Danish researchers finally solve the obesity riddle

Danish researchers finally solve the obesity riddle
physorg.com

Just for example, raw foodists tend to have low-protein diets that may be low OR high-glycemic index, and tend to be very thin.

Without a comprehensive listing of specific meals, I would guess that people in certain groups in this study would be much more likely to cheat on their diets. The selection of low-protein, low-GI foods for most people used to typical Western diets would lead to very disappointing meals and thus more cheating over a 6-month period.

Further, gaining a pound of fat over a period of 6 months works out to less than 20 extra calories per day. This is essentially noise. Cheating with 150 extra calories once per week (e.g. a single sugary treat) could account for this.

Keeping your blood sugar in check is a major factor in preventing binge eating and fat storage. There are various ways to do this, including low-GI foods, exercise, and eating small meals frequently. The recent standard for Hollywood stars and starlets is working with a personal trainer and eating every 2 hours. This helps keep blood sugar steady.

On the flip side, people engaged in sustained cardiovascular exercise must eat high-GI foods or their performance drops. Riders in the Tour de France chow down on every sugary snack and drink known to man (not just "performance formulas" of energy bars and drinks), and Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day while training.

You don't need that level of Herculean effort before this becomes important. Even if you are completely sedentary, if you are engaged in a mentally taxing task, your brain is burning through a lot of glucose. Eating sucrose means half glucose and half fructose, and only the glucose can be metabolized immediately. Fructose can be stored by the liver and converted, but if the liver reserves are full (e.g. late in the day, as opposed to waking up from fasting during sleep), fructose will end up as fat. Fructose has a low glycemic index, so guess which sugar is more likely to be included in a low-GI diet. (Glucose is of course used by diabetics in order to raise their blood sugar quickly. It is also called Dextrose.)

Finally, without body composition analysis, they haven't shown anything about fat loss. High protein diets require more water to process, and a difference of a pound or two on a human body can easily be down to differences in fluid retention. High protein diets can lead to slightly more dehydration.

Gotta be careful if that's the case. Wouldn't want to catch the fat virus here or anything.