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The Sugar Conspiracy (how bad nutrition science made us fatter and unhealthier)
- Thread starter AstroLad
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Dancing Queen
Banned
There's other things you can eat such as lentil, chickpea, rice and fruits. Tofu is also good.
titiklabingapat
Member
Most animal fats, butter, ghee, lard, real nut butters (like almond butter), avocado, olive oil, coconut oil and fatty fish are considered healthy now. Most processed vegetable oils (sunflower, peanut, etc) and margarine are not.
Saturated fat is not the enemy.
Losing weight has always been a fucking uphill battle for me, I've been fat as far as I can remember, except when I practically became anorexic and went down to 57 kg ( 125 pounds).
Now, I'm up to 81 kg ( 191 pounds) . Fortunately, I work out so I've got some muscle to compensate.
And have always been struggling. I've never quit making efforts and tried so many diets : intermittent fasting, eating certain types of food at certain times of day, low sugar, low fat ... nothing worked.
Well, actually they all worked for the first two weeks and then suddenly stopped. My body adapted overnight every fucking time.
Only one I haven't tried is keto ... might be the miracle I need...
do you guys think some people are just fucked and are destined to grow fat overtime ? Like bad genetics ?
I almost never get sick though so I guess I can get some comfort with that .
But being the only "fat guy" in your work environment really takes a toll on you. Fat-shaming is a real thing here in France !
Now, I'm up to 81 kg ( 191 pounds) . Fortunately, I work out so I've got some muscle to compensate.
And have always been struggling. I've never quit making efforts and tried so many diets : intermittent fasting, eating certain types of food at certain times of day, low sugar, low fat ... nothing worked.
Well, actually they all worked for the first two weeks and then suddenly stopped. My body adapted overnight every fucking time.
Only one I haven't tried is keto ... might be the miracle I need...
do you guys think some people are just fucked and are destined to grow fat overtime ? Like bad genetics ?
I almost never get sick though so I guess I can get some comfort with that .
But being the only "fat guy" in your work environment really takes a toll on you. Fat-shaming is a real thing here in France !
Dancing Queen
Banned
I highly recommend you read about Dr. MacDougall and Dr Neal Barnard.
Read about "The Starvation Experiment" and please don't calorie restrict your life. The issue lies on animal products. No one is bound to be fat. The problem is not you, is the food you eat.
EarsOfASnake
Member
You may find that your body is fighting against you even when you make healthy choices. For example it is possible you have a gene polymorphism that causes you to not process red meats as easily as other people. So if your healthy diet relied on a lot of meat consumption then you may not be getting the results you want.
It sounds like you're hitting you head against a wall even after trying so many things, it might be worth looking into getting your genes sequenced and finding out.
I read a recent study that compared how different people reacted to food in a controlled environment.
They said that people who ate the exact same food on the same quantity, and with just as much physical exercise still put on weight while others stayed the same or even lost some !
The conclusion was that there's a gene that determines your tendency to put on weight or not.
Well, I also often suffer from painful digestion so I wonder if I don't have some kind of food allergy that could mess up with my metabolism and influence my losing or gaining weight.
Interesting, I've never heard this before. Do you have a source?
dragonelite
Member
That's why i like self experimenting with diets and foods. Tried a lot of diets just like you
gained and shredded with them with success.
But i feel best and mentally good(im a programmer) when i'm in a ketogenic state either
with intermitting fasting or a ketogenic diet.
One thing i found that i have a really hard time losing fat when im on a diet that has 100 plus grams of carbs a day.
Its not impossible but it just takes a lot of work big calorie deficit almost 500 kcal and quiet some cardio(i hate cardio).
So far on keto i have a 200kcal deficit and don't have to do any cardio.
But somebody else might have the vice versa effect, dem genetics yo.
MarkMclovin
Member
Chicken wings.
But not all fats are good for your cardiovascular health. Trans fats are definitely bad and there is controversy over saturated fats. The US Dietary Guidelines have been updated to be less concerned with total fats, instead concerned with saturated and trans fat amounts. The American Heart Association supports this.
