Those are really good rules. I appreciate that the title is "Healthy eating" and not "Losing weight" or "Dieting too. Personally, once I started avoiding things like Doritos, I was able to taste subtler flavors and appreciate them. It's hard to appreciate even a really nice piece of fresh bread if you just had a load of salt, sugar, fat, and flavor enhancers. They take the amplitude beyond what normal food can achieve, but the overall taste is "meh".
I personally have said fuck it. I takes drugs for pain with a liberal moderation and drink protein shakes to balance out my vice of eating pure sugar snacks. Glycemically I know its terrible but on the calorie scale and macro nutrients I am well nourished. Eh..I have some sense of guilt about potential glycemic shock from the spikes but I think my body can handle it. Trick is to know before its too late...
This guy is really great. He has a YouTube channel called Healthcare Triage, which I enjoy.
On it, he talks about commonly asked health questions (is coffee good for you?), and backs up everything he says with data and research (he tries to use meta-analyses when he can).
The science supporting this is super thin, isn't it?
Pretty sure it's still as simple as "eat enough calories. Eat enough vitamins and minerals to not get sick from a deficiency. Have enough fiber to keep the digestive system humming. Drink enough water."
What a poor article, it doesn't go into any specifics or give reasons for why you should eat this or avoid that. The whole article really boils down to 'don't eat bad food, eat good food.'
On another note, I've recently given up sugar as an experiment after reading all the bad things about it (surprised it didn't even come up in the article!), and have had quite dramatic results. The first 3 weeks were a shock to the system and I had major withdrawal symptoms; cravings, sweating, migraines, insomnia even shaking. Then in the 4th week I was back to normal again and seeing lots of benefits. The biggest surprise for me was sleep; I used to need ~10 hours a night, but now wake up refreshed after 7! My skin on my face is also less red, acne on my back has cleared up 50%, excma on my arms nearly fully gone, and of course my waistline has reduced.
This was just from eliminating all the obvious processed sugars, ie. chocolate, cakes, desserts, honey, biscuits etc. Also only drinking water and eating oatmeal for breakfast. These days I don't have any cravings for them; the knowledge of all the long term problems they caused completely kills it for me.
It's a poor article because it's not the kind of article you want? Seems a bit harsh. For a quick 7 point set of tips, it's the kind of thing that most people (in this country at least) would find a radical change.
Dark chocolate is still good, if you like it. Also the occasional fruit is supposedly good for your metabolism, because the fructose will restore any depleted glycogen in your liver from losing weight.
This is true, I didn't go into any more detail as the post was getting a bit long, but I do find fruit and nuts to be a good substitute for snack food. I've never been a fan of dark chocolate, although I do find that after eating a lot of sugary foods your taste buds get dulled to other things, so I maybe I will try it again.
Actually the article was pretty good I thought in terms of giving simple advice -- it actually said "don't eat too much of bad food, eat more of good food" and it tells what might be generally classified as bad food. It's simple advice and actionable.
At this point, can anyone take The New York Times seriously about health advice? Someone should compile their history of publishing thinly-sourced, pop science conclusions that are openly contradictory.
Not overheating food is another healthy eating rule. (Though try making french fries, bacon, pot roast, etc, w/o doing this. Not possible!)
Seriously, though, to address why people find it hard to follow such rules one has to look beyond nutrition and medicine. People don't just eat to fuel their bodies, they eat to fuel their minds i.e. for comfort and pleasure.
This is why (I think) that small amounts of caffeine and alcohol are good: for a given level of mental stimulation they reduce the amount of food needed. Reducing side effects from any one source reduces overall damage to the body.
How does one reduce one's overall level of self-stimulation? For want of a better word this is a spiritual problem. Having an objectively valuable purpose or problem to occupy the mind with is crucial, but perhaps there will remain 'ups' and 'downs'. Look to traditional religious teachings or the AA for advice. Which advice, again, is going to be mingled with falsehoods and irrationalities. Intermittent fasting is becoming fashionable and may be part of the solution; it certainly bring personal issues into vivid focus.
