I'm a bit more skeptical of the CIM than I was in the past, but the EBM to me just seems hilariously inadequate to explain the obesity crisis.
It's like if a patient came to their doctor complaining of water retention, and the doctor said "well clearly you're drinking more than you're excreting" and sent the patient home with instructions to drink less and pee more.
My hunch with the CIM is that a human in good health can pretty effortlessly maintain a non-obese weight without much regard for things like macronutrient balance, but that some fairly widespread factor has disrupted that regulation mechanism in a large fraction of the population.
That in a sense a keto/low-carb diet is a workaround for a mechanism that's broken in a lot of people, rather than some platonic ideal of how everyone should be eating.
As to what broke it, there are some interesting hypotheses here [https://slimemoldtimemold.com] but no clear answers.
I do personally feel a bit better eating a lower glycemic diet (from the standpoint of consistent energy levels), but I haven't achieved any weight loss that way (BMI hovers just under 25).
> The CIM provides a conceptual framework with testable hypotheses for how various modifiable factors influence energy balance and fat storage. Rigorous research is needed to compare the validity of these 2 models
> A landmark paper proves that obesity is not just energy in and out; the type of food matters.
The paper does not say what the article claims. The paper is about proposing a credible alternative model of weight gain and is a call for further research. This article, like most science journalism, is fake news and we need to stop sharing “stories” like this
> It's like if a patient came to their doctor complaining of water retention, and the doctor said "well clearly you're drinking more than you're excreting" and sent the patient home with instructions to drink less and pee more.
I agree that if that were the only thing the doctor said, they would be a pretty terrible doctor. What would happen in the real world is that the doctor would try to diagnose why the person is drinking more than they're excreting, and help stop that from happening, whether it's a psychological reason, an illness, or some other reason.
What the doctor for sure needs to have, though, is a base understanding that if someone is complaining of water retention, the underlying thing that is happening really is that they're drinking more than they're excreting. That's the basis of the diagnosis process. "You drink, then you excrete liquids, and if there's a misbalance there you have a problem" - if the doctor denies that, it's impossible to diagnose anything.
> but the EBM to me just seems hilariously inadequate to explain the obesity crisis.
I'd just like to point out that people usually talk about diet/nutrition in two contexts. One is the context of "how should I personally eat to lose weight" (or gain weight, but losing is more common). The other context is "how do we explain the society-wide obesity epidemic.
Those are very different questions. They both need to start by taking the EBM seriously, since it's completely proven science (both on a theoretical and on a practical level).
But I completely agree with you that the model by itself doesn't explain the obesity epidemic. It doesn't even try to, really - it just says that we know for sure people are eating more calories now, and therefore they are becoming obese. Why they are eating more calories is a separate mystery (though, in my mind, it's not very mysterious - far larger access to far more calorically-dense but nutritionally-poor foods).
> though, in my mind, it's not very mysterious - far larger access to far more calorically-dense but nutritionally-poor foods
This doesn’t seem so obvious to me… it seems reasonable to me that any abundance of calorically-dense food would lead to obesity. I don’t think it is obvious without study that the food being nutritionally poor is a requirement for widespread obesity.
> I don’t think it is obvious without study that the food being nutritionally poor is a requirement for widespread obesity.
I think calorically dense is "sufficient". Maybe nutritionally poor is a poor choice of words - I was trying to say calorically-dense, but not very satiating.
EBM is just begging the question. You gain weight when you have a positive energy balance, and you have a positive energy if you eat more than burn. It's trivially true, otherwise you are violating laws of conservation of energy. Therefore, it has no real explanatory power.
Biology is all about homeostasis, cybernetics, and feedback loops. People aren't universally overweight in industrialized countries, therefore it suggests something is messing with those feedback loops.
These feedback loops are myriad and complex, ranging from the simple control loop that tries to keep blood sugar in range, to the choices you make based on concepts such as self image.
One of the shocking things I figured out when researching this that no one ever talks about is just how efficient fat is.
If you burn 2000 calories a day and eat 2000 calories a day, you are in a steady state. Won't gain or lose any weight. But if you burn 2000 calories a day and eat 2100 calories a day, you have a 100 calorie gain. This should all be obvious. So you do that a month and a few days, and after a month or so you are up 3500 calories, which is one pound.
Now that you are one pound of fat heavier, you now burn an additional couple calories per day. If you continue to eat 2100 calories, you will gain 10 pounds before you reach your equilibrium weight from consuming 2100 calories.
Every 10 daily calories is worth 1 pound. Every daily apple is worth 10 pounds long-term. The 720 calorie average above is worth 72 pounds of fat. And that's even before we consider if now that you burn more calories, you will start eating more calories to keep the same offset?
> EBM is just begging the question. You gain weight when you have a positive energy balance, and you have a positive energy if you eat more than burn. It's trivially true, otherwise you are violating laws of conservation of energy. Therefore, it has no real explanatory power.
That's not true. You can see it's not true by the fact that so many people do in fact dispute consequences of this claim, despite it both being trivially true and proven multiple times in studies with actual humans.
If you eat at a calaoric defict, no matter what you are eating, you will lose weight. That is both undeniable and widely denied, and has lots of explanatory power, because at the end of the day, a correct question to ask about the world is "why are people eating more calories?".
There are certainly other factors which matter, depending on why you are asking the question: if it's for personal weight loss reasons, a good question to ask is "what kind of diet will allow me to eat less calories in the easiest way". If it's to explain the obesity epidemic, the answers are "why are people in general consuming more calories now than they were in the past".
But if you discard the base mechanism by which people are gaining weight, you don't even know what questions to ask.
EBM makes it seem that the only thing affecting the weight of human is calorie balance and there will not be any scenario where calorie deficit might not always lead to weight loss.
If water is free of calorie, has weight, affects body in some way, shouldn't that be taken into account?
Weeks of 1000kCal deficit without weight loss might not necessarily mean EBM is wrong. But EBM doesn't explain the phenomenon.
Usually what's looked at is average weight, since you're absolutely right - weight can fluctuate for many other reasons, including amount of water in your body. You can drink a liter of water before weighing yourself and weigh 1 liter more, though obviously that isn't anything we care about.
But if you're running a 1000kCal deficit for weeks, you are going to lose weight. Just think of the limit case - if you normally eat 3000kCal to be at maintenance, then running a 3000kCal deficit will cause you to lose weight quickly, then eventually die for lack of food. Eating at 3000kCal will cause your weight to stay the same. Deficits in between will cause you to lose weight more slowly.
> "what kind of diet will allow me to eat less calories in the easiest way"
I think this is still kind of missing the point about why people think that the EBM is unhelpful.
Intentionally eating fewer calories to lose weight is a little bit like lowering the mains voltage going to your house because the thermostat is stuck at too high of a setting and your house is too hot. In the extreme case it will work (how could it not?) but it's going to cause all sorts of other problems in the meantime.
In the case of diet those other problems take the form of constant intrusive thoughts of eating, irritability, inability to think clearly, feeling cold all the time, and disinterest in any kind of movement/exercise.
And it also (in the mind of the CIM adherents and friends) focuses attention away from the real problem (maybe my thermostat is broken) and toward something that doesn't really have anything to do with the real problem (maybe the voltage that seems to work for everyone else is too high for my heating system).
> I think this is still kind of missing the point about why people think that the EBM is unhelpful.
I don't think it's missing the point so much as disagreeing with the point :)
> Intentionally eating fewer calories to lose weight is a little bit like lowering the mains voltage going to your house because the thermostat is stuck at too high of a setting and your house is too hot. In the extreme case it will work (how could it not?) but it's going to cause all sorts of other problems in the meantime.
So this is why I have a problem with people arguing against the EBM and arguing against carbs (assuming I'm right of course!). It's teaching people a wrong underlying mechanism, that CICO "doesn't work", and that what foods you eat is more important than how much you eat.
