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Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?

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Re: Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?

#51

Post by e40 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #20
ellyagg wrote: post #10

Neither by themselves, but when combined... I read somewhere that when they want to fatten up lab mice they feed them a mixture of 70% sugar and 30% fat or something similar. When you make something much more delicious and available than what appears in nature, it screws with an animal's energy balance signals.

The catch though is that you need fat to live. That is, without fat in your diet you're not able to digest plants. And if for whatever reason you're not eating enough fat, your body will crave sugar. So basically eat healthy fats. If you don't eat enough healthy fat (e.g. from walnuts), your body will start craving unhealthy fats. And if you don't eat either then your body will crazy sugar as a last resort. As far as…

When I started doing intermittent fasting I also started eating lots of walnuts, and I can say my craving for sugar went way, way down. I haven't had sugar once since I started IF (> 30 days).

Re: Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?

#52

Post by cheald »

Alex3917 wrote: post #20
ellyagg wrote: post #10

Neither by themselves, but when combined... I read somewhere that when they want to fatten up lab mice they feed them a mixture of 70% sugar and 30% fat or something similar. When you make something much more delicious and available than what appears in nature, it screws with an animal's energy balance signals.

The catch though is that you need fat to live. That is, without fat in your diet you're not able to digest plants. And if for whatever reason you're not eating enough fat, your body will crave sugar. So basically eat healthy fats. If you don't eat enough healthy fat (e.g. from walnuts), your body will start craving unhealthy fats. And if you don't eat either then your body will crazy sugar as a last resort. As far as…

Fats are also a primary component in hormone synthesis. It's very important to get enough - they're just also 9 cal/g, compared to 4 cal/g for protein/carbohydrate, so they can be easy to overconsume if you're trying to manage your caloric intake.

Re: Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?

#53

Post by Memebook »

After years reading about what is right or not for me. I just gave up and began eating what felt good to me.

After awhile, I begin to notice that my body's constantly telling me what feels good or not. Sometimes good health is nothing more than a bit of awareness and experimentation.

Re: Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?

#54

Post by kough »

Aron wrote: post #40

My intuition is that there is a small delta in impact between a 'reasonable' diet and a 'perfect' diet, and so playing in that margin is pointless. But I've always felt it notable that you can consume a whole day's worth of calories in about 5 minutes with a super happy value meal, and then be hungry again a few hours later. I'd say avoid doing that.

Actually, it's pretty hard to eat a whole day's worth of calories in a single meal. I know this because I've tried to, regularly, as part of a longer attempt to gain weight. If you're ordering at McDonald's, your best calorie/dollar ratio [edit: s/your best/my preferred] is the ~800 calorie double quarter pounder with cheese for ~6 dollars. My daily caloric requirements are estimated at 3000 calories based on my age and gender, which means I'd have to eat a little under four of these. The best I've managed is two, and that's even with smoking weed to increase my appetite.

Re: Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?

#55

Post by cheald »

Memebook wrote: post #53

After years reading about what is right or not for me. I just gave up and began eating what felt good to me. After awhile, I begin to notice that my body's constantly telling me what feels good or not. Sometimes good health is nothing more than a bit of awareness and experimentation.

The problem is that your body is highly adapted for survival, and it frickin' loves calories, and we have a food industry that has perfected the process of putting as many calories into as small a package as possible, with a composition that sends your brain hormones into overdrive and tells you to shove as much of it into your face as you can.

Obesity is epidemic in our society because the food available to us presses all the "this feels good" buttons. Most people eat what feels good to them; the healthiest are the ones who intentionally restrict themselves from eating what their brains tell them they should be eating.

Re: Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?

#56

Post by munificent »

mvpu wrote: post #26

Bah, why do people write such painfully long posts without an executive summary at the top?

The entire gist of the article is that nutrition cannot be executive-summarized and that it is likely the confluence of many many factors that determine how our diet affects our health.

Re: Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?

#57

Post by milesvp »

tiglionabbit wrote: post #18
blakesterz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I skipped to the last few minutes of that, they seem to do a nice summary... "avoid processed foods" "All faddish diets are wrong and exercise is important" "the combination of fat and sugar is bad" (not just one or the other but foods full of both like donuts are bad)

I thought eating fat with sugar was better than eating sugar alone since the fat slowed down the absorption of the sugar, thus dampening the insulin response.

