Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007) • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 1:11 PM UTC

bloat wrote: post #117

xaviers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can generalise diets pretty easy. Eat less calories than you burn and loose weight. Eat whatever you want if you can abide by this rule you will loose the weight. But to be healthy. Well you have to eat healthy to be healthy. And that means getting all the fat, carbs and protein your body needs. And what your body needs I agree you can't generalise.

Why is this true? Calories measure energy, not mass. If I eat high calorie food, why does that cause me to retain more of the mass of that food in my body, compared to the same quantity of low calorie food? This is a genuine question which I've never found a good answer for. It would make much more sense to me if you said "Eat fewer kg of food than you excrete, and loose weight".

[deleted]

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

#132

Post by rory » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 1:15 PM UTC

bloat wrote: post #117

xaviers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can generalise diets pretty easy. Eat less calories than you burn and loose weight. Eat whatever you want if you can abide by this rule you will loose the weight. But to be healthy. Well you have to eat healthy to be healthy. And that means getting all the fat, carbs and protein your body needs. And what your body needs I agree you can't generalise.

Why is this true? Calories measure energy, not mass. If I eat high calorie food, why does that cause me to retain more of the mass of that food in my body, compared to the same quantity of low calorie food? This is a genuine question which I've never found a good answer for. It would make much more sense to me if you said "Eat fewer kg of food than you excrete, and loose weight".

Your body stores excess energy as fat, or uses it to build muscle. The amount of food mass in your body at any given time is assumed to be constant in the long term, so when we talk about a person's weight changing we are generally referring to a change in their fat or muscle mass.

1kg of ice cream has a much greater potential to change your long-term mass than 1kg of broccoli because your body has the ability to extract more energy from it, and thus build more fat or muscle.

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

#133

Post by mathattack » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 1:37 PM UTC

Capt-RogerOver wrote: post #128

problems wrote: post #31

Some of the conclusions seem a little quacky here to me - like "avoid ingredients you can't pronounce" and a lot of "avoid processed anything". While I'm sure there's some arguable benefits to these things, I think it's paranoid or stupid to dismiss something just for being "processed". What the heck does that mean anyway? All our food is processed in one form or another and nothing about something being more process…

The idea here is following: - Processing food, even in chemical ways does not necessarily mean it will be bad for your health. - However, a lot of examples have shown that food that has been processed by the current realities of the food industry is often very bad for your health. Many times it's shown to be bad, many times they don't even check it. - Basically if you process the food, the chances are very good that…

That's exactly it. His suggestion is a heuristic that is good 80% of the time. But if you can't check for the other 20% that the processing is bad, why not avoid?

Even if we follow his guidelines most of the time, fewer exceptions means fewer dietary risks.

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

#134

Post by CPLX » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 1:46 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #85

CPLX wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

Not really. If I was in an argument with a UFO theorist where I said the US government wasn't actually hiding live aliens, and someone came along and pointed out that we have illegal aliens in custody, I would point out that this is true and irrelevant.

The word toxin is widely used in "wellness" circles, but the concept so described does not exist. The fact that there is a correct, jargon-specific, scientific usage of the same term notwithstanding.

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

#135

Post by Gatsky » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 1:46 PM UTC

philfrasty wrote: post #78

Gatsky wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

The article isn't pay walled for once, I encourage you to read it, I consider it a ray of sunshine in the current darkness of nutritional science.

They use the post-prandial glucose response (PPGR) as a surrogate marker for how the body absorbs and metabolises food. Spikes in glucose levels after a meal are considered 'bad' as they cause large excursions in insulin secretion, and are associated with diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

They found a wide range of inter-personal variability in how particular foods affect blood glucose levels after a meal. Some people could eat a pizza for example, and the PPGR would hardly budge, whereas for others it would surge. The gut microbiome seemed to be important to this response. I believe the scientists have formed a company which plans to make personalised nutrition suggestions based on microbiome analysis, among other things.

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

#136

Post by bogomipz » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 1:51 PM UTC

problems wrote: post #31

Some of the conclusions seem a little quacky here to me - like "avoid ingredients you can't pronounce" and a lot of "avoid processed anything". While I'm sure there's some arguable benefits to these things, I think it's paranoid or stupid to dismiss something just for being "processed". What the heck does that mean anyway? All our food is processed in one form or another and nothing about something being more process…

>Some of the conclusions seem a little quacky here to me - like "avoid ingredients you can't pronounce"

Indeed, quinoa and acai - two super foods before they became Whole Foods staples would have met this criteria.

