Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny Wild speculation time: In ancient times, when the times got rough, there was always a pre-crisis-phase, aka you witnessed something traumatic, but were not yet impacted by it yourself. Stressing yourself out and triggering that "horror"-phase (movies/ evening news) makes your body go into the "binge" for reserves during crisis mode. Testable Hypothesis: End of the World screaming makes you fat, Continuous bored…
Should be able to see a significant uptick in BMI across the population between 2019 and now if this is the case...
A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
41–50 of 201 posts
Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
#42Saying "Calories In Calories Out" is what makes you fat is as interesting as saying "Money In Money Out" is what makes you poor. It's tautologically true but doesn't help anybody.
If there is anything that people who want to lose weight should do, it's eat less. Skip the snack. Smaller portions. That's incredibly hard to do, of course, and easier said than done, but ultimately it is behind virtually all successful weight loss. What is behind an enormous number of failed weight loss attempts are waving that away and believing some specific macronutrient is really the cause, if you just subscribe to whatever the current trend is.
People get really upset about the calories reality.
And indeed if you compare caloric intake between say 1970 and 2010, there was a significant jump in the average diet. Grain products rose, but not nearly as much as fats and oils rose. People ate more and they got fatter. When excess accumulates over time, the increase doesn't have to be large. More calories in, BMI increased.
Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
#43There is something I dont understand about this. Is it really true that carb consumption has gone down? My own anecdotal experience is that people are drinking way more sodas and eating way more candy than they used to (in 70/80'ies my childhood). Like where I live now every other street corner has those "mix-your-own candy bag" shops, where you pay by the 100g. There must be someone buying that stuff, since they kee…
This doesn't seem to match the data: https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-are-drinking-less-...
Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
#44Saying "Calories In Calories Out" is what makes you fat is as interesting as saying "Money In Money Out" is what makes you poor. It's tautologically true but doesn't help anybody.
But it's the fundamental, most basic truth. If there is anything that people who want to lose weight should do, it's eat less . Skip the snack. Smaller portions. That's incredibly hard to do, of course, and easier said than done, but ultimately it is behind virtually all successful weight loss. What is behind an enormous number of failed weight loss attempts are waving that away and believing some specific macronutri…
Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's the fundamental, most basic truth. If there is anything that people who want to lose weight should do, it's eat less . Skip the snack. Smaller portions. That's incredibly hard to do, of course, and easier said than done, but ultimately it is behind virtually all successful weight loss. What is behind an enormous number of failed weight loss attempts are waving that away and believing some specific macronutri…
It no more fundamental or surprising than the "truth" that giving up smoking is done by not smoking cigarettes.
But there are massive industries[1] that exist to tell people that no, it's really that you aren't eating enough food that is red. Or that fell to the ground. Or whatever. Whatever magical, simple fix means that they can still eat an excess of calories. These diets have a failure rate approaching 100%. The US is the most diet focused country in planetary history, yet also one of the fattest.
Maybe pretending that the basic thermodynamics are just some unachievable mirage is a really profoundly stupid approach?
And yes, people who have actually lost weight (or, more often than not, not gain it in the first place) simply ate less (it's magnitudes harder to burn more calories to any meaningful amount). Virtually universally.
But this makes obese people angry. It always makes them angry.
[1] - And authors. This paper cites Stephen Guyenet casually dismissing "CICO". The guy makes his living pitching easy "AHA" moments to fat people. It is, ironically, his bread and butter.
Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
#46Saying "Calories In Calories Out" is what makes you fat is as interesting as saying "Money In Money Out" is what makes you poor. It's tautologically true but doesn't help anybody.
But it's the fundamental, most basic truth. If there is anything that people who want to lose weight should do, it's eat less . Skip the snack. Smaller portions. That's incredibly hard to do, of course, and easier said than done, but ultimately it is behind virtually all successful weight loss. What is behind an enormous number of failed weight loss attempts are waving that away and believing some specific macronutri…
Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
#47People are getting fat because they are consuming more calories. And they are consuming more calories because processed foods are engineered to make you overeat them. To lose weight, stop eating processed foods and learn to cook simple foods from scratch, minimizing the use of sugar, salt, and oil, three common appetite stimulants.
I've heard this being claimed a lot, and have therefore often thought about it while eating fast- and other processed foods, picking around in it trying to discover the big conspiracy, but I can't seem to find any substantial differences with what I make at home from raw ingredients.
The engineering seems to be geared more towards reproducibility of all the dishes over a large network of franchises around the world. It's still the same ingredients, they're just less tolerant of substitutions and deviations from the specs.
Maybe it's really a matter of fast food being compared to food cooked by unskilled home cooks who just happen to be suffering from a socially induced panic about some arbitrary ingredient, and therefore tends to produce a result that's just plain unpalatable compared to something made by a professional or a seasoned home cook.
No cook with any amount of self respect will make intentionally unpalatable food, and the French paradox clearly demonstrates that it's not necessary for food to be unpalatable to avoid obesity.
Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's the fundamental, most basic truth. If there is anything that people who want to lose weight should do, it's eat less . Skip the snack. Smaller portions. That's incredibly hard to do, of course, and easier said than done, but ultimately it is behind virtually all successful weight loss. What is behind an enormous number of failed weight loss attempts are waving that away and believing some specific macronutri…
TFA, and particularly the second part (link near the bottom) does quite a bit to refute this. It’s worth reading it all the way through.
Haven't people gotten a little less gullible about this stuff yet?
Look, some tribe had fruit on the ground and they weren't obese. Stuff that pizza is your mouth while we get to the bottom of this.
The reality is that calories have never been as available and cheap. And there is an absolutely lock-step correlation between dietary calories and obesity rates. No, it isn't the great mystery that it is held as. Indeed, this article spends most of its time debunking "it isn't the calories" dietary trends -- low fat, low carb, low sugar, low fat.
Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
#49And the 2nd. part: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/author/slimemoldtimemold/
>It’s true that people eat more calories today than they did in the 1960s and 70s, but the difference is quite small. Sources have a surprisingly hard time agreeing on just how much more we eat than our grandparents did, but all of them agree that it’s not much. Pew says calorie intake in the US increased from 2,025 calories per day in 1970 to about 2,481 calories per day in 2010. The USDA Economic Research Service es…
Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Should be able to see a significant uptick in BMI across the population between 2019 and now if this is the case...
A correlation between BMI and media consumption would be rather blatantly obvious i guess.