I always ask when I think I'm hungry if I'm just bored. I know it seems like a silly thing to do but I found often when I'm really bored I just eat more just to do something I think. Not sure if this is objectively true in all cases even for me, but it seems to be helping me lose weight.
For me it works this way: when I think I'm sad/depressed I ask if I'm just hungry. I can easily forget to eat, and this has consequences for my state of mind. I need to reassure myself that I'm not depressed, I just need some nutrients. Then I eat and I find I'm no longer sad.
Anything involved heating up vegetable oils to high temperature is extremely dangerous, because oil releases carcinogens [0]. Preparing healthy food using heated oils sounds like nonsense to me.
The worst oils for cooking are the "healthiest" ones for adding to salads. For example, olive oil and avocado oil "burn" really easily and at a low temperature. On the other hand, butter and lard can survive the high heat better.
This is because poly- and mono-unsaturated fats had double bonds that oxidize rapidly. A free radical colliding with one of those double bonds will set off a chain reaction, resulting in rancidity.
In comparison, saturated fats have single bonds that do not oxidize as rapidly after a free radical challenge.
It's more complicated. Olive oil is high in antioxidants. A recent study found that no realistic cooking process would significantly oxidize the pufas in evoo because the antioxidants are pretty good at what they do.
This isn't wrong, assuming that you can get the real stuff. Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) has a higher smoke point and will survive cooking. Unfortunately, if you purchase olive oil in the US, there's a good chance that it's been processed, even if the label claims it's EVOO! A study by UC Davis found that 2/3 of oils labeled EVOO did NOT meet the standards.
The processing step that the fake oils use will degrade the antioxidant capacity that you'd get from real, cold-pressed oil.
So, in summary:
PUFA's go rancid easily in absence of antioxidants.
Pure EVOO, though PUFA, has antioxidants that protect it.
If you buy "EVOO" in the US, it has possibly undergone processing (despite the label!), which means that it will have lower antioxidative capacity
Right on! We eat a lot of 'stir fry' style foods, but simmer the veggies, and sometimes a little chicken or fish in vegetable broth and spices. Then we add healthy oils after the food is removed from the stove. I honestly think this style tastes as good as frying food in hot oil.
This is a great article. We seem to love the act of complicating healthy eating habits.
Vegetables are good. Processed foods (including sugar) are bad. Mix in some fish and chicken from time to time. Don't pour salt all over it. There you have it. A healthy diet.
The bottom line is that eating healthy is not hard, nor is it prohibitively expensive. It's all about priority. If you would rather have the flat screen TV than a budget for Whole Foods, then that's your prerogative.
After following his rules for a year now and losing 50 pounds with literally no exercise, I'm (further) convinced that healthy eating and corporate interests are completely opposed.
It seems everything that makes food more profitable also makes it less healthy. Perhaps the science is thin on things like caloric sources (quality vs quantity), preservatives, complexity of sugars, the effects of high processing of food, etc., but my anecdotal evidence and growing intuition aligns with the author's opinions.
For me personally, removing added sugars and processed foods and moving to a more "real foods" meal plan (meat, veggies, fruit) has been transformative.
It's a prisoner's dilemma. Lacking government regulation, investment will always flow to the food companies willing to sacrifice the longterm health of consumers in exchange for higher revenue.
That is, food corporations that practice methods that increase consumption to unhealthy levels - high sodium, high sugar, low satiating and cheap to produce foods (high-carb, high-yield meat products due to growth hacks like bovine growth hormone).
The food companies that choose not to play along are either niche health food companies, or they will go bust by not being able to compete in a commodity market.
Sarah Palin (1) would have you believe we should have the "freedom" to eat what we want. However, for the vast majority of Americans that's a straight up pipedream. We are "free" to eat whatever is available, and baring government intervention what is available is subject to the forces described in my previous paragraph (ie garbage optimized to make us over-consume).
