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How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

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Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#111

Post by jerf »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #109
jerf wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Regarding obesity, exercise is far more important than diet." When Gary Taubes surveyed the literature to find the evidence that exercise is useful for losing weight, what he found is that the scientific literature itself proves this statement is either not true or even slightly false. There aren't any studies where exercise has lead to persistent, significant (which I would define as taking someone from clinically…

Here is evidence that exercise on it's own works for weight loss. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.duke.car... You can find lots more in sports medicine textbooks. Plenty of studies have varied exercise and diet in order to fine tune muscle gain vs fat loss for various purposes (mostly related to weight class). I would not trust Gary Taubes in general. I've only had one exposure to him, but I found…

With all due respect, that perfectly fits the theories that Taubes is advocating. "High intensity" exercise over six months manages to drop only 3.5 kilograms on average (and add 1.4 kg in muscle). That is not terribly significant by any definition, let alone the one I gave, and based on my (other) reading it seems likely that actually happened fairly early in the study and everyone has plateaued by the end. I dropped that in my first two weeks of dropping carbs and have kept it off for a few years now in addition to a couple dozen other pounds and drop that amount pretty much at will when I accidentally gain it back from slipping on the carbs too much. (Which I am slowly but surely getting better at avoiding.) And I guarantee you that I did not exercise during that first period. (I do now, because it's much easier now.)

It might be significant if we could just assume that's a linear progression and you'll keep losing that every six months, but that's not a conclusion you can make. The bar for proving exercise works as a weight loss method in the literature is low, because it can't get over any higher bar than maybe ten pounds with a fairly large exercise load.

("But you're just citing your own anecdotal evidence!" In this case, only as a tidbit to show how unimpressed by that study I am, not because I consider it proof. Proof I'm leaving to others who have done it better.)

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#112

Post by ams6110 »

city41 wrote: post #7
johnny22 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or we just make healthy food taste better.

The other factor is cost. Healthy food costs more, often significantly more.

If by "healthy" you mean the certified organic stuff, free range animals, yes that can be expensive. But you can do a LOT better than the typical junk food diet for the same money at any "big box" supermarket.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#113

Post by ams6110 »

baggachipz wrote: post #45
martythemaniak wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to make it cheaper (via subsidizing fresh produce instead of the corn and cattle industry) relative to processed food and the rest will take care of itself. Funny thing is, people will scream "social engineering" if you say this, yet they're perfectly content to ignore the current social engineering.

This, times 1000. The only reason it's so cheap to eat at McDonald's is because of subsidies given to industrial beef, corn, and soy.

It's really not cheap to eat at McDonald's. You can buy a dozen eggs at the supermarket for the cost of one Egg McMuffin.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#114

Post by ams6110 »

seanalltogether wrote: post #24

And the flip side of the coin. "How western diets are driving the next stage of evolution in humans"

Starting to get off topic but I really don't think evolution is happening in humans anymore, at least in the first world. Sanitation, medicine, and surgery has advanced so far we've almost completely eliminated natural selection. In fact I'd be surprised if some "de-evolving" isn't happening.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#115

Post by ars »

simonsarris wrote: post #13
deveren wrote: post #2

Good question and answer at the end of the article. Fat is not what's making Americans fat. It's the prevalence of carbohydrates in our diets, and overeating of the same. I was in KY last week interviewing my great aunt who is 108 years old. Do you think she never ate bacon, beef, etc? Haha, their diets would be today's poster child for meatlovers. They didn't eat too much sugar, or carbs, but more importantly they n…

When my friends ask about nutrition, explaining fat is the very first thing I try to do. Eating fat does not necessarily make you fat, nor is it in itself a bad at all. Many fats are among the best things for your brain and heart. At the same time, fat-free foods can quite easily be bullshit. A pound of sugar is fat-free, after all, but has an insane calorific value. (110 per oz) Sugar is 100% total carbs. A ounce of…

You should also tell them that fat and carbohydrates are basically interchangeable. The body can easily convert between them, so there is little point in limiting just one of them.

In fact eating fat will probably lead to less calories overall since fat gives an earlier feeling of fullness.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#116

Post by blahblahblah »

latortuga wrote: post #67
beaumartinez wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asians eat a lot of rice, but then again, they are a physically active people. (Please excuse the gross generalization.) (Weight gain/loss is ultimately a simple equation: calories in ‒ calories out . Eat more but exercise more and they'll cancel out.)

