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The case for eating steak and cream

economist.com

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Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#51

Post by zurn »

Evgeny wrote: post #40
zurn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A vegetarian calling meat eating "the most rational choice" ! It's destroying our planet and causing untold, horrific amounts suffering to animals just because people get a kick out of chewing on other beings. PS. I've been around other European countries most my vacations and never had the problem. Worst case you get salads and omelettes.

It's destroying our planet and causing untold, horrific amounts suffering to animals just because people get a kick out of chewing on other beings. You may be interested in this article: http://anthonycolpo.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-... Its arguments, in short, are: Published figures suggest that, in Australia, producing wheat and other grains results in: –at least 25 times more sentient animals being k…

You are shifting the argument by cherry picking Australian beef production (vs meat production in general). Overwhelmingly most meat production is fed using harvest from cultivated land, hence the claims are irrelevant to the general discussion in addition to being factually uncredible.

About the questionable facts: the 25x claim is not substantiated in any way. It doesn't in any way substantiate why use of fertilizers to grow plants for human consumption would be worse than growing grass for the equivalent nutritional value of cows.

Lastly, even if you ignore the irrelevance and the bad claims, it concludes that ethically you should only eat rangeland grown meat and kangaroos, a clear counterargument for the usual meat eater diet!

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#52

Post by sp332 »

Andys wrote: post #47
zt wrote: post #8

I have been participating in a Stanford Medical research study since October. The name of the randomized control study is "One Diet Does Not Fit All" ( http://nutrition.stanford.edu/projects/DietbyGenotype-Study.... ). The basic premise of the study is that as almost everyone has one of two insulin responses to glucose and that if you have one response, you should be on a low-fat diet, and if you have the other, you…

> it's as simple as calories in, calories out I recently saw a study that was a great example of why it isn't this simple: Intermittent fasting, with the same average daily calories consumed, resulted in more rapid weight loss than no fasting.

Fasting accounts for the calories in, what about the calories out?

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#53

Post by tomp »

sp332 wrote: post #52
Andys wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's as simple as calories in, calories out I recently saw a study that was a great example of why it isn't this simple: Intermittent fasting, with the same average daily calories consumed, resulted in more rapid weight loss than no fasting.

Fasting accounts for the calories in, what about the calories out?

If I understand intermittent fasting correctly, you eat the same amount (so calories in/calories out don't change), you just don't eat for a part of the day (e.g. 12 hours) or every second day and eat that much more in the "allowed" window.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#54

Post by gtuckerkellogg »

From the review, this book seems like a rehash of Taubes' two excellent and well researched books on the same topics. Taubes was the first to make the broad historical connections that also seem central to this book. Even the book title, "The Big Fat Surprise" is a play on Taubes' famous 2002 New York Times article "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?". What, if anything is original to this work? From the Economist review, we have no idea.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#55

Post by zurn »

zurn wrote: post #34
NotOscarWilde wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a vegetarian, I don't laugh at people eating meat. In fact, when it comes to nutrition, eating (the right) meat is likely the most rational choice based on today's understanding. As a sidenote, I have looked into low-carb/keto diets and I've found that those are rather hard for vegetarians; reducing carb intake from some sources (rice, pasta) is easy, but even staple vegetarian foods rich in protein (tofu, lentils…

A vegetarian calling meat eating "the most rational choice" ! It's destroying our planet and causing untold, horrific amounts suffering to animals just because people get a kick out of chewing on other beings. PS. I've been around other European countries most my vacations and never had the problem. Worst case you get salads and omelettes.

There was this controversial art performance where the guy killed a cat with an axe and masturbated on the corpse to (among other things) make a point about killing animals for our enjoyment. He was sued and convicted for animal cruelty. The guy is currently a prof in the most prestigious art school in Finland. One of my heroes.

http://www.quodlibetica.com/what-does-it-mean-to-kill-an-ani...

edit: As a metapoint, interesting how heavily my other comment is being downvoted. I hope it's because it's sligtly off tangent, an not because HN'ers are in denial about what they're doing with their eating.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#56

Post by VLM »

Borkdude wrote: post #13
hueving wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's as simple as calories in, calories out This is definitely true, if you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. But this is really hard to enforce for many people. Without blatant calorie labels on everything you eat, it's really easy to go over and then assume that it must not be true.

