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Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007)

michaelpollan.com

81–90 of 191 posts

Re: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007)

#81
post #28

When I eat carbs, I put on weight. When I don't, I lose weight. However, other people I know are the opposite. Quite honestly, I think you can't generalise 'diets' or eating advice as, frankly, it would appear that different people's bodies work in slightly different ways. This could explain the vast array of different advice that, often times, seems contradictory.

the only thing that matters for weight (barring some serious disorders) is the balance of energy. eat excessive calories and your body stores it as fat. eat too little and your body burns fat for energy. regarding carbs: they make about 50 pct of the average persons caloric intake and they really aren't filling (atleast simple carbs). so cutting them out usually means getting rid of s major source of calories and usu…

Weirdly, I find increasing fat intake makes me lose weight faster. This is probably because it's hard to eat lots of fat, but easy to consume the equivalent calories through carbs (I'm looking at you Oreo milkshakes...)

Re: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007)

#82
post #71
post #28

When I eat carbs, I put on weight. When I don't, I lose weight. However, other people I know are the opposite. Quite honestly, I think you can't generalise 'diets' or eating advice as, frankly, it would appear that different people's bodies work in slightly different ways. This could explain the vast array of different advice that, often times, seems contradictory.

Your comment is absolutely spot on [1]. [1] http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)01481-6

Thanks for this link! Really appreciated.

Re: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007)

#83
post #28

When I eat carbs, I put on weight. When I don't, I lose weight. However, other people I know are the opposite. Quite honestly, I think you can't generalise 'diets' or eating advice as, frankly, it would appear that different people's bodies work in slightly different ways. This could explain the vast array of different advice that, often times, seems contradictory.

>When I eat carbs, I put on weight. When I don't, I lose weight. However, other people I know are the opposite.

I doubt so.

If you stick to protein and vegetables with no carbs and sugars in general, you get lots of filling fiber, and fewer calories, unless they consume huge quantities of lard or bacon every day, or drink sugars (e.g. in juices or sodas), etc.

So those people are doing something wrong.

Re: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007)

#84
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the article talking about a „interpersonal variability in post-meal glucose levels“. But there is no mention of the parent-comments main point „When I eat carbs, I put on weight“ .... which might be an indirect effect of a higher blood glucose level (more hungry) ...but definitely not a direct effect.

Not sure if i fully understood you correctly, but yes, I feel a lot more hungry when eatinv more carbs. A good example of this is toast: no matter how many slices i eat, i'm never full. It actually makes me just want to eat more....

„when eating more carbs...toast“

You eat the wrong kind of carbs. The kind of carbs you eat have ZERO fiber...so of course you will be hungry. Eat a bowl of oatmeal (100g) with a banana and milk, add a little cinnamon, heat on the stove or in the microwave and you are set for the next 8 hours.

Re: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007)

#85
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is dangerous advice though. Loose weight just by counting calories will not take in consideration toxicity (see my other comment in this thread). Many people burn fat this way, which release toxins they can't process. Hence their body is thin but saturated with poison. From here 2 things happens: - the person gains weight again to protect him/herself. Happens very often. - the person manage to not gain weight at…

This post is unscientific and literally nonsense. There's no such thing as a "toxin" and reducing your adipose fat tissue does not poison your body. It's precisely this sort of magical thinking that the OP is trying to counter.

You should probably rephrase. I think I get what you are trying to say, but the way you said it is way off.

There most definitely are such things as "toxins". There are neurotoxins produced by black widows, most scorpions, box jellyfish, many algae and cyanobacteria, among others. There are necrotoxins produced by the brown recluse, rattlesnakes, puff adders for example.

Heck, if there were no such thing as toxins, the "Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins including Tropical Diseases" would have long ago dropped "and Toxins" from its name to save costs on ink :-). The Toxin and Toxin-Target database [1] would also have about 3700 less entries if toxins did not exist.

[1] http://www.t3db.ca

Re: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007)

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

„You can eat 4000 calories/day in banana and loose weight, but eat 2500 in cheese burger and gain.“ This my friend, is not true. Not true in like...completely false. (source: Bodybuilding for a long long time...dieting 6 months every year...bulking up the other 6 months of the year...been counting every calorie for years)

Again I tested it on myself. I tried so many diets it's not funny: - full prot diet; - mono-diet; - fasting; - raw food diet; - veggie; - vegan; - classic 'balanced diet'; - body-building diet where you weight your chicken; - and of course the good old "student-fast-food" diet. I usually take blood samples before and after and graph my weight and IMC.

>Again I tested it on myself.

It doesn't matter, it's still not true. And there are tons of ways the measuring can go wrong or be misleading.

Re: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007)

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can eat anything and wont gain weight. It really seems like there is too much diversity in how we handle food inside our body. The best diet is to try some things(experiment) and do whatever works best, not what feels best. Too many of these diets read like they are the most fun thing to do in the world. Also a lot of people have the tendency to get their goal and then stop the diet only to gain weight again (then…

This is not exactly true. Yes, there is a big variance in the way people process food. But people also usually exhibits common characteristics: - they don't eat that much on average. While they may sometime eat a lot, if you what the quantity during one week, you'll see they eat less than most people. - they eat slowly. Those 2 things alone allow you to process a certain amount of unbalanced diet. BTW, if anybody wan…

There are no such "toxins": https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/toxins-the-new-evil-humours...

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/05/detox-m...

If you eat bad stuff you'll just bring empty calories and some crappy additives and such.

Re: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007)

#88
post #49
post #45

"When William Prout isolated the big three macronutrients, scientists figured they now understood food and what the body needs from it; when the vitamins were isolated a few decades later, scientists thought, O.K., now we really understand food and what the body needs to be healthy; today it’s the polyphenols and carotenoids that seem all-important. But who knows what the hell else is going on deep in the soul of a c…

> today it’s the polyphenols and carotenoids that seem all-important What a joke, the only thing that's known for sure about "polyphenols" (and practically all non-vitamin "antioxidants", that was the previous hype) is that a healthy human body rapidly excretes them, as well it should. The rest is hype, speculation, and the everlasting quest for the next "superfood".. Carotenoids, okay, anything that's in egg yolks g…

Carnivore meat you can eat: cat, crocodile, alligator. I'm sure there are others. Not very common in the west - if nothing else, herbivores and omnivores are easier to factory farm - but people do eat them.

What about fish? Tuna, salmon, shark - they all eat meat.

Re: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007)

#89
post #17
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 42 and this is what the USDA has been saying all along with their food pyramids and four food groups and what have you. I think as a whole, nutritionists have always been on the same page, but those selling diets keep changing their opinions. Sure, there has been flip-flopping recently on fats and sugars, but the edict "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" doesn't concern itself with those. I can't recall anyon…

> I'm 42 and this is what the USDA has been saying all along with their food pyramids and four food groups and what have you. You are not remembering correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_USDA_nutrition_guid... > I think as a whole, nutritionists have always been on the same page, No, they certainly haven't. "Best practices" change all the time. This happened quite recently; http://articles.mercola.com/…

Sorry, but what is hard science? I mean, models are suppose to change over time, at least if you're doing science right. Even physics models keep changing.

I'm not sure we can say that at any point in time the FDA recommendations were bad, but simply that as more and more knowledge is acquired, old models are showed not to fit the data as well, so we come up with new models that do.

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