Eating Healthily for $3 a Day • Hacker News Board

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#311

Post by beagle3 » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 8:53 PM UTC

eavc wrote: post #291

beagle3 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started reading this hit piece, and saw, e.g. > "One can lose weight on a low-calorie diet if it is primarily composed of fat calories or carbohydrate calories or protein calories. It makes no difference!" Quoted from one of the "experts" refuting taubes. And yet, research by Robert Israel and Michel Cabanac (full list of references in Roberts' "What Makes Food Fattening" bibliography) shows that this is complet…

You're saying one can't lose weight on low-calorie diets that are primarily composed of carbs? In that case, we should send a single rice grain to all starving persons to serve as their only nutrition. I imagine you have a more nuanced point, but the statement you quoted is clearly true taken for what it actually is saying.

> I imagine you have a more nuanced point, but the statement you quoted is clearly true taken for what it actually is saying.

You are right, of course. Without quantifying (how low is "low calorie"?) these statements are useless.

There was an experiment in Mass General some 15 years ago, in which they were able to get people with similar lifestyle/activity on 1500 cal/day diet. About one third lost weight, one third stayed the same weight, and one third gained weight, depending on how exactly the diet was composed.

Yes, you will lose weight, regardless of diet composition, on less than 800 kcal/day. Is that "low calorie"? "too low calorie"? "moderate"?.

No, you will not necessarily lose weight on more than 800 kcal/day. You probably will if your diet was not specially crafted to make you keep your weight on 800 kcal. When you get up to the 1200-1500 range, there is a non-negligible probability of "accidentally" gaining weight (or at least not lose it) by randomly stumbling on a bad diet composition.

One of Cabanac's (If I'm not mistaken) experiment was able to make rats gain weight for 3 weeks on a diet of water+chalk (caloric value 0) for a while, by feeding them water+sugar+chalk for a while, and then dropping the sugar. Sure, it was water gain - but the calories in - calories out theory fails so miserably in this case (and countless others) that it cannot be taken seriously. (For only 3 weeks for a rat; it might not hold for a human for a few months in similar conditions).

The calorie accounting is an approximation at best, which possibly takes several months to a year to average out reasonably, whereas a lot of the research focuses on results over 3 months or less.

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#312

Post by SwellJoe » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 8:54 PM UTC

zach wrote: post #303

yummyfajitas wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we can be quite sure that the suspect(s) is a carbohydrate. How can we be so sure? The most obvious culprit is total calories. From 1980 to the present, total caloric consumption increased by 500 calories/day (see table 1 of my report). Coincidentally, obesity increased over the same period. But lets ignore that. Carb consumption decreased , both as a fraction of diet and in absolute numbers. Obesity increased .…

First off, I think this is good data and commend you for going back to the numbers to make your point. It's not perfect data - as the report says, by nature it's overstating actual consumption - but for short-term trends it is valuable. But I don't see where gross carbohydrates are decreasing in Table 1. It seems like they went from 420g in the 80's (from under 400g in the 70's) to 480 or so a decade ago.

Taubes argues from the perspective of percentage of total intake. I suppose someone arguing with him could do the same. I tend to prefer the idea of discussing absolute consumption, as you've done, and when we look at it that way, Americans are eating more of everything, across the board: More fat, more sugar, more carbs, more white flour, more pasta, more sodas, more fruit, more meat, etc.

The simplest explanation is that we eat too much. Taubes often argues that's not true, and comes up with elaborate theories about insulin response and such to indicate that we eat too much not because we're gluttonous and too rich for our own good, but because we are victims of some hyper-fattening food (carbs). Taubes theory is a hunch, based on incomplete science. This was the point of my comment way up there at the start of all this. His theory might have some validity. But, you can't simply wave away the fact that we have vast data indicating that a high carb, low fat diet, can be extremely healthy and not lead to weight gain. In fact, the best evidence we have today from large populations indicates that a low-fat, low-sugar, high fiber diet, like that eaten by the Japanese until very recently or in some Mediterranean regions, is probably the best we can do for health and longevity.

It will take a lot of science to convince me that flipping that on its end and making saturated fats and animal proteins a core part of your diet is healthier (or even healthy, at all, though it does appear to be dramatically less dangerous than the American scientific establishment would have us believe).

Anyway, I don't know if Taubes is right or wrong about his insulin and carbs conspiracy theory. I do know, however, that our food production industry has figured out how to cram a lot of calories into foods with little to no nutrition. So, skip the processed/packaged foods. Eat more whole foods. More fresh/frozen produce. Stop buying things that are unrecognizably separated from their original form. i.e. if it started out as a pile of corn and some other ingredients and is now a can of Coke, a snack cake, a donut, a breakfast bar, a "chicken" nugget, or a "whole grain" breakfast cereal; skip it; it's probably not really food and is probably a net negative for your health.

