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Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

I am just watching the British "Supersize Vs Superskinny" series.

The heavy articipants have serious addiction problem, obviously. The question is whether some foods are inherently addictive, at least for some people who are more predisposed to food addiction.

There are some obvious commonalities in the diets of the superfatties: pretty much every one of them consumes a lot of pizza, fries, soft drinks and various fat-and-salty snacks. "Normal" cooked meals that were the staple of nutrition before the advent of fast food are almost absent from their diets.

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I'm sure some foods are inherently addictive, but I hesitate to put the blame on specific foods because I gained most of my weight from eating sushi rice… a pot at a time.

My experience suggests to me that food addiction is primarily psychological in nature and is often the result of a history of "experience coupling" (examples to follow) and a genuine misunderstanding of what feeling "full" truly feels like.

Most obese people I know have no idea when they've eaten enough food and often don't stop eating until they're in pain. I'm not sure if this problem is physical, but as a formerly-obese person I can state with confidence that I still don't quite know when I've eaten enough. There is no feeling of "full" for me; just pain vs. no pain.

"Experience coupling" examples…

* Feeling the need to eat popcorn while watching a movie

* Feeling the need to eat peanuts, hot dogs, and beer at a baseball game

* Feeling the need to meet with friends at restaurants, coffee shops, etc.

* Feeling the need to eat cereal by the fistful when trying to work through a tough algorithm (<-- personal anecdote)

* Feeling the need to snack on road-trips

"have no idea when they've eaten enough food and often don't stop eating until they're in pain"

Our hunger / satiety feelings are driven hormonally by hormones called ghrelin and leptin. Ideally, those two take care of a perfect equilibrium.

If something messes this self-balancing mechanism up, feelings of hunger and satiety may no longer respond to actual caloric intake - a recipe for a slow-motion disaster.

Worth noting that satiety (to a large degree controlled by leptin) is triggered much more by fat than by other macro nutrients. So white rice, and all other carbs, are worse on that axis too - high in calories but not very filling, thus promoting overeating. The decades of war on fat have contributed to people indulging in these foods.

Why do you think this? I've never seen a satiety index that scores butter over white rice.

You can resolve this for yourself experimentally. Or just look at the math (pulled from google's nutrition facts):

Eat two cups of cooked white rice, ~412 calories, 316 g.

A day later with the same starting conditions, eat 316 g of butter, or ~2,265 calories. I bet you're going to feel way more full after eating the same "amount" of butter vs rice.

As for 500 calories of rice vs 500 calories of butter, hopefully someone else can chime in with references, but again, do the experiment for yourself: how soon after eating an entire meal of rice vs butter do you find yourself getting hungry? This is complicated by what kind of macro ratios a given person's gut is used to, but generally, I find myself ready for more after the rice much sooner.

Wow! So butter is healthier than white rice?

Satiety has nothing to do with health. As well, one is going to affect your blood glucose, and the other might mess with your arteries. It's not such a black and white healthier or not. It also depends on your body, for example, if you are in ketosis you will process that fat differently.

I have been one of those "Experience coupling" eaters (eating while reading) and decided to try and experiment on myself last month. I decided to no longer eat while reading, watching TV, browsing my phone, etc.

I noticed I ate much less than I would usually eat, enough to stick to 1500 calories a day rather easily.

You may know this, but, white rice has one of the highest glycemic indexes (along with white bread). High GI foods tend to be addictive, in that spikes in blood sugar are sort of a double whammy, the sharp rise help cultivate future cravings (the body produces dopamine in anticipation of big “positive” effects in the body, in this case to help encourage finding similar high calorie food stores in the future), while the almost immediate drop in blood sugar is a signal that we’re hungry, despite possibly having a too full belly, and already having a high baseline blood sugar level.

As to the rest of your comment, yeah, associative memories are a bitch when it comes to compulsive behaviors. I personally have to keep things out of the house otherwise I too would always eat popcorn and candy with every movie...

please note: sushi rice is not just plain white rice. Sushi rice often has sugar added to it, that's a big part of what makes it so addictive. And then, in the sushi itself, they often add oils, mayonaise (also made from oils), and sugary syrups on top too.

> Sushi rice often has sugar added to it

I know since it was homemade!

I'm glad I didn't become diabetic.

> The question is whether some foods are inherently addictive, at least for some people who are more predisposed to food addiction.

