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The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

nytimes.com

71–80 of 91 posts

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#71
post #45
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But his question was "why in America?", why not anywhere else?

It's not only in America anymore. I've seen just as gigantic portion sizes while traveling to Europe (England, Netherlands, Romania, Italy, France) and Australia, though not so much in China (except Macau). Likely other countries are moving in the same direction as America. At restaurants, however, there is very good incentive to provide large portions. A restaurant has fixed portions that need to feed everyone from…

"a general fear of running out of food at social gatherings such as parties."

I went to a social xmas party a few years back, and the rule was "you have to bring a dish to share". No one brings enough to just share with just one other person - everyone brings a dish/item that serves at least 4 people. We had a gathering of about 30 people and enough food to serve 150.

They changed the rule the next year (I think that was the first and only year they tried that rule, IIRC).

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#72
post #25

I suffer acid reflux a lot of times. One trick I read some years ago proved to be magical: eat a teaspoon of dry, milled coffee. It works instantly and lasts for at least 2-3 hours. It can be tough to swallow the coffee at the beginning, but once you get used to it, it isn't that difficult.

That's strange. Coffee is acidic, it should make reflux worse.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#73
post #47

Ori Hofmekler for years has been promoting his evidence-based Warrior Diet [1], which claims that humans have always been nocturnal eaters and that only the slaves were eating during the day and warriors were feasting at night. I reduced my meals to two a day (within 6 hours), mostly at night, and have since lost a few pounds although I've increased my caloric intake from fats. I slowly want to shift to a single meal…

I hope this warrior diet is a good diet, and the things in your description that make me cringe are just marketing gimmicks. What was the average life expectancy of a warrior at the time and place this diet was based on? Likely under 35. Your description makes it sound like the diet's creator started with a bad premise and unhelpful constraints and used (hopefully) good science to hill-climb his way to some local maximum in some scoring function that's hopefully not particularly far from the global maximum in that scoring function.

An appeal to nature is a terrible line of reasoning that underlies way too many diets I hear friends promoting these days. The usual implied or explicitly stated premise is that there was some time and place of peak human fitness in the distant past, brought about by evolution, and we should return to the diet of that time and place and apply scientific methods to improve upon that diet.

There are at least 3 huge flaws in using evolutionary arguments to base modern diets on what humans ate thousands or tens of thousands of years ago. Let's start with the flawed premise that after the explosion in variety of foods available when we learned to domesticate both animals and plants, that evolution rapidly converged within a few thousand years the human body to be optimally tuned for all of the foods available at whatever time the diet's creator has chosen. (1) A human at the global optimum for a given diet does not imply that the diet is a global optimum for the human. (The implication arrow goes the other way. Evolution has not optimized plants and animals to be the most fit food source for humans.) (2) Evolution tends to converge to pretty good working solutions, not optimal solutions. (3) There hasn't been enough time since human domestication of animals and plants for evolution to produce more than a hand full of adaptations.

The only two human dietary-related beneficial mutations I'm aware of in the past 10-15 thousand years both happened to have arisen in Europe. One is a mutation that makes a high wheat diet less harmful and the other is a mutation that causes toleration of lactose late into adulthood. The way some people construct diets, they would then start with the premise that people whose ancestors mostly came from Europe should mostly eat wheat and dairy products. The diet creator would then do some reading of dietary studies to scientifically improve the quality of the starting diet to some local maximum based on some set of starting constraints and some limit of research effort. This might actually produce a decent diet with whole grains, yoghurt, and lots of fruits and vegetables added through a healthy dose of hand waving combined with good scientific research.

It would be much better to throw out the flawed starting point. If you're going to pick an arbitrary time and location in human history as a starting point for constructing a diet, don't pick a time and location that had a life expectancy less than half that of modern first-world countries. If I were to design a diet, I would probably look at modern diets in countries with the highest life expectancies or lowest rates of whatever diet-related maladies you're trying to avoid, and scientifically improve the diet from there. I might even try to find a set of countries that had very different diets and yet all ranked highly in my selection criteria and try to find commonalities in their diets as a starting point for designing a diet.

