Processed foods that dilute protein content subvert our appetite control systems | Hacker News Reader

Processed foods that dilute protein content subvert our appetite control systems

nature.com

115 pointsdang68 comments

Screw it, going to try to preempt the standard responses to dietary posts on HN.

a) Yes, obviously fundamentally it all comes down in conservation of energy. But that's also a ridiculously reductionist view that neglects the layers and layers of complexity that overlays that. For example, if you were able to create a situation where a person's diet and exercise levels could be exactly controlled, then yes, we can control a person's weight from first principles, relying only on conservation of energy. But that's not a realistic situation.

b) Just "cutting your carbs" is probably a reasonable piece of advice on an individual scale, and probably a reasonable thing for a person who is worried about their weight/health to attempt. But as the article points out, the carb increase is systemic, and while its certainly possible to address systemic problems from a purely ground-up, individual basis, it's certainly easier to tackle the issue from as many perspectives as possible.

c) Just "cutting out the processed foods" is exactly the same as above

d) Just "try <insert name> diet" is once again probably the same as above, with the added bonus that nearly any diet is probably going to work and generate short-medium term results just by shocking the body, and forcing some level of structured discipline on an individual, especially discipline laced with all the extra goodies of being from "experts" and all the other fun social stuff we work in.

e) Natural obviously does not mean 'better'. However, it's clear that we have adapted for a certain environment, and while we certainly don't need to replicate that environment in it's totality, that does not imply that our current environment is any good at all from any number of perspectives.

f) This does mean that 'paleo', especially the way the that the paleo-diet/lifestyle is marketed is the way to go. Really all we got to go on is that our macronutrient ratio is out of whack. That does not mean that if you're doing paleo, or are considering paleo that you're doing shit wrong. If it's work, its working, but that don't mean it gonna work for everyone.

Now if we could just get this to autopost if the referenced article mentioned nutrition and obesity. :-)

Looking at the software that is probably not feasible, but it would make for some interesting forum software which did an autoFPR[1]

[1] Frequently Posted Responses - probably needs a better acronym.

Isn't tokenadult a biological implementation of an autoFPR system? ;). His posts are long, well-thought, full of references and appear so quickly that I'm damn sure he's copy-pasting things from his personal Wiki or research notes.

'Paleo' diets have little to do with how primitive man actually ate. Most noticeably due to a wildly different bacterial profile.

Our lifestyle is vary different as is our longevity. Not to mention actual palio diets involved a huge variety of local foods that where generally regionally specific.

Don't forget lack of domesticated food. Pretty much every plant and animal we consume has undergone selective breeding, and many are not even native to our prior environments.

'Just "cutting your carbs" is probably a reasonable piece of advice on an individual scale, and probably a reasonable thing for a person who is worried about their weight/health to attempt.'

I've been sympathetic to the low-carb explanation, especially because of its hormonal explanations, but, irreducibly, if one goes to cut out a large portion of carbohydrates that implies a number of other significant changes in diet, and there's no particular reason why "what you intended" and "what actually happened" have to line up. While I'm not immediately switching to a protein view as in this article, I'd observe there's no contradiction between "I cut out a lot of carbs and lost weight" and "I lost weight because I increased my protein intake"... one would have to approach the problem with literally clinical precision to precisely balance carb removal with fat increase, with no change in protein intake.

There's also nothing stopping a bit of both from being the case; a protein-deficient diet of over-processed foods starts a process of excessive refined carbohydrate intake, which then causes metabolic syndrome, which results in great apparent improvement if you switch to a low-card diet specifically because of the metabolic syndrome even though it may, technically, be a secondary problem. I'm not advocating for that, but I can't disprove that; it fits a great deal of what we see, it seems to me, it just isn't unique in that way yet.

(My only strong position in this debate is that the current conventional wisdom is wrong, and the Puritan-inspired attitudes about how it's "just calories" and therefore the only acceptable explanations are a shocking degeneracy in the modern human, and also tutt tutt and shame on them, are double-wrong. The real science is interesting, and still surprisingly unsettled.)

There's also the "a calorie is not a calorie" when it comes to comparing fat / pure sugar / carbs / protein. [1][3]

Calorie content printed on foods is done by calorimetry not by bodily uptake. [2]

And research suggests it is important how you eat foods in combination. Even the simple process of drinking water with food will increase your calorific uptake, just ask any dairy farmer; they give water with dry feed for that reason. Fibre, wholewheat and fat will give you less bodily calories than the same calories of sugar.

