To Cut Calories, Eat Slowly | Hacker News Reader

To Cut Calories, Eat Slowly

nytimes.com

34 pointsrobg48 comments

Of course the food industry is well aware of this. Given that their goal is to sell product, process foods are designed to have texture that rapidly breaks down into easily swallowed mush.

Here is an experiment. Get a some chicken and cook it yourself. (If you need an easy recipe, try http://www.recipefiles.org/view_recipe.php?id=551 - my kids love it.) Buy some pre-cooked chicken from a fast food restaurant like KFC. Attempt to eat pieces of both chickens. You generally will need to chew the chicken you prepare yourself about twice as much before swallowing. The reason is that the preparation for the fast food chicken involves breaking down all of the internal texture of the chicken while injecting a mix of sugar, fat, salt and water to plump it up and make it more tasty.

If you want to look at this another way, stop looking at processed food as food. Look at it as a drug delivery system. The drug is a combination of sugar, fat and salt, and easy administration of the drug is an explicit design goal.

You may be overcooking your chicken:) I roasted a nice organic chicken last night and the meat was amazingly soft and almost melted in your mouth.

The chicken that I cook myself is plenty soft. But it is nothing like pre-processed chicken. In particular if you pay attention while chewing you realize that the pre-processed chicken doesn't have a lot of internal texture than the home cooked chicken does. Read The End of Overeating for more details.

No. Eat greens.

Eating low calorie-density foods gets calories inside so much slower, no matter how fast you chew. Plus, they are packed with healthy nutrients.

Eating slowly and eating greens are not mutually exclusive.

Correct. But the second is hugely better.

It's like someone is eating poison and you'd say: eat slower. Not a bad idea, but...

I would add, remove wheat and most other grains -- but especitally wheat -- from your diet. Personal results include a loss of 25 pounds, effortlessly. No hunger, more energy.

Here's some background on the theory behind that:

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/name-that-food.htm...

I've been doing the paleo diet for a while and I can echo the energy level increase is great!

http://thepaleodiet.com/

Agreed. While eating less can help, its more about what you are eating.

Eat real food (meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds). Stop eating processed food. Cut out the grains and possibly dairy.

If you do this (exercise is good too), you will lose weight and not have to worry about how much you are eating.

http://marksdailyapple.com is another good resource

There is one thing I do not like at all in the Paleo Diet: MEAT.

There are countless studies about effects of eating meat, from heart disease to cancer. What study is there about the BENEFITS of meat? This diet is a dangerous fad.

I personally prefer the Eat To Live diet: basically loads and loads of greens, veggies and fruit.

when a group of subjects were given an identical serving of ice cream on different occasions, they released more hormones that made them feel full when they ate it in 30 minutes instead of 5

A half hour to eat one serving of ice cream? Madness...

someone should measure the difference between:

a. eating the icecream during 30minutes b. eating in 5 minutes + working out lightly (take a walk) the other 25

One first-order approximation is 100 calories per mile for 180-pound person.

Say you walk 2 miles; you've hit about 200 calories. So a wash, and you had to wolf down your food.

I am by no means against working out, but forcing this dichotomy may dissuade people from taking a simple an useful step that could even be aggregated: Stretch out your previously brief ice cream consumption while doing your normal schedule AND go for that walk. BAM! You're an even bigger winner.

How many calories could you burn by jogging (or cycling, or swimming, or doing whatever exercise you prefer) for the extra 25 minutes, instead of eating the ice cream more slowly? If it's even close, jogging is a better idea, because exercise has so many added benefits.

Presumably, ice cream is one of the things that most favors the extended consumption time, because of its high calorie density. For more standard meals, exercise looks even better.

A super-rough number to use is 500kcal/hour.

Ice cream is even better because it melts... if you are eating it over a period of 30 minutes, you've only had half of it because most of it melted and dripped onto the ground/your hand! If you eat ice cream really fast and then jog, you will probably get a cramp. But you might puke instead, which would make ice cream come out ahead again. ---

But seriously, this is a bad comparison. Eating the same amount of ice cream over 5 minutes or 30 minutes will have the same amount of calories.

The difference is that eating more slowly causes you to feel full at a lower amount of food eaten, which will keep you (typically) from consuming as many calories.

It is just as useful to eat a set amount (in five minutes) that is 10% less than what you would have eaten.

I think the technical term for this phenomena is the 'inverse Japanese hot-dog guy effect'.

"Don't eat until you're full, eat until you're not longer hungry."

Or do intermittent-starvation/alternative day fasting.

I do this (48/24) because of the reduced likelihood of a recurrence of cancer. (The cancer I had seems to be accelerated by IGF.)

There is NO way that is healthy. No way.

It's interesting you say that because the doctor who wrote ETL, which you mention in another post, prescribes intermittent fasting all the time. He's even written a book about it: http://www.amazon.com/Fasting-Eating-Health-Medical-Conqueri...