I wonder if there are any registered dietitians and nutritionists on this board. I work with them and PhDs/MDs on a daily basis and it's fascinating. I'm currently on a busy trip visiting a dying family member so I can't make the time to provide a lot of insight into this discussion, but as usual, a lot of GAF is pretty clueless about nutrition science and some lean way too heavily into zero-carb, all-fat philosophies.
Psychotext
Member
I'm reasonably certain no-one was suggesting eating transfats.
Agreed! I've become a lot healthier and slimmer thanks to their advice.
Here's Neil Barnard on tackling diabetes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktQzM2IA-qU&list=PLxrSKU7XU7Y7x_4pc-zS4zJD5T2v4pDSP&index=11
If people are interested, check out the documentary Forks Over Knives which is a good counterpoint to everything in this thread.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
Polioliolio
Member
The dangers are obvious, but we gotta give as much time as possible for the industry to make billions off the unknowing public before they fully wise up. That's just capitalism yo.
infinitys_7th
Member
He already lost the argument at "See the plaque in his arteries? That's bacon and eggs!" That's 40-yeaar old debunked nonsense for the vast majority people.
Not trying to make you feel bad, but you should know the info in this documentary is notoriously awful. Give it a Google.
I accidentally doubled it in my head from 7000 cal =2lb fat, sorry
also a kcal is a single food Calorie, it's used more in communist metricland than us in america with our imperial freedom units
Why is full fat dairy consistently found to be better than low fat dairy?
Also, saturated fat encompasses many different molecules with variable chain lengths. Do you think all of these molecules have the same effect on metabolism?
From my perspective, high fat dairy, chocolate and coconut seem to be cardioprotective, if anything.
Palmitic acid may be harmful, depending on other factors of the diet, but it usually isn't found in isolation.
DigitalHoax
Neo Member
This is outdated information and terrible advice.
It's updated to 2015/2016 and it is the leading authorities on medicine and nutrition in the US, and it is the consensus taught by actual regulatory professionals, so no.
DOWN
Banned
Uh no. It's not practically poison.
You mean the same regulatory professionals that have consistently given harmful advice for decades? Great argument.
Lol. Are you even aware of what the article in the OP is about?
ersocaster
Member
Your brain needs 120g of glucose, which makes up 60%-70% of the required amount of glucose in your body. Which means your entire body needs about 200g of glucose for energy.
The conversion of protein to glucose is minimal and slow, and only excess protein is converted.
So no. That's not how it works. Unless 1g of protein produced more than 1g of glucose, you would need an excess of 200g of protein, at the very least, to get your glucose from that alone.
infinitys_7th
Member
For decades the AHA told people, without evidence, that eggs would raise their cholesterol and put them at risk for cardiovascular disease. Looking online at their "revised" cholesterol help page, they never apologize for trying to scare people away from a valuable source of nutrition.
Where is the accountability? They can slap a logo on Honey Nut Cheerios but not do their research on eggs?
Your argument is pitiful and makes sweeping statements on generalities.
These are the professionals, supposedy you are not one of them. Nutrition science evolves with time. It is a worldwide effort of hundreds of individuals in several organizations who consider evidence carefully en masse over time, and doesn't get overturned by some pop science articles, individual journal publications, and occasional YouTube videos by a PhD here and an MD there. Robert Lustig is a good doctor but everything is far more complicated and sophisticated than the microscope picture people here are seeing when it comes to nutrition science.
I work with these professionals, who have dozens of journal publications each themselves, RDs, PhDs, MDs, who lead the food and nutrition regulatory efforts of the world. I'm not hasty to internalize nutrition science by armchair GAF nutritionists whose reason for ignoring the American Heart Association and other respected organizations are because they think they were wrong once in a field of study that is always changing.
The brain only needs 40g glucose / day when in ketosis. Also, glucose can be made from the glycerol backbone of triglycerides. The RDA handbook lists the absolute DIETARY carbohydrate intake for humans as a whopping 0g of carbohydrate.
I remember you didn't know basic biochemistry in an earlier thread. What a joke.
infinitys_7th
Member
The brain functions just fine, if not better, using ketones instead of glucose.