EDIT: I should point out that there are cases where an appeal to nature is a reasonable line of reasoning, but I have never seen such in the context of diet.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#74
post #25

I suffer acid reflux a lot of times. One trick I read some years ago proved to be magical: eat a teaspoon of dry, milled coffee. It works instantly and lasts for at least 2-3 hours. It can be tough to swallow the coffee at the beginning, but once you get used to it, it isn't that difficult.

I found a cure that works perfectly for me. My doctor prescribed a truckload of antiacids and proton-pump inhibitors for me, until they stopped working. Then, as a new year's resolution, I decided to stop eating potato chips... after avoiding them for about 3 weeks, the acid reflux completely went away. Whether it was because of all the salt, or the oil, I don't know, but it solved it for me. Give it a try!

What kind of doctor prescribes medicine without first asking what the patient is eating?

Fries are the first thing to cut from the diet to stop reflux, along with chocolate, soda, alcohol, coffee, milk and it's derivates.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#75
post #58
post #47

Ori Hofmekler for years has been promoting his evidence-based Warrior Diet [1], which claims that humans have always been nocturnal eaters and that only the slaves were eating during the day and warriors were feasting at night. I reduced my meals to two a day (within 6 hours), mostly at night, and have since lost a few pounds although I've increased my caloric intake from fats. I slowly want to shift to a single meal…

Carbheads on a downvote crusade again...

I didn't downvote you, but I think your downvotes are probably from people who read your summary as a diet based on a flawed appeal to nature. I'm not sure if a carbhead advocates a high carb or low carb diet, but I imagine most of the downvoters would probably also downvote a post advocating a high-carb or low-cab diet that appeared to use poor logic as a starting point.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#76

Well there is a ritual in Jainism which says not to eat after sunset (remember: this was written/said generations before all science and research came into existence). Being Jain, I am just amazed by how precise our religion/literature is. Like many other ritual, this one is also backed by science now. FYI: It's called "Chauvihar" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting_in_Jainism )

Never heard of Jainism... interesting. But you're right, in that many religions do have a ideas that are good for you.

Markov chains can also generate good ideas.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#77
post #61
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only in America anymore. I've seen just as gigantic portion sizes while traveling to Europe (England, Netherlands, Romania, Italy, France) and Australia, though not so much in China (except Macau). Likely other countries are moving in the same direction as America. At restaurants, however, there is very good incentive to provide large portions. A restaurant has fixed portions that need to feed everyone from…

> England, Netherlands, Romania, Italy, France None of these places have anywhere near the same portion sizes.

Agreed (haven't hit Italy yet, but the others ... 1 year, 2 months, 1 month, 3 months).

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#78
post #22

"In France, for example, a serving of ice cream is typically a single modest scoop, while in America, it’s often three gargantuan scoops." This was the first thing that struck me when I first moved here. Portions for all kinds of food from ice-cream, to coffee are huge. Why are huge portions such a common thing here?

if you're an immigrant from a poor country where food is an issue, portion size is the first sign of success. recent studies compared obesity levels of immigrants from mexico - you see a huge spike once they're settled in the US. the direct correlation between poverty and obesity in the US is driven by that. cheap, sugar and fat rich food with huge portions. "i didn't work my ass off to eat a fucking salad".

portion size is the first sign of success

Or perhaps, people with childhood food insecurities and a habit of gorging what's available, when it's available, as quickly as possible will probably eat more of worse food when given the chance.

i didn't work my ass off to eat a fucking salad

... which is amusing, given that the extremely affluent classes consume well produced salads with quality ingredients as main meals, even in the face of significant choice.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#79
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this effective for acid reflux? Curious as i have it too...

I'd like to know, too.

Hypothesis... dry means it reduces liquid levels in the gut. Also, diuretic? You could test the first part of this hypothesis by using other highly absorbent foodstuffs and seeing if the same result can be gained.

Re: The Dangers of Eating Late at Night

#80

Well there is a ritual in Jainism which says not to eat after sunset (remember: this was written/said generations before all science and research came into existence). Being Jain, I am just amazed by how precise our religion/literature is. Like many other ritual, this one is also backed by science now. FYI: It's called "Chauvihar" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting_in_Jainism )

Very observant Buddhists (chiefly monks and nuns) are not supposed to eat after midday either.
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