This is an appealing take but ultimately oversimplified. Calories in equals calories out, this is self evident. Assuming that calories in has no effect on calories out or vice versa is where you make the mistake - they are dependent variables and quite obviously so. Don't eat much and you get cold and lethargic, go work out and you work up an appetite. Saying you're fat because you eat too much is like saying you're…

"Saying you're fat because you eat too much is like saying you're an alcoholic because you drink too much. It's true but it doesn't say anything about how to solve the problem and it mixes up cause and effect"

I think you're really close to getting at the root of this problem right here. Fundamentally, we're talking about a behavioral compulsion here - people are literally getting addicted to food. Fructose is the substance that's hijacking the brain's reward system. A particular individual's susceptibility to obesity is very likely set up by the same factors that function in other addictions, whether chemical (as in alcoholism) or behavioral (as in gambling) - namely, dysfunctional family systems, psychological trauma, stress, etc. If this is, in fact, what's really going on then the solution is to (A) treat obesity as an addiction and (B) limit the proliferation of fructose in the food supply.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#117

Post by pizza »

wmboy wrote: post #33
ryanfitz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the paleo diet is a growing diet/lifestyle based on eating real foods. If anything else its very interesting to read about. http://freetheanimal.com/ancestral-life-way is a great blog for anyone interested.

The Paleo diet is interesting but is not the be all and end all. Check out http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/ , http://www.marksdailyapple.com/ and http://www.westonaprice.org/ for more viewpoints. The general consensus though is to avoid processed foods and stick to whole foods. A big one is to eat animal fat instead of industrially produced vegetable and seed oils. Also, limit carbohydrate intake (ideally eatin…

You might be interested in www.reddit.com/r/keto

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#118

Post by yummyfajitas »

jerf wrote: post #111
yummyfajitas wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is evidence that exercise on it's own works for weight loss. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.duke.car... You can find lots more in sports medicine textbooks. Plenty of studies have varied exercise and diet in order to fine tune muscle gain vs fat loss for various purposes (mostly related to weight class). I would not trust Gary Taubes in general. I've only had one exposure to him, but I found…

With all due respect, that perfectly fits the theories that Taubes is advocating. "High intensity" exercise over six months manages to drop only 3.5 kilograms on average (and add 1.4 kg in muscle). That is not terribly significant by any definition, let alone the one I gave, and based on my (other) reading it seems likely that actually happened fairly early in the study and everyone has plateaued by the end. I droppe…

I was only arguing against this statement from your post: "I am not aware of any evidence that exercise on its own actually works for weight loss..."

I'm not disputing that the obese need both diet and exercise to reach a healthy weight (that's pretty easy to see, just by looking at the Harris Benedict equation), I'm just making you aware of evidence that exercise on it's own does work for weight loss.

As for whether 11lbs of fat loss is significant or not, I guess that's mainly a question of where you draw the line for "significant". If you want to label anything less than 20lbs in 6 months "not terribly significant", be my guest.

Also, jogging 4x/week (what the paper described as "high intensity") is not a "large exercise load".

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#119

Post by [deleted] »

Tichy wrote: post #100
beaumartinez wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, then, what is the "Western diet" if it isn't what the Western people eat? (I see your point, though; it's been changing over time, and you're right: it is getting more and more processed and less balanced {and dare I say "healthy"}). Regarding obesity, exercise is far more important than diet. You can eat all kinds of, well, crap, and if you exercise, you'll still be physically fit and probably even look healthy.…

The exercise theory doesn't make much sense. Old people would all have to grow fat because they can't exercise well anymore. Also I think most systems in nature are optimized for saving energy - humans would be a strange exception if they could only be healthy by wasting energy.

[deleted]

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#120

Post by SkyMarshal »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #23

Misleading title, it is not "western diet" what is bad for health, it is fast food, and sugar sweety food what is. What Americans were eating 70-50-30 years ago was healthy and "western". It has been people eating industrial foods instead of someone making the food what has changed. I use to look at obese people shopping cart and I see a lot of Coca Cola, pizza, industrial bread, industrial buns,cookies, chocolate,no…

>Artic Circle people have a huge problem in winter, only fish is fresh, so they eat potato chips with are easy and cheap to store for months(specially if they use trans fat).

Not entirely surprised that someone else on HN knows of this obscure problem, yes it's very bad. Essentially, the Inuit and Inuvialuit used to be self-sufficient with a diet that had evolved over hundreds of years. Fish, caribou, polar bear in the winter, etc. But hunting and preparing these things in the inhospitable arctic ain't easy.

Then the Canadian government decided to try to domesticate them by sending the children to school down south, where they learned the RRR's instead of the traditional -50 degree climate survival skills passed down from generation to generation.

They'd come back reliant on the government to ship in food and other necessities, and the government resorted to chips and pop and since it's the only thing that can sit on store shelves for the long winter months (when there's too much ice to ship anything else) and not spoil. Obesity, health, and cultural problems were the result.

A classic case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. A good friend of mine is running research and intervention projects up there attempting to find healthier alternatives to replace the pop and chips, I hear a lot about it.

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