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#313

Post by jessedhillon » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 8:58 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #280

hammock wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This diet is pretty much the standard in many poor parts of the world - rice, beans, and fresh vegetables (in season). Billions of people across the planet have figured out that it's cheap and nutritious. Glad he could figure it out on his own too.

Many people in poor parts of the world get their daily B12 from fecal contamination in the water supply. It's actually an issue because cleaning up the water supply makes them deficient.

Can you provide sources for this claim?

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#314

Post by KVFinn » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 9:03 PM UTC

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #304

lsc wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I find it amusing that you say that, since I never implied any such thing. really? because four servings of coffee a day doesn't seem that much over the median dose, at least among people I know, if you adjust for body size. When I'm on, I consume more caffeine than that. So, to me, suggesting that someone has a problem when the dosage is that close to the median suggests that you are criticizing the delivery method…

I'm not criticizing the medium at all. In terms of health benefits, eating a caffeine pill is healthier than consuming the equivalent amount of coffee. No doubt alcohol withdrawl is worse, but if we're performing comparative metrics, I can vaporize cannabis for two months straight and stop all of the sudden without so much as a thought. I drank a twelve pack of coke across 4 days and had headaches for that Friday and…

People don't consume it just to stay functional, there are positives associated with caffeine that may outweigh the negatives. In particular, if you have any dementia in the family, it is one of the only known effective ways to reduce that risk.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21422521

http://iospress.metapress.com/content/d885346618q57103/fullt...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19158424

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20182054

The most stunning result: http://health.usf.edu/nocms/publicaffairs/now/pdfs/JAD_Arend...

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#315

Post by georgieporgie » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 9:18 PM UTC

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #306

georgieporgie wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're taking a stimulant to get through the day Come again? This is news to me. when one form of it is taken away, you supplement with another form. Again, what? I decided to try caffeine in a pill form and found that I mostly prefer it to the coffee form. Nothing was taken away. How is that different than a junkie getting their fix to stave off withdrawl For starters, because I don't experience any withdrawl. You d…

I can't get over the amount of defending people do here of DOSING caffeine. Your first comment was specifically talking about the psychological effects that you're getting from the chemical stimulant caffeine. You find that going to the pure, drug-only, form of it is better for you. You clearly consume it for the stimulant effects, or why else would you take it. > someone who is physiologically dependent on a substan…

I can't get over the amount of defending people do here of DOSING caffeine.

Since I don't want to keep going in circles, I'm just going to say this: replace, "dosing caffeine" with the less inflammatory, "drinking coffee." Now, consider what the difference is.

Regarding your claim that you didn't say it was a bad thing, I will remind you that you wrote, "How is that different than a junkie getting their fix to stave off withdrawl." If that's not passing judgment on someone, I don't know what is.

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#316

Post by zach » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 9:36 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #312

zach wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, I think this is good data and commend you for going back to the numbers to make your point. It's not perfect data - as the report says, by nature it's overstating actual consumption - but for short-term trends it is valuable. But I don't see where gross carbohydrates are decreasing in Table 1. It seems like they went from 420g in the 80's (from under 400g in the 70's) to 480 or so a decade ago.

Taubes argues from the perspective of percentage of total intake. I suppose someone arguing with him could do the same. I tend to prefer the idea of discussing absolute consumption, as you've done, and when we look at it that way, Americans are eating more of everything, across the board: More fat, more sugar, more carbs, more white flour, more pasta, more sodas, more fruit, more meat, etc. The simplest explanation i…

Hmm. Maybe Gary Taubes has changed his approach, because in a typically-logorrhetic blog post last year, he went on about why low-fat calorie-restricted diets work exactly because the "absolute amount of carbohydrates consumed goes down."

http://www.garytaubes.com/2010/12/calories-fat-or-carbohydra...

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#317

Post by dkarl » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 9:45 PM UTC

aberkowitz wrote: post #302

dkarl wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sugar crash is a good sign. If you stop constantly pumping sugar into your body, your body will eventually starting maintaining your blood sugar on its own -- which is how it's supposed to work. Starving writers have been known to buy horse meat at pet stores. I wonder if that's still legal? Also, I wonder if organ meats are cheap, since they're so unpopular in the U.S.? They can be very nutrient-rich. Lentils and ri…

> your body will eventually starting maintaining your blood sugar on its own I was under the impression that a sugar crash is the result of your body maintaining your blood sugar on it's own[0]. [0] On it's own, meaning secreting insulin from the pancreas to maintain homeostasis.