I'm not advocating any special dietary regimen but time and time again the research points to : each your food with plenty of fresh vegetables, particularly leafy greens - for iron, fibre, calcium - and the rest will pretty much look after itself.

If you want to keep up with research then http://www.reddit.com/r/advancedfitness is a good place to keep tabs on.

[1] http://home.trainingpeaks.com/blog/article/a-calorie-is-not-...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorimeter

[3] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/79/5/899S.full

Could you share any links regarding studies that suggest drinking water with food increases calorific intake? My Google searches come up with studies that say drinking water with food increases weight loss.

My personal experience is that the there is something about food in the US that really pushes you towards obesity.

I recently spent 2 months in the US (conference + work + road trip). It was relatively sedentary, but probably no more than my day-to-day life. I was careful not to consume any soft drinks - just water, tea (the coffee is unbearable) and the occasional beer. I ate very few snacks and sweets and usually swapped fatty side dishes with salads or cooked vegetables.

I did eat out a lot, but I also eat out a lot at home. I don't think my portion sizes were any bigger. The result? Gained nearly 8 pounds! I was really surprised by this.

In contrast, during a 2-month long trip to china that included more physical activity, but also tons of very oily noodles, I lost around 4 pounds.

Btw, my typical diet is roughly mediterranean+beer (Tel-Aviv). In particular it includes lots of salads with olive oil, lots of hummus, chicken, fish, pasta, pizza, and various forms of junk food.

This is, at least, an appealing simple explanation for obesity. Much simpler than "Impurities in high-fructose corn syrup disrupt a particular metabolic pathway in the liver causing ... increased fat storage". Simply: humans crave protein and will eat things that taste like protein until they have enough.

I hereby suggest Occam's diet: avoid things that taste like protein but aren't.

can you give some examples of things that 'taste like protein but aren't'? thanks

Wouldn't that be something with an umami taste?

That makes sense to me, but when I think of cultures that are big on umami I don't see a lot of obesity, so I'm not sure if the point connects fully.

I used to believe that the Japanese diet is inherently healthier because there is lower obesity in Japan. I've asked Japanese people about this and they say that it's actually quite a struggle for many of them to not gain weight, but they work hard to keep their weight down because that's what's expected of them to fit in.

So now my theory is that lower Japanese obesity is more a result of a strong sense of cultural conformity rather than something inherently healthy about the diet.

A Big Mac weighs 215g but has only 25g of protein. Add the french fries and coke and you basically have a whole bunch of carbs and fat.

Even their ice creams don't contain much protein. A large McFlurry with Oreo's is 381g but has only 15g of protein (and 85g of sugar).

source: http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/getnutrition/nutritionfacts.p...

There's an amino acid called glutamate which creates an umami or "meaty" flavor. It's present in various additives such as monosodium glutamate and hydrolyzed yeast extract. Look at the nutrition facts of e.g. Doritos or Cheez-Its; you'll likely find one of these additives.

The explanation for obesity is simply a caloric surplus. You can't get much simpler than that.

That's just shuffling the question around rather than answering it. Why are more people running caloric surpluses than before? It is not happening deliberately.

I'm absolutely not shuffling around the question rather than answering it.

In a practical sense, the question doesn't matter at all to people trying to live healthier lives.

The reason we have fatter people is we have more calorically dense foods readily available (meaning greater calories in) while people live more sedentary lifestyles (means less calories out).

This function to lose weight is so incredibly simple (paging jacques chester and his steam machine blog post).

A proper solution involves solving the 'Willpower Issue'. We want to address the problem in a way that can be nearly invisible to those who want to spend their willpower and intellect elsewhere. As someone in the nutrition industry, I spend a lot of my time considering what I eat, but we also have to solve the problem so that everyone can eat healthy without it having to also be a full time hobby.

Yea, it seems that people have this historical fantasy that people used to just exercise all day, and voila... were thinner. I've lived in Boston, NYC, and SF... all of which have had transit systems for a century, and people presumably lived extremely similar lives as far as passive exercise is concerned (though air conditioning is an obvious change). Still, many people in these cities are incredibly obese. The biggest difference is the automobile (for which i'm assuming these cities would be good control groups), after that, the clearest difference is food. More of it, yes, but why are people eating so much more... cost doesn't fit. It's not as though my stomach says, well these are cheap calories, better get my money's worth. No, it just doesn't make much sense if the food itself isn't causing the increased consumption.

Why do people smoke when they know the results?

Why are people running surpluses?

