In July of 2023, I was about 254lbs. I'm a pretty tall dude (about 6'5"), so it's not quite "obese", but it's pretty heavy, and it was only growing.
Amusingly, by accident, I started losing weight a month later, because I bought a kegerator, and I had up to 10 gallons at a time of Diet Coke in the kegs. Suddenly, I almost completely lost my urge to go to Taco Bell for every meal.
I guess it turns out that I wasn't addicted to fast food, I was addicted to "unlimited soda", and Taco Bell is the closest place to my house that had free soda refills. When I made it so that I could get as much cold soda as I wanted directly in my house, I completely lost the urge to go to Taco Bell, and I would eat comparatively-healthier stuff in my house. Within about a month, I had lost about 10lbs, and completely lost my cravings for real sugar.
After that I started more aggressively counting calories and ended up getting to about 191lbs, which is more or less in the "normal" range for someone my height.
I guess I thought that caffeine addiction didn't affect me, somehow, but I'm pretty convinced I was wrong about that. The kegerator more or less worked like a nicotine patch, but nowadays I've transitioned to the caffeine-free versions of soda now.
ETA: Just looked it up, it actually was just barely on the "obese" side.
Soda really is something—I drank plenty as a kid, but I kind of soured on it after an interactive exercise in a college class, where we each guessed the amount of sugar in a can of soda, scooped the sugar into a glass, and then were shown the actual amount. In seeing that, I realized I would simply never put that much sugar in anything on my own, if I were sweetening a drink rather than buying something pre-sweetened.
I've always done the diet sodas (Coke or Pepsi, whatever's cheaper), but I'm sure there's a lot of extra sugar in all the crap I was getting at Taco Bell.
I also had a habit of doing a small splash of sugary soda, with with the remaining ~95% as diet, which in a vacuum is probably medically insignificant but I think it was enough to keep sugar cravings going.
Thanks for sharing. Diet soft drinks get a bad rap but are imo an incredibly useful tool for health. I can probably count on my fingers how many standard soda drinks I had in 2024, compared to 1 or 2 diet soda drinks per day on average. I get the enjoyment of something sweet, fizzy and with a kick, but without the calories. And they're often just as tasty; in fact, I'm not sure I can even taste the difference today between Dr Pepper standard and Dr Pepper Zero.
I grew up with it, so I actually prefer Diet Coke over regular Coke at this point. I don't remember the last time I just had a can of regular sugary soda...it's been awhile.
That said, I will acknowledge that the relatively-consequence-free nature of Diet Coke makes it a lot more addictive to me. It's much easier for me to drink Diet Coke every day, and lots of it, because I know that the likelihood of me actually facing a short-term consequence from it is relatively small.
At least now, I've transitioned away from the caffeine, so the only thing I really need to worry about is the sweeteners, which seem to be "mostly harmless" from the research I've done, so maybe I don't need to go any further.
> Diet soft drinks get a bad rap but are imo an incredibly useful tool for health.
If you have diet sodas on one hand and obesity on the other, they're definitely the lesser evil. But that's also a pretty low bar, since obesity is THE co-morbidity factor for just about everything.
As far as I can tell, they're by far a lesser evil. There seems to be two health arguments against diet soda: that they can erode teeth and that they can degrade insulin function. The first of these is just as true for - say - eating an orange, and can be combatted by drinking or rinsing with water afterwards. The second is still a subject of research.
Short of a kegeraror, one can develop a taste for tea or black coffee. As long as you don't put anything in it, it's basically zero calorie and trivial to prepare.
I tried, but I absolutely despise coffee. I think I'm really sensitive to the bitter compounds, I think it's vile even when I put a lot of sweetener in it, to a point where a small irrational part of me is kind of convinced that everyone who says they like it playing some kind of elaborate and expensive joke on me. Tea isn't as bad but I still dislike it.
That said, if you can develop a taste for coffee or tea, that's definitely the cheaper option.
I have; I think I've tried everything. I've tried instant coffee black, I've tried it with creamer, with sugar, with artificial sweetener. I've tried it at chain restaurants like McDonalds, I've tried yuppier places like Starbucks and a bunch of their concoctions, I've tried hipster independent places and different blends from them.
I've tried cold brew, coffee slushies, different quantities of frapp'd up milk, different coarseness of the grind, different types of beans, different roast levels, etc. and the only time it's tolerable is when there's so much milk and sugar in there that it's debatable to even call it "coffee" anymore. I can't even stand coffee ice cream.
You might be a supertaster and have extra and more sensitive tastebuds. The extra sensitivity means they tend to prefer sweeter (and/or salty) foods and stay away from bitter food/drinks to greater extent.
I used to be this way. I ended up liking coffee through a pretty ridiculous way - microwaving half of a Starbucks cold brew that I dumped a bunch of milk into.
Now I can drink whatever coffee with nothing in it, though I wouldn't say it tastes "good". It just scratches that itch. I think it's more of a minor compulsion than a preference.
That's obese! I'm always amazed how may fat people are walking around who think they're athletic, buff, and fit.
I'm 5'10" 155# at age 61. I count every calorie. It's the only way today with so much convienient, calorie laden, "addictive" food. The body-positivity folks would tell you that it's a mental illness and obsessive to track every calorie, but if I didn't, I'd gain wait. The calories-in/out formula for weight gain and loss is simple, a law of physics, and works for everyone.
