke a few times and assumed that was what you had to deal with if you went sugar free. One day someone gave me a Coke Zero and it was actually not bad, even if not quite being as good as Coke. This led me to try some others like Dr Pepper Zero Sugar for which I thought "what the hell, this tastes better than Dr Pepper???". Obviously which are better will vary by person and most people will, overall, like sodas with actual sugar more often but if everyone tried a few different options they might be surprised how little they'd have to trade down on the soda for, if anything, to drastically drop their sugar intake.
- nprateem 2y ago
  Aspartame is bad for your gut microbiome
  - parineum 2y ago
    Source
  - mohaine 2y ago
    Citation? Is this a normal soda consumption levels in humans or when feeding it to rats at some obscene rate? I'm not saying it is good for you, but we need facts not blind statements with no context.
    - aziaziazi 2y ago
      I’m not an expert but a quick search leads me to: > We identify NAS-altered microbial metabolic pathways that are linked to host susceptibility to metabolic disease, and demonstrate similar NAS-induced dysbiosis and glucose intolerance in healthy human subjects. Collectively, our results link NAS consumption, dysbiosis and metabolic abnormalities, thereby calling for a reassessment of massive NAS usage I’d be glad to see the full paper https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25231862/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25231862/ > normal soda consumption levels in humans I note that "normal" here should be read as "common during the last 50years (or less)", where the last 50ears is quite reductive in human dietary habits.
johnyzee 2y ago
>I do the same for fats. The way I look at it, I want to maximize the "enjoyment per kcalorie". :) We are increasingly moving away from looking at fat as an indulgence, towards understanding it as an essential nutrient, with a large variance in fat types and their benefits. E.g. some people would avoid eating nuts, because they are high in fat, and not as tasty as something similarly fatty, like a pastry. This seems wrong both intuitively, but also from empirical findings about the impact of certain omega-3 fatty acids (such as in nuts) versus that of, say, omega-6 fats, which are way overrepresented in our diets due to being so cheap.
- presentation 2y ago
  I mostly avoid nuts because they’re so tasty I overconsume them every time. Those things pack a lot of calories into a small package!
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    Your body can only access about 40% of the calories.
- rroblak 2y ago
  This. People are getting the message that "sugar is bad" but the public health messaging of "fat is bad" still lingers in many people's heads. It's sad, because as you mentioned some days are indeed essential nutrients. Especially for kids and pregnant women.
  - mlyle 2y ago
    I mean, the "fat is bad" thing isn't completely wrong: it is definitely possible to overdo it. It's extremely calorically dense, and most fats are bad for us in other ways. But society didn't replace some of the fat with increased intake of vegetables and lean meats. Food manufacturers compensated for less fat with more sugars and salt, which we've been finding are even worse.
  - hilbert42 2y ago

BigGreenJorts 2y ago

I knew a guy who did this with chocolate. He used to get a candy bar from the vending machine at work like every day, but something happened, I think he either got a health scare or saw a documentary or maybe a combo of things and was like, "Gotta stop eating these shitty chocolate bars every day." Started setting aside the coins he was using at the vending machine and at the end of the week would get a bar from a higher quality brand at the grocery store. Learned he really liked dark chocolate. Started upgrading to nicer and nicer chocolate. Last I heard from him he was going to some of the bougie chocolate shops downtown every few months.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

Good for you. I think for meat especially, there's a difference between the stuff people talk about (like premium steaks they almost never eat) and the reality of what ends up on their plates which is a lot less glamorous. A typical fast food burger just isn't that great in terms of texture, taste, looks, etc. and IMHO almost always disappointingly unsatisfying and slightly uncomfortable afterwards. I'll eat that once in a while; usually because there's nothing more convenient and never because I crave one. For me the cheap and nasty stuff is easy to skip on a daily basis and it's not like I eat the expensive premium stuff that often anyway. I love a good steak, but I don't splurge on paying 3x the other items on the menu when I'm at a restaurant typically. Which is what it takes typically to get a nice premium cut of meat. I do enjoy cooking with meat but I'll make an effort to make the most of it. E.g. I made a nice beef stew over the weekend. That's a bit of of work and a humble/affordable cut of meat. And very tasty. If you like Indian food, try having or making a dal. As it turns out, Indians know a thing or two about making very tasty vegan food from cheap/simple ingredients. And this can as nice as some chicken curry with a few chunks of cheap chicken that is maybe a bit overcooked and dry (I've been served that in many Indian restaurants). Those curries actually still taste fine if you don't eat those chunks of meat. And the whole point of heavy spicing in countries with warm climates like India was historically to mask the flavor of cheap cuts of meat that were maybe a bit past their prime. Which is possibly also a reason why vegan food is popular in India. Fridges are a fairly recent novelty too. And the meat doesn't even add a lot of flavor; they just add it last minute typically. Lots of Indian restaurants usually have vegan or vegetarian versions of most of their curries where they toss in some tofu or paneer instead of meat. The only difference between eating meat or vegan in such places is literally what protein is added to the dish at the last minute. The rest is basically vegan or vegetarian by default. Anyway, I skip sugary drinks mostly. And I've cut down on my alcohol intake as well. Most of what I drink has basically very little or no calories. Most of my remaining food challenges are unhealthy snacks, unnecessary carbs and the temptations of unhealthy restaurant food, or late night shopping in super markets and the associated bad decision making. Restaurants bulk out their dishes with carbs and they make things taste good by adding salt and fats. It's hard to eat healthy in restaurants. So, I try to limit my restaurant food intake. And like with meat, most of the restaurants people visit aren't actually that great anyway. At least where I work, Michelin stars are not a thing for the typical lunch options. Quite the opposite actually. I'm only an OK cook but I can cook tastier/better versions of a lot of the shit I get served in places like that. It's not that hard. I recently actually started just skipping lunch entirely at work mainly for this reason and I'm training myself out of having a Pavlovian craving for food just because the clock says so. I don't actually need the calories. Or the post lunch dip in productivity. I especially don't need the lousy food choices imposed by that one person that wants to go to the burger place. There's a lot of group thinking inspiring unhealthy choices around lunch time. I took part in that for years. It's stupid when you think about it and I've suffered the health consequences as well. There's a cumulative effect if you do that for a few decades.

