Drop that spoon: The truth about breakfast cereals (2010)
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Then as I got older, I thought I was making an improvement by "upgrading" to something more wholesome -- like Frosted Mini Wheats ("It's shredded wheat.......and SUGAR.")
I finally rebooted my eating when I started running about 4 years ago and promptly lost 35+ lbs and actually became athletic for the first time in my life. I traded in the cereal and started having greek yogurt for breakfast (more recently I switched to having a _real_ breakfast in the morning -- eggs, grapefruit and steel-cut oats and feel even better).
But the point is: We've been marketed-at to the point where we just think that cereal is what you have for breakfast, and it feels great to wake up from that trance.
Breakfast cereal is easy, and it has milk which is good for you, I thought that is why it is popular.
http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2010/04/13/#.U_FKp7x...
PS. I do believe Quaker Oats is a healthy breakfast, anyone has a opinion on that? (it does'nt taste good though)
The new Doritos Loaded product is a great example, it reminds me of a designer drug. I'm sure it is absolutely delicious, crafted specifically to incite pleasure in our brains, but processed to be faster to digest and give little nutrition so as to not fill us up so we stop eating.
Edit: As another point, prepare a meal of healthy food and see how much harder it is to overeat. Without the intensely pleasurable flavors that drive you to eat "until you hate yourself" as Lous CK would say, I find I enjoy the flavor until I am reasonably full and then don't want to pack anymore food down because it just doesn't taste good enough too.
> the only thing that will stop the obesity epidemic is heavy food regulation which people will fight tooth and nail against.
I don't think it's primarily consumers that would fight against this; rather, the food industry will. At the moment, not only do we not "sin tax" sugar the way we do tobacco, we actually subsidize artificially cheap corn starch and syrup. And unfortunately, eliminating these subsidies is a complete political non-starter.
"Personally, I don't think that's a big deal."
You may live a healthy life so out of sight out of mind, but the obesity epidemic is a huge issue (no pun intended) in regards to quality of life, healthcare costs, etc.
In all cases, I don't think there's anybody who wouldn't benefit from additional mindfulness. If such behavior becomes problematic, it's a case-by-case determination as to whether moderation or elimination is the better strategy. (I personally find it easier to eat zero junk food than to eat it occasionally, but I certainly don't begrudge anyone who can moderate successfully.)
I packed on an extra 20-30 pounds working in a catered, snack-heavy silicon valley company. I decided to change my diet completely. I slowly cut out all processed food from my diet, and then all snacks, so that everything that I ate was homemade by myself, typically "healthy" (similar to mediterranean diet), with no sugar, no juice, lots of vegetables and fish, some fruit, and relatively portion-controlled (eyeballed.) I lost 8 pounds but then plateau-ed - I continued to be overweight. I also exercised 4 times a week.
I started monitoring calories for a couple months and realized I was eating at a slight "calorie deficit" - I should have been losing a pound every week or two but I wasn't. Only when I cut my calories and STRICTLY portion-controlled my healthy food (to a calorie deficit where I should have been losing 2-3 pounds a week), did I finally start losing 2/3 pound a week. I'm proud to say I'm now a healthy weight but I eat FAR less and exercise FAR more than I should "need" to.
The journey really helped me realize there's something wrong with our food (not just the processed food but the ingredients themselves) and that there are some environmental factors involved (something in the water? the environment? pesticides? I really don't know. I'm not sure what it is.)
In contrast, Indian milk tastes different when you buy from different vendors. You also have a choice between cow and buffalo milk.
I control my calorie intake using published calorie counts (for mass market stuff), and a kitchen scale for anything I make myself. I also record every single thing in a diary. I eat a lot of crap (breakfast is either a hot dog or a bag of mustard pretzel bits), but my weight loss is exactly what I'd expect given my measured calorie deficit. If anything, its easier to measure your calorie consumption if you don't cook at home, because many mass market places now publish nutrition info, and they have a strong commercial incentive to maintain uniform portion sizes.
I did the same as you in terms of measuring calories, but mostly using scales or calorie counts on packets as I was cooking using raw ingredients. I recorded everything in a diary, using paper initially and then myfitnesspal app. I would also "cross-check" (e.g., after finishing a bottle of olive oil I'd look back at how much I'd logged.) I do think there's space for error and variation - e.g., a vegetable that's sweeter than average, or trying to judge how much fat (and therefore calories) is left on a piece of meat. That last one is the toughest because it can make a huge difference.
Probably some combination of these factors explains why you need to "ear FAR less than you should need to" based on how the math works out. I still think counting calories can be useful, but only in relative terms, not absolute.