What we should be teaching people is that any diet will produce weight loss, assuming it causes them to consume fewer calories. They need to find a diet that works for them and fits their lifestyle, and doesn't cause the above side-effects.
For one person that might be going keto and getting rid of carbs, because that seems to be a fairly "automatic" way of doing things, that causes people not to have hunger, and also not count calories. Great! They should do that.
For other people, getting rid of carbs is simply not something they can do for a sustained time. For them, other options might be better. Finding ways to make less calorically-dense foods, finding more fulfilling or lower-calorie versions of foods they like, etc.
For me personally, when I started my (relatively small) weight-loss journey a year ago, I just did pure calorie counting, which seemed to fit my life the best. I could still eat whatever I wanted, I just had to be smarter about amounts. I also had to learn to sometimes eat more fulfilling foods, otherwise I'd be hungry. It was a great way to learn about how nutrition and hunger work, and it's what I think will help most people.
So many people I ran into were surprised that this worked for me. After all, the only way to lose weight is to stop eating carbs, or so think a huge chunk of the population (including me a year and a half ago!).
> In the case of diet those other problems take the form of constant intrusive thoughts of eating, irritability, inability to think clearly, feeling cold all the time, and disinterest in any kind of movement/exercise.
Yes, just saying "eat less, move more" is definitely not the end of the conversation, because it's hard. You need to learn about foods and nutrition. You need to learn to substitute lower calorie alternatives or have more satiating meals. But you need to understand the underlying mechanism to even get there - if you think it's just about carbs, you're severely limiting your options and understanding.
There are an awful lot of people who work eight hours, come home, and plop in front of a screen until they go to bed. They do this for decades until they die. People didn't do this as much when there were only three stations on TV and you'd find other things to do. It isn't that much of a mystery.
more tasty food available for less money and less effort over time. harder to resist because it tastes better and is easier to obtain and prepare in terms of time
and money.
Yes, but why are we eating more? It's not like people in 1961 had more willpower than those in 2021.
I think there's some truth to the CIH and palatability. It's pretty hard to argue that food engineering hasn't made super tasty snacks designed to get you hooked. Those same snacks just so happen to mostly be high-carb as well.
> It's pretty hard to argue that food engineering hasn't made super tasty snacks designed to get you hooked. Those same snacks just so happen to mostly be high-carb as well.
I mean, this pretty much answers the question. Also, I suspect, more hidden fat and sugar. It would be interesting to track the calories of processed food that you generally wouldn't associate with snacks, such as bread or salad dressings. I could imagine those got a higher sugar amount over the decades.
The other side of the equation might also be to blame - less energy output: Today, more areas are optimised for cars, not for walking. We also spend more time in front of a screen - both at work and for leisure.
Note: This ignores the factors in the article to keep it simple, those affect many things which contribute to or decrease hunger, satiety, etc.
I think it's as simple as the availability and quantity of food in front of us at all times.
We're eating just as often as in the past, but portions (of everything) are so much larger and our bodies will eat more if it's available.
Satiety is always a lagging indicator to stop eating, so by default we'll over eat if we can. Combine this with food always being available and it doesn't take a genius to figure out where the trend is going to go.
This feels even more accurate to me as I've started doing alternative day fasting (because I'm about 50 lbs overweight), but I've been tracking my food intake on days I eat and I'm almost always eating 2500-3500 calories.
Stuff adds up quickly.
* 500 calories for a bowl of cereal with milk
* 1,000 calories for a sandwich from a sandwich shop
* 1,000 calories for dinner
* 500+ calories from drinks
And eating all of that doesn't make me feel stuffed. It's what makes me feel full. Which I know is a good bit more than "just enough" which I've done when I was working out a lot and watching every calorie I ate.
Jesus, all of those quantities are shocking to me.
A cup of cereal is under a hundred calories, and a cup of milk less than 200, so a bowl of cereal with milk should run about 2-300 calories. 500 calories is a Big Mac. Are you spooning sugar into it? Cream?
What the heck kind of sandwich has 1000 calories? Okay, a fully loaded footlong from Subway maybe, but you seriously have that for lunch? A normal sandwich, such as you might make at home, has 300-500 calories. No 6 inch sub has more than 600 calories. Why is your lunch the same size as your dinner?
1000 calories for dinner is more reasonable, but still - that's a huge dinner. That's like a generously large platter of spaghetti bolognese. I don't know how you could be hungry for that after downing an equivalent meal at lunchtime.
500 calories from drinks is truly horrifying because unless you're chugging milkshakes that's probably all high fructose corn syrup. A quarter of your recommended daily caloric intake, in the form of pure refined sugar! That's an express ticket to diabetes-ville right there. 4+ cans of coke daily is not a healthy intake.
I'm not trying to lay into you here. I'm glad you're experimenting with fasting. But, reality check - I would physically struggle to eat that quantity of food without being sick. I wonder if all that soda is messing with your appetite?
As someone that eats (maybe I should turn that into "used to eat") a lot of cereal, knowing that they're pretty unhealthy for me, I did an experiment just now: I poured a large but not exceptional (for me) amount of cereal into my cereal mug, half an inch from the rim, and then poured it into a measuring cup. It came out to 1 3/4 cups.
Then I looked at the labels in my pantry:
Store brand muesli - 330 kcal per cup /
Kashi GOLEAN - 176 kcal per cup
I also looked up cereals I ate as a kid (I find them too sugary now):
Frosted Mini-Wheats - 210 kcal per cup-ish /
Cap'n Crunch - 150 kcal per cup /
Froot Loops - 113 kcal per cup
These numbers are surprising to me but they probably shouldn't be. Despite Froot Loops being subjectively
the most sugary cereal I've eaten and the muesli having a proportionally low amount of sugar, the density of the muesli (82g per cup!) compared to the Froot Loops (29g per cup) means that it's crazy calorie-dense per volume (which is how most people eyeball their cereal, I think).
Having eaten 600-700 kcal worth of cereal with milk just before I typed this, and not thinking that amount particularly remarkable (but the calorie count was surprising!), I'm starting to wonder how my weight has remained stable and well below average my entire adult life. I pretty much only drink water (and the cereal milk), so at least I have that going for me.
I like honey bunches of oats cereal. It’s delicious. The variety I like is also ~200 calories _per cup_. That’s before adding milk of any kind. Add a little bit of milk and tip the box a bit more than usual (I imagine a lot of folks are not very precise when measuring breakfast cereal) and we’re easily sailing over 500 calories. I eat a modest 1700 calorie diet most days and I could easily crush 1,000 calories of this cereal without even feeling full.
Likewise for sandwiches. The best rated local sandwich shops near me offer a selection of (very likely) 1,000+ calorie sandwiches. They also do not list calories so my estimates are based on casually deconstructing them and plugging in constituent ingredients into MyFitnessPal ensembles with surprising results. It’s surprising because I’ve proven I can eat more than one without feeling full.
It doesn’t take a mad genius in an evil food lab somewhere underground to make food that’s guaranteed to derail a diet. The ingredients are cheap, easy, and abundant everywhere.
It's not usually the main portions of food that's a problem. It's all the little things that are added to enhance the flavor.
The worst example I can think of is, one of my favorite sandwiches, Jersey Mike's Club sub. The "mini" is the size with a reasonable portion. It has Provolone cheese, mayo, bacon, and olive oil on it (if you get it "Mike's way") that takes it from 280 Cal to 640 Cal without changing size (visibly). But I don't always get the mini. Sometimes I get the regular which brings it up to a whopping 1,120 Cal.
And yes, there are plenty of times I'm not really hungry for dinner, but I'm so accustomed/habituated to eating dinner with my wife that I'll eat out of habit. I wasn't hungry, so I chose a small serving, but that still ends up being 500-600 Calories that I didn't need.