The obesity epidemic WILL NOT be resolved until heavy government regulation comes into play in the food industry. Pretending otherwise is no different than those who pretend abstinence education prevents pre-marital sex.
1. Obviously I'm just using her here as poster child for a certain political ideology.
> Sarah Palin would have you believe we should have the "freedom" to eat what we want. However, for the vast majority of Americans that's a straight up pipedream.
I don't know, in every town there is a grocery store that sells produce, raw meat, and other unprocessed foods. If your argument is that the shopper is so overwhelmed by advertising that he just can't help but choose poorly --- well, that's the dividing line between conservatism and liberalism.
Actually I believe that there is truth to both sides, but either side taken to the extreme leads to absurdity. Full faith in the individual, and full faith in government, are each flawed.
> no different than those who pretend abstinence education prevents pre-marital sex
>If your argument is that the shopper is so overwhelmed by advertising that he just can't help but choose poorly --- well, that's the dividing line between conservatism and liberalism.
You're free to believe that most humans are capable of making healthy eating choices by their own free will if you want (not trying to be catty, and I'm not sure that was the point you were communicating, just how I interpreted your comment), but the data overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.
At a certain point I believe it is important to protect people from themselves. Being too proud to admit that "humans can be taken advantage of using certain hacks/tricks" makes society as a whole weaker.
>Actually I believe that there is truth to both sides, but either side taken to the extreme leads to absurdity. Full faith in the individual, and full faith in government, are each flawed.
You and I agree on this point 100%. Currently I believe the FDA has allowed too much leeway with the food industry. I'm not foolish enough to think that it couldn't easily swing too far in the other direction as well.
sigh... lemme tell ya what they taught us in finance theory class: rich investors are not stupider than average investors; in fact, if investing "for the long term" is the right thing to do, rich investors actually have the resources, wherewithal and the time to do it.
The problem is, as hard as it is to predict the future, it is harder to predict farther into the future; and, once you set up a pot of "long term" honey, people have a chance to reorganize their affairs to siphon off said honey and if your idea is to not pay attention to their short term results, you set yourself up for a big long term surprise. Publicly traded companies are mostly companies that have products, markets, customers, service, etc. Generally, when they are losing money compared to other companies, it does not scream "we're pouring money into R&D, great things are around the corner!"
This boils down to, statistically speaking, short term results are actually the best indicator of long term results. You'd be foolish (statistically) to overemphasize long term hypotheticals in the face of short term losses.
TL;DR that financial markets are too tilted in favor of "short term" results is largely a myth. if it were not a myth, wealth would shift from the majority people who supposedly pay attention to short term results and toward people who ignore short term results leading to the end of the myth.
edit (couple above and): I'm not saying that long term projects and ideas and thinking don't ever pay off; I'm saying that saying that they are undervalued and therefore represent an opportunity is a stretch and requires proof that you most likely will not find if you look because others have looked.
Algorithmics would disagree with you: the greedy algorithm, or trying to find a global maximum from local maxima, usually fails as a method. It's usually a "stupider" way of doing things :P
My own experiences, especially related to corporations, seem to corroborate this.
I think it's a mistake to apply ideas from the mathematics of functions (other than statistical functions) to "trendlines" observable in financial market data. The idea of local maxima, for instance, suggests to most people who've heard the term that you could find a maximum by finding roots of a derivative function, the proof of which is based on the dynamics of the underlying processes being discernable or model-able as a function.
To convey the intuition I'm trying to describe as quickly as possible, I think you're thinking of market data being useful to help you find the Old Faithful geyser, and once you find it you just need to hang around and scoop up the reliable expulsions. Coupled with the even worse idea that you can see it where nobody else can :) To continue the analogy, I think it's not Old Faithful you found, but a solar flare on the surface of the sun, and while waiting for the next one you are more likely to get scorched.