In some sense, yes, because to get to extremely high weights, you need to consume extremely high amounts of food. Your stomach will grow, but I would imagine a person would struggle to eat enough carrots to weigh 500 pounds. Quick napkin math says some obese people eat 6700 calories a day. 50 calories is ~12 baby carrots. That's ~1608 baby carrots per day. If my math is right, that's about 67 one pound bags of baby carrots per day.

Carrots are probably an extreme example, but I think the point stands that to get that overweight on healthy food, both the volume of the food and the time required to eat it become astonishing. I don't even know if we can metabolize carrots fast enough to eat that many in a day without rupturing some part of your stomach.

> "Normal" cooked meals that were the staple of nutrition before the advent of fast food are almost absent from their diets.

I think this is a big part of it. Calorie dense food has always been around. The problem was that it was often difficult and/or expensive to make. How long would it take you to replicate a Big Mac combo meal, and how much would it cost? It takes a while, especially given grocery shopping, and it's probably not much cheaper. Likewise, I can go to the grocery store and buy a whole cheesecake for like $10.

Honestly, I think the best way to tackle it is not to outright ban the foods, but just add an excise tax. If we added a 10% tax to soft drinks, fries and pizza, it probably wouldn't make a huge difference to the average citizen's spending. It would be a 10% increase in your food budget if that's all you eat though. If you want to go crazy, add a program that lets you earn that back by doing healthy things, like riding a bike. We should probably do that anyways. If we want to reduce the amount of driving people do, paying them walk/bike places instead of driving isn't a bad system either.

>Honestly, I think the best way to tackle it is not to outright ban the foods, but just add an excise tax. If we added a 10% tax to soft drinks, fries and pizza, it probably wouldn't make a huge difference to the average citizen's spending. It would be a 10% increase in your food budget if that's all you eat though. If you want to go crazy, add a program that lets you earn that back by doing healthy things, like riding a bike. We should probably do that anyways. If we want to reduce the amount of driving people do, paying them walk/bike places instead of driving isn't a bad system either.

The behavioral epidemic is defined by being irrational and not in the self-interest of the sufferers. How would a slight change in food prices lead to any change in behavior?

The price of products does have an impact for shoppers. Also especially with poor people, raising prices limits the amount they can afford.

"It was concluded that there is reasonable and increasing evidence that appropriately designed taxes on sugar sweetened beverages would result in proportional reductions in consumption, especially if aimed at raising the retail price by 20% or more. There is similar strong evidence that subsidies for fresh fruits and vegetables that reduce prices by 10–30% are effective in increasing fruit and vegetable consumption."

https://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/fiscal...

It has worked to some degree with cigarettes.

>If we added a 10% tax to soft drinks, fries and pizza

The argument against this is that it becomes a regressive tax scheme. Many in the lower income strata disproportionately eat these foods because they are convenient and relatively cheap. A 10% increase in the food budget of someone at or near poverty isn’t trivial.

Talk to chefs at high-end restaurants and you’ll see how much fat is inherent in (or gets added to) “luxury” food as well. But I almost never hear about them in the discussion about fat/sugar taxes. I’m not necessarily against the idea, just not in favor of the classist way it’s usually discussed.

The WHO found that the consumption of sugary soda declines when it is taxed[1].

> A 10% increase in the food budget of someone at or near poverty isn’t trivial.

The goal is to decrease the consumption.

[1] https://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/fiscal...

That’s a given. Increase the cost of anything and you’ll decrease the consumption (in general, exceptions exist).

My point is that the discussion is centered around only taxing the sugar/fat disproportionately consumed by those in the lower economic strata, meaning it becomes a de facto regressive tax.

Like I said above, I’m not against the idea. I’m against the way the implementation is typically discussed. Tax it, but tax it across the board. Tax caviar and truffles as well as hamburgers and sodas, that’s all.

High-end restaurants are such a microscopic part of the problem that this isn't really a point worth fighting over.

I can understand the utility part of the argument.

But human beings have an innate drive for fairness in society. People will actually work against their self interest if they feel they are being treated unfairly.

The counterpoint is that the “small part of the problem” logic works both ways. If it’s such a small part, it shouldn’t matter if it gets taxed. Taxing would have little impact on the consumption dynamics while having a much larger impact on the perception of fairness

I disagree that caloric drinks like sugary soda (along with hyperpalatable food) are a small part of the problem.

From the standpoint of public health policy, it is a good idea to introduce simple measures that are effective for 90% of the target group. If it turns out necessary, you can find a (perhaps less optimal) solution for the other 10% later.