Very interesting what you write about caffeine. I've never been a coffee drinker, having never "developed the taste" for it, but I drink a lot of sugar-free soft drinks (Pepsi Zero is my preference).
I'm fairly sure it acts as my source of caffeine, because on days that I don't drink it in the morning, I get headaches. (It took me a while to connect this, I happened to be reading that headaches are a common symptom of caffeine withdrawal.)
Depends on your build. I'm 6'5" but my 'normal' weight when I was 19 with zero fat was 225 lbs. 30 years later at 250lbs, I'm continually annoyed that my BMI shows me as obese.
As a guy your height 225lbs is not “zero fat” unless you are absolutely stacked with muscle. Likely on steroids unless you are a bodybuilder and eat and train like one.
Though he was shorter, natural bodybuilder Sean Connery was 6’3” and 190lbs at the start of his bond run. That’s a useful data point. Not only is he close to an ideal male physique for non bodybuilders, he was also very fit. Ad an inch and a half to him and 35lbs and that’s not “zero fat”.
Similarly I was once depressed and 260lbs. I was definitely obese.
Things are distorted in the US. We consider fat to be morbidly obese and dismiss fatness as normal now. Look at Trump. That’s normal obesity. Loot at Musk. That’s overweight.
I definitely had some muscle for sure, on a fairly large frame. But I could see my ribs and had no belly (then). My point is BMI does not seem valid for tall people, unless perhaps there's something I'm missing.
I think a big part of the problem is that even prepared foods are packed with garbage. There are a lot of Americans who can't/don't cook mainly for time reasons, and instead eat lots of prepared foods, whether that be from restaurants, shops, or grocery stores.
If you are not cooking it from scratch yourself, it is almost guaranteed to be brimming with fat, salt, and sugar. This is true regardless of the source. Whether it be a frozen meal from the grocery store, a sandwich from the local deli, a dish from the bistro, or a quick bite from the coffee shop.
All of it is maximized fat, salt, sugar.
Seriously, I live in a major metro are and if you put a gun to my head and said "You have 20 minutes to pick-up an unmodified meal that is filling, mildly flavored, and healthy", I'd have to eat the bullet.
(And this doesn't even get into all the processed food ingredients)
It's mostly the sugar that's the killer. Fat isn't necessarily a problem, depending on the specific type. Part of what made the "standard American diet" so deadly is when packaged food manufacturers replaced fat with extra sugar based on junk science that appeared to show a correlation between fat consumption and heart disease.
And even extra salt isn't necessarily a problem for most people with typical genetics, either. The issue with hypertension is more to do with osmolality than absolute quantity. A lot of people have taken the "low sodium" fad a little too far.
Do you live near a Chipotle? Burrito bowl with brown rice, black beans, and chicken for $8.50.
I really don’t understand this “I don’t have a choice all fast food is bad” some are pretty healthy even if they are less tasty. I think the real discussion is how addictive the trash foods are.
> I really don’t understand this “I don’t have a choice all fast food is bad” some are pretty healthy
I agree with you, but when you factor in cost, availability, familiarity, and other psychological factors, you end up with people instinctively choosing really unhealthy options.
There's an acculturation issue IMO. I grew up white trash, while my wife grew up wealthy in an Asian household. I cook lots of healthy food, and even wrote a nutrition app before they really existed and hosted it locally, tracked my food, have spent months where I cooked everything I ate from scratch so I knew there was no added salt (I've had hypertension since I was 16yo, even though I was an elite high school athlete with a six pack and everything).
Despite all this, when under time pressure, I will instinctively prep unhealthy food because that's what I was raised with. It's completely mindless. One less thing to stress about, pure muscle memory taking over.
EDIT: My wife, OTOH, will throw stuff together that is so insanely health and based on random vegetables lying around, because that's what she grew up learning to cook.
It's not even conscious. I don't want to prep that food. It just happens because the stress of devoting even one brain cell to planning something that I didn't spend nearly two decades surrounded by just adds to the stress, even after all the deprogramming I've done the two decades since.
Thank you. That is what I was saying. It's a habit that all the knowledge in the world I've amassed still doesn't help me completely overcome. It's something I have to be conscious of my entire life.
You should see the meals I cook: loads of healthy bean-based vegan dishes, salads, etc. But then it's 10pm, I'm thirsty, but my body struggles to tell the difference between thirst and hunger, and I drift over to eat some spicy chips instead of chugging water like I should be. And then I realize what I"m doing.
In grad school, it was really easy to avoid this: every meal, exactly the same thing. Nothing in the pantry except things necessary to make those meals.
Sometimes people treat the problem as just a simple “decide and act” type of discipline, but in reality it has psychological, environmental, and social components that often act under the surface to influence our behavior. Unconsciously gravitating towards unhealthy “comfort” foods is a good example.
This comment resonates a lot with me, so thanks for writing it. In order for me to lose weight, I had to completely upend my view of food instilled during childhood which meant no longer eating three meals a day "because that's how it is" and focusing on a few areas like drinks since those are easy to go overboard with.
Constant vigilance. IN grad school it was easy bc I only kept things in the pantry necessary to make the same meals every day: oatmeal with fruits, chicken breast and various vegetables, a variable bean and rice dish like Cuban black beans or rajma masala.