Gluconeogenesis is a very important factor for ketogenic diets. It is the reason why many people fail - this is a high fat, adequate protein, low carb diet, yet people do not try to consume the necessary fat and just eat chicken breasts.
Haha i TLDR'd and this was like my brain had made a post
I've actually taken biochemistry and bioengineering classes, and your ad hominem is completely irrelevant to my comments about the American Heart Association, specifically the FAQ section at the bottom that addresses saturated fat controversy.
That just makes it more embarrassing that you can't get basic facts correct and have to revert to relying solely on your connection to authority figures who've gotten it wrong for so long.
Of course people revert to authority figures who know what they're talking about. You don't get a schoolteacher to build your home and I don't accept all nutrition advice from random online posters when I work with the leading scientists in the field and there is current consensus on these issues. I linked to reputable organizations and you didn't even seem to care about the links, you just responded with sarcasm and insults.
Considering you're just dealing insults and speaking in generalities and I have not seen that you have claimed background in physical sciences, your trolling has gotten you on my ignore list.
Psychotext
Member
Interestingly, he gets a shitload wrong in his "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" video, some of it stuff that's key to his arguments.
meitantei_conan
Member
From what I read saturated fat is classified as bad due to the LDL response in the blood. LDL is the main transporter of fatty acids in the blooD. Now we all know that LDL is labeled as "bad" becuase it builds up and forms plaque.but what new findings are showing is that there are more forms of LDL, some small and dense and some light and fluffy. Saturated fat lands in the light and fluffy category which was found to be unharmful.while small dense was shown to be the major cause of cardiovascular disease. I'm studying nutritional sciences right now and my profs all have different view points. The older ones still believe that fat is bad for the heart while the younger profs believe that saturated fat might not be so bad after all. It still needs to be studied more. Nutritional science is an always changing field.
On mobile so sorry for any errors in writing.
From what I read saturated fat is classified as bad due to the LDL response in the blood. LDL is the main transporter of fatty acids in the blooD. Now we all know that LDL is labeled as "bad" becuase it builds up and forms plaque.but what new findings are showing is that there are more forms of LDL, some small and dense and some light and fluffy. Saturated fat lands in the light and fluffy category which was found to be unharmful.while small dense was shown to be the major cause of cardiovascular disease. I'm studying nutritional sciences right now and my profs all have different view points. The older ones still believe that fat is bad for the heart while the younger profs believe that saturated fat might not be so bad after all. It still needs to be studied more. Nutritional science is an always changing field.
On mobile so sorry for any errors in writing.
Good thoughts. And yes, the problem is it needs to be further studied. The new information on fats introduces some conflict and we need to study it further. That's not to say that all saturated fats are all harmless or harmful all the time, but rather the picture is likely more complex than was thought in the 90s.
It's reasonable to believe that scientific ethics and information was dodgy in the 60s - 90s (technology and science industries rarely cared about human health, they just wanted to make money). The preached doctrine of low-fat, high-sugar in everything was damaging to our food culture.
But today (my personal opinion), I see so much advancement in nutrition science and food ethics as industries and organizations attempt to improve food based on the newest information.
dragonelite
Member
Your brain can work perfectly on ketones, for some its even a better brainfuel then glucose.
I had the same problem, i got like 200gr of protein that was too much for me even when lifting.
infinitys_7th
Member
Unfortunately, LDL is not actually tested in a standard lipid panel. Panel LDL is a calculated value based of of HDL, total cholesterol, and triglycerides. Differentiation of types of LDL is also not done, of course.
My calculated LDL increased when I started doing keto, but my triglycerides plummeted. I've been meaning to find somewhere to do more testing on my LDL but I haven't had time. I'm not concerned because it is pretty common and other ketoers who have had testing done found the harmless LDL predominates.
My calculated LDL increased when I started doing keto, but my triglycerides plummeted. I've been meaning to find somewhere to do more testing on my LDL but I haven't had time. I'm not concerned because it is pretty common and other ketoers who have had testing done found the harmless LDL predominates.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
It's actually in the first sentence of the first link.