Try to get fat eating steak or carrots. More or less on a dare I found I started feeling sick after the second pound of steak couldn't finish the third, and a daily diet of that doesn't contain enough calories to fatten me, only 1500 for two. Ditto the carrots, I've done the "orange skin" thing on a dare (so I'm an idiot, whatever) but again its literally not enough calories to fatten me and my stomach feels really sick after maybe two pounds of carrots. Maybe the fundamental problem is my stomach only holds two pounds of solid food, and two pounds of healthy food can't fatten you up, but two pounds of junk food most certainly can.
The problem with donuts is not necessarily that they're a huge number of empty calories, but that I can eat perhaps two per hour all day long and wash them down with a can of Mt Dew and never feel full and still feel hungry for dinner in an hour.
I don't think I ate for about 24 hours after I ate two pounds of grilled steak. Just wasn't hungry. Couldn't eat another bite and didn't feel like more food for a day. Don't think I could have pulled that off with honey biscuits, I'd be ravenous again by the next meal time.
This whole topic fits in with the stereotype of "ate Chinese-American style take out, got hungry again in two hours" That stuffs actually pretty good food, other than added corn syrup and the lack of long term satiety resulting in eating more.
I mostly eat paleo-type food but I'll socialize and eat junk food occasionally, and it never fails to amaze me that I'll have a piece of cake and feel like I'm starving even though its more calories than my entire salad lunch or a medium sized bag of pecans.
People rightfully should fight against that heavy regulation. You don't want to go down that road. Whatever unhealthy dietary choices that people are making is a much better alternative to government regulating people's diet. Think about it for a while.
All of these regulations aren't in place just because officious bureaucrats wanted to clog up the smooth workings of a free, capitalist society, they exist because historically, when they weren't, people died. For proof, go and read about some of the nightclub and theatre fires that happened a hundred years ago, in which hundreds of people burned to death.
When there's a immediate link between malfeasance and harm, it's easy to see that the government should step in, introducing building codes and hygiene standards to ensure it can't happen again. When the harm is delayed, the link feels more tenuous, even if it's really not. Companies that pollute are contributing to potentially catastrophic disruption of the biosphere and global warming, but it doesn't happen overnight, so people treat it as less wrong than building a nightclub with no fire exits. It isn't.
Likewise, food companies who aggressively promote nutritionally dangerous foodstuffs cereals at children, while promoting them as healthy, are doing harm. They're doing it knowingly, and they're paying to distort scientific and political processes in order to keep doing it.
It's easy to trumpet individual choice as all important, but reality is not an individualist pipe dream. The average person is not well informed about dietary science and never will be, and many children cannot make a choice at all, let alone an informed one. In the face of the wealth and marketing power of large food companies, people have no chance on their own, and they levels of obesity in modern societies are clear proof of that.
Food regulation isn't about the government telling people what they can eat. It's about the government telling food companies that they can't produce food that's dangerous, in the long term as well as the short term. Just like the government tells companies they can't produce cars that fly apart on the highway, or buildings that fall down in a strong wind.
Regulation of dangerous business practices is exactly what government should be doing it. It's the reason why all the other nonsense governments do is worth putting up with. It protects people from irresponsible companies, and it protects responsible companies from being undercut by irresponsible companies.
So are you going to throw more people in prison for the illegal sugar trade?
It never ceases amaze me how many people on HN actually advocate these draconian, statist policies. Stop hating on your fellow man.
I'm going to start using this appeal to authority from now on. It's hilarious.
What if instead of being reactionary and waging another war (War on Drugs, War on This, War on That), we step back and think about what caused this phenomenon in the first place.
Cereal, junk food, cheap low-quality meat all point towards the same culprit: farm subsidies - esp. corn and soybeans. It's time we phase them out and start eating real food again.
Forbidding snack and soda vending machines in schools, mandating healthy and balanced meals in school's cafeterias, making it mandatory for kids to receive an education on food that allows them to understand their choices, ...
There doesn't need to be a lot of regulation. At least just enough to protect and educate kids to become better informed adults.
I'm open to many solutions, this included.
I suspect that all it's needed is preventing the huge load of disinformation that we suffer.
Most people that I've known that were trying to lose weight (and failing) were totally clueless, parroting cliches from tv.
Then, maybe forbid (or even better, criminalize :-) adding any kind of sugar to packaged food or to meals where it doesn't make sense. Tax heavily sugar.
Maybe I'm wrong on this, but isn't every calorie source fairly acceptable if one hadn't got enough yet, and they're still far from a limit on how many one should get? I.e. a slice of pizza isn't "healthy" (nutritionally dense) but brings more good (+200-300 Kcal, and some protein from cheese and meat, and possibly some vitamins from vegetables if topping contains fresh ones) than bad (possible excess supply of triglycerides and some gastritis risk) if one had only consumed 1500 Kcal today and they really should get at least 2500. Especially if one has to force themselves to eat oatmeal, but would happily eat some tasty "junk food".
