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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

#371

Post by CrimsonCape »

nemomarx wrote: post #343
robrenaud wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our genes are heavily evolved to live in calorie scarce environments. In those environments, high calorie foods are amazing. Our biology is built to find them incredibly rewarding. Science and capitalism have created incredibly delicious foods that are nutritionally lacking, hyper optimized for (against?) our now mis-aligned reward system. In the west, calories are not scarce and the most delcious foods are far from…

that's the macro change, yeah, but the rate of increase in obesity in the us got sharper after the 80s, so it doesn't feel like the complete picture to me. we got the abundant food and the largely car bound live cycles and it still kept getting worse for decades after that point. I suppose it could be generations growing up only knowing this and so habituated to it more?

The ability to experience endorphins from things unrelated to food has gotten more expensive. Would you rather buy a $13 dollar move ticket and go hungry, or just buy a $13 McDonald's meal and go home to watch a movie? Buy a $75 dollar ticket to a special event? Buy several thousands of dollars in travel? Food is much easier to fill the gaps in feeling good.

The "public presence" of society has diminished due to the internet. You no longer need to put effort into constantly looking your best because social media helps curate your appearance. Going to Walmart is now so relaxed that you can wear pajamas. Putting on your "best appearance" occurs elsewhere in curated ways (i.e. facebook/instagram posts and careful selfies). You can "partition" your social life so that the people shopping at walmart see pajama-you while the Tinder matches see someone totally different.

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

#372

Post by BoiledCabbage »

steveBK123 wrote: post #355
foxyv wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes so much more sense than the labels in the USA.

US food labelling is insane. For example - lactose-free yogurt is often just regular yogurt with lactase enzyme added. If that's what I wanted, I'd buy regular yogurt and take a lactaid supplement.

What other method would you deem appropriate for removing lactose from milk? A targeted enzyme that removes it seems pretty wise to me.

Since they're not gonna use tweezers, :) are you suggesting instead engineer or breed a special set of cows that don't produce lactase in their milk?

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

#373

Post by MisterTea »

yellow_lead wrote: post #274
foxyv wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't help that food manufacturers intentionally make it hard to measure nutrition from most of their foods. They play around with serving sizes to hide carbohydrates making you have to do math just to keep up. Sometimes they will round down on grams of macros after setting the serving size so they can claim it has zero sugar when it does in fact have tons of sugar. Tic-tacs are the worst about this. They claim…

Plus the whole sugar vs. sugar alcohol nonsense, which I still don't completely understand.

I also hate the games they play with labeling such as "no sugar added." Bought a cherry pie from a local market labeled "no sugar added" thinking it was going to be extra tart only to take it home and taste sugar. Reading the label it listed sugar alcohol which I learned can cause gas and bloating in some people, which I soon found out. Once slice had me doubled over with gas pains a whole night and shit my brains out the next day. I got my money back for that piece of garbage pie. I want to punch whoever thought no sugar added means fuck all...

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

#374

Post by reubenswartz »

ryan-richt wrote: post #283
skyyler wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also watch out for "sugar by another name" ... pineapple puree, white grape juice/concentrate, apple juice/concentrate are very common commercial dressing ingredients to load up on sugar. Sure always ask for the vinaigrette eating out, but at home make your own salad dressing: * get a mixing bowl big enough to toss salad in, and a whisk * add 1T dijon mustard, 1T not-balsamic vinegar (balsamic is high sugar! I like s…

Making your own salad dressing is really easy and let's you have a salad you really like in a couple of minutes.

My recipe is basically what you have here, although I usually mix some balsamic and other vinegars, and add a bit lemon juice.

I went from feeling sorry for people who were "forced" to eat salads to craving them. (Side benefit of not having the afternoon urge to sleep.)

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

#375

Post by Pigalowda »

wrfrmers wrote: post #304
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…

Calories in -> calories out is flawed (or, rather, not useful) because metabolism is a feedback loop, not a one-way serial process. The types of foods you eat, how they're prepared, and when you eat them have complex influence for how hungry you feel and how much energy you have to exercise or resist impulses, as well as ramifications for the state of your physiology, per nutrient intake. CICO helps explain weight ma…

What happens if I ingest 0 calories for 3 months?

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

#376

Post by aziaziazi »

UomoNeroNero wrote: post #334
yapyap wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Is a really complex game. The basic reasoning is that for every X carbohydrates ingested, you need to inject Y insulin (according to a personal ratio). However, everything is complicated by numerous factors and the technology you use. Factors: how you feel, stress, exercise, what you ate in previous meals, your blood sugar level at the start of the meal, and the activities you’ll engage in after the meal (physical or…

> È un mondo difficile E vita intensa Felicità a momenti E futuro incerto

I was curious, for the other curious:

"It's a tough world And intense life Happiness in moments And uncertain future"

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

#378

Post by steveBK123 »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #372
steveBK123 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US food labelling is insane. For example - lactose-free yogurt is often just regular yogurt with lactase enzyme added. If that's what I wanted, I'd buy regular yogurt and take a lactaid supplement.

What other method would you deem appropriate for removing lactose from milk? A targeted enzyme that removes it seems pretty wise to me. Since they're not gonna use tweezers, :) are you suggesting instead engineer or breed a special set of cows that don't produce lactase in their milk?

A better description would be "lactase treated" milk. In any case, I found consuming it regularly for breakfast still lead me to feel unwell over time.

However I can periodically consume dairy when I take a strong dose of lactase supplements.

From some literature it does appear that manufacturers can use "lactose free" even for non-zero amounts of lactose (10mg per 100g).

This is actually higher lactose density than many cheese varieties, especially considering I would be consuming say 150-200g of yogurt, whereas if I am eating cheese its in small careful quantity.

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

#379

Post by darkhorse222 »

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…

This should be an indication that tracking as a personal health methodology is inherently flawed. Your body is your most accurate measurement system, both in terms of precision and accuracy but also in its multidimensional, intersectional measurement apparatus that completely demolishes the poor substitutes found in personal nutrition, which are continuously shown to be either flawed in theory or in practice.

Tracking takes more work and is less accurate. Bad trade.

The only use I see in tracking is to perhaps help one inform one's intuition. But that's as far as I'll go.

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

#380

Post by s1artibartfast »

oersted wrote: post #28
thefz wrote: post #12

Everything needs to be weighted on a precise scale, every ingredient and not just the macros. On top of that the reported nutrition values on labels can be wrong by a large margin so for not whole foods, we introduce an error. This is why calorie counting is ballparking to get us a general idea, and not a precise science.

I find the way we measure calories very interesting: place the food in a metal box filled with oxygen, immerse the box in water, make the food explode so that it combusts completely, and finally measure how much the water heats up. Rather crude and fun, but that's it, see Bomb Calorimeter. I guess it makes sense in retrospect, how else would you do it? They usually just measure standard basic ingredients, then you ro…

I think it is an interesting and underappreciated aspect of calorie counting as well. I think calories are a decent first order approximation for foods that humans (and animals) evolved eating, because we are efficient extracting chemical energy.

The alternative would be empirical animal studies that look directly at weight as a function of feed. You will note that agribusiness doesn't mess around with calories when money is on the line. Instead relies on empirical data for mass as a function of feed type.

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