throwup238 2y ago
> Restaurants bulk out their dishes with carbs and they make things taste good by adding salt and fats. Anthony Bourdain wrote in Kitchen Confidential: “If you eat at any good restaurant, assume you've eaten a stick of butter.”
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  My brother worked for multiple (very) good restaurants here in France. I’m always super chocked when I see him throwing a good portion of the butter brick in almost any meal. His dishes are super delicious. His current restaurant is a a very good vegan one and he does the same with plant butter.
bitwize 2y ago
> A typical fast food burger just isn't that great in terms of texture, taste, looks, etc. and IMHO almost always disappointingly unsatisfying and slightly uncomfortable afterwards. I'll eat that once in a while; usually because there's nothing more convenient and never because I crave one. The "Big Mac Attack" is real. I used to get one about every six months or so. Then I would eat a Big Mac, and the attack would be sated, but the GI discomfort reminded me of why I don't get Big Mac Attacks more often. These days I just avoid fast food. I live in a part of the country that's actually rather persnickety about good food, and there are much fresher options available nearby that are rather cheap. Plus I'm stocked up on low-carb soups, lunch meats, and other yummies most of the time now. > And the whole point of heavy spicing in countries with warm climates like India was historically to mask the flavor of cheap cuts of meat that were maybe a bit past their prime. My dad used to tell me stories about roadside chili houses in Texas. They kept a big pot of chili constantly going, and added whatever meat they could find, together with beans, spices, etc. to keep the pot full as the chili was served to customers. Roadkill was, supposedly, one of the most convenient sources of meat for the pot.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  The weirdest thing for me is that when I was young I used to live off fast food. A few Jack in the Box burgers and I was good to go (my girlfriend at the time looked at me somewhat strange the first time I asked her how many burgers she wanted). But now when I eat a fast food burger I just don't feel very good afterwards. Curious how many others also seem to get the same thing. I always thought I was just being a bit more snobby than when I was younger and it was some sort of psychosomatic thing.

pessimizer 2y ago

> About 15 years ago, I stopped drinking soda. Not out of a desire to be healthy or loose weight[...] Same thing happened to me at probably around the same time. I realized I could just have a lollypop, and it would be a tenth of the sugar. Most of the sweetness in soda doesn't even get a chance to touch your tongue before it's going down your throat. If I want candy, I should just have a piece of candy. If I'm thirsty, I should have a glass of water. Also, the carbonation in soda enables them to get twice the sugar into it. Drinking a flat soda is like drinking maple syrup.

BeetleB 2y ago
I drink 250 ml soda cans/bottles. 25-28g of sugar. Be aware that a lot of candy has similar amounts of sugar. M&M packets have even more.
- malfist 2y ago
  The typical soda in the US is either 12oz (can) or 20oz (bottle). A 12oz coke has 39g of sugar. A 20oz bottle of coke is 65g. Coke isn't close to the worst offender and this ignores soda at restaurants when 28oz is often the smallest you can buy
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    > The typical soda in the US is either 12oz (can) or 20oz (bottle). True but you can get 250ml cans in most grocery stores. Also, there are plenty of places I shop at where the smallest Hershey's bar or M&M packet is the King/share size one. The M&M one has 57g of sugar. Difficulty in buying smaller portions is not unique to soda.
chrisco255 2y ago
It's probably a risky line of thinking, if you're addicted to sugar, to substitute in some other source of sugar. Best to avoid pastries, lollipops and sugary sodas.
- 2y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