Secreting insulin is the mechanism that keeps blood sugar down, which is only half the job of homeostasis. The other half is keeping blood sugar up when you haven't eaten a bunch of carbs recently, and it seems (anecdotally) that if people don't exercise that second half -- i.e., if they keep their blood sugar up by eating constantly -- that their body's ability to keep blood sugar up on its own atrophies.

When your body's blood sugar regulation is working properly, you can skip one or two meals without any dire consequences(+). You have a bunch of glycogen in your muscles and liver, for one thing, and your body just has to release that energy into your bloodstream as glucose. It's really that simple, but the impression I get from a lot of people is that their blood sugar regulation is only half-working. They take it for granted that if they miss lunch, they're going to be a wreck in the afternoon. They become tired and irritable, and they may even have headaches. That shouldn't be considered normal. A sugar crash isn't a normal reaction to a brief interruption of a healthy diet; it's a warning sign that your diet before the crash was not healthy.

(+) I won't swear this holds true if you exercise intensely, since I haven't tried it, but the paleo lifestyle guys say they have no problem exercising on their "lean" days.

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#318

Post by yummyfajitas » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 9:47 PM UTC

zach wrote: post #303

yummyfajitas wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we can be quite sure that the suspect(s) is a carbohydrate. How can we be so sure? The most obvious culprit is total calories. From 1980 to the present, total caloric consumption increased by 500 calories/day (see table 1 of my report). Coincidentally, obesity increased over the same period. But lets ignore that. Carb consumption decreased , both as a fraction of diet and in absolute numbers. Obesity increased .…

First off, I think this is good data and commend you for going back to the numbers to make your point. It's not perfect data - as the report says, by nature it's overstating actual consumption - but for short-term trends it is valuable. But I don't see where gross carbohydrates are decreasing in Table 1. It seems like they went from 420g in the 80's (from under 400g in the 70's) to 480 or so a decade ago.

Sorry, I meant a decrease from 1909-1919 to the present. I was definitely unclear, sorry about that. You are right, total carb consumption did increase since 1980.

But if carbs were the issue, shouldn't we have been fat in 1909-1919, thin in the 80's, and fat again?

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#319

Post by drivebyacct2 » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 10:08 PM UTC

georgieporgie wrote: post #315

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get over the amount of defending people do here of DOSING caffeine. Your first comment was specifically talking about the psychological effects that you're getting from the chemical stimulant caffeine. You find that going to the pure, drug-only, form of it is better for you. You clearly consume it for the stimulant effects, or why else would you take it. > someone who is physiologically dependent on a substan…

I can't get over the amount of defending people do here of DOSING caffeine. Since I don't want to keep going in circles, I'm just going to say this: replace, "dosing caffeine" with the less inflammatory, "drinking coffee." Now, consider what the difference is. Regarding your claim that you didn't say it was a bad thing, I will remind you that you wrote, "How is that different than a junkie getting their fix to stave…

You're not drinking coffee though, you're, I'm laughing here because I keep having to reiterate this...

You're not consuming coffee because you like coffee. That's obvious. You like the buzz. You like the stimulant effect of the drug caffeine. I am comparing in the motions of a junkie... I know caffeine addicts that are bigger caffeine junkies than some hard drug users I know. It's neither here nor there, but I could care less if you shoot heroin, let alone drink coffee or take caffeine pills. If it helps you do your job and it doesn't ruin your life, fine. Lord knows I'm sick this week during a week that I simply can not be sick, I'm using Aleve and Mountain Dew like they're going out of style.

I just wanted to point out that plenty of people are very productive without caffeine. Seeing as caffeine doesn't give you abnormal abilities... it seems to be that it would be better to not be dependent on it, or not use it as a crutch, or whatever it is that you're using it for.

Re: Eating Healthily for $3 a Day

#320

Post by drivebyacct2 » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 10:10 PM UTC

KVFinn wrote: post #314

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not criticizing the medium at all. In terms of health benefits, eating a caffeine pill is healthier than consuming the equivalent amount of coffee. No doubt alcohol withdrawl is worse, but if we're performing comparative metrics, I can vaporize cannabis for two months straight and stop all of the sudden without so much as a thought. I drank a twelve pack of coke across 4 days and had headaches for that Friday and…

People don't consume it just to stay functional, there are positives associated with caffeine that may outweigh the negatives. In particular, if you have any dementia in the family, it is one of the only known effective ways to reduce that risk. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21422521 http://iospress.metapress.com/content/d885346618q57103/fullt... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19158424 http://www.ncbi.nlm.ni…

That's absolutely fair and I was slightly familiar with the idea of benefits of caffeine. Do I think that we were discussing these benefits? Not really. Like I said, I don't have a problem with people supplementing with caffeine. As I've mentioned, I do it occasionally, I just don't make it part of my daily routine.