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

#137

Post by sametmax » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 1:54 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #119

sametmax wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just provided general resources about food and nutrition Well of course, why would I not ? They include the knowledge I'm using right now. However I can't help but notice you provide blog posts with opinions, not studies or books. Again I agree that using the word "toxin" was not a good choice. I'm not a native English speaker, I don't know any proper term for "things the body can't process, and that harms it".…

> Yes it has. A calorie is always in a context. No, the context only applies to health. You will always lose weight if you eat less calories, period. > During this process, molecules that can harm the body can enter it, or be produced in it. Since using fat to wrap molecules is one of the ways the body cope with it, it has an impact on it. That's not what happens. There is no such procedure that uses fat to "cope wit…

Example of a context:

- eat a little protein and lots of fructose from an apple from your garden;

- eat the same amount of calories as proteins + fat in industrial meat.

The second amount will create vastly more waste, such as urea, to be processed by the body. It will also require more energy to processed because the fructose is almost usable as-is. Because the second source of calories brings less minerals, it will also bring your PH down, forcing the body to deal with it. Because it's industrial meat, it will contains synthetic products such as antibiotic than will make your livers works a lot more and impact your digestive system flora.

But will not trigger the same insulin response.

Same amount of calories, very different context, and impact on the body.

Again, I notice a trend in those responses: you are just saying I'm wrong harshly but don't make demonstrations. If you know I'm wrong, please use arguments.

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

#138

Post by rubber_duck » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 1:54 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #94

problems wrote: post #31

Some of the conclusions seem a little quacky here to me - like "avoid ingredients you can't pronounce" and a lot of "avoid processed anything". While I'm sure there's some arguable benefits to these things, I think it's paranoid or stupid to dismiss something just for being "processed". What the heck does that mean anyway? All our food is processed in one form or another and nothing about something being more process…

> While I'm sure there's some arguable benefits to these things, I think it's paranoid or stupid to dismiss something just for being "processed". What the heck does that mean anyway? It mostly means, "a whole industry of greedy scum that added all kinds of useless and often harmful crap to the food it sells to make it last longer -- and increase their margins--, be more addictive --and increase their margins--, be pr…

>Unfortunately a lot of people are so naive as to think that corporations are basically ethical and would never do those things, or that if something involves technology (e.g. food chemistry) it is necessarily good, even if said technology is used against them to pad profits.

I've never actually seen people like this, in fact I've only seen people who are the exact opposite - and you seem to give off such vibe - where something is "evil by default" because it's not "natural/organic/whatever buzzword here".

You can get crap from your "organic local natural farmer", just from the top of my head a few years back here in EU people were dying from ecoli caused kidney failure because the organic farm manure contained the bacteria.

Corporations will do unethical things for money but individuals will not ? Who do you think spends more on quality control - people who shipping millions of units of something and have billions invested in capital to produce said thing or some random farm ? Who do you think gets more regulatory oversight ?

And about the biased sponsored science - so we just discard science and go for something because of how it feels ?

I mean I'm all for eating quality and fresh stuff if you can get it but the arguments like this are just nonsense paranoia.

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

#139

Post by johnward » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 1:55 PM UTC

arghIdontwantto wrote: post #130

ENTP wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

I still don't understand this idea that is hard to eat a lot of fat. Lean protein sure, there is a limit to the number of chicken breasts I can eat, but fat? Bacon, Cheese, Fatty meats. I can easily eat 1000-1500kcal in a single meal without feeling really full. I eat 4-5 eggs with bacon with a bit of butter, being around 750kcals for breakfast and then by lunch time, want to eat a bunch again. I easily eat a pound o…

"fat bombs" are something I never understood in low carb communities. It's not hard at all to eat fat without supplementing. I eat bacon, eggs, red meat, salad dressing, dairy, etc and get plenty of fat.

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

#140

Post by dTal » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 1:55 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #57

problems wrote: post #31

Some of the conclusions seem a little quacky here to me - like "avoid ingredients you can't pronounce" and a lot of "avoid processed anything". While I'm sure there's some arguable benefits to these things, I think it's paranoid or stupid to dismiss something just for being "processed". What the heck does that mean anyway? All our food is processed in one form or another and nothing about something being more process…

> What the heck does that mean anyway? All our food is processed in one form or another and nothing about something being more processed necessitates any loss. I hope it means something like: Take a chicken and roast it, with potatoes and vegetables. Add some gravy. Now take the same chicken. Remove most of the meat and sell it. Mechanically recover the rest of the meat, and form it into small popcorn size bites. Bre…

Huh. Ketchup bottles have always told you to keep them refrigerated as far back as I can remember (across decades, in the US and the UK) and I have always disobeyed. I have never, ever known ketchup to spoil. I just checked and none of the ketchup in the house now (several brands) have any "chemical" preservatives. But they do contain lots of vinegar. I am sure that the delivery mechanism of squeezy bottles helps prevent infection as well.