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Are grains making us fat? If so, we should be much thinner than 1914.

theatlantic.com

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Re: Are grains making us fat? If so, we should be much thinner than 1914.

#41

Post by pyre »

tomp wrote: post #12
pyre wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that the theory was the simple carbs (e.g. sugars, refined grains) were worse offenders than complex carbs (e.g. potatoes).

In terms of GI, the Glycemic Index, sure they are. However, the more important measure it GL, the Glycemic Load, which is basically the GI multiplied with the average amount. For example, even though a cherry has much higher GI than a potato, you eat more sugar/carbohydrates in one potato than in one cherry, so a potato has higher GL and thus higher insulin response.

How many people would think to compare a single cherry to a single potato though? Most people would think in terms of roughly equal mass (x grams of cherries vs. y grams of potatoes where x is approx. y).

Re: Are grains making us fat? If so, we should be much thinner than 1914.

#42

Post by burke »

vlisivka wrote: post #39
georgieporgie wrote: post #22

We spend enormous amounts of mental energy thinking about types and combinations of calories, but not much time burning them. We pay huge signup and monthly fees to gyms that we never find the time to visit, meanwhile we never walk our streets.

"We"?

Collectively, as a society, compared to that of, say, 1914.

Re: Are grains making us fat? If so, we should be much thinner than 1914.

#43

Post by leoc »

rubashov wrote: post #25

This article repeats the lie that wild meat is lean, lacking fat. The white and yellow stuff in in the pictures below is loads of fat in free range grass fed bison. http://www.tribeoffive.com/2011/04/hunting-for-good-food-and... Kurt Harris has lately been addressing this misconception that the ancestral diet was low fat. http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2011/4/5/wild-vs-grass-... http://www.archevore.com/panu-we…

There's a long back-and-forth between Kurt Harris and McArdle http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/are-grai... in the comments.

Re: Are grains making us fat? If so, we should be much thinner than 1914.

#45

Post by Lost_BiomedE »

nano81 wrote: post #33
rubashov wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manual laborers then, as now, were more likely to be fat. Physical labor is not related to obesity.

That seems counter-intuitive to me. Do you have a source?

I don't know about physical laborers being fatter, but our bodies are horribly/wonderfully efficient when it comes to work. The amount eaten will be the larger factor.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate#Biochemist.... About 70% of a human's total energy expenditure is due to the basal life processes within the organs of the body (see table). About 20% of one's energy expenditure comes from physical activity and another 10% from thermogenesis, or digestion of food (postprandial thermogenesis).

Re: Are grains making us fat? If so, we should be much thinner than 1914.

#46

Post by robchez »

jf271 wrote: post #30
rubashov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obesity epidemic had a start date. It was not a gradual trend, or something that ebbed and flowed over the decades. People first got obese in large numbers in the early 1980s. Whatever is making everybody huge can be traced to a change in the 1980s. That is a useful data point in that it rules out a lot of things. It's not exercise. It's probably not starch. Personally I suspect it's a mix of telling everybody to…

Not just fructose. In fruit fructose is fine. High fructose corn syrup is different and became prevelent in the 80's because of the sugar tariffs in the late 1970's in the USA.

Fruit fructose is just as bad as the fructose found in HFCS.

Re: Are grains making us fat? If so, we should be much thinner than 1914.

#47

Post by robchez »

georgieporgie wrote: post #22

We spend enormous amounts of mental energy thinking about types and combinations of calories, but not much time burning them. We pay huge signup and monthly fees to gyms that we never find the time to visit, meanwhile we never walk our streets.

Diet >> Gym You burn a lot of calories in a day, the extra little you burn from exercise is moot if you are scoffing down the wrong food.

Re: Are grains making us fat? If so, we should be much thinner than 1914.

#48

Post by saveriomiroddi »

Seems like to me that almost (probably) all nutrition articles try to find a silver bullet to beat obesity/overweight.

My theory is that modern culture keeps searching such illusory silver bullets because acknowledging the working solution, which is practising sports and stop eating junk food (fast food, fat food, sweets) would be much more challenging.

=of course clinical cases must be dealt separately =given a certain cultural context. in a more healthy cultural context, eating cleanly is much easier.

Re: Are grains making us fat? If so, we should be much thinner than 1914.

#49

Post by saveriomiroddi »

saveriomiroddi wrote: post #48

Seems like to me that almost (probably) all nutrition articles try to find a silver bullet to beat obesity/overweight. My theory is that modern culture keeps searching such illusory silver bullets because acknowledging the working solution , which is practising sports and stop eating junk food (fast food, fat food, sweets) would be much more challenging . =of course clinical cases must be dealt separately =given a ce…

The star characters corrupted the text. The first '=' is a note after "working solution", the second after "more challenging".

Re: Are grains making us fat? If so, we should be much thinner than 1914.

#50

Post by saveriomiroddi »

Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #45
nano81 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems counter-intuitive to me. Do you have a source?

I don't know about physical laborers being fatter, but our bodies are horribly/wonderfully efficient when it comes to work. The amount eaten will be the larger factor. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate#Biochemist... . About 70% of a human's total energy expenditure is due to the basal life processes within the organs of the body (see table). About 20% of one's energy expenditure comes from physic…

The reference to the wikipedia article is misleading, and practically false.

Practicing physical activity indirectly increases a series the expenditure for the basal life processes, so it increases the calories consumption more than the raw amount of energy spent doing it.

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