The case for eating steak and cream • Hacker News Board

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#71

Post by irremediable » Sun, Jun 01, 2014, 2:18 PM UTC

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…

Do you have any more information about those different insulin responses? Did they use genetic testing to assess your response? It sounds very interesting.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#72

Post by jqm » Sun, Jun 01, 2014, 2:39 PM UTC

Personally I will be glad when they get what to eat/not eat settled once and for all...

As it is now, there are so many changing/competing theories out, and with such frequency I have been forced to abandon considering any of them at all and just eating what I feel like.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#73

Post by randallsquared » Sun, Jun 01, 2014, 2:50 PM UTC

anon4 wrote: post #33

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.

It's actually pretty easy to do without food labels. Apply this simple test: are you feeling dizzy from low blood sugar and is your stomach hurting from hunger? If yes, then congratulations - you're burning more calories than you're eating. If no, then don't eat for a while. If no and you're actually feeling even a little full, stop eating, right now. You'll get used to the lower calorie input after a while and the f…

As Evgeny says, fasting doesn't necessarily cause those symptoms. I've fasted for a day or two at a time as an adult (and about two weeks once as a fat teen). Hunger as a physical sensation is probably not usual thing to feel in the West (or, at least, in America). As an obese American, it takes more than 24 hours of fasting for me to be physically hungry; the vast majority of the time I eat for social reasons, or from boredom.

In my social circles, the most common response to a question about food is "I could eat" rather than "Yes, I'm hungry", since the latter is never literally true.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#74

Post by Evgeny » Sun, Jun 01, 2014, 2:55 PM UTC

zurn wrote: post #51

Evgeny wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fertilize…

You are shifting the argument by cherry picking Australian beef production (vs meat production in general).

Yes, though not intentionally - this is just an article I read recently so it came up in my memory. I believe, though, that a lot of small animals die because of farming grains everywhere in the world, not only in Australia. Other factors, indeed, may vary greatly.

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!

I agree - if one's aim is to minimize the number of animal deaths or the amount of suffering, that seems to be the answer.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#75

Post by randallsquared » Sun, Jun 01, 2014, 2:58 PM UTC

Evgeny wrote: post #37

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…

Don't forget that your basal metabolic rate is not constant in different circumstances and over the duration of your life. It actually goes up if the calories consumed go up. I guess in some lucky individuals it may go up high enough to offset all extra calories - but, surely, to a certain limit. Also, this BMR varies between different people - even if their bodies are very similar. So that is probably the source of…

> So that is probably the source of the confusion "i know this guy who eats all the time and is skinny, therefore the calorie theory is wrong".

If we have evidence that something isn't true, and we even have theoretical reasons why it wouldn't be true, why continue calling it "confusion" when someone points out that it doesn't seem true?

(By the way, no one, anywhere, is disputing the laws of thermodynamics when they say that "calories in / calories out" isn't the whole story.)

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#76

Post by Evgeny » Sun, Jun 01, 2014, 3:11 PM UTC

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…

I don't have that much time to look at the link, but at the first glance it appears that at least some of the studies reviewed relied on self-reported calorie intake, so the subjects were not kept in laboratory conditions where the food intake was strictly measured.

This has been shown to be widely inaccurate, for example here and in the references to this study

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/71/1/130.long

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#77

Post by conroe64 » Sun, Jun 01, 2014, 3:36 PM UTC

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.

If you drink milk and consume eggs, aren't you still perpetuating the same system? I mean after a cow no longer can produce milk it's not like it will go to a cow hospice.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#78

Post by mason55 » Sun, Jun 01, 2014, 3:45 PM UTC

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.

What gets lost in these discussions is the intricacies of calories in vs. calories out.

Bodyweight should always vary based on calories in vs. calories out. You can't create mass from nothing and if you're burning more calories than you take in then you have to lose mass or else your body is a perpetual motion machine. What people ignore is that:

1. Certain things change calories out. In some women (for example those with PCOS) their calories out drops dramatically and continues to vary based on their calories in. Their bodyweight is still obeying the laws of calories in vs. calories out but the calories out drops and so it feels like there must be something else going on, that cals in vs. cals out doesn't work.

2. What people really care about is not bodyweight but bodyfat. So even though everyone obeys calories in vs. calories out you can still change what your body does with those calories by adjusting your macronutrient ratios (nutrient partitioning). Decreasing carbs can change your insulin response and cause your body to lose more fat vs muscle which is what people really want. Also your body uses carbs to create glycogen which is stored as water weight.

3. Different macronutrients affect satiety differently. If you just binge on carbs you'll generally be hungry again very soon. If you eat high fat then you'll be full longer. There are also microoptimizations that occur like shifting leptin levels.

It's the source of a lot of arguments. One camp says keto is magic, the next says it's just a trick to keep your calories low, and both are right. Diets like keto do help you keep your calories low, you can't binge and eat 5000 calories of meat and lose weight, but there are also other benefits.

TL;DR: Shit's complicated

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#79

Post by travisp » Sun, Jun 01, 2014, 3:56 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #58

xherberta wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

> You can't not lose weight if you burn more calories than you eat.

True. However, you can eat less and not lose weight, or eat more and not gain weight, because while Calories Consumed = Calories Stored + Calories Expended, by the laws of thermodynamics, the variables are not independent. If you exercise more, your body acts to try to get you to consume more calories -- and if you don't, by making you not want to expend energy the rest of the day (some studies of kids exercise programs show that the kids become more sedentary the rest of the day). Further, the type of calorie consumed affects the balance of the other side of the equation as well.

20 calories a day is theoretically 40 pounds of fat over 20 years, but nobody can perfectly maintain their caloric input to within exactly 20 calories of maintenance level a day -- our body guides us with signals and changes our metabolism. The arguments about things like fat, carbs, etc. are that the wrong foods mess with these signals and the metabolism in ways that make it substantially harder to stay at a healthy weight or to lose weight.

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154

>Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance

>The results of our study challenge the notion that a calorie is a calorie from a metabolic perspective. During isocaloric feeding following weight loss, REE was 67 kcal/d higher with the very low-carbohydrate diet compared with the low-fat diet. TEE differed by approximately 300 kcal/d between these 2 diets, an effect corresponding with the amount of energy typically expended in 1 hour of moderate-intensity physical activity

>In conclusion, our study demonstrates that commonly consumed diets can affect metabolism and components of the metabolic syndrome in markedly different ways during weight-loss maintenance, independent of energy content. The low-fat diet produced changes in energy expenditure and serum leptin42- 44 that would predict weight regain. In addition, this conventionally recommended diet had unfavorable effects on most of the metabolic syndrome components studied herein. In contrast, the very low-carbohydrate diet had the most beneficial effects on energy expenditure and several metabolic syndrome components, but this restrictive regimen may increase cortisol excretion and CRP.

Re: The case for eating steak and cream

#80

Post by DanBC » Sun, Jun 01, 2014, 4:48 PM UTC

jsdalton wrote: post #66

DanBC wrote: post #62

I am one of the people who thinks that "calories out > calories in" is most important. I've tried (in the spirit of Feynman) to poke holes in this, so here's the stuff that would persuade me I'm wrong. 1) satiety. Some foods make you feel full, so even though they're "fat" you eat less. (This doesn't counter CO>CI but explains why people fail at it). 2) abysmal quality of research on weight loss. Lots of the research…

6) Insulin response. Carbohydrates trigger insulin production, which causes cells to store more fat. See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/opinion/sunday/always-hung...

Posting non medical sources, especially from the opinion section, is less likely to convince me.