But now I'm married and have kids and it's a ridiculous way to expect to have a family, eat the same meals every day for years.
That's kinda why I added in "unmodified", because you can often put in enough subtractive mods to make something meet the requirements.
The issue here though is that no place ever subtracts cost as you cut ingredients. Add extra bacon? +$1.75. Subtract bacon? -$0.00. Chipotle prices in you getting a bunch of extras off the bat.
So you end up getting bent over for trying to be health conscious. All the junk is already priced into the cost, so you become the sucker for leaving it out.
I personally cannot eat dairy, so every sandwich I get I still pay for the cheese, and every coffee I get I still have to pay for the oat milk (despite not getting any sugar or pumps or whatever). I could rant a lot about this, as my girlfriend knows well, hah
Brown rice isn't that good for you. Although if you remove that (or at least tell them to do 'light' rice) and add the lettuce, one of the salsas and the fajita veggies instead it starts getting pretty healthy (at least as far as I know).
Based on what, exactly? Japan has one of the highest average lifespans, and the healthiest demographic in this already top-of-the-lifespan-pack nation consume significant amount of white rice, let alone brown.
Many foods can become toxic in excessive quantities. That's why it's best to eat a wide variety of different foods and not get too many calories from any one food. Everything in moderation.
For my friends reading this from Europe, you probably can keep on eating brown rice. In American it’s from pesticide and in Asia from mines erosion to water to rice. Americans might be good with organic one. IMHO the price difference worth the nutritious benefit.
You also can wash your rice to remove 90% of arsenic, basically putting it to wheat and other grains levels.
When asked why restaurant food tasted so good, Anthony Bourdain chuckled and quipped that "everything you are served begins and finishes with a stick of butter".
People would gasp if they prepared that food for themselves.
When I finish a steak with 2 tbsp of butter it tastes luxurious, and any respectable steakhouse is finishing a steak with a stick of butter and garnishes it with an ice cream scoop of butter.
Years ago we were in Bologna. The ragu was splendid, but I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling absolutely parched. If it wasn't a lot of salt, I don't know what it would have been.
this is a good tip at home. At home you can have better results with less seasonings. Sugar, vinegar, salt, a glutamic should be considered the foundation for every dish
I am not all that bothered by the stick of butter as the meal is actually satiating and the calories consumed will remain within the calories I need to be consuming. Besides, most of it gets drained off anyway. The 1,000 calorie fast food meals that leave you still hungry afterward are troubling, though.
In most dishes like a pasta or curry, it’s not drained off. We’re not talking about a stick of butter, it’s butter, sugar, fat, carbs all in quantities that would make someone shudder if they were preparing food at home.
Cava is pretty good in NYC and I’ve largely replaced Chipotle with them if I’m craving “bowl of food not made at home”. Would encourage you to try it out.
Excuse my ignorance,but what is wrong with Chipotle?
Is it the high sodium.
I eat the thing twice a week and do so because I get a high amount of fiber and calories needed for my diet...the only issue it the sodium content.
I tried Cava once and it was expensive for what it was and did not taste as good.
Yes, I have had Cava (and similarly Eons), but unfortunately they are kind of playing the same game[1]. They are also pretty expensive, which as I ranted about in my other comment on Chipotle, they don't give you a discount for getting a lighter meal. You pay for all the sides then tell them to keep them.
That being said, I still would prefer Cava over other fast casual places for sure.
A useful analogy is the Coca plant. Chewing its leaves will give a mild stimulant and is relatively benign. But if you extract and concentrate the active ingratiate it becomes highly addictive. This is pretty much what we have done with our food.
However, don't we grow tolerant to pleasures? For instance, the first time you have a salty chip, its great. The 100th time you had one, its not great.
Also, curious if you are limiting it to processed foods, or are making claims that potatoes are more addictive than before.
The first, obvious, but it has manufacturing and inventory costs. The latter is happening on such a tiny scale, its not noteworthy.
For some, the tolerance doesn't cause them disinterest but rather a drive to go further. Can they get an even _saltier_ chip? Or rather more flavorful with increasingly exotic condiments. Or one bowl no longer does it, maybe 2 will do.
You can see this in American supermarkets on the snack aisles. You see variants of the same products from plain/traditional, to novelty flavor, to 5x extra novelty flavor. It isn't just marketing or just the normal distribution of individual preferences. I think it is a hedonistic ratchet. You see it in the level of nuances specialists take to any field or hobby the deeper on delves. The craft beer connoisseurs to who keep wanting more hops in their IPAs are a good example too.
It’s just sugar, fat, and salt but at scale. No need for more.
Get it when you want and as much as you want. Doctors will say you can be healthy at size and advertisers will tell you to be body positive. Then when you’re over served and obese you can get weight loss injections and start all over. It’s the American way. An endless orgy of consumerism. Binge and purge like a hedonist Roman could never even imagine.
I think this is an accurate point. I would also add preservatives. Companies have an incentive to increase shelf-life, so they pump these products full of them, despite their effects on health.
Preservatives achieve their intended function by broadly destroying and preventing the growth of microbes, which are an integral part of our digestive system. So I would flip the question: what evidence is there that preservatives don't damage a healthy human microbiome?