That, and the fact that most natural high carb foods, like fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains have a low calorie density compared to high fat foods. It's much harder to overeat on them, because they have more volume and fiber.

"most natural high carb foods ... have a low calorie density"

Need to combine with the equally true observation of most modern processed high carb foods have a ridiculously high calorie density.

Apples are only in season some of the year, so when you can get them, pig out, of course it takes a lot of work to find and harvest apples and the natural supply is fairly limited in quantity and your stomach can only physically hold so many apples ... and millennia later the same taste receptor and insulin feedback loops results in some dude drinking an entire 2 liter of corn syrup soda while sitting on the couch watching a movie.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#57

Post by BSousa »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #24
gdrulia wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is definitely true It is a strong argument and I know to many examples where this is just simply not the case. I myself have been eating all my life big portions of food couple times a day, mainly with meat and potatoes, sometimes with some salad though a lot of times without any. I'm not a big fan of sweets, but I do eat bread and some other stuff containing carbs, simply because it is almost impossible to av…

I've been 1.8m and 64kg since I stopped growing. I know I overeat most of the time. Where does the additional energy go? Why is it stored as fat in some people, not in others. There is more to health than simple calories in = calories out.

Can you run us by a typical day of food? I'm not discrediting you, but from experience, what for you is overeating, for others is considered undereating.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#58

Post by adrianN »

xherberta wrote: post #43
hueving wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's as simple as calories in, calories out This is definitely true, if you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. But this is really hard to enforce for many people. Without blatant calorie labels on everything you eat, it's really easy to go over and then assume that it must not be true.

Evidence does not support this as "definitely true." One example: http://m.ajcn.nutrition.org/content/79/5/899S.full The human body is more complicated than that. Different foods cause different levels of insulin response. Insulin tells the body to "pack it away as fat." As mentioned in the article, it's likely insulin is more relevant to heart disease than saturated fat intake. The role of insulin also helps to expl…

You can't not lose weight if you burn more calories than you eat. Where does the extra energy come from? I'd like to see examples of overweight people that are malnourished in the sense that they don't eat enough calories.

I fully support the claim that some foods make you more hungry than others, even if you eat the same amount of calories. It'd be pretty hard to consume 2000 calories of spinach without rupturing your stomach, but it's easy to eat 2000 calories of chocolate chip cookies with milk.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#59

Post by Tycho »

The other day at work I caved and went for a pub-lunch, a burger with cheese, served with chips and coleslaw. I enjoyed it but immediately afterwards thought 'damn, that was greasy,' and remembered my marathon running colleague who always refrains from going for a 'crappy burger' with us. But here's the thing: I didn't feel hungry for the rest of the day. In fact I skipped dinner completely, just went for long walk round the city and stopped to have a beer somewhere. If you want to lose weight, surely the trick is to consume less calories per day and avoid the feeling of hunger. Few people are going to have the discipline to refrain from eating when they actually feel hungry, day after day after day.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#60

Post by icantthinkofone »

About 10 years ago, my two sons and I worked out with George Turner as our coach. George was a gruff, ex-Marine in his 60s known all over the world and had many weight lifting awards to his name and wrote for magazines. His nutritional advice used to scare my wife. Essentially, it was a high-protein, low-carb diet.

He told us not to fear fat cause it was good for us. Nor eggs if you worked out cause cholesterol wouldn't stick to anything. If you were hungry, "Eat!!", he would shout at my son who was 100 pounds overweight. "Listen to me cause I'm right!"

This made no sense at all. He told us he used to give talks at the local medical university on nutrition. He complained that doctors were not given enough classes on nutrition and he knew more about it than most of them.

In nine months, all three of us were strong as an ox. My overweight son lost 100 pounds. I lost 40 pounds.

George was always right.

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