Claims that breakfast is a health panacea may be unsupported

"Free" snacks in the office cost us a lot.

Nutritional science seems worse, but I think that's because real (not pop) psychologists seem to be giving up on simple good/bad and fad advice.

There is so much of this in nutrition because there is profit motive via the food industry.

Put fat and sugar together and you get very palatable foods (like ice cream). It makes sense that removing either would help control weight.

Protein already came and passed. That's why cereal breakfast was introduced to avoid proteins in the early 1900s.

Ironically the man behind the campaign against protein was called Dr Kellogs and you can guess which company he founded.

There's a great documentary called In Defence of Food. Check it out.

>It can absolutely be the case that the old recommendations were the best we knew at the time from science, and be unsupported today.

It can also absolutely be the case that old recommendations were a mix of old wives tales (with no scientific basic whatsoever), bad papers (replicated and taken as gospel without reproducibility and further study) and studies sponsored by the food industry to promote this or that foodstuff...

Dietary science performs so ridiculously poorly compared to every other branch of science, that I can't simply chalk it up to the inherent nature of scientific progress. There are a lot of variables and complex systems, yes, but you get whiplash from the way so many of these hypotheses turn out to be absolute bullshit every few years. Really the lesson should be that no one should place much confidence at all in any of these ideas until they've actually been supported by many sources for a very, very long time. Branding these things as "current scientific knowledge" is exactly the kind of thing that gets people doubting science, and it's an insult to the rest of science.

No, the saturated fat argument was pure bullshit from day 1. Ansel Keys cherry picked his data and did not do his multivariate analysis correctly. He then went on to bully and threaten anyone who disagreed with him for the rest of his life.

This is absolutely correct and I don't know why anyone would try to deny it. We've known most of these things for a long time, as well as having multiple studies reinforce it, including recent ones.

Filling out your meals with more plant based foods instead of avoiding those foods while eating lots of low quality meat will have measurably better outcomes:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/255644.php

> It's pretty indisputable that fruit and vegetable consumption reduces CVD, increases mental well-being, and lowers weight.

I'd dispute part of that -- fruit contains significant amounts of sugars, and eating a lot of fruit will result in weight gain.

Eating a lot of vegetables is almost definitely a healthy option, and weight gain is unlikely.

what your middle school Health class contained or didn't contain does not change the fact that these are very widely accepted facts in society.

Well, no one said there is a downside - maybe there is, we simply don't know. Just like we do not know whether drinking two liters of water does have any benefit at all.

Recently, I have read an article which claimed that one should only drink water when their body demands it, you know, like becoming thirsty. The problem is, in most of the popular science circles these kinds of urban myths are propagated almost as if they were basic nutritional facts. I would personally think some mega-companies, such as Nestle, would be really interested in propagating the myth of the necessity of consuming at least two liters of water.

also, you might be interested in researching why cutting back saturated fats might not be as beneficial as it has been claimed for decades now. Actually, there is a new kid in town - ketogenetic diet.

> The thing to remember about hunger as a craving is that it'll always pass if you leave it alone. Have a cup of water and let it go.

Another option is to use a clock instead of gut feeling. I ignore the hunger until the clock tells me it's been 5 hours since my last meal.

Following your body's cues really doesn't work for everyone. Some people are just hungry all the time and have to learn to ignore those urges.

> Eat if you're hungry or your doctor tells you too. And when you eat, eat good food.

> I don't understand why people overcomplicate it.

Because it is, in fact, more complicated in practice. For one thing, it can take significant effort to isolate and distinguish hunger that signals need to eat for calories, the sensations produced by habitual expectation of food, cravings due to specific needs but not general caloric needs, and even thirst.

> The only difference is if you're trying to lose or gain weight, in which case it makes sense to watch how much and what you eat, when is less important.

When can actually be quite important if you are trying to do anything with law with your day besides losing weight when trying to lose, since managing to maintain a calorie deficit while mitigating the impact of the adverse effects of such a deficit and the associated stress on other activities is nontrivial.

> Follow your body's cues

Your body’s cues are setup to promote overeating when that is possible, because humans aren't actually evolved for constant, reliable food surplus but alternation between surplus and insufficiency.

Typically it's more like thin but with poor muscle definition. Not overweight but not fit.

But assuming the gp was exercising with weights etc, they might mean that they felt they weren't overweight but were carrying excess fat in certain areas, or considered themselves bloated.

Thinner and softer; noodle arms. You can be thin or lean, but skinny-fat is marked by soft muscle.

I believe it's using "fat" as a catch-all term for an unhealthy body composition. You appear skinny but lack muscle. I don't think you necessarily have to have "hidden" excess fat to be called this term.

It means your BMI is “normal”, but it’s normal because you lack muscle to offset having more fat than ideal.

It depends.

Growing people may need to eat more frequently.

Personally I like to have breakfast at my first break at 10am, so I’m fasting for longer each day. I’m not that far off 40, and if I’m honest I probably don’t need an evening meal either.

I'm never hungry in the morning. That should be an indicator that I should skip breakfast, which I often do.

Maybe you're hungry in the morning _because_ you eat breakfast

I'm in the UK, and since being a kid I've always heard "breakfast is the most important meal of the day". This was never specifically about cereal, but that's what most kids in the UK eat for breakfast - especially given at the time we were all told fat was evil, and would basically kill us.

Nowadays I don't eat breakfast, as it helps control my weight, and TBH I don't miss it. When I started doing this, I thought about those "truths" I'd been fed as a kid, and suspected they came out of paid-for pseudoscience. A year or so ago I actually looked into this, and sure enough, all these claims about breakfast are from studies sponsored by Kellogs, other cereal brands, or companies closely associated with them.

Governments base policy on these kind of claims, and over time they become unquestioned "truths" - paid-for, corporate science shilling really is an absolute fucking scourge on society.

It is healthy-ish, depending exactly what you have, how you cook it and quantity and how frequently you have it. The healthy version will look significantly different than the greasy spoon version dripping in oil.

I’ll do a full english with scrambled eggs, sourdough toast, mushrooms in a little butter, home cooked beans, 2 rashers of rindless bacon with a tiny amount of oil fried or grilled, maybe a slice of black pudding, I may even put avocado on the toast.

It's probably fine if you're going to spend the next 12 hours plowing a field with a team of oxen.

Eating isn’t a weight loss strategy.

In other news, circles are round. Film at 11.