So that's 1,200 - 1,800 calories in two main dishes. It is way more food than I need? Do I feel stuffed after eating it? Not usually.
In a sense you are right, but it is VERY easy to get yourself accustomed to larger portions. I would have absolutely no problem eating a 1000 calorie dinner, even a 1500 calorie dinner. Carbs and dairy are very easy to eat a lot of without noticing.
Your body is incredible at adapting, and it's happy as pie to adapt to a high calorie diet. A few months ago I started calorie counting rigorously and was shocked at how many calories I was casually consuming in what I felt was a normal diet.
The easiest switch I made (and I acknowledge it's not for everyone) is having precisely the same breakfast and lunch every weekday which is a 300 calorie breakfast and 500 calorie lunch. Only one milky coffee per day (in Australia coffee is often made with all milk, no water).
If you come home from work having eaten 800 calories then it's no great hardship to keep within 1000 calories in the evening. But if you've had 1500 calories before 5pm you're stuffed.
Pair that with a dinner of Marie Callender's Chicken Pot Pie (600 - 930 Cal)
* 10 Oz Chicken Pot Pie (600 Cal) / 15 Oz (930 Cal)
So without any snacks or beverages that puts me at 1,726 Cal - 2,136 Calories.
If I had a glass of milk with lunch and dinner and some Almonds for a snack (1 oz 175 Cal) that would add another (495 - 655 Calories).
Total of 2,221 Cal - 2,791 Cal.
And this is me watching what I eat, but just getting a little sloppy around snacks and beverages. I could easily blow past that by having a Red Bull or soda. Maybe some dessert at some point in the day. It could be easy to add another 1,000 Cal.
I don’t mean to sound rude, but frosted cereal, miracle whip and pot pie are not indicators of a good diet.
Once you start eating whole foods (mostly meat, vegetables, nuts and eggs), you’ll realize how easy it is to lose weight (particularly once you start exercising). I think the trouble is that most people have conditioned their tastebuds to respond to highly processed food, so they think they can’t eat “normally”.
Bullshit. It was honestly one of the hardest things I've ever done. I would spend a few hours a week planning meals and shopping. And then cooking for another 2 hours each day. (Yes, I realize this is pretty standard, but I'm not interested.) I don't enjoy cooking for myself (I don't mind doing it for friends and whatnot though). I did it for three years consistently to lose my last 30 lbs (and got under 10% BF @ 160 lbs.), but I hated having to think about food all the time.
Finding, shopping, choosing and cooking whole foods was the biggest pain in the ass I had when I was single. I don't mind eating healthy, but I hate the work that goes into it. And given the choice I'm going to throw butter, honey, mayo, avocado, etc onto whatever I'm eating to make it tastier.
Is my diet unhealthy? Yup and I know exactly how unhealthy it is. But I love sweet things. That's just something I've come to accept.
Did my tastebuds adjust when I ate healthier? Also, yup, but and I was fine with it at the time.
When I met my wife my eating habits slowly got worse until I didn't think about my food choices at all and just when with whatever sounded good at the moment and that was also fine.
But I've learned over the last 10 years that thinking about food constantly (in order to consistently eat healthy) multiply that by two with because my wife's food preferences are vastly different than my own and it's a burden I don't want.
All that is what lead me to alternate day fasting. This is a much easier choice than watching what I eat (I'm being a bit hyperbolic for effect, I'm adjusting my diet too, but not drastically like in the past). I eat enough every other day to sustain myself at a nice 170 lbs, so that's just what I'm going to do. I actually don't find it a burden at all to not eat for a day.
[Edit: Also, food choices were pretty random off the top of my head, but still you picked on the miracle whip, but not the mayo?]
I'm not saying you can't keep your weight in check on that diet if you do ADF. I'm saying that your diet is far from normal or healthy - which you yourself admit. Sugar-frosted cereal in particular is just downright terrible. No-one should think of that as "normal".
Drinking 500+ calories a day is almost 1.5lbs a week, cutting that alone would contribute a lot to weight loss. Try drinking a gallon of water a day instead.
But it wouldn't be unusual for me to have three cans of soda a day if I'm not paying attention. Two during the work day and one with dinner, so that's still 500 Calories.
In the last year I've figure out one of the causes for this. I'm, apparently, very sensitive to the flavor of water.
I picked up a home reverse osmosis filter and my water consumption has gone back through the roof and soda consumption down to 1 every few days just because I like the flavor.
Calories from drinks are a good example of stuff with a very different balance between calories and satiety, the carbs in drinks don't really create a feeling satiety even if consumed in huge amounts but do provide loads of energy.
Eating 500 calories worth of non-starchy vegetables, on the other hand, would be much harder, because you would feel stuffed.
Yea - cramming everything full of sugar to encourage over-consumption might be habit forming even for the individuals that try to minimize consuming those sugar laden goods in their adult life.
Maybe a big chunk of folks can naturally avoid this but, honestly, modern life is basically about being bombarded continuously with advertising to over-consume while blaming everyone who falls victim to it - whether it be racking up credit card debt or overeating.
Why are we eating more though? Normally you would expect what, maybe people get pudgy when they live in a realm of excess availability and little exertion, but the percentage of 300+ lb people rising so dramatically in the last 30 years isn't so simply explained.
I would suspect multiple things at play, some combination of processed food, food scientists tweaking flavors so that we don't burn out on eating foods, increased carbohydrate and calorie density, PFAs and endocrine disruptors in the food and water, plastic gloves leaking human analogue hormones into fast food fry grease or some currently unidentified hidden factor is a play here.
Somehow these things the combination has to be shorting out the satiation signal so that people don't stop eating when they have enough. Trying to listen to your body when your body is being lied to.
It's not as simple as people eat too much. Something is creating the hole that they are trying to fill.
N == 1, but when I eat in certain way (lots of veg + fruit, reduce white bread and pastry, no caloric drinks), my body stays the same weight, as measured by clothing size, without any further conscious effort.
I suspect that this is the way how our ancestors in the 1950s-1970s stayed slim (at least compared to us) without calorie counting or even knowing what calories were, even though they held white collar jobs too. Body tries to find an in/out equilibrium, and ultra processed foods disrupt this process.
Take any photo of an engineering or academic team from that period and compare it to a photo of people doing similar jobs today. A massive difference in size, though the job's physical demands aren't that different.
>My hunch with the CIM is that a human in good health can pretty effortlessly maintain a non-obese weight without much regard for things like macronutrient balance, but that some fairly widespread factor has disrupted that regulation mechanism in a large fraction of the population.
In the USA, Percent of adults aged 20 and over with overweight, including obesity: 73.6% (2017-2018)
>That in a sense a keto/low-carb diet is a workaround for a mechanism that's broken in a lot of people, rather than some platonic ideal of how everyone should be eating.
This was studied several times now and they haven't discovered it. Some people assert GI microbiome is broken and there has been success there. Others are asserting that it's glysophate somehow interrupting, that keto avoids the larger concentrations of glysophates in our food.
The one that seems simplest is that 100 years ago we didnt eat carbs unless you were poor. For thousands of years we ate game meats. About 75 years ago the governments of the world were fooled by political activists and they started an experiment on us. I have 73.6 reasons that experiment failed.
a keto/low-carb diet is a workaround for a mechanism that's broken in a lot of people
I think you're onto something from my own experience. I don't think you are entirely correct though. It's not a workaround as much as cure.
This might just be anecdotal evidence but my body was definitely broken. My gut was b0rked and I was in a cycle of eating more and more carb-y food to not feel hungry/cravy/fatigued all the time.
What getting on the right probiotics and doing keto did for me was what I think is to restore the natural state human bodies should be in again. I finally am able to feel "full" again and eat when I'm actually hungry vs. just eating three meals a day (plus 'cravings').