Food is much more readily available and convenient. Look at all the food you can buy. Then look at how much of it can be stored at room temperature, needs no preparation, and has a long shelf time. Then add in all that you can buy that stores in your refrigerator, does not need to be prepared, and has a long shelf life. Lets take it further, look at all the food you can buy, that you store in your freezer, that you prepare by sticking it in a microwave for five minutes.

The abundance of food combined with an excess in idle time, namely the result of a forty hour work week or no work week, leads to over consumption. I always love the farm comparison. Growing up it was eat before light, a big lunch, whatever you grabbed off the tree or stole from the garden, and a big dinner. As a kid if we weren't doing chores we were running off with friends to a game, fishing, or forever building that fort. These days its inside till mom/dad gets home, food everywhere, and an XBOX/PS4/Etc.

Then go look at the people you work with. Its pretty easy to tell why some are overweight. Lunch out every day at the fat festival around the corner, that place that serves 1200 calorie or more lunches for seven bucks. Usually a good chaser for that double donut and coffee with cream breakfast (or bagel with cream cheese). Then those little snacks in the desk.

Its simply calorie overload with nothing but idle time. Hell these same people will make fun of the fitness/diet "freaks".

TL;DR

Idle Time, Endless ready food, results in calorie overload

How is caloric surplus an "explanation" for anything? Yes, a caloric surplus will lead to weight gain, but why do people choose to have a caloric surplus when clearly it's detrimental to health? If given the option, wouldn't you simply choose "no surplus, please"? Perhaps by searching a bit deeper we can begin to understand how the body's mechanisms attempt to regulate calorie consumption, and how we can strengthen those systems rather than subvert them.

That is like saying "the companies go out of business because they spend more than they earn. If you don't want to go out of business: spend less and make more." It is correct, but not that useful to anyone who has spent more than a week trying to lose weight.

That explains about as much as saying, "God did it."

Caloric surplus equals kilocalories in minus kilocalories out.

But kilocalories in is a function of what you eat, and of appetite, which is itself a function of metabolic processes, which are functions of a lot of variables we don't fully understand, just one of which is what you already ate. And kilocalories out is a function of your voluntary physical activity and your automatic metabolic processes, again based on variables we don't yet fully understand.

So "energy in - energy out" is a gross oversimplification. The implication there is that you can eat less and exercise more to lose weight from stored body fat. And that usually works for most people, but not necessarily for the obvious reasons. But you also have to explain all the counterexamples.

And for that, you have to figure out how the human body responds to specific food chemicals. One food with caloric value might cause the eater to lose weight because it is used for its chemical value (such as for methylation) instead. The same food might cause weight gain later, because the body no longer needs that chemical as much.

Ignoring your ignorance does not make you smarter.

That's not a simplification of the problem statement, it's reductionism.

this is like saying the explanation for alcoholism is consuming too much alcohol.

It's probably a little more complicated: caloric surplus marketed by corporations in ultra dense, cheap and convenient hits coupled with insufficient exercise and other health/Maslow's hierarchy deficiencies. One example how bad the situation is: orange juice (the orange flavor packs kind) has more calories than an equivalent HFCS soda bottle, but I'm unsure of the glyclemic relativity... it's still sugar in a bright bottle masquerading as a healthy alternative.

Edit: here's a non-gov funded study, so could be orange, soda or other bias https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2049981

Is it me, or does the reference don't even match the article? Number 4* state:

  Longevity and health were optimized when protein was replaced with carbohydrate 
  to limit compensatory feeding for protein and suppress protein intake.

Overall, the science behind the claims seem weak, there are no clinical studies on human for example.

*http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?holding=npg&am...

It doesn't really contradict the article, which isn't really saying that eating protein is healthy, but that people scarf up carbohydrates trying to find protein - but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the article.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-03/cp-cpi022714....

The article mentions a 0.8% decline in protein concentration. That seems negligibly low. Does such a small variance really matter to foods?

The interesting part seems to be the increase in carbs/fats at 8% over the same 35 years.

People are eating more, hence the 8% increase in carb/fat consumption. But since they are actually getting a hair less protein it means people must be eating food with less protein in it on average.

I think the point is that protein concentration is staying almost constant but people are achieving it by eating more over all.

s/concentration/consumption/

Protein consumption is staying constant, because concentration has dropped, and people eat more total food to bring total protein back up. Acc to the article.

Which is a win/win for industrial food. The article says industry is incented to replace protein with cheaper fat and sugar. So a volume of food sold costs less to produce. And then people turn around and eat/buy even more, to make up for the lower protein concentration.