These industries sell you poison, then the pills that slow down how fast the poison kills you and tell you it's okay to keep eating it. Then the prescribing doctor gets kick backs.
Diabetics take note. How does continuing to eat the thing that got you there to begin with make any sense? Complete and utter lifestyle change.
Eat as many eggs as you want. Ignore EVERYTHING a doctor tells you about cholesterol. Eat a ton of vegetables and as much grass fed meat and butter as you can afford.
(note: 'poison' is a bit of hyperbole)
There is a good body of evidence that that people from Europe do well on the Mediterranean diet. That diet is mostly plant based but with oily fish and occasional eggs and dairy.
If you're saying eating red meat 7 times a week is bad, that's obvious, but I've seen no studies that say that grass-fed beef 1-2 days a week would be bad for you.
>Ignore EVERYTHING a doctor tells you about cholesterol.
Except for triglycerides. Triglycerides are extremely dangerous and strongly correlated to arteriosclerosis. There's evidence that triglycerides are formed in the liver when it's forced to process fructose.[1] They're also implicated in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.[2]
Don't ignore your doctor telling you about bad numbers, but take his/her advice as to what to do about it with a few grains of salt. Dietary cholesterol intake has little to do with the cholesterol in your blood. [3]
>Diabetics take note.
I agree with your basic premise that reducing carbohydrate intake can help with various metabolic diseases, but people with Diabetes need to be EXTREMELY careful. Often they've been on pills and injected insulin for such a long time that their body has adjusted and simply stopping the treatment could actually kill them. These individuals have an extremely dysfunctional carbohydrate metabolism and the transition to a low-carbohydrate metabolism is often accompanied by fatigue often called Keto Flu. [4] This kind of benign fatigue mimics dangerous hyper and hypoglycemic events that can require medical attention.
Diabetes can be treated by a low-carbohydrate diet, but the transition off medication needs to be supervised by a medical professional familiar with the practice.
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3513615 2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18460922 3. http://www.scribd.com/doc/101760834/Low-Carb-Research 4. http://elowcarbfoodlist.org/the-keto-flu-symptoms-and-relief...
Also, if blood sugar drops too low, hypoglycaemia is a very real and potentially fatal threat.
In this case, a keto diet high in fat may not be ideal - an emphasis on low-GI carbs wound be safer. Perhaps it may be possible to ease into a keto diet slowly but the amount of time and monitoring may be a bit much to bare.
To prevent diabetes, keto all the way but it's a little bit tricky if you're already there and have been for some time.
Ketoacidosis is extremely dangerous for diabetics, but it occurs in cases of extreme high blood sugar, not low blood sugar. These ketones can lead to serious kidney damage, or even kidney failure. Your point about hypoglycemia is dead on though.
As a type I diabetic myself, carbs are actually life saving during a low blood sugar episode (and low blood sugars actually occur more often for type I diabetics with tight control). As an aside, I find it perpetually frustrating how keto-fans like the OP conflate type I and type II diabetes as if there is no difference (because the answer to everything is "keto" \s).
You sound like you know what you're talking about so I think we can agree that the way cholesterols are 'generally' discussed is misleading.
Also, transitioning off diabetes medicines is indeed tricky and I'll certainly be reading your linked articles - my father is starting a low carb diet and more or less already self regulates his medication for type ii diabetes.
Both sides of my skinny family have diabetes, not everyone but most, it's frustrating to see Internet know-it-alls wave their hands and declare they know why everyone is fat.
My family eats in-season foods, lots of seafood, vegetables from gardens they grow, is very active yet diabetes runs in the family on both sides. They eat such variety way more than I do which makes me worry considering my family history.
An aunt who was rail thin and very active died of pancreatic cancer, most of her siblings died from diabetic related illnesses.
What's worse is once diabetes (and old age) takes hold, it makes it hard to lose weight and people scorn with vitriolic sneering they know why so and so has diabetes. Look at reddit subreddit fatlogic to see a sea of sneering know-it-alls to see how common it is now it's like a new sport.
I'm really glad you mentioned this. There's a lot more to weight loss then meets the eye. Your body actively works against you if you're not smart about meeting its needs, and knowing what is real hunger and what is a sugar craving takes a higher level of self-awareness then a lot of people think is necessary. Insulin is a hell of a hormone - your consciousness finds any excuse to raise that blood sugar when it gets too low. Makes you question free will sometimes :)
When the established medical practice is to inject people with MORE insulin when their body has produced so much it has become insensitive to it, there's gotta be something wrong. I don't think we've even scratched the surface when it comes to treating metabolic disorders.