Now I don't subscribe to any religion but I do think that any religion that includes a "fast" does right is to basically do something akin to keto. I don't believe in any of the religious aspects of fasting but I do recognize that the easiest way to get a large populace to stay healthy is to subscribe them to a religion and then let the religion dictate things that keep them healthy and happy.
E.g. I don't eat breakfast any longer. I just don't need it. I don't feel hungry in the morning any longer. I oftentimes don't even feel hungry at lunch any longer and only do so around maybe 2pm. Not being bound to traditional meals and customs around eating helped me with this. I just go scour the fridge at 2pm to find some cheese and eat some almonds. Maybe some peanut M&Ms (at the office - at home it'd be say raspberries with cream). I can totally recommend peanut M&Ms with cheese actually! Awesome combination!
As you can see in my comment history some people have asked before after comments like this one from me. What I did was try a lot of different probiotics but what I think helped in the end is Garden Of Life - Primal Defense. You don't have to use that brand but what I think did it is the Bacillus Subtilis included in it, which wasn't part of any of the other probiotics I tried. I'm sure there are others that have that one. I started off with 1 a day, then 2 a day, then 3 a day and I felt like crap for a few weeks. Then it all went away and I felt awesome. I'm still on those to make sure I maintain a healthy gut flora but I'm down to one in the morning and one in the evening and I also made Sauerkraut from it (i.e. empty a capsule into your Cabbage and let it ferment).
I’ve recently learned how important a health gut flora is. I took a course of antibiotics and had a month of severe depression, anxiety, constipation and general sense of hopelessness. It was fucking awful. I’ve completely cut out sugar and processed foods and refined carbs. I’m starting to feel genuinely good. That month was the scariest period of my life.
The experience has also shown me how ignorant we still are in terms of nutrition and medicine. My surgeon basically gaslit me, and handed me 5 different prescriptions. Hopefully we get to a place where nutrition is taking seriously, and we get proper tools to evaluate our body’s health
I would like to add that _all_ of my blood markers improved to completely normal levels when doing keto. Except for cholesterol, which improved too (HDL and LDL) but not to "normal" levels. I've been on statins before (up to max dose over ~15 years) and it did nothing except to cause muscle pain as the dose went up, which caused me to stop them, because the heart is a muscle and a serious (if seldom) side effect of statins is to cause muscles (including the heart) to do things they shouldn't. In an arm muscle it's painful. In a heart muscle it's deadly.
Same experience with gaslighting from most doctors. Not helpful at all. I figured this all out through experimentation and internet research. What triggered it for me was getting migraines worse than drinking 10 bottles of sweet wine from a 333ml bottle of alcohol free beer. A long research period that also explained a lot of previously just weird experiences. And none of the doctors helped at all.
My current GP is awesome though in that regard. She doesn't know much about this stuff either but she's curious. She googled with me, prescribed the blood tests needed etc. Just awesome!
* The popular fake meats, such as Impossible burgers, seem like ultra-processed foods. Is that right? Are they healthier than meat (a question without a general answer, but worth considering)? They could help with climate change, regardless.
* A basic question, but I haven't found an authoritative answer: Warnings about carbohydrates talk about processed foods but are silent on whole grains. Are whole grains a more healthy way to consume carbs?
Looks like impossible managed to keep the 3/1 ratio of carbs to fiber that beans have, while increasing the protein ratio and adding fat.
Hummus is technically a processed food. But if it's not too high salt or filled with preservatives, it's not less healthy than eating garbanzo beans with sesame seeds, etc. From my perspective, impossible is a little healthier than a burger (a lot healthier if you count the environment) but it's not a salad.
> Hummus is technically a processed food. But if it's not too high salt or filled with preservatives, it's not less healthy than eating garbanzo beans with sesame seeds, etc.
I'm not sure what the properties of hummus (or artichokes or beer) implies about the properties of Impossible burgers.
The hummus comment was to point out that there are foods which people might consider processed, but it doesn't mean it's less healthy than their unprocessed ingredients. Just depends on how it was processed. Maybe I'm misunderstanding "processed" tho
But I guess it's kinda obvious that there are levels of processing and IDK what impossible is doing. But I'm curious.
> The hummus comment was to point out that there are foods which people might consider processed, but it doesn't mean it's less healthy than their unprocessed ingredients. Just depends on how it was processed. Maybe I'm misunderstanding "processed" tho
I see. Here's what I understand, but can't substantiate or explain the mechanics myself:
* Eating foods with less processing is one of the strongest consensuses in nutrition - almost universal, in a field where there is a lot of uncertainty.
* Processing is a matter of degree. From the OP (and based on it, I'd guess that Impossible food is ultra-processed, hummus somewhere between minimally processed and processed, depending on the hummus):
Ultra-processed: Foods with additives or few whole food ingredients; includes most packaged snacks, frozen meals, granola bars, soda, and cereal.
Processed foods: “Foods such as canned fish, vegetables and artisanal cheeses, which are manufactured by adding salt, sugar, oil, or other processed culinary ingredients to minimally processed foods.”
Processed culinary ingredients: Table sugar, oils, fats, and salt.
Minimally processed foods: Frozen fruit or vegetables, breads with just a few ingredients, milk, canned beans.
* Why does processing matter? Essential question and I don't know much of the answer, but part of it is that context matters: The effects of foods relies on much more than individual nutrients in the food, but what they are contained in (obvious when you think about it: you couldn't ingest a pile of carbon, etc.). But what are the factors that matter and why? No idea. I'd love to learn about it.
The best source I've found, which examines it on a basic level, recommended several years ago by a leading nutritional expert, is the Brazillian government's dietary recommendations (note these are from 2015):
> The hummus comment was to point out that there are foods which people might consider processed, but it doesn't mean it's less healthy than their unprocessed ingredients.
This is something that actually differs for people [citation needed]. As in, please do google, but fiber works perfectly for some people while fiber does nothing for others. It's genetics. So you're both right and wrong ;)
I'd be more interested in scaling that by calories. I.e. what happens if you make all of those the same amount of calories instead of grams. I think that does wonders for how we eat.
One of the benefits of keto for example (once you're actually in at least mild ketosis) is that you don't actually feel hungry any longer and the calories are just taken from your fat stores. The body no longer 'cares' for easily usable carbs. It has come to terms with the fact that there are no carbs to use and thus it no longer 'sends the signal to go eat more carbs'. It 'knows' that there's a lot of fat stored in the body that it can use up and so it just does that.
I dunno if you're done keto but one thing that happened, at least for me, is that foods that normally don't taste sweet started tasting sweet. E.g the first pancake I had after starting keto (and being in blood test verified ketosis) did definitely taste sweet (recipe: spelt flour, egg, milk) without anything on it.
This is where I think the 'fasting' of many religions has health benefits (nevermind that none of that is explained and it's just religious tradition/rules - but they were onto something basically).
You basically said "fiber needs are different, google it" so I did, and I don't see anything supporting that statement. You bring up ketosis but I though we're talking about more or less "normal" diets that consume carbs.
I think keto is (in most instances) a dangerous fad diet, but feel free to experiment. Tho I have at various times cut sugar and processed carbohydrates (only eating whole grains) out of my diet and everything was sweeter.
Looks like we have a different understanding of my words.
I never said that fiber needs are different. I said that fiber works for some people but not for others. I should have specified better. What I meant is that apparently while many if not most people feel satiated from eating fiber, others don't. I.e. it does not help them feel full. You still want to eat a good amount of fiber for other reasons, such as having enough "bulk".
I never said keto and fasting were the same. I drew a link between some of the benefits that I saw from going keto and some of the benefits of fasting.