Obesity isn’t caused by excess sugar, it’s caused by excess calories. 6% is all sugary drinks, of which soda is a (major) subset. Taxing won’t eliminate consumption but it will reduce it. Say it’s wildly successful and soda consumption is reduced by 30%. If we’re being generous and say soda makes up 80% of the “sugary drink” category, the tax has reduced overall calories by less than 1.5%. I just don’t think that will move the needle of the country’s obesity epidemic. Will it have some impact? Sure, but I think our priorities should be focused on something that actually have a bigger effect. That small effect is what I mean by “feel-good” measures... they allow politicians to put a feather in their cap without having a meaningful impact.

Anecdotally I’ve known people who’ve lost a lot of weight by cutting out soda completely. But success at the individual level can’t be generalized to the population level. Healthcare is nearly 20% of US GDP and nobody doubts obesity is a real contributor. An outright ban on soda would be infinitely more successful and if that would solve the major problem of the industry, I think you’d hear more about it.

I’ll try to put a finer point on it. You can’t (shouldn’t) just increase the cost if access to alternatives is also part of the problem. If you don’t increase the access to high quality, affordable alternatives you will just make things worse. There’s a lot of discussion in this thread that is only looking at one part of the problem (consumption of unhealthy food) and ignoring the other aspects (like access to higher quality alternatives)

If poor people eat so much of it that they get fat, then at a higher price point they will only afford less of the same stuff and thus get less fat.

So why doesn’t the same logic extend to non-poor people?

Again, the issue isn’t with the intent, it’s with the execution. No need to apply it in a manner that disproportionately affects that subset of the population, especially when there are significant other systemic factors that contribute to that consumption.

“Fat and sugar is bad” is quite different than “fat and sugar eaten by poor people is bad”

Rich people already have their ways of maintaining their health and are fitter in general.

I can’t quite follow your logic. Is it that poor people should pay more because they don’t have the tools and resources to maintain their health?

I.e., there’s a greater risk that their lifestyle leads to bad health outcomes that society will have to pay for?

If so, what other groups does this extend to that should be taxed? Should video games get a “health tax” because gamers tend to have a more sedentary lifestyle?

Yes, the same logic could be extended to tax sedentary entertainment products.

Or just let it take its course... Hail freedom! (for corporate marketing and optimizing addiction potential of all products) Boo regulation, that's anti-competitive and communist!

I know you say it in jest, but poorly administered regulation can be worse than no regulation at all. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, or something to that effect.

I’m not against the idea of taxation, I just think it should be done equitably and properly thought out, not haphazardly applied in a reactionary manner.

It’s like the idea of regulating check cashing places. I concede that they can often have predatory practices and deserve to be regulated. However, people who advocate completely banning them don’t necessarily realize they can also provide a valuable service and lifeline to poor communities.

You also don't take into account that companies respond to taxes by reducing the amount of the taxed components in the products.

Every variant of a sugar tax I’ve seen has been at the consumer level. A “sugar added tax” would probably make more sense, but I think there would be little chance of that happening in the US because of lobbying effects. It would be interesting to see if Coke, for example, would shift to mainly sugar-free products (doubtful) but these are also correlated with obesity and its unclear why

Sure, but the lower income strata are also the ones who are more disproportionally fat as well, so they benefit. Something I've always found amazingly annoying is the tendency to throw pragmaticism out the window for "virtue points".

Also, chefs at high ends restaurants is a non-sequitur. People, even of wealth, do not eat those every day. And those with the capability to do so are a tiny subset of the population. Furthermore, there's a negative correlation between wealth and obesity in developed countries.

Fair enough on the frequency argument. But you could easily substitute a different, more apt comparison. Even making the case that sugar laden coffee deserves an equal tax even though it would probably apply to the middle class. It does come across as condescending that since they are likely to benefit, it necessitates the government telling a particular group what personal choices they should make, almost as if they aren’t capable without regulation.

It’s not about “virtue points.” Its about understanding the true nature of the problem. Poorer people don’t disproportionately eat that food just because they’re too dumb to know better or somehow lack willpower. They often lack the time or access to higher quality affordable food. So by taxing it, you’ve just made a hard lifestyle even harder. To a large extent, the food consumption is the symptom of much larger problems. It’s not like just taxing soda will fix the US’s obesity epidemic. (The percentage of calories coming from soda doesn’t actually amount to enough - the numbers I’ve heard are around 6%). If anything, this type of taxation is the feel-good regulation that ignores the root problem. IMO that’s anything but pragmatic and tends to be be a shortfall of technocrats who sometimes fail to see the larger picture that spans multiple domains.