Just an observation as an American living in Copenhagen, Denmark: The typical diet for my coworkers involves the following attributes compared to the US:
1. Hot/big breakfast is rare. A roll with some butter and cheese + Espresso instead.
2. We have a "canteen" cafeteria and it is all fresh made foods, lots of fish options and of course Rugbrød (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugbr%C3%B8d) a super dense "bread" although IMO it isn't really bread as we understand it.
3. Most folks will pile a ton of food on their plate and lunch is served at 11:30.
4. Very little soda. A six pack of soda will last a week or more in an office of 25 people.
5. Almost no snacks. Our office will maybe have one small bag of nuts available and it can last two weeks before refilling.
6. Very little fast food options. There are a handful of fast food options in town, but they are very much an exception and probably serve more tourists than locals.
7. Dining out is expensive relative to income levels, so it is far less frequent.
8. Yes, portion sizes, again, particularly for drinks. A typical soda pour would be maybe 8-10 ounces in a restaurant.
Danes do drink a lot of beer though and they start early. There's no "drinking age" and teens can buy beer/wine at 16 and booze at 18.
So drinking age is 16/18, same as in Switzerland. Speaking of which, from what I've seen but also in stats, youth seem to drink less than back in my days. But that's tangent.
In the US, there aren't many options for whole, prepared foods (meaning someone prepared the food from whole ingredients, fresh) for various reasons. One that is common, for example, is a rotisserie chicken.
If you go to Asia -- Japan, Taiwan for example -- you'll find cheap, fresh, prepared whole foods everywhere to the extent that many households have very small refrigerators and many families have access to prepared whole foods even without having to expend the time cost of cooking at home.
For a dual-income household, this is a big win.
There's various reasons for this: lower labor costs, smaller land mass/higher density, better access to local/fresh ingredients, more favorable climate and longer growing seasons, etc.
Pretty much every neighborhood created between 1940 and 1990 has no sidewalks, and even after that the zoning is such that the only place you can walk is to other residences.
I don't think it's carbs as such necessarily, but the glycemic index of the foods and their addictive qualities - i.e. how easy it is to way overdo the glucose spiking.
Yes, if you cut the carbs the problem is solved, but there are different kinds of carbs and some kinds in moderation can be eaten regularly without causing big glucose spikes and metabolic disease.
Personally I go for low carb to make it easier, but I still eat limited fruit and starchy vegetables and rice and beans. (Some kinds of fruit do spike glucose and I need to be careful with.)
There's truth here, and, as I understand it, carbs with high glycemic index do have the effect of blood glucose and then insulin spikes which cause metabolic disease and lead to diabetes which is the primary thing that's deadly here.
I don't think it's just the carbs, but they likely don't help in today's society. We became too efficient at packing carbs in our diet and at the same time too sedentary.
Beyond macro-nutrients, what I think the true reason food in the US is bad is because of the other stuff. Many things banned in Europe (which is special because they use science for improving quality of life before profits) are not banned in the US, even though it's an advanced enough nation to be able to deal with the ban and look for better options.
The problem in the US is that profits are of utmost importance. Anything that lowers your costs is good for business as long as it's hard to point at it (does colourant X cause cancer? maybe we need more studies, or just didn't know, we'll try better next time).
Japan, Vietnam, France, Italy, etc. would beg to differ. But they also don’t spray their wheat with roundup so it’s probably better to stay away from carbs in the US just on that basis.
I'm not sure why people think fiber is great. Yes it pushes things through. Yes there are bacteria that eat it. So does other food.
But it also makes you go poop more often, which is bad for your body.
I mostly eat meats and relatively low fiber food. I don't track it closely, so occasionally I'll eat corn and it passes through.
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My point:
"Why fiber?" Actually prove that the generic intake of 'fiber' is good. There are so many different types of fiber, the macro size of the fiber matters(ground pinto beans has a different gastro effect than whole), the actual molecules its made of, etc..
Fiber is good for me because it acts as a stool softener.
In my 40's, I had several bouts of diverticulitis. Hard stool may have been a contributing factor in developing the underlying issue, diverticulosis. I suspect more fiber would have made this less likely.
Later, due to the recurring diverticulitis, I had elective surgery to remove the problematic section of my colon. The surgeon cautioned me to ensure my stool stays soft, so that the place where he stitched my remaining colon back together are at lower risk of opening up. This is a long-term concern, so I'll be careful about it for the rest of my life.
Also, IIUC, straining to pass hard stool increases the risk of swollen hemorrhoids, which nobody enjoys.
Fiber keeps you feeling satiated for longer. Also, it’s bulking effect reduces your caloric intake while consuming the meal since the feeling of fullness can be reached with fewer calories.
Fiber fills you up now by taking up physical volume. Try eating the equivalent of 200 calories of broc vs 200 calories of bread or pasta. The problem is that your body can't digest fiber so the digestive system moves it along quickly!
Fat and protein extends the feeling of satiation by turning off the hormonal signals for hunger.
If you eat an apple, try it with two tablespoons of peanut butter (the kind with only peanuts and salt). If you eat a serving of carrots, add two whole hard boiled eggs.
That is adding so many calories though? Adding the 2 tablespoons of peanut butter is another 200 calories.
An example, im targeting 2200-2400 calories. with 3 600 calorie meals (which tbh is pretty hard to do 7 or 800 is more likely) , there isn't that much buffer to add stuff like thhat.