I am interested though to hear more about why you say it is a dangerous fad diet. I think you're definitely are onto something, if I interpret correctly but I don't want to mis-interpret. I say that because I see a lot of "keto bomb", "keto bar", keto this and keto that pre-packaged food popping up in the grocery stores. I wouldn't trust any of that either. There's also a lot of fluffy and shiny info out there on the internet about it. As with any topic really, one has to be careful while doing research, especially if someone wants to sell you something.
Ok but I'm just not gonna continue the discussion if you make claims, tell me to google, I come back and say "didn't find anything" and you still don't support your claim with links. Feels like i'm being trolled.
ETA: this isn't about "feeling full" or "bulk" this is about how the body processes food, and extracts energy using bacteria, who feed on fiber in our diet. google "fiber gut bacteria" for what I'm talking about
I've never trolled anyone in my life and you're the first person to accuse me of that. Feel free to peruse my comment history.
I replied by trying to clarify what I meant as we seem to have had a different understanding on what I was even trying to say. I guess we really are not compatible in having a discussion given the immediate accusatory tone and downvoting instead of trying to figure out together where the misunderstandings were and discussing.
>The popular fake meats, such as Impossible burgers, seem like ultra-processed foods. Is that right?
Very highly processed, but 'what is processed' really anyway. That's not a proper metric to judge things.
>Is that right? Are they healthier than meat (a question without a general answer, but worth considering)?
If you believe the status quo, the impossible meats are tremendously unhealthy. Almost always being higher in saturated fats and such than any real meats.
If you believe that political activists have wrongly accused fat of being a problem. Then these impossible meats are fantastic.
>They could help with climate change, regardless.
Most likely not. This is just another political activist move. Yes a cow farts, but if you properly assess carbon capture of animal agriculture... meat production is good for climate change. Those cow patties is practically all carbon that was taken out of the air and is being returned to the earth. The problem is that animal rights activists want to propose any idea to have animals no longer slaughtered.
>A basic question, but I haven't found an authoritative answer: Warnings about carbohydrates talk about processed foods but are silent on whole grains. Are whole grains a more healthy way to consume carbs?
Glycemic index is what you're looking for. The magic number is 30. Anything above 30, avoid.
Regular white bread is ~69
Wholegrain is ~79
Rice ~72
So it's marginally worse, and that's because the process to make it white removes various parts of the grain and ends up adjusting for more protein and less carbs in ratio.
> Are whole grains a more healthy way to consume carbs?
Yes, more healthy. The less processed it is, the more fiber it has, and the more micronutrients remain. To the degree that you consider carbs to be the problem, though, it's still carbs.
Beef has trans fat, saturated fat, heme iron (impossible has this too but most other meat alternatives don't) and is often processed with cancer-causing chemicals that give harmful meaning to the word "processed".
Although it is important to understand that fake meats are a part of traditional vegetarian culture, at least East Asian ones. There's a whole genre of Chinese food that is based on fake beef, fake pork, etc. Whether these are better or worse than the new "disruptive" versions from Impossible and Beyond is another issue, but the idea that "real vegetarians" don't eat fake meat is a narrow, Western misconception.
Generally it is just called "vegetarian meat" (素肉) and is made from a mixture of potato-like tubers, beans, and wheat, with various spices to give it flavor. There are even a few restaurants in the US that serve it, for example Yuan Fu Vegetarian in Rockville, MD (Washington DC suburb)
Sure. But I used to like the occasional burger, and now I can have something that tastes similar without the ethical concerns. Is it healthy? No. But neither is a fast food burger. Is it satisfying as an occasional treat? Absolutely.
Weirdly, in the US anyway, most "fast food" places have had no vegetarian protein at all on the menu. Their only main course vegetarian options tend to be salads with very low protein (and usually, only a single kind of salad out of maybe 3 will actually be vegetarian - the others will have a meat protein).
It's no mean feat for a vegetarian who's traveling to find a source of protein at any of these restaurants.
Before the "fake meat" products, Taco Bell bean burritos were basically the only ubiquitous option. Starbucks, and some other fast food joints, do have some egg-based protein options in the morning.
So I have no love for Impossible/Beyond/whatever ultraprocessed stuff, and I'd much rather get a big bowl of black beans with some tempeh or something, but the convenience of being able to find any protein when you're pressed for time is welcome.
Favoring "fake meats" for reasons of ethics, rather than health, does not preclude keeping one's health. The bogeymen of "processing" and "GMOs" do not make any definitive statement about the healthiness of those products.
Processed foods have a well-established impact on health. Do you have some evidence tat says otherwise?
> do not make any definitive statement about the healthiness of those products
Did someone say "definitive", or maybe it's a factor. If you don't think that's a factor, what is your evaluation of the healthfulness of the fake meats?
(Is 'bogeymen' like a spell - if we say that magic word, we make something meaningless? 'The bogeyman of Covid!' 'The bogeyman of my mortgage!' This is awesome!)
"Processed" is hopelessly vague and tells you nothing about the manner and the scale of the processing. According to the article, a processed food is one which is "manufactured by adding salt, sugar, oil, or other processed culinary ingredients to minimally processed foods."
So, it's anything with any amount of salt, sugar, or oil.
How much?
An Impossible Burger trivially meets the definition of a processed food. In more meaningful terms:
• An Impossible patty has 370mg of sodium. That is actionable information and should inform your dieting, should you choose to eat one. But with the WHO suggesting a daily limit of 2000mg (the American Heart Association aims lower, 1500mg), a single 370mg patty alone isn't anything to be scared of. Yes, it's a substantial portion of your budget, but if you're committing to eating a burger, how much more are you actually planning to eat? It should be a significant fraction of all of the food you're eating today, regardless of the salt content!
• Impossible patties have less than 1g of added sugars. At that low quantity, I don't much care.
• Impossible meat contains coconut and sunflower oil. Coconut is one of the healthiest options for a food oil, whereas sunflower is sometimes high in omega-6 (the ingredients list is not specific enough to tell). I would love to know the relative proportions, but I'll content myself with knowing that coconut is higher on the list.
So at the end of the day, an Impossible burger seems like a fine meal to me. By my standards, it doesn't clearly raise alarm on any of the three axes that define a "processed" food. Take that scare word away and let's deal in material facts.
> "Processed" is hopelessly vague and tells you nothing about the manner and the scale of the processing.
Hmmm ... it's a widely used term of art in nutrition around which there is a lot of consensus.
> An Impossible Burger trivially meets the definition of a processed food.
It clearly meets (ha) the definition of ultra-processed foods, afaict. You can find the definitions elsewhere too.
> an Impossible burger seems like a fine meal to me. By my standards ...
You should eat what you like, of course. But we are entitled to your own opinions, not to our own facts. Your personal standards and mine have no bearing on the health of Impossible foods.
"Plant based meats" are carbohydrate heavy so they are really only meat-like in terms of taste and texture but fail as meat replacements due to the completely different nutritional profile.
Not the case for the aforementioned Impossible Burger[1] which has about twice as much protein as carbs (and quite a bit of fat). But the question of how 'processed' they should be considered is interesting.
Also you can discount the fiber portion of the total carbohydrates, since it’s indigestible, and with that it has 3x the protein vs carbs. Meat has zero carbs, though.
This article reads like this group of contrarian researchers have proven that they are actually right, and that the silly "establishment" scientists are all wrong.
In reality, if you don't know much about nutrition, you should really read this as you would any other contrarian group that thinks it knows better than everyone else. 99% of the time, if there is a scientific consensus which is different, it is correct, as I believe it is in this case as well.
This study has been fairly widely criticized by most people in the field that I trust.
If you cook, fry, bake, brine or ferment it, it's "processed".
Think of the damage doable by unprocessed food: all the pathogens and parasites that can enter your body.
The fact you can eat something that is six months old is possible thanks to processing, such as leaving it in the same air-tight container in which it was cooked, a.k.a canning.
How is that different than making things like head cheese? You boil bones and connective tissue and make a loaf out of the congealed proteins. It's been done for centuries. Or were our ancestors eating "ultra highly process foods" too?
