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That is curious, considering our rates of heart disease and diabetes were a fraction of what they were today when people ate more saturated fats (e.g butter). A

by lsniddy 11y ago

That is curious, considering our rates of heart disease and diabetes were a fraction of what they were today when people ate more saturated fats (e.g butter). And when switching to a diet where saturated fat is the primary energy source, people tend to lose weight and see an increase in insulin sensitivity.

deleted 11y ago
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irishcoffee 11y ago
Off-topic, but every time I see the phrase "a fraction of what it was" I get a bit miffed. 99/100 is a fraction. 101/100 is a fraction. Every thing that gets measured in time intervals is always going to be a fraction of what it was before, bigger or smaller.
- roel_v 11y ago
  That's one meaning of the word. It also means 'much smaller than it once was'. Funny thing with words is that they can mean different things in different contexts.
  - irishcoffee 11y ago
    Does it? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fraction http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fraction
    - roel_v 11y ago
      Did you even read you link? The very page you link to says "3. bit, little <a fraction closer>".
- kazinator 11y ago
  "A fraction of what it was" is a common idiom, which uses fraction in the ordinary sense. "Fraction" is related to words like "fracture" and "fragment". When you fraction something into pieces, they are always smaller than the whole (barring strange spatial partitionings: Banach-Tarski paradox and all that). Maybe you were playing hooky in grade 3 when the teacher explained that 101/100 is an improper fraction, which can be rewritten as 1 1/100: the whole number 1, combined with a proper fraction. See? "Improper!" Mathematics recognizes a special status for fractions where the numerator has greater magnitude. Also, ever heard of the "integral" and "fractional" parts of a floating-point number? See the ISO C99 function modf, for instance.
  - irishcoffee 11y ago
    An improper comment is still a comment. An improper fraction is still a fraction. What exactly is your point? I'm not sure why you felt the need to be snarky.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Words and phrases have multiple, context-dependent meanings. That's just how natural language works. "a fraction of ..." is commonly used in informal and/or non-technical contexts to mean what would be expressed in a more technical context as "a positive, proper fraction of ..."
CuriouslyC 11y ago
The thing with carbohydrates is that when you consume more than your body can shunt into glycogen stores/fat cells or use immediately for energy, glucose just accumulates in the blood. Glucose is an inflammatory molecule (at least to endothelial cells) and inflammation has been shown to directly modulate insulin resistance; thus you end up in a downward spiral with metabolic syndrome as the result. I haven't seen any research that controls for calories while varying the saturated fat content of the diet which shows improved weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity for the saturated fat case. I have seen ad libitum feeding studies where people were instructed to eat fatty foods of their choice with that result, but I strongly suspect that the results in those cases were due to reductions in calorie intake.
kazinator 11y ago
This other comment from CuriouslyC provides references for the opposite view: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9858478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9858478

by lsniddy 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

irishcoffee 11y ago

Off-topic, but every time I see the phrase "a fraction of what it was" I get a bit miffed. 99/100 is a fraction. 101/100 is a fraction. Every thing that gets measured in time intervals is always going to be a fraction of what it was before, bigger or smaller.

roel_v 11y ago
That's one meaning of the word. It also means 'much smaller than it once was'. Funny thing with words is that they can mean different things in different contexts.
- irishcoffee 11y ago
  Does it? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fraction http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fraction
  - roel_v 11y ago
    Did you even read you link? The very page you link to says "3. bit, little <a fraction closer>".
kazinator 11y ago
"A fraction of what it was" is a common idiom, which uses fraction in the ordinary sense. "Fraction" is related to words like "fracture" and "fragment". When you fraction something into pieces, they are always smaller than the whole (barring strange spatial partitionings: Banach-Tarski paradox and all that). Maybe you were playing hooky in grade 3 when the teacher explained that 101/100 is an improper fraction, which can be rewritten as 1 1/100: the whole number 1, combined with a proper fraction. See? "Improper!" Mathematics recognizes a special status for fractions where the numerator has greater magnitude. Also, ever heard of the "integral" and "fractional" parts of a floating-point number? See the ISO C99 function modf, for instance.
- irishcoffee 11y ago
  An improper comment is still a comment. An improper fraction is still a fraction. What exactly is your point? I'm not sure why you felt the need to be snarky.
dragonwriter 11y ago
Words and phrases have multiple, context-dependent meanings. That's just how natural language works. "a fraction of ..." is commonly used in informal and/or non-technical contexts to mean what would be expressed in a more technical context as "a positive, proper fraction of ..."

CuriouslyC 11y ago

The thing with carbohydrates is that when you consume more than your body can shunt into glycogen stores/fat cells or use immediately for energy, glucose just accumulates in the blood. Glucose is an inflammatory molecule (at least to endothelial cells) and inflammation has been shown to directly modulate insulin resistance; thus you end up in a downward spiral with metabolic syndrome as the result. I haven't seen any research that controls for calories while varying the saturated fat content of the diet which shows improved weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity for the saturated fat case. I have seen ad libitum feeding studies where people were instructed to eat fatty foods of their choice with that result, but I strongly suspect that the results in those cases were due to reductions in calorie intake.

kazinator 11y ago

This other comment from CuriouslyC provides references for the opposite view: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9858478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9858478