I sometimes feel played.

You could interpret the comment as protein concentration in humans stays constant.

Yeah, silly typo.

>Many processed food products are protein-poor but are engineered to taste like protein.

I think MSG may be the culprit here. In college I worked in a large Chinese restaurant, we didnt use it but many people would ask if we did. It go me thinking so I did little research. MSG gives the taste called umami. I started looking through my pantry and many items I snack or junk food items contain it.

> An optimal diet includes a mixture of foods that provide dozens of different nutrients in appropriate amounts and in the right proportions.

I wonder if we're any close to understanding what these "right" proportions are, and whether they are at all close to what is recommended by the USDA (which I believe is 45-65% carbs, 10-35% protein and 20-35% fat).

I have read that the USDA's recommendations are influenced by the huge grain farming lobby in the US. It's well known that a carbohydrate heavy diet works to fatten up a wide range of farm animals, though the impact this has on people is under some debate.

i lost significant weight (>33% from start) eating 50% protein (non processed, mostly fresh fish) 30% vegetable fats (olive oil, avacados, etc) and 20% non-starch carbs (berries, veggies - no breads, pasta, rice, beans)

i have kept it off past 2 years and replaced remaining fat with muscle (eg 48 inch waist -> 30 inch waist) slowly replacing protein with more veggies, beans, and some whole grain breads...fat % same. about evenly split 1/3 fat, carbs, protein.

i couldnt maintain exercise at higher protein levels...i could feel a physical response in energy levels by adding in say 1/2 cup beans or 2 apples 30 min before a workout allowing me to sustain target activity levels

Ymmv

Good piece, and makes sense, but some examples would be helpful -- there's a lot of talk about foods engineered to taste like protein but that have carbs.

Anyone have some examples? Chicken and Beef are, in their un-seasoned form, pretty bland, so I'm not sure what "engineered to taste like chicken" actually means....?

Chicken with just a little salt has good flavor. And beef is pretty good by itself.

They mean that they've added umani (savouryness) to their product. Most famously/commonly done with MSG.

Also soy sauce and some other fermented sauces (Worcestershire sauce, e.g.) hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed yeast, soy extracts, and the ever popular "natural flavor".

Simply put, bad is: Anything ready made, pasta, bread, and anything not visibly grown or sliced in one piece.

Good is: Everything that's noticably not been processed in any way. And if you want to stay off carbs, stay away from potatoes, rice, corn, etc.

> bad is: ... pasta, bread ...

Yep, those French and Italians are dropping like flies.

> stay away from ... rice

Ah yes, Asia, the poster child of poor dietary health in the world.

Well, there's a reason why modern Japanese raised on a more Western diet average something like 6" taller than Japanese raised on a traditional diet.

The same holds true for medieval Europeans and their all-natural diet.

Go look at some old suits of armor some time -- those guys were tiny, and they were the biggest, strongest men of their time.

Europeans also used to be quite short. The whole world is getting taller.

Actually, the world is getting to the height of how humans were pre-agriculture, at around 6 feet. As Asia and ancient Rome has proven, high carb low protein diets do not make for great height.

There is also reason to believe that a height in great excess of 6 feet is not optimal, however. Our physiology - bones and joints - don't allow for it.

I am not advocating traditional diets, I am pointing out the silliness of demonizing pasta, bread and rice when many groups of people that basically live on these things do not have the problems that staying away from these foods supposedly solves.

> those guys were tiny

Diet was hardly their only problem.

My general sense with keto and the carbs-are-evil philosophy is that it's a handy solution for relatively quick weight loss. It really does work for that.

But it's not at all clear if shunning carbohydrates is a healthier option in the long term, compared with a more diverse diet with similar total calories. As you suggest, there's considerable evidence that grains are not evil.

You're equating bread and pasta that the food industry puts on supermarket shelves, with the bread and pasta people used to make themselves from flour they got directly from the local mill for grains they got from a local farmer. Not the same thing at all.

"Diet was hardly their only problem."

In terms of growth, it was definitely the major problem.

People did not evolve to get the majority of their calories from carbs.

Now, the "carbs are absolute evil!!!!" people do take it to an extreme, but it's just a fact that signs of nutritional deficiency (e.g., stunted growth) appear in the archeological record as soon as a group of people move from a high-protein, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a high-carb agricultural lifestyle.

If there are any exceptions to this, I'm unaware of them.

Past and bread are grain that has been processed before you eat it. Your body doesn't have to work as hard to turn it into glucose -- zoom. The more your body has to work at processing its carbs the better (but don't eat mulch).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index#Disease_prevent...