Don't blame the doctors. No one ever recommended sweet potatoes over real potatoes. People made that choice against the recommendations of their grand parents and figured 'they would be alright'.
It seems the main epidemic is long-term inflammation, causing many civilization illnesses. Sugar is one of the most inflammatory foods as well, as most simple carbohydrates.
Your body uses to cholesterol to "patch" the "cracks" in your blood vessels? Therefore taking statins might lead to "internal bleeding"?
None of this is even remotely true.
One of the more interesting things to come from the Soylent people, their self-experimentation, and the experimentation of their early adopters is a validation of an awful lot of the conventional wisdom regarding diet. When people stray too far in one direction or another from the RDI for a given factor, they often experience perceptible negative effects.
Look at this, per 100g, the "Kashi 7 Whole Grain Cereals, Puffs" mentioned in this thread has 5-10g of protein and less than 5g of fibre [1]. The top cereal when googling healthy cereals [2] has 2g of protein and 5g of fibre. In comparison plain nice, big oats have 13g of protein and 10g of fibre. There's just no beating it.
[1]: https://www.kashi.com/our-foods/cold-cereal/kashi-7whole-gra... [2]: http://greatist.com/health/best-healthy-cereal-brands
This is the original product from the Kashi company: Whole hard red wheat, whole brown rice, whole oats, whole barley, whole triticale, whole rye, whole buckwheat, sesame seeds, and nothing else. Puffed, but just barely puffed so it's still chewy and crunchy. Great stuff.
So try to find it. Your grocer will probably have over a dozen varieties of Kashi cereals, every one of them sugared up concoctions. But they are very unlikely to have the original Puffed Kashi, the real thing.
Trader Joe's used to have it. Whole Foods used to have it. Safeway used to have it. Now they all just have Kashi's sugared products.
But lucky me, I found one place that still has the real Puffed Kashi: Amazon!
Or according to TV commercials you feed grains to little mammals of your species because you love them and they're cute. Even though it'll fatten them up and kill em.
You can try and deny what biological commonalities exist for whatever reasons, but the weight scale knows better.
Feeding people the same stuff that farmers use to fatten their herds will inevitably make people look like people of walmart website. No avoiding it.
Everyone is different so if I may suggest: try doing some A/B testing: go a month eating cereal and then go a month not eating cereal and see how differntly you feel. For all I know, some people may thrive on cereal, but not my wife and I.
I remember thinking that breakfast would be just as "complete" if you left out the cereal.
I never was much into prepackaged cereals, but that totally put me off.
Just look at the ingredients on most breakfast cereals and you'll see sugar or some kind of sugar substitute as the second or third ingredient. Eat real food if you're at all interested in your health.
Why fear 50g of cereal when you eat it with 200+g of milk, which is about the most perfect food available?
Sugar is the preferred energy of almost every cell in our bodies; and in the end, protein & fat will be converted into glucose if no sugar (glycogen) is available.
And sugar is "easy energy" and will make you fat. There are better sugar types (such as fructose (sugar from fruit) and Dextrose (found in the pharmacy))
All non-fibre carbohydrates are metabolized as sugar, and it's VERY rare for our bodies to convert carbs into fat. All complex sugars are broken down into monosaccharides before absorption. Chew on a piece of bread for a couple minutes and enzymes in your saliva will break it down into glucose, and it will become sweet in your mouth.
Dextrose is glucose, and sugar does not directly make you fat. Eating a sustained caloric surplus makes you fat, no matter the macronutrient composition of your diet.
Here's more detail about the biochemistry of how we get fat - http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-we-get-fat.htm...
Not THAT rare. Add alcohol, or just eat a whole lot of carbs and few fats[0].
[0]-http://examine.com/faq/how-are-carbohydrates-converted-into-...
Through a similar mechanism to alcohol, one can start up DNL much faster with large acute fructose consumption, but even in that "worst case scenario" we still only convert about 1% of surplus fructose into fat - http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/9/1/89
Somewhat ironically, a scenario where we make more fat from the carbs & protein we eat is when we consume very little fat. Eat less than 10% fat in your diet and this will cause DNL to ramp up. This is explained more in the "how we get fat" link in my previous comment.
Your last point was the main gist of my post, though I didn't spell it out so well. I didn't realize that about fructose though.
That aside, I've yet to see a conclusion on that show that wasn't reasonable.
Whenever the myth is about a secret project to such-and-such, they regularly use "we couldn't figure out how to do it" to conclude "it can't be done"; that isn't reasonable.
I'm generally a fan of the show, mind you.