We aren't going to debate technical analysis here (or resolve it), the point I'm making overall is that people persistently believe that financial markets are leaving money lying around, that these people can see where nobody else can see it, and that is easy to bend over and pick up. I'm trying to use some fairly simple logic and explanation to say, "it's not that easy; if it was, how can you think an entire financial industry somehow can't see what you can see? Wall street hires people just like you."
I'm not sure where you're going with this, but it's digressed far from what I was talking about. To paraphrase your argument, you're talking about assuming convexity, which is a big deal in financial modeling.
If convexity isn't assumed, you're right back to my original point.
the observation that "the markets are too short term focused" is not a useful starting point for a moneymaking strategy because it can be shown with a simple explanation to a layperson that it isn't even an observation, it's a myth... is where I started and where I'm going.
I don't think using terms such as convexity explains anything to anybody, but if it indicates to you that the market is too short term focused, you should just print money with a derivative security that prefers companies that lose money in the short term because that will with no effort uncover all the long term strategies...
But isn't that shift in wealth actually happening? My understanding is that the richest investors are increasingly moving their capital from publicly-traded stocks to privately held companies (venture capital and private equity) exactly because they earn higher long-term returns. Those private companies don't have the same pressure to pay attention to short term results. Average investors can't make the same investments because they are largely locked out of those private markets. This is a market inefficiency, but it's likely to persist for a long time.
There are other explanations for such a trend as you describe that do not hinge on long term vs short term thinking.
For example, if you have control over a golden goose asset and managing it to maximize wealth is best achieved by sitting in a room with other oligopolists and carving up markets, that (1) may be best accomplished "in private" and (2) why share unfairly high profits if don't need to? This type of thing has occurred for example in the growth of cable TV companies, go public (yet maintain control) to get access to the capital necessary to grow your networks, then go private again (you already have control) to not have to dilute profit over and in the face of inefficient public regulation.
In any case, the idea that the market is too focused on the short term has been around for decades, and if the shift had occurred as you propose, then we wouldn't still be hearing it.
Did they teach you that a group of completely rational short-term thinkers can get stuck at a local maximum that's way below the optimum for people who are thinking ahead? Or that irrational behavior can emerge from groups of smart, rational individuals in competition?
Theory aside, here's a thing that doesn't fit into any short-term models I know: Bell Labs. Take a monopoly business with a ton of spare cash, and throw that cash into a well. Build a city full of comfortable middle-class researchers and their families with no need to produce anything of immediate value, and keep it going for decades. Watch them invent a million amazing things that change the world, and then, once they get splintered into a bunch of smaller, short-term focused groups, watch them fade into insignificance.
I'm not sure if you are disagreeing with me or agreeing and adding on.
If you are suggesting that rational behavior is emerging every time, or even much of the time, somebody says "Wall Street is too focused on the short term", I shake my head in sadness at the money you are planning to lose.
> This boils down to, statistically speaking, short term results are actually the best indicator of long term results. You'd be foolish (statistically) to overemphasize long term hypotheticals in the face of short term losses.
Amazon is an apt antithesis ... though obviously an outlier.
Amazon is not an antithesis at all, it's in my column! look, language is imprecise and none of us are writing encylopedias here that we reedit till they are perfect, so to keep it short:
Amazon is pursuing a long term strategy, and it's a public company, and it's getting funded, it's not getting starved for capital. i.e. the market is working, its strategy is being valued, there is no evidence of a market failure. (that is why I covered myself in my previous comment by saying "overemphasize" rather than simply saying emphasize.)
what would be your "antithesis" example would be other similar ideas that were floated and funding dried up because investors "stupidly" didn't get what a great long term idea it was. Of course, nobody can know what woulda coulda, and I'm not saying anybody can; what I'm saying is, if somebody thinks that markets don't properly weigh the long term over the short term, they are essentially saying that they want to sink more of their money into these (hypothetical) "losers" and I'm saying, please don't, it's a bad idea to assume that you know more than people actually in that industry.
