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Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

science.org

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Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#491

Post by beowulfey »

rdiddly wrote: post #312

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

It’s maybe three paragraphs total of his life, then it’s back to the findings. I skipped those paragraphs too.

The article is essentially a summation of Pontzer’s past decade or so of work (and I do find the work to be really interesting), so if you want just the meaty bits you can probably try reading the original papers.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#492

Post by akeck »

Xcelerate wrote: post #487

The article seems to miss what is (at least to me) the most interesting follow-up question: if exercise doesn’t cause a person to burn significantly more Calories throughout the day to induce weight loss, then what does? I’m somewhat hard-pressed to believe the answer is diet alone. Anecdotally, when I was running 100 miles per week in college for cross country, I ate three or four giant meals per day and maintained…

If I recall correctly, capital "C" Calorie, used in nutrition, is another term for kilocalorie. Lowercase "c" calorie is the SI unit. 1 kcal/Calorie is 1000 calories.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#493

Post by abhinavm »

rdiddly wrote: post #312

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

I hate this type of journalism. Article writers are driven by metrics given to them by publishers. In this case, the metric they might be trying to optimise is time spent on the website.

This type of journalism works well if the backstories are tied well together to the main story, and is done by a good writer. But when average writers do it, the stories are tedious, and hard to read.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#494

Post by coldtea »

rdiddly wrote: post #312

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

It's apparently the canonical way all long story/articles have to be written. It's as if those people wanted to be authors instead of journalists...

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#495

Post by coldtea »

abhinavm wrote: post #493
rdiddly wrote: post #312

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

I hate this type of journalism. Article writers are driven by metrics given to them by publishers. In this case, the metric they might be trying to optimise is time spent on the website. This type of journalism works well if the backstories are tied well together to the main story, and is done by a good writer. But when average writers do it, the stories are tedious, and hard to read.

>Article writers are driven by metrics given to them by publishers. In this case, the metric they might be trying to optimise is time spent on the website.

It's not that. It also happens in written media. It's not just as filler either. They have the dellusion that this makes the story better...

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#496

Post by gima »

hwers wrote: post #473
rdiddly wrote: post #312

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

This is a reason we shouldn't feel ashamed about developing a habit of skimming. In many cases it's simply a proper adaption to an incredibly low signal to noise ratio in most articles you're exposed to on the internet.

Props to this.

I have developed a habit of skipping to the end of the whole page, and reading towards the beginning, paragraph-by-paragraph. Works..sometimes :D

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#497

Post by wccrawford »

dTal wrote: post #454
namdnay wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single cinnamon roll is nearly 500 calories. As soon as you’re combining fat and sugar things skyrocket

I would not class eating TWO cinnamon buns back to back as a "snack", but rather "a disgusting pig-out". Am I sheltered?

No, I think you have your head on right.

I used to eat a lot of candy, but I never considered eating more than a handful of anything a "snack".

That said, what do you call it when you eat something that isn't a meal? I don't think most people have any word other than "snack" without resorting to things that sound like insults, like "pig out". And it's really hard for most people to insult themselves.

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#498

Post by carlmr »

michalu wrote: post #352
rdiddly wrote: post #312

Last thing I saw was "The son of two high school English teachers, Pontzer grew up on 40 hectares of woods in the Appalachian bla bla bla..." You know that sentence. So many articles have that sentence. The one where it veers off course to talk about the (usually uninteresting) person who found the thing the article is ostensibly and nominally about. Am I alone in being perfectly happy reading about science for the d…

Whenever there's insignificant science making "controversial" claims like "you can't lose weight with sport" journalist will provide storytelling instead of science. The whole premise of that "You can’t exercise your way out of obesity" is that you burn more calories when you start running than later on as you continue. What's so controversial about it? It's normal that body optimizes for energy expenditure that's wh…

> Whenever there's insignificant science making "controversial" claims like "you can't lose weight with sport" journalist will provide storytelling instead of science.

I think this is quite the claim, maybe you should provide some evidence. I think it sounds reasonable to assume that those that lack the scientific basis will use storytelling to convince, because they have nothing else. But I'm not sure about the reverse.

Here we have storytelling, but the story is peppered with some data from experiments that support the claim. So how does storytelling imply lack of evidence?

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#499

Post by namdnay »

dTal wrote: post #454
namdnay wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single cinnamon roll is nearly 500 calories. As soon as you’re combining fat and sugar things skyrocket

I would not class eating TWO cinnamon buns back to back as a "snack", but rather "a disgusting pig-out". Am I sheltered?

I’m not a big fan of sugar so I wouldn’t be able to eat a whole cinnamon roll, let alone two. But if I’m doing a big hike I’ll have no problem demolishing a whole tub of rillettes, which must be at least 1000kcal

Re: Scientist busts myths about how humans burn calories

#500

Post by nelblu »

mannykannot wrote: post #29
dahart wrote: post #4

> “You can’t exercise your way out of obesity,” […] “you can’t outrun a bad diet.” While this article is being a bit dramatic and possibly understating the impact of exercise slightly, I feel a little dumb that I didn’t know this earlier. It took me several decades too long to understand the obvious, that exercise is for building strength, and losing weight happens by eating less. I tried for way too many years to ex…

This is purely anecdotal, with a sample size of one even if it is right, but it seems to me, personally, that exercise suppresses my appetite to some extent. I can't say that this is even real, but if it is, my best guess as to why this might be is that the exercise subtly stimulates/irritates my gut such that I am de-motivated to eat, either by feeling full or subliminally 'sick to my stomach'. After running a marat…

For me exercise does suppress the urge to eat sugary things. I don't know if it's subconscious or just how my body reacts but on days when I have good exercise, especially long runs I feel less urge to have sugars and more urge to eat chicken, cheese etc.

It doesn't really suppress the urge to eat though. Unfortunately I had to learn the hard way that I must count my calories, I have been counting them for 15+ years now and it has become part of my life.

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