That's not the problem with pasta and bread. The problem is what the food industry does to flour and kernels, and that it's become a fools errand to even attempt to buy pasta or bread that's not stuff full of processed carbohydrates.

If your chicken and beef taste bland try eating some less industrial food. Good beef tastes amazing, and chicken is pretty good.

You need to buy better chicken and beef (usually meaning organic chicken and grass-fed beef), since both absolutely have flavor when properly raised.

Grass fed beef is worth every penny you'll spend on it if you are somewhere where you can find it.

When you have it for the first time though, prepare it some way with a minimum of seasonings, maybe like a simple burger patty. If you first prepare it in something beef is just a part of, say something like a chili, you won't necessarily taste why it is worth a little more.

And that's not talking about any possible health benefits it just tastes great.

Engineered to taste like chicken means pretty much that - they try to reproduce some of the texture and mouthfeel. They make it a bit bland and chicken-like, then use it for something that would have chicken.

Not sure about your first paragraph. I know tha. If you take a rel chicken and roast it, and serve it with vegetables, that you'll have a tasty nutritious meal. But if you take that same chicken you can take the breast meat off and sell that as fillets; same with the legs; the wings get sold too. You do that with all the bird. Eventually you have a carcass from which you mechanically recover as much meat and meat-like protien as possible. That gets sold off for low value meat style products.

So, you take some meat and chop it and re-form it into small lumps. You cover those in a salty spicy coating (which will soak up fat) and you fry those. You serve them with a sweet sauce (ketchup; bbq; anything with sugar).

Now you have a low value bit of meat that you can sell in high volume to many many people for incredible markup. It is really tasty - some people think there aee combinations of sugar / salt / fat that are hyper paletable - and really easy to eat.

This kind of popcorn chicken will have less protien, but more salt and fat and carbs than a regular chicken.

"(ketchup; bbq; anything with sugar)"

Sadly those don't even have sugar in them for the most part, it's all high fructose corn syrup these days. HFCS along with trans fats have been linked to inflammation and should be avoided.

I'm in the UK. We use sugar, not HFSC.

We also have obesity over here. Drinking 42 oz drinks is going to cause problems whether they're using HFCS or regular sugar.

We do have HFCS in the UK, but we call it glucose-fructose syrup. I've noticed it in the ingredients of an increasing number of beverages.

One of the biggest factors might be what people are eating in addition to their proteins. Chicken nuggets and popcorn chicken aren't all that bad by themselves, but when they are paired with french fries and a soda, your protein to calorie ratio is extremely low.

The core research looks very interesting, but Nature should probably hire a few economists to read through all the crap that scientists believe they know about economics, and maybe a few psychologists, too.

I'm curious why processed foods contain less protein now than before.

From the post: "Food manufacturers have a financial incentive to replace protein with cheaper forms of calories, and to manipulate the sensory qualities of foods to disguise their lower protein content."

Essentially, the price that people are willing to pay for a food is less sensitive to protein content than it is to flavor and mouthfeel. If you reduce the protein content of your product from 80% to 75%, and replace that with an additional 2.5% sugars and 2.5% fats, people will probably think it tastes better, and they will eat more of it because of that and because the lower protein content (according to the article) does not trigger a satiation response as quickly.

People will pay more and eat more, while your materials cost goes down. What profit-seeking product manager wouldn't make that change between eyeblinks?

The only possible pitfall is losing customers concerned enough about nutrition to determine whether your product still has the best health value per dollar. If you have ignorant consumers or copycat competitors, that's hardly a concern at all.

It depends entirely on the food and the specific process it may have been subjected to. Applying excessive heat to organic compounds can denature them, removing nutritional value, even if it doesn't burn food.

Preservatives might cause certain foods to retain food-like properties and flavor (saltiness, for example), even though the food has aged more than might be superficially apparent.

So, if you have a food that has been cooked at the factory, and then it traverses various temperatures during shipping, ages on a store shelf for months, then gets over-microwaved in a convenience store, and then eaten, it might taste like an all-beef frankfurter, but from a nutritional perspective, it's shoe leather.

That's not the worst thing that could happen to meat though. In general, most people tend to agree that "pink slime" is the worst material that agribusiness is still allowed to call "meat."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime

The poultry counterpart to "Pink Slime" is called "White Slime", since Pink Slime refers to beef. Pink slime is actually a thing, and many of us have probably eaten some of it, somewhere along the line.

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