"Glucose is virtually the sole fuel for the human brain, except during prolonged starvation"
They say, "except during prolonged starvation." Now this is just their extremely biased way of saying "except when glucose is not available in abundance."
Your body will quickly shift to using ketones to fuel the brain when glucose is not readily available. When you are metabolising fat for energy, the brain requires only a very small amount of glucose, which it can easily produce from protein.
Just about everyone experiences this daily if they get a full night's sleep. The human race would not exist if you needed this much glucose each day to survive and function. You are aware that even today, there are people who (either by choice or due to lack of available food) do not eat anything for many hours or even days on end, right? That fact alone should tell you how ridiculous of an assertion this is.
edit: already been covered by AnAnole and others, it seems. That's what I get for responding too quickly.
Not only is it not the enemy, it's just about the best kind of fat to eat in abundance!
Unfortunately, it's perfectly clear that the recommendations from many (most?) official agencies do not evolve fast enough. We are in the midst of a diet-induced health crisis that's spreading across the globe and they are still spewing outdated garbage that is actively hurting hundreds of millions of people.
You can choose to buy into their heart healthy honey nut cheerios bullshit while you wait for them to update their guidelines as an overwhelming body of evidence continues to pile up, but I would rather prioritize my own health, personally.
titiklabingapat
Member
The large meta-studies done on this subject says that some poly-unsaturaed fat offers heart protective effects but it hasn't been shown that saturated fat itself can induce damage. At worse, it is neutral.
Recommendations from authority figures like the AHA are useful to a certain extent but they are less so when the science says the opposite and policy-making is lagging as a result. This is one of those instances.
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
My problem is that I'm just not active enough. My diet was arguably the worst in college but because I walked all over campus I was probably thinner there than I ever was in my life.
Beer Monkey
Member
Diet causes weight game like 5-10x more than your exercise habits.
Want to lose weight? Cut calories.
#thermodynamics #somelawscantbebroken
Arsenic Yellow
Member
Been doing a ketogenic diet for a couple months now, but haven't really had any grains since late December/early January. The water weight loss has changed my facial Structure (not a negative or positive, just an observation). Losing water weight has also helped define my muscles, especially around the stomach area.
I didn't do it to lose weights, but mostly for mental and body health issues (depression, energy/anemia, eating disorder and anxiety). It's helped a ton, given me the energy to exercise which helps my depression. I eat between 1100-1600 calories (29 yr old female, 117-120 lbs, 5'5.5"). growing up in New Orleans, I had the absolute worse eating habits, ridiculously excessive carbs (I'd eat a whole French bread loaf for lunch, lasagna for dinner and several servings of beignets on the weekend). I was always thin, until I went to college and my weight skyrocketed as I got older andmy metabolism slowed. My highest was 170, but life stresses made me luckily drop the weight (down to about 130-140 without much effort). Moved to Boston for graduate school and by the time I finished, he unhealthy lifestyles an artist (drugs, booze, sleepless nights) made me lose the remainder. I was back to high school weight and almost 30, and felt like absolute shit. This on top of my mother having a binge eating disorder, fluctuating between both extremely low weight and overweight definitely caused food to be both my friend and enemy.
Although the diet hasn't helped with my nervousness and social anxiety, it has helped with mental clarity, energy and overall mood. Before this diet, I was self medicating with dissociative drugs and surprisingly a lot of the affects are the same (minus the calmness and auditory/visual hallucination the drugs provided).
The downside is I've always functioned on little sleep (4-6 hours) and the extra energy has made it even worse. I had been taking onnit new mood supplements before bed which helped a lot, but I've ran out, so unless I smoke weed to sleep, I've been getting 2-4 hours or waking up through the night unable to sleep. This Thursday I got about 3'hours of sleep after a late night out (got home at 3am and overslept til 6:30), worked Friday from 8-5 and then didn't get home until 11. Went straight to bed and woke up at 2:30 am. It's currently 5:16am, have a full day of art viewing/creating, city walking and chore doing ahead of me and probably will feel like shit, but the energy boost will keep my mind racing. I've heard others complain of this extra energy as well and I'm trying to find solutions for when I don't have sleep supplements.