We'll, it's just my gut opinion.

I will read more on this, I may be very well wrong.

Has anyone here read Surfing and Health by Dorian Paskowitz? Great book that. Everyone seems to eventually arrive to his conclusions (including that TED talk about living past 100).

"subjects ... consumed roughly 10 percent fewer calories when they ate at a slow pace"

this intuitively feels like a negligible optimization. don't eat your ice cream slower; stop eating the ice cream!

A 10% decrease in calories in the average diet is equivalent to dropping a serving of ice cream or a candy bar.

the average american needs to drop fully half, or more, of their calorie intake to lose weight (make cal_intake < cal_burned). http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2006/12/27/do_americans_ea...

The study quoted in that post is completely flawed, as people mention in the comments. It isn't a study of how much is actually consumed by Americans, it's a study of how much food is produced in America, factoring in imports/exports, and then assuming that the leftovers all get eaten which just isn't true at all.

The US certainly has an obesity problem, but there's no way the average American consumes almost 3800 calories a day.

3500 calories ~ 1lb of body fat. So eating almost 1800 calories over the recommended would mean gaining 1lb of weight every 2 days, or roughly 14-15lbs a month. 182lbs per year.

Basically in the 45 years when your calorific consumption should be the maximum between ~18 and ~60+, you would gain around 8 tons of body weight.

I'm sorry, I love taking a shot at America for the obesity problem, but an 8 ton man? Really? Did the people who wrote that study even think that figure through? They factored in imports/exports, but they didn't bother to even guesstimate a percentage for food actually consumed in a household.

3800 is surely high, but your caloric needs go up as you gain weight, so there would be an equilibrium point before 8 tons.

I totally agree that the numbers are off, but your calculation is incorrect as well, because most obese people burn much more than 2000 calories a day. Someone who is about 240 pounds could eat about 3000 calories a day simply to stay at that weight, even more if they exercise a lot. Of course this is not really this simple, people vary, hormones, metabolism etc. all affect weight loss/gain, but the general principle stands.

As smokey_the_bear said, your basal metabolic rate will go up as you gain weight, meaning you will eventually need 3800 calories a day to maintain your current weight. I'm guessing this point is somewhere around 400lb, roughly. You'd have to add calories above and beyond to keep gaining weight.

Also you have to look at the level of activity. An athlete or construction worker can probably eat 3800 calories every day and not gain weight.

I know, I was doing it more to point out how sensationally stupid claiming the average American consumes 3800 calories is. The average American male weighs 190+lbs (IIRC) up 30lbs on 50 years.

My problem with calorific calculations, and even bodyweight averages in themselves is that they're so bogus. Post-war diets are vastly different than our current diets. The factors that effect body weight are also vastly different, I'm sorry but we've got thousands of medicines that weren't available 50 years ago, and one of the major contributing factors to weight loss is disease.

Americas weight problem isn't going to be resolved by figures and statistics, and it's certainly going to be hurt by poor statistics like those provided in the study in question.

How can a 190lb average American Joe consume 3800 calories working an Average sedentary job not be gaining a pound of body fat per week? The figures are ludicrously disjointed.

I understand that everybody is different, believe me I work in construction, I likely eat a thousand calories more than I'm recommended and I'm presently losing weight. My BMI says I'm going to drop dead, my vitals tell a different story. My heart is a near-perfect metronome when at rest (literally ~60 bpm), my body fat on my limbs is exceptionally low (especially my legs due to lots of moving heavy weights).

When I'm told I'm obese because of some voodoo astrology bodyweight index by a doctor who's showing all the signs of high blood pressure and could stand to lose a good 10 index points himself, I don't listen and in 20 years down the line I still won't be listening to the new doctor who's taken over the dead guys office because he'll be well on his way to rosy red cheeks and shortness of breath from picking up a tongue depressor.

Governments are paying for these studies that are providing sheer utter crap and they're trying to resolve weight issues by indirect action and instructing their overweight medical professionals to tell their patients to lose weight.

Here's my very simple solution: Vehicle free down towns nationwide. Not only will it be phenomenal for the environment (air quality, noise pollution, etc.) and provide a boon for public transit infrastructures, but it will also mean everyone is forced to get at least some exercise in during a work day.

there's no way the average American consumes almost 3800 calories a day.

Here's an "average" american diet:

breakfast: bagel with creamcheese = 430 calories

mid-morning latte = 225 calories

lunch:6" subway cold cut sandwich = 410 calories

lunch: small bag chips = 400 calories

mid afternoon kit-kat = 500 calories

dinner: spaghetti and meatballs = 970 calories

12 oz bottle of budweiser = 110 calories

total: 3045 calories

Considering that many americans are going to get the 12" sub, drink more than 1 beer and a bunch of soda, have seconds for dinner, and eat "dessert" every night, it doesn't seem that far-fetched that the average american consumes 3800 calories per day.

