Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mistletoe | Hacker News Reader

They are probably both bad in excess, since that’s how calories work.

I am obligated do my usual unpopular reply that people are not calorimeters, the type of food and the cadence matters a lot and perhaps even more than the quantity. Humans are very complex organisms made up of many other complex organisms that react in very complex ways to food and each other. The effect of hormones dominate the caloric expenditure to the point that sufficient hormone intervention can be impossible to overcome with any amount of eating.

I think the desire to simplify the model down to calorie in and calorie out is a way of putting all responsibility onto the unhealthy individual as an aversion to empathy. Our population has been intentionally misinformed and our food has been poisoned in a way that personal responsibility cannot always overcome, so while people may still deserve the brunt of the blame we must also understand that the food industry/medical/politics played a substantial part in creating the situation and as hard as it is to fight back against these profitable industries it is even more difficult to remodel people to have more willpower.

Except animal fat is not ultra processed. 200 calories of Oreos is simply not the same as 200 calories of red meat. Anything in excess is bad, though, agreed.

It can still be simple -- look at it like this: 200 calories of Oreos provides very little additional benefits, while 200 calories of meat provides more additional benefits for your diet. It doesn't matter as much when comparing Oreos to meat, but it really matters when you're comparing orange juice to soda. The processing might play a factor, but really you're looking for calories containing nutrients that keep you alive and healthy -- processing level is pretty subjective.

~3500 calories of orange juice and ~3500 calories of soda will both add 1 pound of mass I to your body.

Yeah, because they are both intensely sugary.

3500 calories of lean meat won't.

I would say OJ and soda should both be avoided.

I compared Oreos to red meat because two medical students argued with me that Oreos, which are vegan, were equivalent or even better than red meat.

They believed this because the medical establishment had gone full tilt against red meat for the past 50 years.

And of course they used their authority on the subject as an excuse for believing something insane.

myth that juice is somewhat healthy should be added to this list of fiction that we are discussing. eat raw fruits. much better than extracting just the sugary water and throwing most of fibres away.

Of course. Processing is a grayscale, but as you go up the scale, the less healthy something is, as a rule of thumb.

I would say a diet soda is significantly healthier than orange juice.

The way the body responds to food is much more complex than the way a calorimeter does. For example, having lipids (components from fat) in your small intestine reduces your hunger, because your body knows you have a lot of good energy coming up. Sugar and other low-complexity carbs, on the other hand, is quickly absorbed, and does not do much to reduce hunger even in the short term.

Even different sugars (glucose/fructose/sucrose) affect the satiety response differently.

Are you honestly implying fats aren’t easy to gain weight on? There’s a reason arctic explorers packed lots of butter and oils. It’s a super efficient way to store energy and consume it.

We are learning more and more that gaining weight has more to do with insulin response and various other super complicated pathways -- not simply "calorie in = some weight gained". If that were true, people wouldn't lose weight on near/full ketogenic diets high in fat.

Yes.

I eat lots of healthy fats and no sugar or wheat. I'm borderline underweight. When you eat such a diet, your insulin levels stay low. High insulin is what causes your body to convert sugar to fat and store it. Low insulin causes your body to burn your fat reserves. I just got back from a 5 day, 50 mile backpacking trip where I averaged about 1000 calories a day. Not once was I hungry.

The arctic explorers weren't gaining body fat from the fats they ate, they were burning them almost immediately.

That’s not at all what they implied and your example backs up the point they WERE making.

No, I'm not. I am saying that humans are complicated, and that the effect of food on weight is not simply down to "how calorie dense is this substance." Unless you are force-feeding a person into obesity, other factors beside caloric density matter a great deal.

You may want to do some reading on the satiety response. You could also imagine whether you think you would gain or lose weight over the next month on a tallow-only diet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com