Can someone, maybe even a nutritionist or doctor, recommend an authoritative textbook or course on nutrition? I would need something at the undergraduate or non-specialist graduate level. Being a topic that directly affects every day of the rest of my life, I would like to gain as sophisticated an understanding as a can, given limits of time. I could work through one textbook or course.
I know there are not always authoritative answers about nutrition; there is much uncertainty. That's all the more reason to have the knowledge distilled by an expert (who would of course discuss uncertainties).
In single variable calculus and newtonian physics, sufficiently talented researchers come to the same conclusion when they devote significant time to a question, with sufficiently talented researchers beginning to appear in high school.
In chemistry, sufficiently talented researchers will come to the same conclusion, with sufficiently talented researchers appearing in college, or more likely graduate school / professional labs for organic chemistry.
As humans, we don't have researchers who are so talented that if you ask them to answer nutritional questions, they will consistently and independently come to the same conclusions. This isn't because nutritionists are dumb, this is because nutrition is hard. However, it makes it much harder to suss out dumb nutritionists when the smart ones disagree.
Notably, none of this stops anyone from writing books.
It's not that nutrition is harder than physics or chemistry, instead it is far less ideal, and more importantly, purely empirical (as opposed to experimental). This is they key distinction between hard and soft sciences and, incidentally, why it is dangerous to treat soft sciences like psychology and sociology (and nutrition) with the same certainty as hard science like physics.
> As humans, we don't have researchers who are so talented that if you ask them to answer nutritional questions, they will consistently and independently come to the same conclusions. This isn't because nutritionists are dumb, this is because nutrition is hard. However, it makes it much harder to suss out dumb nutritionists when the smart ones disagree.
AFAICT, that's not true, and only appears true because of the vast amount of attention one side is able to get, despite being an incredibly small minority.
From what I understand (I'm not in the field and not an expert), except for the few researchers in this article, basically every scientist working in nutrition will say that the energy balance model is correct, and that there's nothing special about carbs.
The media loves to amplify the contrarian and minority voices (see also things like climate change). But they really are outliers, and there really is a consensus, at least on this one big question.
I don't think these researchers are saying that EBM is false per se. They state, “Conceptualizing obesity as a disorder of energy balance restates a principle of physics without considering the biological mechanisms that promote weight gain.” My reading of that is that EBM isn't very helpful as a weight loss strategy because it's harder to "just eat less" if your whole diet is sugar. The CIM explains one's diet's effect on appetite, so can help come up with strategies that make it easier to eat less.
They believe that the "causality" of weight gain is reversed as opposed to EBM - it's not that eating more calories causes weight gain, it's that your body choosing to store more fat (because of higher carb intake) causes you to eat more calories.
I disagree with their ideas, but they do offer very specific differences from the EBM model, both as a tool for understanding obesity and as a tool for transforming public health.
E.g. even in their abstract:
> According to a commonly held view, the obesity pandemic is caused
by overconsumption of modern, highly palatable, energy-dense
processed foods, exacerbated by a sedentary lifestyle. However, obesity rates remain at historic highs, despite a persistent focus on eating less and moving more, as guided by the energy balance model
(EBM).
They're directly challenging the "orthodox" view that we need to get people to eat less and move more.
But that view works! It's not the end of the discussion, because people overeat for many reasons, and in my view high palatability of food and having more wealth are the main culprits. But they clearly disagree, since they devote sections of their article to addressing exactly these ideas and why they're wrong.
Btw, for the record, all these researchers are way more knowledgeable than I am about all of this - I have no education in nutrition at all. But I have pretty solid evidence that they're wrong - lots of other smart people say they're wrong, there's lots of direct evidence that they're wrong (studies in humans), I personally lost a bunch of weight by counting calories and restricting the amounts that I ate, etc.
You’re almost asking the impossible. Nutrition is an area with a lot of dogma, a lot of pre-existing bias, and plenty of conflicting evidence that supports almost anyone to cherrypick things to suit their agenda. This is why you can buy books which (seek to) prove almost opposite positions.
Dr Greger isn’t perfect, and of course has his own plant-based agenda to push… but aside from maybe missing the pleasure of some foods, I can’t see that there’s anything to lose from a health perspective in following his advice… while there may be a large amount to gain.
As others have said, a home-cooked plant-based diet is a very solid base to start from.
> You’re almost asking the impossible. Nutrition is an area with a lot of dogma, a lot of pre-existing bias, and plenty of conflicting evidence that supports almost anyone to cherrypick things to suit their agenda. This is why you can buy books which (seek to) prove almost opposite positions.
That's one reason I'm looking for a textbook or academic course. I am not interested in the political battles; I don't want this month's new book (and I certainly don't agree with the proposition (which the parent didn't say) that everything is politicized).
I dont think there are many 'canon' texts in this space, because of all the conflicting evidence and continual improved understanding of how diets impact health (eg gut ecology, inflammation are recent big research areas).
Looking at a university level course list on nutrition and reading into each of the subject areas might be a start (Pick the ones that apply to you - nutrition in infants is perhaps not relevant). The Oxford Handbook of Nutrition is a good summary reference text.
But it's not political battles (well, there are but they aren't the only issue), it's that there is actual conflicting information in the studies. And there are past well regarded studies that have since become controversial. Or put another way: it seems there is a lot we do not understand about nutrition, we merely convinced ourselves we did.
You really don't need anything that sophisticated to understand what you need to know. People way overcomplicate this. Dr. Israetel's short TED talk covers everything almost anyone will need to know in their lifetime about what healthy eating means. Only people with specific health conditions that require restricted diets, and maybe elite athletes who have strict regimens may require more understanding of their nutrition:
> You really don't need anything that sophisticated to understand what you need to know.
I've heard that all my life, but usually not from people on HN! Knowledge is a powerful thing; it enables me to think for myself and not be prisoner of what others say (or don't say).
He's a well known, non-nonsense researcher in exercise science. Take the 15 minutes to listen and judge for yourself.
> Knowledge is a powerful thing; it enables me to think for myself and not be prisoner of what others say (or don't say).
Signal to noise ratio matters. The SNR in nutrition is terrible, and will more than likely lead you to analysis paralysis. Save yourself some time and pain. Even if you decide to go deeper, Israetel points you in the right direction.
> Take the 15 minutes to listen and judge for yourself.
I don't think that's possible without knowledge in the domain. Human beings are bad at judging trustworthiness, especially the trustworthiness of their own judgment on the issue. IMHO, that's exactly how mis/disinformation spreads; sophists can easily sound trustworthy.
> Signal to noise ratio matters. The SNR in nutrition is terrible, and will more than likely lead you to analysis paralysis. Save yourself some time and pain.
Agreed. And that was the context of my original question.
Just start playing with your diet. Not only is information around diet not guaranteed, it is also specific to each individual. Probably even specific to a time in a persons life.
Try vegan for a few weeks, try keto for a month, see how you feel. I think shaking up your diet is as important as how you shake it up. I would lean towards some research and then diving in and tracking how you feel/perform versus trying to gain a deep academic textbook understanding.
I agree about experimenting (and I do that). Feeling bad is a strong indicator, perhaps, but less so feeling good: People can spend decades eating things that make them feel good and lead to heart attacks. I could smoke cigarettes, which make people feel good.
Even though it has a climbing specific slant, the podcast at https://www.climbingnutrition.com/ covers all the bases with a science led approach. The episodes can be frustrating long and rambling (I offered my services to edit down, but they declined), but the content is still incredibly valuable.
What interests you specifically? I've never read a nutrition textbook front-to-back but I spend a good portion of my time reading research and opinions on nutrition. I think I've cobbled together a pretty good education on the topic over the past decade. I'm sad to say 99% of what I've read has been hack science, stupidly obvious or minute in importance.