Your numbers seem off:

Starbucks latte with nonfat milk = 168 calories

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-starbucks-coffee-caff...

6" Subway Cheesesteak (It was the worst one I could find on browsing) = 360 calories

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-subway-sandwiches-6-c...

Small bag of Lays potato chips = 150 calories

http://www.dietfacts.com/html/nutrition-facts/frito-lay-lays...

Kit-kat bar = 210 calories

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-hersheys-kit-kat-milk...

Fazoli's spaghetti and meatballs (Again, the worst I could find) = 720 calories

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-fazolis-spaghetti-mea...

If you were to add in an extra large vanilla shake from McDonald's you'd add a quick 1100 calories to your day.

I used the bruegger's bagel and medium latte from their website:

http://www.brueggers.com/documents/nutrition.pdf

Subway value was from the "Cold Cut Combo":

http://www.subway.com/subwayroot/menunutrition/nutrition/pdf...

(Note that Subway's page says the cheesesteak sub you mention is 520 calories, not 360.)

spaghetti and meatballs value was from here http://www.calorieking.com/foods/calories-in-italian-spaghet...

I did inflate the potato chips, I thought the small bag was 3oz, not 1oz. Also I thought the kit kat was per bar.

3800 calories is still only a little bit of work. Most people I know drink 2 lattes, 2 or more beers, and would consider the 6" sub the "diet" option.

I suppose this comment thread is pretty illustrative of why it's so hard for people to count calories to lose weight - even though we both looked up data it was different enough that it could be significant in someone's diet.

I was personally enlightened, at least.

Yay for anecdotal evidence! The people I know eat (for the most part) quite healthy, don't drink any soda, don't eat junk food, etc.

As was mentioned by someone else, if the average American ate 3800 calories a day they would continually gain weight until they reached the equilibrium point of maintenance calories.

The average height of America males is 5'10". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height

The average weight of American males is 191lbs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_weight

Given those numbers, and an age of 35 years, with a base metabolic rate, calorie maintenance is 1809kcal/day and 2488kcal/day for exercise 3 times/week (surely more than the "average" American) http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

The equilibrium point for 3800kcal/day and 3 times/week exercise is 400 pounds!

Methinks you're still fudging the numbers.

But that's with a 500% increase in time spent eating. It seems much more efficient to wolf down food after working out, assuming all we're talking about is net calories.

What the efficiency gained? You're still spending the same time, you're just exerting more effort to choke down your food quickly and go walking.

That's assuming that 1) choking plus walking is less fun than eating a meal over a long period, and 2) that it takes just as long. I would dispute #2; you're correct about #1, but there's no reason to expect that you can have weight loss independent of other factors, some of which you might not like.

I also fail to see the logic in the proposition of asking someone that already has a demonstrated self-control problem to "just eat slower instead".

Eating slower is a lot easier than not eating at all, so it can provide a starting point. After constantly being told to exercise, eat less, eat healthier, buy organic, etc., some people have reached the point where there willpower is so low, they can't choose a starting point from that huge list. They need something small that will give them a little nudge in the right direction, to start a positive feedback cycle.

Negligible? 10% of daily consumption?

So a person consumes 2200 calories a day. He burns 1850 per day. Losing 220 off the top of daily consumption means you have only 130 calories to cut out to not gain week or a lot less to cut to lose weight.

It's a free snack a day the person loses by eating slower. That's a HUGE difference when you look at the very small amount that they may be in excess of their burn rate (or increases the amount of the deficit they're managing to engender).

The problem is that people consume 3300, 4400 or 5500 kcal, not 2200 :)

Then my argument is even stronger, and you're not consuming 330, 440, or 550 calories.

Body mass of any type ups your daily burn rate. If you weigh 350 pounds, you may be burning quite a bit more than 2950 calories by just sitting there being fat.

Here is one calculator: http://walking.about.com/cs/calories/l/blcalcalc.htm

Baseline consumption does not raise linearly with body mass (otherwise no-one would gain weight.) While there is some truth to a larger gain, we are still talking about percentages in relation to existing mass and weight maintenance intake. I was merely making the point that at intakes sufficiently larger than the maintenance level, the 10% just means packing weight slower.

Overall, I think eating slower is a good idea, preferably after cooking it yourself. Eating less is too. But, ultimately, increasing expenditure is probably the best of the options (unless you do something dramatic like combine the approaches;)

10% fewer calories could mean reducing your intake by 250 calories a day. A pound of fat is about 3500 calories, so that's a difference of 1lb of fat every 2 weeks. If you were maintaining your weight at the previous level, you'd lose 1lb every 2 weeks at the 10% reduced level. When it comes to dietary health, it's all about small changes and long time horizons.

Eat what you want in moderation and exercise. The formula isn't difficult - the execution just requires willpower and discipline.

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