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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.

#51

Post by Groxx »

saveriomiroddi wrote: post #49
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".

Leave a space after the * characters.

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

#52

Post by radu_floricica »

saveriomiroddi wrote: post #50
Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For weightlifting this is intuitive, because it forces the body to adapt. But for low level continuous activity, like house chores?

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

#53

Post by mdemare »

The trouble with this subject is that everybody, including commenters in this thread, thinks they already know what the solution is, even before they have a good grasp of the problem.

I recommend reading Gary Taubes ("Good Calories, Bad Calories", "Why We Get Fat"), not because of what he thinks that the solution is, but to understand the range of facts that a theory of obesity must explain.

When Taubes starts to promote his own theory (carbs are bad, fats aren't, exercise is fairly useless, insulin is very important), he may or may not be right. Nevertheless his book is invaluable for learning about the extremely counter-intuitive facts of obesity.

To name a few: - obese 6-month old babies - morbidly obese mice starving to death - obesity epidemics among native americans in 19th century - lack of obesity among all animals - prisoners on a forced 10K calorie diet barely gaining weight

We won't conquer the obesity problem until we start treating it as a huge, extremely complicated mystery to be solved, instead of as a problem of persuasion, where the solution is to convince other people that you have the obvious answer.

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

#54

Post by wynand »

rubashov wrote: post #32
InclinedPlane wrote: post #6

In 1914 far more jobs involved physical labor, even house work. Also, there wasn't as much opportunity to consume excess calories in 1914. The killer combination today is sedentary lifestyles PLUS too much food PLUS the wrong sorts of foods.

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

There is a relationship between exercise and weight but not nearly as big as people like to believe. You're right that diet has a much bigger impact.

I had to dig out this paper the other day because someone that I was talking to did not want to believe that weight is mainly tied to one's diet:

http://www.nature.com/?file=%2Fijo%2Fjournal%2Fv21%2Fn10%2Fa...

I'm not sure if this is behind a paywall (my uni has access to everything on Nature's site), so here is the salient bit:

RESULTS: Primarily, subjects aged 40 y have been studied (39.5±0.4 y, mean±s.e.m.) who are only moderately obese (92.7±0.9 kg, 33.2±0.5 body mass index (BMI), 33.4±0.7% body fat); for short durations (15.6±0.6 weeks). Exercise studies were of a shorter duration, used younger subjects who weighed less, had lower BMI and percentage body fat values, than diet or diet plus exercise studies. Despite these differences, weight lost through diet, exercise and diet plus exercise was 10.7±0.5, 2.9±0.4* and 11.0±0.6 kg, respectively.

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

#55

Post by Swannie »

robchez wrote: post #46
jf271 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bad/good. Forget those descriptors.

Fructose found in fruit is indeed no different. But it is in fruit, bound up with fibre, protein, and many enzymes. In HFCS it's just fructose.

The delivery mechanism is more important here than the lab breakdown.

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

#57

Post by robchez »

Swannie wrote: post #55
robchez wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Bad/good. Forget those descriptors. Fructose found in fruit is indeed no different. But it is in fruit, bound up with fibre, protein, and many enzymes. In HFCS it's just fructose. The delivery mechanism is more important here than the lab breakdown.

not really, fructose no matter the form is ot broken down in the gut so its shunted to the liver (much like other toxins). There it does all sorts of crazy stuff.

Modern fruit (due to selective breeding) is ultra sweet with what I can assume were pretty bland flavored fruit back in the day. Natures Candy.

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

#58

Post by nitrogen »

crystalis wrote: post #38
kragen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take a cup of flour from 1914 and a cup of AP flour from 2011. Place them side by side on the counter top. Tell me how they are different from each other. Have you actually done this? Do you really expect someone else to be able to do it? You've managed to come across as really patronizing but I can't tell if you actually have a point. I'm no expert on milling technology, but I imagine today's flour is finer (just…

Flours today are more refined and more likely to be bleached. Extended with fillers and soaked in sweeteners is stated to be how "grains are typically available to us." Wonderbread is a fair example, and the "standard" muffin that typically has 30 or more grams of sugar is another. Oatmeal today, in its most common presentations, will have a great deal of sugar.

What does "more refined" mean in this context, and what makes that bad? In other words, is flour simply ground to smaller sizes, chemically altered to remove certain elements, ...?

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

#59

Post by desigooner »

mdemare wrote: post #53

The trouble with this subject is that everybody, including commenters in this thread, thinks they already know what the solution is, even before they have a good grasp of the problem. I recommend reading Gary Taubes ("Good Calories, Bad Calories", "Why We Get Fat"), not because of what he thinks that the solution is, but to understand the range of facts that a theory of obesity must explain. When Taubes starts to pro…

I haven't read anything recent from Taubes but is he still peddling the Atkins diet or has he moved on to the Paleo diet?! I find it irritating that Taubes ends up cherry picking data to support his hypothesis.

But then I subscribe to the Lyle McDonald-Mark Rippetoe line of thought when it comes to nutrition-fitness ideology.

.

Edit:If it interests anyone, here's a transcript from a Larry King Live episode hosted by Joy Behar with Gary Taubes on to talk about his book and Dr. Mehmet Oz + Gillian Michaels and Dr. Andrew Weil (an "integrative" medicine evangelist)

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0710/19/lkl.01.html

My main problem with Taubes is that he dismisses exercise and portion control/moderation in favor of his Atkinsian approach

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

#60

Post by shpxnvz »

nitrogen wrote: post #58
crystalis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flours today are more refined and more likely to be bleached. Extended with fillers and soaked in sweeteners is stated to be how "grains are typically available to us." Wonderbread is a fair example, and the "standard" muffin that typically has 30 or more grams of sugar is another. Oatmeal today, in its most common presentations, will have a great deal of sugar.

What does "more refined" mean in this context, and what makes that bad? In other words, is flour simply ground to smaller sizes, chemically altered to remove certain elements, ...?

Wheat germ is removed from white flour in order to increase shelf-life and rising ability, which removes useful fatty-acids, oils and nutrients as well as fiber and protein. Whole-wheat flour is flour that has not had the germ removed.
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