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Comment by davisp | Hacker News Reader

I made it through a few paragraphs before noping out because of how terrible this article is. Your comment made me go actually look to see what they could possibly be arguing against CICO. Turns out it’s nothing because this author has no idea how science or biology works.

We can all argue about what makes a calorie “good” or “bad” but CICO is basic thermodynamics. A calorie is a unit of energy. If a cell doesn’t have enough energy, it dies.

Sorry for mildly ranting at idiocy on the internet via your comment, sodality2.

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Yeah, I too struggled to get through it. If I tilt my head and squint, I could almost vaguely see an argument about how most major markers of nutritional health are just defined by the fact that they’re already found in unhealthy people. And if I mash and mangle the words together quite a bit, I could see an argument for why CICO is reductive and harmful to use in cases where people know exactly what to do but struggle to do it (yelling “just CICO bro” does nothing for these people). But that doesn’t just make CICO meaningless. It’s still rooted in thermodynamics and true, all things considered.

CICO is true, but it misses that some sources of calories are more satiating than others. So the desire to consume more calories will be higher with the less-satiating foods. The thermodynamics work fine, but to create a long-term behavioral change you also have to prevent the discomfort of hunger.

For some people hunger isn't particularly uncomfortable (e.g. I often barely notice it and have to set calendar reminders to remember to eat), for other people it's actively painful and nearly impossible to ignore.

CICO is true, but it's only solving the easy half of the problem.

Satiation is only relevant in the short to medium term, while you're adjusting to the diet. It's been tested with super low volume foods way back. And unfortunate starvation experiments, people literally stop feeling hunger just go weak.

Ultimately the system is feedback based.

I think a 2000 kcal single meal would work, but good luck making it a single pill, absorption would suck.

Maybe an advanced liquid, like for parenteral nutrition, and even then the volume would be pretty big and it would have to be eaten slowly. Unless you want to go straight for the mainline and bypass the gastrointestinal system via a banana bag, which has some risks.

Such a diet would be extremely boring though.

CICO is true but has the absorption and metabolism caveat.

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