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People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

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Re: People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

#261

Post by aidenn0 »

mattlondon wrote: post #254
marinmania wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly recommend people get a food scale/measuring cups and weighing everything single thing they eat (even small things like nuts and cooking oil) for at least two weeks. After that I think you have a much better appreciation for how many calories your regular meals and snacks have.

+1 The killer for me was breakfast cereals. The box shows a full bowl of whatever, full to the brim etc. in reality the pictures are probably 5 or 6 or more servings - a single serving would barely even cover the base of the bowl and even then be 200ish calories before milk. If you just pour yourself "a bowl" of cereal without thinking or weighing then you're probably having 1200+ calories (or about 50% of your entir…

I don't know if they still do this, but I remember Special K cereal had identical calories listed for their various varieties, despite obvious differences in the ingredients; they just changed the portion size for each variety.

Re: People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

#262

Post by keybored »

2cynykyl wrote: post #93
everdrive wrote: post #81

A lot of people seem to have a purely emotional relationship with resources which logic doesn't seem to be able to penetrate. Food and finances seem similar here. For years I tried to get my wife to stick to a grocery budget. That is, we have $n per week for all groceries. She'd blow badly over the limit every time. "But we needed [food]" or "These were toiletries, so they don't _count_ as groceries." Ultimately we n…

Im reading Sapiens at the moment and one statement really got my attention: human society is a marvel, but individually we are embarrassingly similar to Chimps. This mental model really helps put put so much behavior into context, like resource hogging and the hoarding instinct, despite obvious surplus of everything everywhere at all times.

[deleted]

Re: People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

#263

Post by yapyap »

UomoNeroNero wrote: post #200
wnorris510 wrote: post #130

I've done research in this space for many years at Google AI and now at SnapCalorie. The thing I find interesting is how confident people are in their ability to estimate portion size visually, and in truth how wrong they all are. We published in CVPR (top peer reviewed academic conference for computer vision) and people are on average off by 53% and even trained professionals are still off by 40%. Basically if you w…

I have been diabetic for 20 years. I have tried every method, app, plan, and tool, including systems falsely marketed as "smart." No method works or delivers decent results except for using a scale and weighing ALL the ingredients. For a diabetic, eating "out" is always a roll of the dice. The "fun" feedback from post-meal blood sugar is always a reminder of how "eyeballing a plate" is utterly useless.

I’m rather unknowledgeable on diabetes, so here’s a question that may seem basic:

does choosing healthier meal, a salad instead of sweet ribs, not suffice for a good blood sugar?

Re: People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

#264

Post by Spinnaker_ »

watwut wrote: post #152
everdrive wrote: post #81

A lot of people seem to have a purely emotional relationship with resources which logic doesn't seem to be able to penetrate. Food and finances seem similar here. For years I tried to get my wife to stick to a grocery budget. That is, we have $n per week for all groceries. She'd blow badly over the limit every time. "But we needed [food]" or "These were toiletries, so they don't _count_ as groceries." Ultimately we n…

> they struggle with actually putting it into action [...] conceding to their cravings The trouble is that people who have no problems to do this ... are the ones at risk for anorexia. They lack the instincts that make the rest of us safe from that particular hell.

That's just a healthy relationship with food, not a risk for anorexia.

Re: People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

#265

Post by bradlys »

aziaziazi wrote: post #29

For those that "track and weight everything" (how ?) do you manage ?: - sauces you make yourself? I often mix some different oils, mustard, seeds, miso, bit of leamon juice and spices… but weighting and logging everything will take 3x the time to do the sauce itself - different cooking time in one receive : oignons going first, tomato sauce in the middle and parsley at the end (but still cook a bit with residual heat…

90%+ of the effort is just weighing everything and writing it down. If you make a lot of custom dishes that's fine - just save the recipe and measure out the ingredients consistently. Weigh out your portions and it's not a big deal...

People who are tracking everything are usually doing it because they're trying to achieve a particular goal that involves cutting or bulking. I don't know too many people who do rigorous calorie tracking to achieve maintenance unless their body is their profession.

Re: People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

#266

Post by taeric »

jacobr1 wrote: post #246
taeric wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may be famously large, but I don't think they are abnormally large for most of the US nowadays? I certainly didn't think they were particularly big when I visited.

Katz serves roughly 3/4 lbs of meat. That is particularly big. You can get triple hamburgers which would be similar is size - but most people are ordering singles or doubles. And you can find other kinds of large sandwiches around the country ... but it is not the most common of sizes.

I think what made them not seem excessively large to me, is that it didn't really come with much else? Yes, it was more meat than I would get on a sandwich, typically. But... that is about it?

Maybe I got too used to some of the obscure burrito places around Atlanta that would put way too much on them?

