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Comment by jononomo | Hacker News Reader

Rice, beans, sugar, and bread are cheap foods -- if you are trapped in poverty then you will be eating a carb-heavy mostly plant-based diet and you'll probably also be consuming a lot of sugar. Carbohydrates are what lead to obesity. Cutting carbs out entirely is a healthy way to cut weight, but that would mean eating only meat, which is comparatively expensive. This is why poor people are fat.

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I don’t understand. There are entire nations (eg. Pakistan, Bangladesh) where meat is a delicacy and Rice and Wheat is what feeds the masses, the obesity ratio I’ve personally observed is nowhere near the US.

India and Pakistan suffer from the lowest life expectancy in the world and diabetes is exploding. They do in fact have a fair amount of obesity, but the rate is not as high as it is in the west because it is overpowered by poverty, so they are on a low-calorie version of a poor diet. There is also much more manual labor happening in India, which keeps the weight off.

There are rich countries like Japan and South Korea that consume between 8 to 12 times [0] as much rice as the US and have much lower obesity rates (almost a tenth) [1].

[0] https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/rice-consumption-per...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...

8 to 12 times rice doesn't mean much if its substituted by a different carb, like bread or pasta. But the point holds. I've heard tell of Japanese doctors recommending people eat more rice as western diets begin to cause problems in Japan.

Good point, rice could be substituted by another carb, but OP was explicitly talking about low carb diets. South Korean maybe don't eat as much beard or pasta, but for sure they are not having a low carb diet, yet they are not fat.

Japanese also eat a fairly high amount of meat. But I also think you may be correct that rice is a less dangerous carb than wheat, which contains gluten. In South Korea obesity rates are in fact increasing and the fact that you should avoid eating a lot of rice if you want to stay slender is well-understood. In North Korea, on the other hand, white rice is more of a staple and yet obesity rates are not as high because the general poverty of the society as a whole is overpowering.

Calories is what makes you gain weight. Calories.

Also, a note: not everyone can eat a meat-heavy diet. I cannot. I don't have a gall bladder - like many others - and cannot digest the fats well. Eggs are too much sometimes.

Not only that, but you can eat perfectly healthy without actual meat. Low quality foods - meatless or not - generally have a lot of empty calories and aren't very filling, making it easier to gain weight.

What makes a food "low quality" vs "high quality"?

I would argue that the answer is the nutrient to calorie ratio. Many nutrients for few calories is good, but few nutrients for many calories is bad. By this analysis, plant-based food is "low quality" and animal-based food is "high quality".

So if calories are what make you gain weight then it makes sense that people following a plant-based diet would gain weight compared to people following an animal-based diet because they will need to consume more calories to acquire the same amount of nutrients.

But this isn't true, and your conclusion is false. It won't matter where you get calories if you need them: Calorie-dense, nutrient low foods can have a place in diet. Sometimes, folks just need calories (it used to be that some marathon runners loaded up on carbs before a race: I don't know if this is still true) And to be fair, I've lost weight - and kept it off - without eating meat. As have many, many others. Some of this is because nutrient-low foods don't make up a huge portion of my diet: Instead, it is beans and lentils and rice and a wide variety of vegetables with a bit of eggs and cheese and the occasional fake meat for textures and eating favorites.

The main reason folks lose weight on meat-heavy diets is because they tend to eat less and therefore eat fewer calories. But there is more than one path to eating fewer calories. Lentils and beans tend and some vegetables tend to be rich in fiber, which keep you full longer and tend to mean you eat less. Not to mention that a plate full of vegetables and beans tends to have fewer calories than a plate of meat - and hold a variety of nutrients as well.

Yes, you do need a certain number of calories just to keep your heart beating. My point is that once you already have all the calories you need it would be too bad if you needed to keep eating in order to get all the nutrients that you need. That is why it is favorable to eat red meat.

You are correct when you state at the beginning of your second paragraph that people on meat-heavy diets tend to eat fewer calories. But you are incorrect when you state at the end of that paragraph that a plate full of plant food will have fewer calories than a plate of meat. If this were true, then people on meat-heavy diets must not be finishing their plates of food, since they end up consuming fewer calories.

As for your own diet, it's a good thing you have the eggs and cheese in there! That's where your vital nutrition is coming from. The rice and beans and veggies are just keeping you alive with calories but not carrying their weight in terms of nutrition. You could be doing worse, such as eating a bunch of bread and pasta, or even worse than that, soda and candy, but you could also be doing much better by eating mostly steak and sardines.

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