I find that the only backlash I get is from people who have either never heard about it or have never tried it. When people hear the word diet, they automatically assume it's to lose weight and look at me and judge (as in already on the slim side), but I associate diet with nutrition, health, and eating lifestyle.
I'd suggest anyone to try the diet for just 60 days to see how it affects them. At first you do drop weight rapidly (1-2 lbs a day), but it's mostly water weight. You can also feel like shit (flu like symptoms) for about a week, but after that you'll start noticing as urge of energy. My cravings for sugar are gone and replaced for heavy cravings of fat and protein.
I work at a local bank and they had a huge meeting on Friday, meaning free breakfast and pizza for lunch. Staring at the assortment of food, I realized literally everything had excessive carbs and sugars. Muffins, bagels, sugar filled yogurt, fruit juices, pizza and bread rolls were splayed out and the only untouched items were the butter and cream cheese. by the end of the day, I made sure to take the fats home with me (organic valley and Cabot brands?!?!! that's fine quality whole foods shit brah).
I wish there was another word commonly associated with overweight than "fat". We see full fat and decide on fat free items (as we know are dubbed in a more positive phrasing a as light and skinny). I think proper nutritional education and a change of perspective would do wonders. If only schools had taught mandatory nutrition growing up, I think our collective national health would be completely different.
Exercise is important, but 80% of your weight is sue to what you eat. Want to lose weight? Eat right. Want to gain muscle? Stack exercise with that. I've grown up around a lot of health nuts, friends with both female and male body builders/fighters, my father was into martial arts and boxing for years and although my on deals with weight issues herself, when she was my age she worked in a health spa and dealt with nutrition. They will all tell you the same thing, you become what you consume. This sounds completely contradictory to what I was saying before about my New Orleans eating lifestyle, but looking back, I think the south idea of what overweight means is different than what is in reality unhealthy.
Sorry for the ramble, my brain is pretty dead right now.
Not trying to call you out or be rude, I saw the NOLA in your username and it caught my attention
I didn't do it to lose weights, but mostly for mental and body health issues (depression, energy/anemia, eating disorder and anxiety). It's helped a ton, given me the energy to exercise which helps my depression. I eat between 1100-1600 calories (29 yr old female, 117-120 lbs, 5'5.5"). growing up in New Orleans, I had the absolute worse eating habits, ridiculously excessive carbs (I'd eat a whole French bread loaf for lunch, lasagna for dinner and several servings of beignets on the weekend). I was always thin, until I went to college and my weight skyrocketed as I got older andmy metabolism slowed. My highest was 170, but life stresses made me luckily drop the weight (down to about 130-140 without much effort). Moved to Boston for graduate school and by the time I finished, he unhealthy lifestyles an artist (drugs, booze, sleepless nights) made me lose the remainder. I was back to high school weight and almost 30, and felt like absolute shit. This on top of my mother having a binge eating disorder, fluctuating between both extremely low weight and overweight definitely caused food to be both my friend and enemy.
Although the diet hasn't helped with my nervousness and social anxiety, it has helped with mental clarity, energy and overall mood. Before this diet, I was self medicating with dissociative drugs and surprisingly a lot of the affects are the same (minus the calmness and auditory/visual hallucination the drugs provided).
The downside is I've always functioned on little sleep (4-6 hours) and the extra energy has made it even worse. I had been taking onnit new mood supplements before bed which helped a lot, but I've ran out, so unless I smoke weed to sleep, I've been getting 2-4 hours or waking up through the night unable to sleep. This Thursday I got about 3'hours of sleep after a late night out (got home at 3am and overslept til 6:30), worked Friday from 8-5 and then didn't get home until 11. Went straight to bed and woke up at 2:30 am. It's currently 5:16am, have a full day of art viewing/creating, city walking and chore doing ahead of me and probably will feel like shit, but the energy boost will keep my mind racing. I've heard others complain of this extra energy as well and I'm trying to find solutions for when I don't have sleep supplements.