Re: People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

#267

Post by skyyler »

yapyap wrote: post #263
UomoNeroNero wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been diabetic for 20 years. I have tried every method, app, plan, and tool, including systems falsely marketed as "smart." No method works or delivers decent results except for using a scale and weighing ALL the ingredients. For a diabetic, eating "out" is always a roll of the dice. The "fun" feedback from post-meal blood sugar is always a reminder of how "eyeballing a plate" is utterly useless.

I’m rather unknowledgeable on diabetes, so here’s a question that may seem basic: does choosing healthier meal, a salad instead of sweet ribs, not suffice for a good blood sugar?

So, first off, commercial salad dressing almost always has sugar in it. Look at the nutritional facts label next time you're shopping for it. There's a few brands that offer "simple vinegar and oil" style dressings that don't have any sugar in them, but MOST salad dressings Americans come in contact with are full of sugar.

Even low GI foods still cause blood sugar to raise by some amount.

All of the vegetables in the salad have carbohydrates that will raise blood sugar. Carrots, onions, tomatoes, all of that will raise blood sugar. Croutons? Blood sugar.

Obviously selecting a garden salad with no dressing is a healthier choice than "sweet ribs". Most diabetics (that are managing their condition) are not going to be ordering things with refined sugar in them.

Where things get tricky is asking questions like "what's healthier, a honey-miso glazed salmon with brown rice or a salad with croutons and a honey and berry dressing?" or "What's better for you, grilled chicken with a sugary barbeque sauce or fried chicken with no sauce?"

Re: People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

#268

Post by ryan-richt »

wnorris510 wrote: post #130

I've done research in this space for many years at Google AI and now at SnapCalorie. The thing I find interesting is how confident people are in their ability to estimate portion size visually, and in truth how wrong they all are. We published in CVPR (top peer reviewed academic conference for computer vision) and people are on average off by 53% and even trained professionals are still off by 40%. Basically if you w…

There is actually an elegant _mathematical_ solution to this problem using sensor fusion and a differential equation model of the science: if you weigh your food almost all of the time at home, and only make portion and ingredient guesses when infrequently eating out, we can actually estimate your personal rate of underestimation and correct for it.

Our startup (BODYSIM.com) has also been doing research on this a long time. As founders, we all have >16 months of daily food logging mostly by kitchen scale weights, aligned to daily BIA-scale weigh-ins, fitness tracker calories, bi-weekly blood tests, monthly DEXAs, 3D scans, etc etc. We also have a science-based structural model of macronutrient balance and muscle hypertrophy. Given all that, we can VERY confidently estimate your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) and its components, and predict how your fat and muscle mass will change on a daily basis. This is real math/science so you can also run it in reverse. This ("simultaneity constraint") provides enough constraints we can estimate users' individual underestimating/over-indulgence when eating out. In fact, it's better to just NOT log those days AT ALL and we can fill them in. I think this solution isn't more widely used b/c you need all this other "quantified self" type data at the same time.

Re: People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

#269

Post by steveBK123 »

yapyap wrote: post #263
UomoNeroNero wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been diabetic for 20 years. I have tried every method, app, plan, and tool, including systems falsely marketed as "smart." No method works or delivers decent results except for using a scale and weighing ALL the ingredients. For a diabetic, eating "out" is always a roll of the dice. The "fun" feedback from post-meal blood sugar is always a reminder of how "eyeballing a plate" is utterly useless.

I’m rather unknowledgeable on diabetes, so here’s a question that may seem basic: does choosing healthier meal, a salad instead of sweet ribs, not suffice for a good blood sugar?

Not a diabetic but adult later onset lactose intolerant and the problem is you really have NO idea what restaurants put into stuff, even if you ask.

Even a stupid salad, what's in the dressing, what's in the bread/croutons, what was the meat glazed with. Etc.

Restaurant food tastes good because it is generally unhealthy top to bottom, with quantities of salt, butter, etc no sane person would use at home.

One thought experiment - when was the last time you ate out and needed to add salt to anything? Now thing of home cooking how often you might add a little salt while you are eating.

The easiest thing to do is ruling out restaurants entirely, but then that's rather anti-social.. Not to mention family/friends gatherings, etc.

Re: People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research

#270

Post by InitialLastName »

nemomarx wrote: post #145
agos wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yup, it will. Nobody said tracking nutrients was quick. well, many say it's "easy" (it's not)

tbh it's "easy" if you're also doing a pretty specific focused diet. (maybe simple would be a better phrase - it can be reduced to very simple steps. mentally choosing to do this and enduring it is difficult, but the process itself is straightforward.) like the worry about sauces is true but if you eat mostly chicken and rice and one slice of bread a day you can really get that variability down. when I was heavily re…

One insidious thing is that it's incredibly easy to do food tracking if you eat mostly single-serving prepared foods, but those are, by nature of being incredibly palatable and digestible, the most psychologically and metabolically challenging foods to maintain a calorie deficit with.
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