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Comment by Detrus | Hacker News Reader

You're wrong on the internet.

The fructose being talked about isn't the nice one in fruits. It's corn syrup or sugar in soda. Yes, obese people consume incredible amounts of it. A gallon a day. Those Texas sized doses of soda you can order with your meal actually get consumed.

It's very difficult to consume even 1000 extra calories from proper food, like potatoes. They fill you up. And I can barely get a layer of fat. With soda you won't even notice the consumption. And it screws with insulin in the blood like fruits and potatoes never could. Makes you absorb more.

Some powerlifters eat junk food precisely because it contains more calories per stomach stuffing material. Ruins bloodwork but gets results. So do steroids.

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Take that soda and replace the fructose with sucrose. You still get people drinking a gallon of it.

> It's very difficult to consume even 1000 extra calories from proper food, like potatoes.

This is just not true. People find it easy to overeat. They add a little bit of butter here, some mayo there, have a drizzle of salad dressing, a nice snack. It all adds up.

Detrus is talking about proper food. You're talking about butter and mayo.

A huge part of the problem is that people equate these things just as you have. Mayo in particular is an abomination. What we have come to accept as "food" is tragic[1].

[1]http://www.livestrong.com/slideshow/1007800-11-banned-food-i...

Hey! There's only 57 calories in a tablespoon of mayo. If people are responsible and only use one or two tablespoons (to dip their fries, for example) then it is totally fine!

People need to learn to eat slower and really savour the food. Small portions of more intensely flavoured food is way better than huge, bulky meals of starch and meat and sugar. Whole grains too! I used to eat a half pound of regular pasta topped with several cups of cheap meat sauce. Now I eat 1/5 of a pound of whole grain multigrain pasta mixed with 3/4 cup of high quality marinara sauce (no meat) alongside a nice big salad (with minimal dressing). It tastes way better and is much healthier.

This thread is full of people saying that HFCS is the cause of obesity, and merely avoiding fructose will cure obesity.

We agree that fructose is not the only problem, and that people eat crap, regardless of hfcs.

Yeah, but we have just now allowed to be fed even more poisonous stuff. It's neither positive nor irrelevant. It's a problem.

As usual, it's important to take pop-nutrition blurbs like this one with a grain of salt. Here's a counterpoint:

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/06/21/eight_toxic_...

What's wrong with mayo? It's just eggs, oil, vinegar and a few spices. Seems pretty straightforward and far from an "abomination".

I mean don't eat it as a main course but throwing some into your chicken salad should be perfectly fine (and delicious...).

I think sugar based soda had less sugar per gallon. With HFCS they changed the recipe and added more, even though it's sweeter. Makes people buy more. Not sure what the case is now with back to sugar changes.

What I had in mind was intentionally consuming 1000 calories of proper food on top of a diet that covers physical activity. Often 3-5000 calories. You know you're stuffing yourself then.

And assuming the butter and mayo aren't packed with extra sweetener or leptin suppressors, they're not a big deal. They won't cause insulin spikes. A drizzle of typical salad dressing is full of HFCS though. Gotta eat your vegetables!

But note that soda doses and recipes changed around 1990. That's also when the word fat didn't quite describe the state of a growing number of people. You can get fat on greasier food. Fatter on sugary sweets. But nothing digests faster and makes your body react like liquid packed with HFCS and salt. Salt makes you thirst for more and more HFCS blocks out its taste. That's how those bucket sized cups get consumed.

It's very difficult to consume even 1000 extra calories from proper food, like potatoes

No shit, that's nearly 6 medium russet potatoes.

Unless you french them and fry them in oil, then you just need two.

Sugar has 50% fructose. HFCS has 42% to 55%, depending on variety. Are you sure the fructose in the corn syrup is the problem here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

It's a longer video (1h 30m), but it explains the problem with fructose in exactly as much detail as it needs and is very "average" people friendly.

It's true that eating raw things pulls on all sorts of threshold triggering a strong stop reflex, whereas one can eat processed food for long periods without even half of this 'im fed up' sensation.

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