It's almost troubling to me how far you can go just following Michael Pollan's old chestnut: eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants. Barring any intolerances that right there will get you to near-optimal nutrition for general health in 8 words.
EDIT: Being guilty of not reading the article before posting, I just noticed my message ties nicely with the content. If you want to look good inside and out, eat food your grand-grandparents would recognise in amounts that wouldn't shock them.
In this case, I'm not interested in (further) gradual accumulation of knowledge; I want authoritative fundamentals of nutrition, probably starting with how the body processes food. In my experience, in many cases the latter more efficient (less time, much more knowledge, much more accurate) if I have time to do it. For something as central as nutrition, I will prioritize it.
This is still a subject of ongoing debate, and little has stood the test of time. Take for example work by anthropologists such as Herman Pontzer that find that hunter gatherers do far more physical activity than Americans yet burn the same number of calories each day.
You're overcomplicating this. The fundamentals of nutrition are simple, and are as follows in decreasing priority order:
1. Calories: too few and you die, too many and you gain weight, get sick and die early.
2. Macronutrients: too few and you will get sick and possibly die, too much doesn't matter so much as long as calories are under control.
3. Micronutrients: too few and you will live, you just might be a bit sickly (brittle bones, scurvy, anemia, etc). Too much of some micronutrients can be toxic, but most you'll just excrete in various ways.
That's it for the basics. There are some recommendations around fiber and other things to lower your risk of various age-related diseases, but if you just keep your calories in the right range and ensure you get the necessary macronutrients and micronutrients, then you know everything you'll likely ever need to know, barring any medical conditions that require specific diets.
OT: It's interesting to me why people trust things on the Internet, when everyone knows the Internet is drowning in BS. We know, yet we keep ingesting it.
If you think about what goes into a high school textbook, including the expert reviews before one is recommended (IIRC, Richard Feynman served on a review panel for school textbooks), AFAIK there's no comparison.
I feel like I live in a bizarro-world sometimes. I seem to be the only one who cares.
You asked about quickly getting up to speed in the basics. To me that means a level of understand where you just recognise the extent of your ignorance but have a decent enough mental model and vernacular to know how to ask the right questions.
The model is going to be simplistic anyway, but as long as its recognised as such theres just so much damage particular misinformation can do.
Compared to a group of enthusiasts who actually believe their simplistic model to be more or less complete enough. There is no shortage of such models when it comes to nutrition.
To be clear, I wasn't criticizing your suggestion; I appreciate it. I was just going off on a tangent. Back on that tangent:
> have a decent enough mental model and vernacular to know how to ask the right questions
I think people greatly overestimate themselves. A lack of expertise can result in very confused mental models and the wrong questions. IME in domains in which I have expertise, places like Reddit are filled with people with the wrong models, asking the wrong questions, and others answering based on the same wrong models. In their echo chamber, it looks right. Not different, I suspect, from any non-scientific theories, such as those before modern science.
My understanding of nutrition isn't much different than many in this thread (though others clearly know more than I do); I just evaluate our understanding as much less accurate than many others do.
With asking questions I meant simple things like just notice that particular statements are a bit too simple.
I have consumed my fair share if theory from an array of sources hung up on their particular take. My take away so far is that we understand pretty little. Any particular prescription is more or less just extrapolated from rather naive statistical correlations. The current understanding is good enough to reproduce those correlation when treating particular deficiencies or diagnosing certain metabolic dysfunctions but besides that they mostly say “healthy people tend to eat such and such”
I mean desperate measures like bariatric surgery a thing. One of the most effective treatments against obesity to be sure, but not really indicative of field with shit together.
The effects of different foods will be different based on the individual. Observing how you feel during and after eating various things will tell you more about that thing than anyone else can.
If I recall correctly, carbohydrates alone can explain about 1/3 of the variability in postprandial glucose responses [1]. That's a lot, but not the whole story.
Variability between individuals and also for the same meals at different times of the day or under different conditions is high.
But overall, most of the recent nutritional research shows that grandma/mom was probably right in banning "junk food" and serving "natural" foods. We've invented highly processed foods before having fully adjusted to doing agriculture.
At least my better meals (w.r.t the post-meal glucose response) were fairly self-composed whereas frozen pizza & co gave me the worst spikes.
In my experience (I have type 1 diabetes and wear a glucose monitor) carbohydrates are responsible for pretty much all blood glucose increase. Some people report fat and protein eventually being converted to glucose, hours later, but this doesn’t seem to happen to me. Carbs start a rapid increase in blood glucose about 15 minutes after consumption. The only real variability for me is that my liver also puts out a bunch of glucose in the morning.
People don't have long-term willpower. If someone sticks to a diet and exercise routine which makes losing weight easy-ish and natural, there's a good chance they'll lose weight; if their routine makes them constantly hungry, tired, and stressed, there's a good chance they'll gain weight. Ignoring the effects on metabolism, unprocessed food generally causes the former, insulin spikes cause the latter.
Even if "CICO" is absolute and 500 calories of broccoli = 500 calories of chocolate, that's not really important. Because 500 calories of broccoli is an insane amount that you probably can't eat even if you tried, while 500 calories of chocolate you can eat and still be hungry afterwards.
But there's one caveat: a lot of people find that occasional "cheat meals" make sticking to a diet the other 90% of the time easier. Even some pro athletes and bodybuilders have cheat meals. I really doubt smaller amounts of processed food cause the metabolic changes the article describes or any significant changes, so while the quality of food matters, that doesn't mean people need to avoid junk food entirely.
To me the focus on insulin for processed foods may be very incomplete.
While refined carbs are bad, the problem is probably more related to the entire gastrointestinal pipeline and immune system.
Processed foods are not just high in refined carbs, but also low in fiber, involve emulsifiers, stabilizers, preservatives, pasturization, and more.
Fiber is needed for healthy intestines, and may be essential for limiting overall systemic inflammation.
High temperatures denature molecules, create a large number of carcinogens: polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, advanced glycation end products, etc.
Preservatives like sodium benzoate combine with molecules like citric acid to form benzene and is a problem for many soft drinks.
Emulsifiers, i.e. many stuff labelled as "gums", may literally be gumming up your works, making it difficult for your intestines to do their job, causing heartburn, inflammation, etc.
I'm not opposed to highly processed things because they are processed with advanced technology. But profit-seeking companies selling things to ignorant shortsighted consumers will maximize for shelf life, taste, and appearance over health almost every time.
And it is our fault because deep down we know this.
You also have all the major corps realizing carbs are a problem and are now offering carb-free options on their menus. Lettuce wrapped things, etc. Keto hit the 10% market measurement awhile ago and now everyone is reacting. It is hilarious to see 'keto corn chips' and you look at ingredients and it's 99% carbs. It's just a thing now.
>That Energy Balance Model (EBM) seems to make intuitive sense: we gain weight because we consume more calories than we burn. However, as the authors note in the abstract, “Conceptualizing obesity as a disorder of energy balance restates a principle of physics without considering the biological mechanisms that promote weight gain.”
>Instead, in the Carbohydrate Insulin Model (CIM), they offer as an alternative, the types of food we eat—particularly excessive carbohydrates (including added sugars and refined grains)—change our hormonal balance in a way that makes our body store more fat, and that makes us obese.
this seems trivial to prove that theory. get a number of test subjects, calculate their BMR via direct calorimetry, restrict their physical activity and feed half of them a diet of supermarket garbage, and the other half a nice and balanced diet, then publish the results.
have any of the researches who seek to debunk the laws of thermodynamics attempted to do that?
Anecdotally I’ve done the same. I lost 20 lbs or so eating fast food regularly. I’m able to get to around 12-14% BF like this pretty easy. It might be harder to go leaner.