Is it? An apple is only ~100 calories. 300 calories. You could make it a full meal by adding 500 calories of chicken or beans/lentils + rice to get to your 800 target and that's a very solid meal. A whole can of tuna in water is only ~200-250 calories and another option to add more protein.
No, not over a certain level (low/no fibre would be it's own type of bad).
Carbs give a type of satiety I can't replicate with unlimited fat/protein/fibre. IMHO it's not actually hunger/stomach related but relief from withdrawal symptoms. Carbs are CNS stimulants that trigger serotonin release and very addictive to me at least.
After fasting or eating keto for a sufficient duration this carb specific form of absence/satiety no longer exists. Hunger/appetite stops feeling like a gnawing craving desire, instead it feels like a more neutral empty/weak signal.
Anyway, if eating carbs, best bang for buck satiety is the potato.
The first 2 links have no data available. I only could read the third.
Self reported. Oh boy. No control. haha.
So... is this not science? Its induction?
Since fiber correlates with healthy food, I believe that is what we are seeing. Where as eating sugar and oil has no fiber. However its not like we are having a meat eater compared directly.
I come from chemistry, not sociology. The replication crisis has been kind to me, and terrible for biology and beyond.
> 121 eligible trials with 21 942 patients were included and reported on 14 named diets and three control diets ... At 12 months the effects on weight reduction and improvements in cardiovascular risk factors largely disappear.
You cut out the part that said the diets improved people’s health at 6 mo. But they were hard to maintain for 12 months. I think a lack of consistency is the issue. From your link:
>What if they'd lasted 12 months, or two years, or a lifetime? The benefit would likely have been greater and more long-lasting. The trick is to pick a diet with foods you actually like so that it's not so hard to stick with it.
Meaningful behavioral change is hard, especially in a modern food environment.
I think metabolic adaptation plays a larger role. In this Biggest Loser followup study, even after six years (!), participants' resting metabolism burned 20% fewer calories than a "typical person of their current weight":
> In contrast, a matched group of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery patients who experienced significant metabolic adaptation 6 months after the surgery had no detectable metabolic adaptation after 1 year despite continued weight loss (17). It is intriguing to speculate that the lack of long-term metabolic adaptation following bariatric surgery may reflect a permanent resetting of the body weight set-point (18).
Simple, it's called a selection bias. The people able to long-term control what they eat aren't obese, so by running a study on obese people, you're essentially biasing the study towards subjects who have difficulty controlling what they eat. This means most of the subjects will struggle to stick to the diet long term.
I think these studies controlled the diets entirely? The notion is that they did not deviate from the diet, yet their body adjusted to return to the original weight. Presumably by slowing the metabolism and decreasing energy for activity. If activity was controlled as well that would be truly fascinating. There is quite a bit of room for optimisation apparently. Through hikers often have trouble maintaining weight after stopping because their metabolism becomes very efficient.
You might find this NYT piece on the winners of the Biggest Loser TV show interesting. Basically, "dieting" as a reduction in calories is a lose-lose game because your basal metabolic rate goes down so you have to keep eating less and less to keep it up.
Keeping up the basal metabolic rate is part of the rationale behind intermittent/extended fasting instead of pure calories-in-calories-out weightloss advice.
I fixed your question. If obesity is caused by poor [nutrition], why doesn't [weight loss programs] work long-term?
You answered your own question. Weight loss programs do not work long term because only healthy nutrition does. I have been downvoted here before, but I would argue that healthy nutrition is expensive. It is cheaper in terms of time and cost to consume quick meals full of carbs, sugars, chemical additives that wrecks our bodies. It not only takes money but also time to cook meals that are heart healthy, prevent diabetes, and provides healthy fats/proteins/carbs.
> Weight loss programs do not work long term because only healthy nutrition does
That's not entirely true, although it is a big factor. As an anecdotal example, there was a period of my life where nearly 100% of my diet was fast food: there was a McD's, BK, and Wendy's in my neighborhood. I did this part out of laziness, and part because Supersize Me annoyed me. In contrast to Supersize Me I dilligently tracked my caloric intake from those meals and intentionally limited things to be affect the changes I wanted to see in my weight.
Net result? I lost weight until I achieved my target, and then I was able to stay steady.
Would I recommend this plan? No. I was focusing purely on weight and I'm sure there were many other suboptimal knock on effects for my body. But people act like it is physically impossible to lose weight via pure caloric deficit and/or by consuming fast food. That's not true.
Yeah, there is definitely something we are missing. Some of the stuff about portion sizes and processed foods may actually be a symptom rather than a cause. I.E. those foods sell well because something else is wrong. GLP 1 inhibitors are expected to shrink the sales of snack foods and alcohol by at least 5% in the next couple years based on shifting preferences. So the idea that some chemical or pathogen we are exposed to has contributed to it isn't farfetched at all. Especially when we view the spread of obesity across the globe even to countries with very little discretionary income on average.
