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

science.org

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

#411

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #136

People are bad at reporting ANYTHING. Exercise, food, sex, grooming. Just ask a lawyer or anybody trying to get a story out of somebody. This should be a fundamental understanding of anybody asking people anything. That scientists imagine there's some accurately-reporting population of subjects for their experiment is an example of the breathtaking naivete of scientists.

>breathtaking naivete of scientists.

Crows are never whiter by washing.

You cannot dispense common sense through the educational system. Most career scientists are mediocre, and/or they are trying to survive in a rigged system.

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

#412

Post by je42 »

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.

What works well is to measure the same food multiple times in a container (every time same volume ).

after a while you can estimate carbs by visually inspecting the contents without scale.

Add to that automatic bolus by a semi closed loop system to correct for errors, you can achieve good results with minimal effort.

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

#413

Post by Full_Clark »

ryan-richt wrote: post #268
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 lon…

How reliable do you find the calories-burned data from fitness trackers to be? Are there any brands that have higher accuracy than others? Are there any hardware features like pulse monitoring that improve the accuracy?

I find that the raw step count varies up to 66% between my phone and my wrist-worn tracker and I can't close that gap just by making sure my phone is never left behind.

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

#414

Post by freedomben »

rini17 wrote: post #359
freedomben wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANA nutritionist or expert at all in this area so take this with a grain of salt, but my understanding from looking into it is that the sugar alcohol doesn't break down in digestion and isn't absorbed, that's why the "carbs" from sugar alcohol "don't count." I would recommend taking it easy on the sugar alcohols even though they "don't count" because they can cause significant gas ;-)

And some like xylitol are highly toxic to dogs, must be careful around them.

Indeed. My dog loves the dissolve-on-your-tongue melatonin, but it is super deadly to her because of the Xylitol. I keep it on a high shelf now and am very careful to pick up any pieces that might get dropped. She made it through, but that was a terrifying few days D-:

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

#415

Post by ksenzee »

WheatMillington wrote: post #409
ksenzee wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cereal bowl sizes vary wildly, to make it even more confusing. Mine hold two cups (~450ml). Some hold way more than that. Some hold less. Buy a new set of bowls and you might be affecting your entire household’s eating habits.

You don't have to fill a bowl to the top with whatever you're eating lol

Well, no, but people do. The whole point of this thread is "people are bad at estimating quantity." If it looks the same size as it used to be, but in reality it's half again as big, that's going to have an effect.

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

#416

Post by barnabyjones »

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?

A2 milk not only exists but is very popular in Asia actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_a2_Milk_Company

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

#417

Post by makeitdouble »

nemomarx wrote: post #258
bluGill wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The compensation is often lower energy levels. Your body compensates by keeping you from doing as much.

yeah, you want to force yourself to do some activities that keep your metabolism up along with the restrictions you can't exercise out of a bad diet but exercise is a helpful supplement to a good diet too. it's just that making yourself do it when you're tired and hungry is draining.

One of the traps is mental health. People focus on their body when dieting, but there are far more aspects to manage, and forcing themselves to do things they utterly hate will have wider impacts.

At the end of the day they'll blame will power or motivation or whatever else on why the diet failed, but still won't account for these same factors when trying the next diet involving basically the same mechanics.

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

#418

Post by exhilaration »

barnabyjones wrote: post #416
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A2 milk not only exists but is very popular in Asia actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_a2_Milk_Company

What does A2 milk have to do with lactose? I don't see lactose mentioned in your link.

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

#419

Post by username135 »

bluGill wrote: post #364
BobaFloutist wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite example is that cooking spray advertises 0g of fat, giving a serving size of 0.33 seconds of spray

That might even be realistic if you are spraying a baking sheet - since you cover the whole thing. But if you are cooking pancakes and spray the pan after each one you get a lot of carbs.

Alt tip: dont use any fat on the pan when cooking pancakes. Gives the surface that restaurant quaility, smooth evenness.

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

#420

Post by worthless-trash »

My wife takes pictures of -everything- she eats, I'm sure she's not alone in this behavior. I can't eat until the photo is taken, and its a good one.

They just need to tap these people.

Its a real problem when I'm hungry.

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