Now if we’re talking about using those taxes to address the deeper problems, I can get on board with that. I’ve yet to have anybody reply to that effect though, almost as if they think banning soda would magically fix our health crises.

Mind you, I'm personally opposed to a sugar tax myself, since I like soda, so you have my bias explicitly stated here. I'm also interpreting his initial thing as a proxy for the more established "unhealthy food tax", most commonly proposed as a sugar tax.

>It’s not about “virtue points.” Its about understanding the true nature of the problem. Poorer people don’t disproportionately eat that food just because they’re too dumb to know better or somehow lack willpower. They often lack the time or access to higher quality affordable food. So by taxing it, you’ve just made a hard lifestyle even harder. To a large extent, the food consumption is the symptom of much larger problems. It’s not like just taxing soda will fix the US’s obesity epidemic. (The percentage of calories coming from soda doesn’t actually amount to enough - the numbers I’ve heard are around 6%). If anything, this type of taxation is the feel-good regulation that ignores the root problem. IMO that’s anything but pragmatic and tends to be be a shortfall of technocrats who sometimes fail to see the larger picture that spans multiple domains.

So, this isn't a feel-good regulation, nor is it something that ignores the root problems, The current research shows that a sugar tax would be effective. The fundamental issue here is that they ingest too many calories, and sugar is by far and large the easiest way to do so. You're saying that they'll have problems affording sugary foods. That's the entire point. This is not a tax that's targeted at revenue or fairness, this is a tax that's fundamentally constructed to modify behavior.

Furthermore, from a nutritional standpoint, 6% of calories from soda is huge. That's a half litre of soda per day or double what the Europeans drink on average. Remember that for obesity, it's the little things done many times that gets you. A consistent increase in calories per day, compounded over the years is exactly how you get an obesity problem. Of course it's one of many factors, but it is an important factor and low hanging fruit at that.

>You're saying that they'll have problems affording sugary foods.

That’s not quite what I’m saying and I think this is probably the core of our disagreement.

I’m saying they are buying fatty or sugary (or otherwise unhealthy) food because they often lack access to suitable alternatives. “Suitable” being defined as relatively convenient and affordable. In that context, extra tax makes a bad situation worse.

A somewhat clunky analogy would be levy a tax on any grocery store that doesn’t have a competitor within 50 miles. For the sake of the analogy, let’s say it’s in the vein of logistics/transportation externalities related to getting food to said store disproportionately contributing to climate change. What do you think that does to people in that community? It makes a shitty situation of lack of alternatives even worse. Before you hand waive this analogy as silly, I’ve lived in communities that were almost two hours from a grocery store and people had to pack coolers of ice in their pickup beds. There’s many other rural communities where a Family Dollar is the main grocery store.

>The current research shows that a sugar tax would be effective.

As an aside, a smaller point of disagreement is that I don’t think soda would fix the obesity problem. If it would, simply banning it would be a near panacea for our healthcare system. As you stated, obesity is much more complicated. As I understand it, the research shows sugar taxes are useful for reducing sugar consumption not necessarily at producing better health outcomes. It’s important to not conflate the two. That’s not to say it won’t lead to better health outcomes, just that the longitudinal data has isn’t there yet.

But what makes carrots "healthy food"? Is it that it has some vitamins and few calories? Does that mean that a multivitamin pill combined with a piece of plastic is the ultimate healthy food? It has vitamins and basically zero calories, because you can't actually eat the plastic.

On another note, 6700 kcal is a once in a while type event. Calorie calculators put the calories needed at 6700 kcal at excess of 450 kg (1000 lbs). That's more than the record weight of a person. 6700 kcal is still 2.5 kg of Big Macs.

Also, carrots just aren't great as food. They're more like flavorings. You would definitely have a brought deficiency on a carrot diet, whereas it's less so on a Big Mac diet.

The thing is that our bodies need a wide range of materials to function well. We can function even when our diets aren't great, but there will usually be some small problems. I don't understand why food that's actually poor as a food is considered healthy.

The article "The opioid effects of gluten exorphins: asymptomatic celiac disease" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025969/

Gluten can be degraded into several morphine-like substances, named gluten exorphins. These compounds have proven opioid effects and could mask the deleterious effects of gluten protein on gastrointestinal lining and function. Here we describe a putative mechanism, explaining how gluten could “mask” its own toxicity by exorphins that are produced through gluten protein digestion.

No wonder it is addictive when you can get a morphine like effect when eating it. Most fast food contains wheat and vegetable oils (and not the ones that are good for you like Olive Oil). Nobody can stay slim with these food as they usually contain close zero in nutrition value except for energy.

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