One thing I rarely see discussed is the possibility of contaminants like machine grease, spray lubricants, and dust getting into food. When the process for making food is automated, it seems much more likely to me that some of the moving parts in the process end up getting coated with small amounts of machine grease or lubricants. Maybe a moving machine part was sticking, so a technician used some spray lubricant on it, some of which found its way to the conveyor belt that was transporting the food to the next stage of the process. Maybe a metal part that is used in the process was coated in some kind of oil to protect it during storage. Someone may install it without cleaning it off with a solvent. Maybe something is being stored in an open-air vat, and work is being done nearby that generates dust. The more processed a food is, the more opportunities there are for contaminants to find their way into the food.
I think of these things because I worked in a kitchen that made dough, and our dough mixer always needed to be lubricated. I once found grease that had dripped from above into the mixing bowl. Luckily I am someone who takes such things seriously, but there are a lot of careless people out there. Even if you wipe off grease, an invisible trace amount will remain on the surface unless you clean it with a solvent. I also worked in a warehouse that stored machine parts used in food packaging equipment. There was drywall work being done at the time and the whole place was coated in gypsum dust. I remember handling "food grade" lubricant and looking up its safety data sheet (SDS) out of curiosity, and my takeaway from reading it was that it's still probably not something you would want to eat.
Imo, its mostly cultural which turns physiological. Every home cook I know has difficultly even putting on weight. The home cooks also enjoy the taste of vegetables and find the amount of sugar in store bought/fast food desserts nauseating. But I also know people who were fed pre-made food all their life and would literally throw up if fed broccoli. This problem needs to be addressed at home and from a young age, which is.. hard.
We don't have self-control. Nobody cooks. And if they do it's microwaved or frozen garbage.
We eat out too much. To the point where we overpay to have shoddy delivery services bring us fast food.
The portions are too big. 1,500 calorie burgers, 2,000 calorie appetizers (the thing you eat before you eat your meal), 1,600 calorie 'salads'. Let's not forget the copious amounts of soda. When's the last time you at a single slice of pizza?
Plus ubiquitous snacks like chips or cookies that are precisely engineered to get to eat as many as you can.
I agree, though the famous 7 word advice comes to mind.
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
In this sense, I think dietary advice has been relatively stable over the decades, though there is definitely arguments over how much is "too much" and what proportion is "mostly". Perhaps even what is covered by "plants".
I weigh myself every morning and have a chart of my weight going back 10 years. The chart plot looks like a roller coaster. Last March I hit 228, so started counting calories, limited myself to 1500/day, and hit 187 by August. Then I ate whatever I wanted and climbed back up to 232 at the end of 2024. So I'm counting calories again, feel comfortable at 1000/day of meat and potatoes, and have dropped 11 pounds the first 7 days of this year.
I'm a formerly obese person who has kept the weight off for 20 years. It is a mindset, though not in the way they claim.
It's not about shaming yourself or having tremendous restraint. Dieting is like "not thinking about elephants" in that you'll obsess over it if you try not to.
What has helped is understanding true hunger and the sensation nutrients have. Sugar can feel as strong as a narcotic in certain conditions. If you are eating 20g of sugar you should have a strong sensation. if you aren't, the calibration is off.
Junk food (including restaurant cuisine) plays a part in disrupting that calibration. It's like listening to a deafening rock concert every day and then trying to distinguish a whisper. But junk food isn't poisonous. I eat "junky" food daily like chocolate truffles, marshmallows, butter, ice cream, bacon fat, donuts, brownies, chocolate cake, McDonalds. The difference is that a mouthful has an immediate sensation.
Would you be able to catch a baseball by calculating the vectors? no, you just look at it and raise your hand.
Something that this genre of article fails to explain or even mention is the vast geographic differences between "the American diet" and other American diets. Health outcomes are quiet varied. Why are people in Minneapolis healthier? Are they immune to Wonder Bread and Gummi Bears? Why are people in Oakland fairly healthy despite the fried chicken wars?
Not at all the point, but I love that 3/4 through the article, the author meets with a nutritionist/molecular biologist with the last name Nestle, buys a chocolate cookie to eat in front of them "as a provocation", and Nestle says “Actually, I think it’s probably O.K.”
Yes, "Nestle" != "Nestlé", but reading that she defended the chocolate chip cookie seemed so on the nose.
Boredom snacking from starting a new job is killing me. I put 10 pounds on starting a new job, sit at the computer and snack on shit. Crept into "overweight" according to BMR. Hard exercise 3x a week, hard but milder exercise pretty regularly. Its too easy to snack my to 3k calories. I only maybe eat out/order in 3 meals a week.
It probably would if it means oils with less chemicals, but might not affect diabetes much which is as I understand it, caused by glucose/insulin spikes.
I did the math once and Americans ingest a lot of hexane just from seed oils every year on average.
Peanut oil is a seed oil though and it's refined the same way as others using hexane.
I don't know how much it's the fact of them being seed oils vs the toxic stuff added to them in the refining process.
I stand corrected. Then the question becomes are certain seed oils healthier than others? Soybean oil seems to be the default in most dressings, condiments now.
Maybe, but all of the ones commonly called "seed" oils do as far as I know use a similar refining process with toxic hexane and probably other toxic stuff if I were to guess.
There may also be a difference in the polyunsaturated fats being worse as humans haven't been eating them in quantity for as long historically and maybe aren't well adapted, but I don't know as much about that.
I only use olive oil or algal oil, and noticed a significant improvement after the switch.
I deliberately tried my best to isolate that variable, but obviously some other changes are downstream from that decision.
