Complete Notes to Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes | Higher Thought
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Change in energy stores = Energy intake – Energy expenditure
According to my biochemistry professor in college, this had one - and only one - interpretation: The change in energy stores is controlled by energy intake and energy expenditure. The right side of the equation controls the left side of the equation. Also, there was an implied "just eat less and exercise more" (that energy intake and expenditure are independent variables).
But Taubes suggests that the causation could be reversed, and that energy intake and expenditure are dependent variables. In other words, a metabolic change could cause a change in energy stores, and energy intake and expenditure would change to match.
That (amazingly!) translates to: if you are losing weight you are likely to be less hungry and likely to have more energy. Or perhaps, if your metabolic state is such that you are losing weight, your hunger will adjust to match your activity level. Or even, if you're burning fat, you will only eat to make up for what you aren't getting from stored fuel.
It makes sense to think that if your energy stores are releasing fuel into the blood stream you would be less hungry (I'm assuming that hunger signals are a function of available fuel to some extent).
Naturally, we eat for nutrition as well as fuel, so I suppose it can't all be broken into thermodynamics, but it's an interesting way of thinking about it!
Energy intake - Energy expenditure - Change in energy stores = 0
There. Just f(x,y,z)=0. That's what the first law really says. There is no causality implied, it just a first integral of the "motion" of metabolism that the body, naturally, has to follow.
It does NOT say what variables are free to independently modify. It's just a relation the three of them have to obey.
You put some mass that contains chemical energy into your body. Then that mass comes out of your body, minus SOME of the chemical energy. How much of it is extracted? What determines this? I have no idea. That said, I think it is funny to treat it as if the only way to get rid of energy is expenditure. How about:
Energy intake - Energy Ependiture - Energy still in food when it comes out the other end = Change in energy stores
My point is that a lot of people misinterpret conservation of energy assigning it a direction of causality it doesn't have. It's a constraint between variables (not an assignation as in programming languages) which are under complex feedback control systems in the body, and that's why the kind of calories you eat (fats vs carbohydrates) DOES matter, you don't eat abstract pure energy but as you say mass with chemical energy that has to be metabolized.
That's why starvation diets (just counting theoretical calories, which are numbers obtained in laboratories, dismissing the type of macronutrient) often fails in the long term and leave serious damage. The book talks long about this.
I've just noticed that people generally do equate "energy intake" with calories that go into your mouth, and find that interesting.
I think I was mistaken.
There was a thread on here with a video that was just incredibly insightful and it was a big part of what convinced me. I'm starting to rethink my own nutrition and diet.
"Sugar: The Bitter Truth", +132 points, 86 comments http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006980
Takes a while to watch the video, but it was very worthwhile for me and highly recommended.
The issue with calories in minus calories out is not equivocating the word "in", though. It is that it doesn't provide a useful model of how weight gain works. "Calories in" and "Calories out" are not independent variables, they are managed by the body's various feedback systems. Changing one of them will almost always change the other. Going for a run will make you hungrier, and undereating will lower your energy level and probably make you hungrier as well.
Based on a lecture of his I've seen, I'm convinced that his major hypothesis is God's own truth - that "calories in - calories out" is not a useful model for controlling weight, and that the regulatory systems of the body are what you have to get at to have a real effect on body weight. I am sold on the idea that diet is one way to get at those systems effectively. I'm eager to read his book to find out more about the case he's making.
Specifically, how did you transition to a restricted diet? How have you felt, both emotionally and physically, throughout the process? What is a typical day like in terms of intake? Where do you get recipes? Do you count calories?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11Calories-t.html...
and the details from a vigorous Googling. I'm 6 feet tall, 165 lbs, and probably moderately physically active, so I picked a daily target of 1800 calories. That was based on some online calculators I found and anecdotes from people doing caloric restriction.
You can eat anything. The trick is not using up your whole quota on empty calories. If I have a can of soda and a cup of Ben and Jerry's, that's 37% of the day's calories right there, with pretty much no nutritional value. So you can have junk food, but not so much that it's going to make it hard to get all the nutrients to need while staying under your whole quota.
Another guideline is that if you end every day hungry, you're doing it wrong. Cheese will fill up your quota without filling you up. Fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, are filling and nutritious without packing a lot of calories. I shoot for a roughly even three-way split between calories from fat, protein, and carbs. I don't really use "special" caloric restriction recipes; I just cook/prepare whatever I want, while staying within the rules. I eat out a few times a week too.
Typical breakfast is eggs, maybe with mushrooms or something thrown in, and a fruit. A lunch might be chicken or fish with salad, or maybe a sandwich (bread is calorically dense, though, so careful). Dinner is pretty much the same as lunch, except that it's almost never a sandwich, is probably a bit more food, and includes red meat more frequently. Lentils and beans are all-around excellent, by the way.
I do count calories, because it would be too easy to lose track or cheat otherwise. I use Daily Burn, which has a huge number of foods in their database, and if I eat something they don't have, I guesstimate using things they do have. Counting calories makes it a lot easier to stick with it, because the more aware you are of what you're eating, the less tempted you are to be naughty.
After (a very brief) look this seems to me like another Atkins-style diet: less carbs lots of fat.
No thanks. Read a little Dr. Fuhrman for a different approach to nutrition: more nutrients, less calories. Greens in other words. More carbs though.
Who's right?
Contrary to popular belief there is lots of research backing up the low carb theory, but they are mainly found in the fields of endocrinology and physiological psychology.