Yeah, I'm not sure how to model the fat+sugar problem I keep hearing whispers of. I know from the research I did with my wife's gestational diabetes is that the glycemic index of a food went down if you added just about any other food volume that with a lower glycemic index. The best example I found was that toast is like the worst possible food you can eat in terms of GI, it was higher than anything but pure glucose . But toast with jam, actually had a lower GI, since sucrose has ~half the GI of glucose (makes sense since sucrose is glucose+fructose, and fructose requires time for the liver to process). Toast with butter was even better, since butter fat has 0 GI.

I still don't know how much I trust the claims that fat+sugar is particularly bad, but I suspect it may have to do with some kind of second order insulin response. Like, the presence of triglycerides in the blood cause fat cells to be more likely to respond to insulin, storing fat, instead of releasing it. I dunno.

Also keep in mind GI is falling out of fashion as a key indicator. Glycemic Load seems to be more indicative of poor health indicators. That is to say, that the area under the curve is potentially more important than the max height of the curve. I'd say limiting both is probably important as well. I also highly suspect that the slope of the curve is very important in how we perceive hunger, which is why we tend to feel hungry shortly after eating foods with fast carbs...

FWIW, at the end of the day, in order to keep my wife healthy, we ended up giving up fast carbs, and she had to keep her carb count low in general. Her basic formula for a snack was to add the grams of fat+ grams of protein, and if that was bigger than the grams of carbs it was safe to eat.

Sorry I don't have links to this stuff, this was like 5 years ago, and I'm not sure if I ever saved those bookmarks. I can say it was really hard to find credible data sets. There didn't seem to be anything from America (draw your own conclusions :) ), most of everything I found was published datasets from Australia and New Zealand. Also, don't take this for anything other than anecdata, do your own research. You'll find very quickly a lot of really bad nutrition information. I had to plow through most of it, and might have given up if it wasn't for my pregnant wife, coupled with a friend with a digital signal processing background pointing out engineering problems with most of the current thoughts on controlling diabetic blood sugar levels.

Re: Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?

#58

Post by ra1n85 »

tiglionabbit wrote: post #18
blakesterz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I skipped to the last few minutes of that, they seem to do a nice summary... "avoid processed foods" "All faddish diets are wrong and exercise is important" "the combination of fat and sugar is bad" (not just one or the other but foods full of both like donuts are bad)

I thought eating fat with sugar was better than eating sugar alone since the fat slowed down the absorption of the sugar, thus dampening the insulin response.

Not really. Common sugars begin to be broken down in the mouth by enzymes in saliva. Insulin (a hormone that promotes storage of energy!), is the last thing you want to stimulate while consuming high fat, energy dense foods.

Re: Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?

#59

Post by dnissley »

kough wrote: post #54
Aron wrote: post #40

My intuition is that there is a small delta in impact between a 'reasonable' diet and a 'perfect' diet, and so playing in that margin is pointless. But I've always felt it notable that you can consume a whole day's worth of calories in about 5 minutes with a super happy value meal, and then be hungry again a few hours later. I'd say avoid doing that.

Actually, it's pretty hard to eat a whole day's worth of calories in a single meal. I know this because I've tried to, regularly, as part of a longer attempt to gain weight. If you're ordering at McDonald's, your best calorie/dollar ratio [edit: s/your best/my preferred] is the ~800 calorie double quarter pounder with cheese for ~6 dollars. My daily caloric requirements are estimated at 3000 calories based on my age…

If you use that $6 to get 6 $1 McDoubles (are they still $1?) then you can get 2280 calories at 380 per burger.

Re: Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?

#60

Post by snarf21 »

kough wrote: post #54
Aron wrote: post #40

My intuition is that there is a small delta in impact between a 'reasonable' diet and a 'perfect' diet, and so playing in that margin is pointless. But I've always felt it notable that you can consume a whole day's worth of calories in about 5 minutes with a super happy value meal, and then be hungry again a few hours later. I'd say avoid doing that.

Actually, it's pretty hard to eat a whole day's worth of calories in a single meal. I know this because I've tried to, regularly, as part of a longer attempt to gain weight. If you're ordering at McDonald's, your best calorie/dollar ratio [edit: s/your best/my preferred] is the ~800 calorie double quarter pounder with cheese for ~6 dollars. My daily caloric requirements are estimated at 3000 calories based on my age…

A McDouble is 390 calories for $1.39 and I think you are also missing the fact that a "large" coke is around 310 and we haven't even gotten to the fries yet.
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