Yes, energy balance is absolutely, unequivocally true. That said, focusing on energy balance may not be the best therapeutic approach to obesity, which is what the OP was quoting.
If the advice is to eat lower on the food chain - more simple whole foods - instead of highly processed foods and sugary snacks, it seems like good advice. At least it has been in everyone I know who does so. On the other hand if it is an indictment of simple carbohydrates like potatoes, I'd say it's too simplistic. One guy ate nothing but potatoes for two months; his health improved and he lost weight[1]. If it's just simple carbohydrates are bad that shouldn't have happened.
'The paper does not say what the article claims. The paper is about proposing a credible alternative model of weight gain and is a call for further research. This article, like most science journalism, is fake news and we need to stop sharing “stories” like this'
People hate on the calorie these days because it's oversimplified and doesn't account for other important nutrition factors. But it's a single value and people can use it very easily. If we had an index or weighted calorie that had some scientific rationale, that could be really interesting to publish as nutrition facts on food labels.
The elephant in the room is that, despite the alleged environmental cost and marginal increase in cancer risk, meat (including red meat) is probably one of the most convenient healthy foods that one could consume. Minimal "processing", low glycemic index, high nutrient density, complete proteins - almost as if humans evolved to eat it!
I’ve actually never heard of the Nutrisense CGM. I have type 1 diabetes and use a Dexcom, which is way more expensive than that. As far as I know, all others (Libre 2, Medtronic, Dexcom) require a prescription in the EU and US.
For what purpose? Use what diabetes use if its that important, or just avoid sugar and carbs, its cheaper and healthier than overgathering data for unhealthy habits.
This article isn't credible. I eat less calories than I consume and I ate a ton of sugary food like ice cream and dried sugary fruit, but didn't gain weight since CICO matters more than any other model.
I don't buy that it is as simple as the writeup implies. (I didn't read actual research it is based on however.)
Is energy balance true? Yes. But as the paper implies, we don't have direct control of that. I suspect it is _what_ you eat.
Does insulin response matter? Yes, I assume so. But that is not the only factor.
If you are not getting proper nutrition, your body will ask for more food. Naturally we know what we need. We get a taste for broccoli if we need nutrients in broccoli. But if people have somehow short circuited their food sense and don't realize they need broccoli and instead they eat more hamburgers or fruit loops or whole grain bread, they won't get the nutrition they need, and they will probably still want more food.
So insulin response, nutrition, and I am sure there are other things too.
I don't know about your first sentence. It seems more likely animals and humans would evolve to eat what they needed. That certainly seems like it would be evolutionarily preferred. But I do agree junk (which didn't exist through most of evolution) is easier to eat and that is part of our problem.
Can we stop using the term "processed foods"? It's a term so broad as to lose all meaning.
Processed foods include anything cooked using any method and processes such as pasteurization and fermentation.
Other than fruits and an occasional salad, everything I eat is "processed" (cooked). When I see a headline like this, it literally tells me nothing. (Seriously it groups yogurt the same as root beer)
Even what people tend to think of when they think of processed foods, such as ready-to-eat foods, tend to be high in preservatives such as salt, sugar, vitamins, and other food-grade additives--but all of
these have different nutritional effects.
Usually, articles about "processed food" really mean "ultra-processed". And the general idea is that ultra-processed food is that you extract food chemicals from what is usually the cheapest sources, and transform and recombine them into a final product. By contrast regular processed food normally starts with whole ingredients rather than extracts, often of better quality because you can't make up for lower quality using extra processing and additives.
It's a legitimate point to raise, as page 3 of that report points out:
> Food processing in itself is not the issue. One obvious reason is that nowadays, practically all food is processed in some sense and in some way. The term ‘processing’ (like the term ‘industry’) is very general and therefore not helpful, and so judgements of foods simply because they are ‘processed’ are not meaningful.
"Minimally processed foods are natural foods altered by methods that include removal of
inedible or unwanted parts, and also processes that include drying, crushing, grinding,
powdering, fractioning, filtering, roasting, boiling, non-alcoholic fermentation, pasteurization,
chilling, freezing, placing in containers, and vacuum packaging. The distinction between
unprocessed and minimally processed foods is not especially significant. "
Interesting actually to see fractionation on that list... At least with distillation and like process it feels it should be solidly in processed food category.
> normally starts with whole ingredients rather than extracts
But the extracts come from whole ingredients, so if you think about where the extracts came from then the whole process is again using whole ingredients.
I also have an issue with organic and natural* as well, but that's not exactly on topic.
If prefer people to use words that mean things. The article wasn't even about processed foods so much as how there is a nutritional model that shows high carbohydrate/low glycemic index foods are particularly fattening relative to their calorie content. The article could easily (and more accurately) be titled "New research highlights the damage from high carb/high sugar foods".
*I mean seriously, vitamin water is "natural"? That stuff is water and sugar alcohol, with a tiny bit of stevia added so it can appear on the ingredients list for people who look for that particular keyword. Those sugar alcohols do occur naturally, I guess, but not usually in foods, and never in such quantities (and never from high fructose corn syrup).
The idea is that the processing can alter the structure of the food lightly (grilling a steak), moderately (frying a burger), or deeply (making a sausage, with all the extractions, admixing, etc). Deep processing is often used to make less edible things more edible, less palatable things more crave-inducing, and less nutritionally good things more palatable.
Well "processed foods" ALSO contain chemicals that are never found in home-cooked food or traditional menus. Many of those chemicals are problematic.
But also "natural" ingredients are often bad as well as certain ratios (e.g. high sugar and fat together, all seed oils, etc.).
For example ALL seed oils are problematic; the only "fats" that is fairly safe are: butter, ghee, and coconut oil. The rest become dangerous with heat (especially unsaturated oils). So ANY food made with cotton seed, flax or similar oils are part of the problem.
Processed foods means "industrial made using ingredients optimized for profit". Using seed oils is cheap. Using preservatives to extend shelf-life so that 1-3 month warehousing and shipping is possible. Therefore these are used.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_ratio_in_food - it looks like canola is less bad than most other seed oils but still not ideal. I've been using avocado oil but looking at this chart I am thinking I will incorporate more butter and coconut oil.
Not OP, but neither of those tell me any properties of the actual food. If two "factory processed" foods have something in common that's important, it's basically a coincidence. Tell me what factory processes are bad, or something.
Is there something about being made in a factory that makes things unhealthy? Are all things that are made in a factory unhealthy (factory farming, factory packaged salads, etc).
Anyway, the article was not about any of that. It was about a nutritional model describing how excess carbohydrates and low glycemic index foods would be more likely to result in obesity.
None of that has anything to do with whether the food was processed, made in a factory, or packaged for convenience. Yet all are reasonable conclusions from the title. The only information in the title is effectively that "there may be a good that is bad for you".
Why are we still talking about the CIM? It failed practically every test we threw at it. Sure low carb diets can make you lose weight, but that's because you eat less, not because of insuline.
Well, perhaps carb-related metabolism changes and insulin is a valid mechanism that makes people eat more or less, if that's the case, I'd count it as a success as that offers practical ways to get results.
It's like if a patient came to their doctor complaining of water retention, and the doctor said "well clearly you're drinking more than you're excreting" and sent the patient home with instructions to drink less and pee more.
My hunch with the CIM is that a human in good health can pretty effortlessly maintain a non-obese weight without much regard for things like macronutrient balance, but that some fairly widespread factor has disrupted that regulation mechanism in a large fraction of the population.
That in a sense a keto/low-carb diet is a workaround for a mechanism that's broken in a lot of people, rather than some platonic ideal of how everyone should be eating.
As to what broke it, there are some interesting hypotheses here [https://slimemoldtimemold.com] but no clear answers.
I do personally feel a bit better eating a lower glycemic diet (from the standpoint of consistent energy levels), but I haven't achieved any weight loss that way (BMI hovers just under 25).