When I stopped drinking soda (about ten years ago), my stomach immediately started feeling better. I will sometimes have a ginger ale, from time to time, when I'm eating out, and usually won't finish it, but I otherwise, don't drink soda, anymore.

hattmall 2y ago

In most cases you could eat multiple pastries and still have significantly less sugar than a soda.

parineum 2y ago
pastries also have fat though and parent was talking about enjoyment per kcal.
- cluckindan 2y ago
  Fat is good for you, as long as it isn’t trans-fat. The common wisdom around cholesterol is false (the ”lipid hypothesis” is just that, a hypothesis).
  - parineum 2y ago
    Excess calories are bad for you, no matter what form they come in.
    - cluckindan 2y ago
      Very true. However, consuming oils and fats make one more quickly satiated compared to sugars and other carbohydrates, leading to less overall consumption of calories.
eitally 2y ago
This depends if you consider all carbohydrates to be sugar or not. At the end of the day, the refined flours in the pastry are also sugar-equivalent.
trhway 2y ago
>In most cases you could eat multiple pastries and still have significantly less sugar than a soda. yep. The can of soda has something like 10 spoons of sugar. In that volume i stop feeling the difference after 2nd-3rd spoon of sugar. I do drink soda - by diluting it about 1:5. For the pastries and other bakery products - it does depends where it comes from. The standard American bakery sill puts a lot of sugar into pastries, cakes, bread (especially the fast-rise), etc. while some of the ones trying to do European style do use sugar more moderately (they also usually use more fat like butter thus making the taste better, more balanced, and probably also thus more healthy - my personal impression/opinion - as the more balanced content (fat/carbs vs. low-fat-high-sugar approach somehow more popular in the American bakery) seems to me to be better).

zamadatix 2y ago

Not that no sugar variants of soda are exactly a shining health food staple or better than going to healthy drinks lik water but... For me I was absolutely shocked at how a soda being sugar free didn't have to imply it was like drinking horse piss. I had tried Diet Coke a few times and assumed that was what you had to deal with if you went sugar free. One day someone gave me a Coke Zero and it was actually not bad, even if not quite being as good as Coke. This led me to try some others like Dr Pepper Zero Sugar for which I thought "what the hell, this tastes better than Dr Pepper???". Obviously which are better will vary by person and most people will, overall, like sodas with actual sugar more often but if everyone tried a few different options they might be surprised how little they'd have to trade down on the soda for, if anything, to drastically drop their sugar intake.

nprateem 2y ago
Aspartame is bad for your gut microbiome
- parineum 2y ago
  Source
- mohaine 2y ago
  Citation? Is this a normal soda consumption levels in humans or when feeding it to rats at some obscene rate? I'm not saying it is good for you, but we need facts not blind statements with no context.
  - aziaziazi 2y ago
    I’m not an expert but a quick search leads me to: > We identify NAS-altered microbial metabolic pathways that are linked to host susceptibility to metabolic disease, and demonstrate similar NAS-induced dysbiosis and glucose intolerance in healthy human subjects. Collectively, our results link NAS consumption, dysbiosis and metabolic abnormalities, thereby calling for a reassessment of massive NAS usage I’d be glad to see the full paper https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25231862/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25231862/ > normal soda consumption levels in humans I note that "normal" here should be read as "common during the last 50years (or less)", where the last 50ears is quite reductive in human dietary habits.

johnyzee 2y ago

>I do the same for fats. The way I look at it, I want to maximize the "enjoyment per kcalorie". :) We are increasingly moving away from looking at fat as an indulgence, towards understanding it as an essential nutrient, with a large variance in fat types and their benefits. E.g. some people would avoid eating nuts, because they are high in fat, and not as tasty as something similarly fatty, like a pastry. This seems wrong both intuitively, but also from empirical findings about the impact of certain omega-3 fatty acids (such as in nuts) versus that of, say, omega-6 fats, which are way overrepresented in our diets due to being so cheap.

presentation 2y ago
I mostly avoid nuts because they’re so tasty I overconsume them every time. Those things pack a lot of calories into a small package!
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Your body can only access about 40% of the calories.
rroblak 2y ago
This. People are getting the message that "sugar is bad" but the public health messaging of "fat is bad" still lingers in many people's heads. It's sad, because as you mentioned some days are indeed essential nutrients. Especially for kids and pregnant women.
- mlyle 2y ago
  I mean, the "fat is bad" thing isn't completely wrong: it is definitely possible to overdo it. It's extremely calorically dense, and most fats are bad for us in other ways. But society didn't replace some of the fat with increased intake of vegetables and lean meats. Food manufacturers compensated for less fat with more sugars and salt, which we've been finding are even worse.
- hilbert42 2y ago