The picture coming out of it as outlined by Taubes is of an extremely complex system.
The endocrinologists have shown that the primary hormone governing obesity is insulin which isn't controversial anymore. It isn't that simple though to avoid foods that physiologically spike insulin.
The Physiological psychologists have shown that insulin can see short spikes in preparation for a meal due to smells and tastes, which is why artificial sweeteners can be problematic sometimes.
Taubes' book is not a diet book, it's a thick book on all the things that are wrong on modern research on nutrition. It explains why the problem is not fats (nor greens), but refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour.
Very worth your time, really.
Fast food makes it cheap and easy to get into a pattern where a significant portion of your daily intake is essentially a combination of sugar (soda, coffee, tea, etc), fat (burgers, fries, tacos, etc) and salt (flavoring, preservatives, etc.)
If we went back to the diet before there was fast-food then we'd have a lot less obesity. People would be eating more whole grains, fruits, veggies, fish and lean meat.
That theory simply doesn't explain all the observations, and you need to catch up to modern science. Salt especially; current science strongly indicates that salt is not a problem for a normal person, it only matters if you already have a blood pressure problem (and I still think it may yet be revealed that it actually has no effect at all and it's all sugar). This isn't even from Taubes' book, this is simply the current state of the science.
Running on the dietary theories of the 1960s leaves you defenseless in the face of our current food environment, and when you get in trouble it doesn't give you a way out. Check this new stuff out. Check out the sugar video lionhearted referenced, it's free and the source is unimpeachable, and unlike reading the book which has the step of obtaining a book, that video is as easy to watch as any other video on YouTube. It has biochemistry in it. It's pretty good.
Where he differs, he has a lot more science to back it up.
This quote is taken from the wiki article on Gary Taubes
"Although Taubes has no formal training in nutrition or medicine, his book was praised as "raising interesting and valuable points" by Dr. Andrew Weil, while Dr. Mehmet Oz and trainer Jillian Michaels who appeared on the same program disagreed with Taubes on many questions. [6]"
I think we have to question the science when he states that exercise is an inefficient tool for weight loss.
Taubes is against refined carbs (OK, that does make sense) but is a bit of a nutter on other causes and solutions to obesity.
The science of the book is sound. And he is right about exercise: it's good for fitness (as in muscle) and other health reasons, but for weight loss is almost useless by itself. The reason is insulin, which signal the body to store, not use, energy.
Of course you could calorie-count people on a high carb diet and whip them to exercise and they will probably lose weight. But you will also destroy their health and they will regain all of its former weight (and then some) later. This is documented and is all in the book too.
Of course, I wouldn't expect a lot of people on HN to agree, thus the down-votes.
A lot of the food industry is based on pumping the salt, sugar and fat so that we eat/buy more. So people focused on making money are more likely to side with Taubes (even if he's wrong) than with Kessler.
If I could down vote this thread, I would.
I suspect that if we went back to the diet before there was fast-food, people would be eating more flavorful (a.k.a. fatty) meat than lean meat.
I know plenty of fat vegans including a family member who became diabetic and suffered a stroke because of it. Of course your and my experiences are both anecdotal, but I do believe I have heard studies showing that vegetarians do suffer disproportionately of heart disease. I'll try and google it.
(Yes, part of the reason some vegetarians are vegetarians is because plants can be more rich in nutrients, but it is not automatically balanced, and some vital nutrients are more challenging to get than others.)
In that case, a vegetarian ends up eating a not-excessively-large portion of carbs naturally.
A bad vegetarian who assumes if it's not meat it must be healthy can still get in trouble, not just on this front but on others as well. It's not that simple.
(I've resolved that if any of my children ever want to be vegetarians, I'm OK with that, but a critical precondition is that they demonstrate that they have done their homework and understand the nutritional implications. I believe it can be done safely, but it's not trivial; it takes work in our environment.)
The Irish have also had a long time to adapt to that diet. They're much less carb sensitive than others. Hence the difference between people from cultures who've eaten a traditionally low-carb diet vs those eating a high-carb diet. Native Americans suffer greatly, but those who traditionally farmed (Asians who eat rice for example) are healthy.
You legitimately have a point that there are certain nutritional deficiencies that vegans/vegetarians are more prone to.
That said, I would hope that whether or not the child is a vegan, you would have him understand the nutritional implications of what he is eating. Being an omnivore safely is also quite difficult.
Measured against GDP, countries in which rice-based diets are common (Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, etc...) have very thin, very long lived people compared with the protein crazed areas such as the US, UK, Australia, Canada.
Honestly, the only place I hear this carbohydrate-bashing crap is in English language news from places filled with fat people.
I do believe though that urban Chinese and Japanese are experiencing the same health issues we are here due to increased fructose consumption.
Traditional Inuit diets consist of 0 carbohydrates and is very high in fat. They had very low levels of obesity, heart disease and diabetes being unknown.
"Inuit Greenlanders, who historically have had limited access to fruits and vegetables, have the worst longevity statistics in North America. Research from the past and present shows that they die on the average about 10 years younger and have a higher rate of cancer than the overall Canadian population"
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-do-primitive...
Edit: I don't doubt that highly processed foods that are full of fructose are dangerous. Of course eating a banana is different from getting the same amount of fructose by drinking soda.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10479222
Interestingly if I recall correctly he mentions that 7th day adventists (vegetarians) have roughly the same heart disease level as Mormons (meat eaters).
meat eaters who should be nearly vegetarians (although definitely are not, in general): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_Wisdom#Meat