I find that the only backlash I get is from people who have either never heard about it or have never tried it. When people hear the word diet, they automatically assume it's to lose weight and look at me and judge (as in already on the slim side), but I associate diet with nutrition, health, and eating lifestyle.
I'd suggest anyone to try the diet for just 60 days to see how it affects them. At first you do drop weight rapidly (1-2 lbs a day), but it's mostly water weight. You can also feel like shit (flu like symptoms) for about a week, but after that you'll start noticing as urge of energy. My cravings for sugar are gone and replaced for heavy cravings of fat and protein.
I work at a local bank and they had a huge meeting on Friday, meaning free breakfast and pizza for lunch. Staring at the assortment of food, I realized literally everything had excessive carbs and sugars. Muffins, bagels, sugar filled yogurt, fruit juices, pizza and bread rolls were splayed out and the only untouched items were the butter and cream cheese. by the end of the day, I made sure to take the fats home with me (organic valley and Cabot brands?!?!! that's fine quality whole foods shit brah).
I wish there was another word commonly associated with overweight than "fat". We see full fat and decide on fat free items (as we know are dubbed in a more positive phrasing a as light and skinny). I think proper nutritional education and a change of perspective would do wonders. If only schools had taught mandatory nutrition growing up, I think our collective national health would be completely different.
Exercise is important, but 80% of your weight is sue to what you eat. Want to lose weight? Eat right. Want to gain muscle? Stack exercise with that. I've grown up around a lot of health nuts, friends with both female and male body builders/fighters, my father was into martial arts and boxing for years and although my on deals with weight issues herself, when she was my age she worked in a health spa and dealt with nutrition. They will all tell you the same thing, you become what you consume. This sounds completely contradictory to what I was saying before about my New Orleans eating lifestyle, but looking back, I think the south idea of what overweight means is different than what is in reality unhealthy.
Sorry for the ramble, my brain is pretty dead right now.
Skinny does not equal healthy. I listen to dr Rhonda Patrick's podcast (foundmyfitness) and she talks a lot about this. It's a real shame that when we go to the doctors, as long as we appear skinny or normal weight, we are never asked "what is your diet like?" You can be skinny and have a body/mind not running optimally BECAUSE you're eating trash.
Not trying to call you out or be rude, I saw the NOLA in your username and it caught my attention
well, it's physically impossible to not lose weight if you take in less calories than your body needs to function. The problem, then, becomes to figure out what your diet should look like so you don't feel constantly hungry. I'd advice you to start counting your calories intake and research an extensive list of low-calories meals and snacks that can fill your stomach up
Keto worked for well for me. I lost around 1kg a week, from 73 down to 60 (I'm 1,80m tall), which admittedly isn't impressive but, ya know, it worked. I don't think I ever even reached ketosis because I still consumed too many carbs during that time
oh, and you should probably do some light exercising or you might end up losing muscle mass, like me
There are definitely some conditions/medications that lead to weight gain and obesity.
That being said, you just need to count calories like the guy above said. People tend to eat more than they think they do. Count calories for a week and find out your BMR. Then you'll see why you're not losing weight.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
I always see you in these threads, Mr. Beer Monkey, posting pretty much the polar opposite of what I'm arguing. Well, not exactly, but I have to wonder, do you really think that all food you eat gets processed for energy in the same way? Have you ever been curious enough to look into the various metabolic pathways and how they work?
Obviously #thermodynamics applies and #somelawscantbebroken, which means that, yes, if your body cannot get enough energy to keep going via food, it will begin deregulating functions to conserve energy and also break down body tissue for energy purposes. It will always choose that over dying if it can. All that says, though, is that starving yourself can cause you to lose weight. Obviously.
That still says nothing about body composition and whether or not your body is preferentially mobilizing and breaking down stored triglycerides for energy or not. All of that is determined by nutrient composition, hormones, and other factors. You can absolutely create an environment in which you eat way more food than your body needs for energy purposes, but still not accumulate any body fat, or even reduce body fat.
Body composition is not determined by an energy balance equation.
And that's before we even get into the satiety vs. willpower factor that comes into play with the different dieting methods.
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