I don't think I could ever go back - I feel more clear headed, have begun losing the last stubborn 10-15 lbs which I have always found to be a challenge, and my skin has improved.
I have family connections into South Korea and this article makes me think of the changes in the Korean diet over the past few decades. When I was first started encountering Korean food over 20 years ago (both in the states and in Korea), everything was either sourced from fresh ingredients, or preserved using some kind of traditional method like pickling, fermenting, or curing. There were very few factory processed ingredients, maybe fish cake, and some condiments. There was a notable absence of sugars and sweetness, even in desserts. I ate more fruit in the first year with my wife than I probably had in the decade prior as it was constantly served as snacks and after meals. I never found Korean portion sizes appreciably smaller than American portions, but I struggled eating through a meal until I fully adapted to mixing banchan in between bites -- which introduced me to the palette cleanser. There were some problems in the diet, mostly lots of instant coffees, tons of alcohol, questionable "medicines", and everybody smoked. But people were generally fit or thin, walked a lot, were tall (a sign of good nutrition), and lived long lives.
In the years since then I was introduced to concepts like the "Bliss Point" [1] and "Taste Satiety" which explained both the taste of Doritos and the use of Kimchi to cleanse the palette so you could eat more.
Over time the Korean diet has changed and I've started to recognize that the food sciences are taking over for the traditional home-made meals and the flavors in Korean food are changing dramatically -- you can feel them targeting the bliss point in flavor. In some ways its getting harder to eat out because it's not hard to cook at home, and make it taste better, and we can keep ingredients fresh. You can still find small restaurants run by old people who make things the home cooked way, but all of the larger restaurants and chains have this new kind of sweetness in the food.
There's a well known TV chef [3] who even advises people on how to make their home cooking taste more like restaurants. The magic ingredient? Add sugar to basically everything. Gone is the delicate sweetness from carrots or pears, now even beef dishes blast you in the face like a candy bar. It used to be unusual to see an obese person at all in Korea (I was usually the largest person anywhere, and I'm not big by American standards). But now it's not at all unusual. Korea is where the mukbang originated [4].
The problem is really quite simple: Americans overeat
Processed foods are part of the problem (in that they are tastier and easier to consume than "rawer" foods), but increased wealth and ability to consume food is also a part of the problem
Restaurants in the U.S.A. belonging to large franchise chains have portion sizes that are astonishingly large in comparison to those I've typically seen in my world travels, and the ingredients tend to be heavily processed.
Even quick snacks found at U.S. gas stations (when I'm running late) consist chiefly of mass-produced, sugary, heavily processed desserts like Twinkies and HoHos, whereas options for fresh fruit and locally made goods with natural ingredients are often not to be found. I take a pass and look for an open supermarket instead. I doubt that it is a supply chain issue: in the north of Scandinavia and Canada, the outback of Australia, and especially through Asia it is almost always possible to get somewheat healthy quick snacks of a local variety at roadside petrol stations.
The cultural attitude about appropriate portions in America bothers me a lot. People blame restaurants but just anecdotally from my own life, Americans will refuse to eat at restaurants that serve “European size” portions. Restaurants in most of the US go out of business if they don’t serve a 3k calorie meal, American patrons won’t go there.
Europe isn't a monolith. Restaurant portions in the Balkans don't seem any smaller. Maybe even larger on average.
As a large man who exercises a lot I do refuse to patronize restaurants that serve tiny portions (unless I'm specifically intending to order multiple small plates for tapas or sushi or something). And you're exaggerating with the "3k calorie meal" thing. That rarely shows up on real restaurant menus. Most of them top out at around half that much for a regular entree and a customer would have to add beverages, appetizers, and dessert to reach 3k.
If processed foods are why Americans overeat (and they, and their abundance, price and marketing is why), then they are not part of the problem they are the problem.
On the flip side of portion size, the giant portions restaurants give out in the US means that my wife and I can split almost any meal we get when eating out.
The food industry is fundamentally flawed, root cause tracing back to ~100 years ago. In 1904, a chemist published misleading information that has had a lasting impact on our understanding of nutrition. These myths, which have been perpetuated for a century, have led to widespread misconceptions about healthy eating.
The sugar industry's manipulation of scientific research has further wrecked the industry, deflecting blame from refined sugar. Legacy of WW1's food rationing and the conscription of farmers has resulted in a food system unable to serve the population #s.
As the joke goes, the British empire dominated the world to obtain spices... not to use any of them. Is British food supposed to be bland? Yes if correctly prepared.
Our food culture has been shaped by a century of disinformation, perpetuated by governments and the education system. The consequences of this disinformation campaign are far-reaching, with many people developing unhealthy relationships with food.
Want to fix this? Gotta start with the governments who are pushing the disinformation.
"The term “ultra-processed food” was introduced by a Brazilian epidemiologist named Carlos Monteiro. In the early seventies, Monteiro was a primary-care doctor in the Ribeira Valley, an impoverished part of rural Brazil, and he treated many plantation workers with swollen bellies, stunted growth, and exhaustion. He started to think that they needed better food, in larger quantities, more than they needed medicine. He relocated to São Paulo, hoping to study malnutrition. Then he learned that around a million Brazilians were growing obese each year. Strangely, a shrinking number of people were buying ingredients that doctors blamed for the obesity epidemic, such as salt, sugar, and oil." - he went to São Paulo to study malnutrition, he found malnutrition - just not the type he expected.
I would guess it's because the calorie density of Japanese ultra-processed food is vastly different than the US (having eaten both extensively and also former over wight guy who calorie counts daily) - that's actually basically the premise of the article. American ultra-processed food is hugely calorie dense and refined to be palatable.
I feel like this gets at the core issue which is food being too palatable and not satiating enough? At least on the obesity / calorie overconsumption front, I think it's just that simple. 'ultra-processed foods' or 'too many carbs' or whatever other explanations people come up for are just lossy proxies for the underlying issue which is 'foods that people tend to eat too much of'.
I would tend to agree, I mean, I had to eat a lot of healthy shit as a kid that I did not enjoy at all because my mum is a LSD, from the earth only, 60s era hippie. Healthy but not delicious. The other day I bought some packaged mac and cheese from the grocery store, it was on the big side but I didn't pay much attention, zoned out watching TV and ate the whole thing. After I was thinking, hmm, I don't feel well. Grabbed the mac and cheese box, I'd just consumed near 2k calories in a very manageable meal.
Friend of mine moved from South Korea to the US and within 6 months had gained a noticeable amount of weight, we discussed it and I said "just gotta watch the calories bud" - confused face - he didn't know how to actually go about calorie counting, he didn't know the calories in 1lb of fat (~3,500), he'd never had to do it in Korea.
Its impossible to not get blindsided by HFCS and the general sugar content of American foods if you compare the retail shelves like for like with Europe.
In Ireland and other European countries they literally have to 'cover up' the Breakfast Cereals in the 'American Speciality/Import' section due to their misleading nutritional information and/or child targeting.
For example, American formulation PopTarts have to legally cover up the claim on the front that they are "a good source of nutrition" and another sticker on the back with a factual nutritional breakdown, as is mandated by most EU members.
The McMuffin is pretty much the most balanced meal at McDonalds! If you wanted to quibble over it, you could make it with a poached egg white instead of a whole egg, and dress it with olive oil instead of butter, to cut down on the cholesterol without removing too much energy. At ~300 calories a McMuffin is hardly sufficient for many people to get through the morning.
Tbf the Bacon McMuffin is a lot better than I thought it would be. The 'healthiest' option other than a pure salad in Irish McDonalds would be the grilled chicken wrap they have - "The BBQ and Bacon Chicken One - Grilled"
As for your 300 calories contention - 300 calories of scrambled eggs or steel cut oats would do me fine to get through a morning. 300 calories of McNuggets would not conversely. I'd imagine most of that has to do with satiating fibre, protein and fat therein.
Is the Japanese diet so full of ultra-processed foods?
Couldn't quickly find a source for Japan, but this meta-study [1, see Table 1] gives a list of the percentage of UPFs per national diet. It lists Korea (25.1%) and Taiwan (19.5%), which may be relatively close. Anyway, the US comes in at 58%, clearly a big difference.
"Ultra-processed" is a term denominating a particular kind of food. Not every food that "involves a lot of treatment of the raw ingredients" qualifies as ultra processed. In particular, the end result needs to be high in fats, salts and/or sugars. The production cost also plays a role.
Cultural factors for Japan. People eat smaller portions, walk more, and dieting and commenting on someone's weight (a different idea of what is an "acceptable" weight) is also more prevalent. School lunches are also from what I've seen while there considerably more nutritious and fresh.
You'd probably put me in that crowd, but I think it is a very valid objection. "ultra-processed" is in my opinion a far too large and diverse group to yield good scientific results. It may be a reasonable starting point for investigations, but you really need to look at specific aspects individually to figure out how this works.
We're not going to convert everyone into only eating fresh and non-processed stuff, so you'll have to find out which specific ways of processing or which additions to processed food are problematic and address those.
One of the laziest rhetorical approaches I see regularly on Hackernews is someone angrily complaining about commenters who aren't there.
If you have an argument, make it. If you see an argument you want to refute, refute it. Complaining about people that aren't even commenting in the thread serves no useful purpose.
It's just that the definition combines things that feel very different to folks under the ultra processed umbrella, grouping together things like pasta with "junk food" things like candy bars and deep fried anything. I don't know if your example of "boiling noodles" is supposed to be "obviously ultraprocessed" or "obviously not ultraprocessed" -- maybe that's accidentally the perfect example of the question the parent is mocking.
The problem is that there's no definition of ultra-processed. It's generally a "I know it when I see it" type of thing but of course that means it's unevenly applied in a world without nuance.
To use your example, surely hand made noodles aren't ultra processed. But are Bertolli noodles ultra processed? The only difference in ingredients is what emulsifier is used.
Food, biology, etc. is complicated and reducing it to TikTok sound bites often results in squabbles.
I routinely make noodles by grinding durum wheat in a home flour mill and making the dough by hand. Probably the lowest level of processing possible I guess.
Because they switched from Thorpe's 1957 high-protein, high-fat and low-carbohydrate diet advice to Ancel Keys' (who had a BA in economics and a PhD in Fish Physiology) ration advice for the US forces declaring war on cholesterol and burying any discussions about sugar for years.
would you like some low fat diet coke with your high carbohydrate freedom fries?