I'm also not saying "don't think you have better ideas" and I'm not saying "don't pursue your good ideas" etc. I'm saying, don't think that financial markets are stupider than you. Don't think that the world is this hugely unfair place where all the people with money don't know a good idea when they hear about it, and that all these people with no money have all these great ideas that money seems to make people blind to (which is what "markets just don't get long term like I do" is saying)
Or the issue that often the real costs aren't on the companies balance sheet at all. The cost of type II diabetes notably does not show up on food industries balance sheet. Just like the cost of smoking didn't show up in the tobacco companies balance sheets.
> I'm (further) convinced that healthy eating and corporate interests are completely opposed.
This is touched on a bit in the Omnivore's Dilemma, people without heavy encouragement otherwise, have a rough limit on how many calories they will consume in a day. As a food company that has sufficient market penetration, you're stuck growing your profits at the same rate as the population. To get around this, you'll either need to increase your profits per calorie (sell less for more, cheaper ingredients, etc) or increase the amount of calories people are eating, through marketing and/or formulating your foods in such a way to encourage more consumption.
I think most companies opt for both, there's a lot of limits/diminishing returns on the making food cheaper side of things, but on the human consumption side, there's a lot of room for growth until everybody is morbidly obese. The bigger you are, the more calories you need to consume to keep that weight. More calories consumed is more money for food producers.
The food industry is close to absurd. To cut costs the makes things barely edible, then spend a few millions in marketing[1] and another load of money in chemically compensated taste (fancy name to mean sugar+fat+salt, and colors).
ps: said that earlier, my body made me change diet, you discover a lot of sensations you don't sense with the average industrial diet (everything is fuzzed by sugar and fat). It's not easy though because you lack all the hoops all these sweet meals gave you before, and your brain crave them a lot. Without a change in culture/lifestyle and real constraints (disease) it seems impossible to achieve on long term.
[1] there's a research department in some English univ. dealing with consumer buying reflex optimization, they investigate the package-sound-crispiness / buying ratio
> It seems everything that makes food more profitable also makes it less healthy.
There are two sides to this: it's cheaper to supply unhealthy food, but only when people buy it. Other brands (Whole Foods, Amy's frozen foods, arguably the entire "cooking show" industry) are built around fetishization of the healthy eating. This is why the recent ruling on displaying "added sugars" is so important, even if many more similar steps are necessary for people to make educated, healthy decisions when hungry. If we can convince corporations it is in their profit margins' interest to provide healthier food—ideally because consumers assign value to the nutritional content instead of just calories—we'll see widespread health benefits.
That said, you're completely correct, which is why there are systemic problems with the diets of the lower class. Why buy real food when you can feed yourself (or your kids, or your relatives) with cheaper food that is easy to eat? There's simply no reason for those brands to invest in cheaper, healthier food when it would be harder to sell and couldn't piggyback off shared food processing (e.g. processed sugars, grains, meats, proteins).
This seems similar to the guidelines from the book "Diet Cults" called "agnostic healthy eating" which is a list of foods with the better foods to eat at the top of the list.
Essential foods (eat more of these than the other types of foods):
1. vegetables
2. fruits
Recommended foods:
3. nuts, seeds, and healthy oils
4. high-quality meats and seafood (by this he means "wild-caught fish and shellfish, only the highest-quality farm-raised seafood, the leanest meat cuts, and meats from wild game and free-ranging animals fed natural diets". Also eggs.)
5. whole grains
6. dairy
Acceptable foods (eat less of these than the other types):
7. refined grains
8. low-quality meat and seafood ("all processed meats and all but the leanest cuts of unprocessed meats" as well as "seafood that does not meet the quality standards of watchdog organizations such as the Aquaculture Stewardship Council" are in this category)
9. sweets
10. fried foods
No particular category is required if you don't want to eat them, as long as you eat more of each grouping than the one below it.
Some of the differences between the two are that the linked article would allow "low-quality" meat as long as it isn't processed, but doesn't include as much "healthy oil" or dairy. Another difference is the article would consider a whole grain cereal to be "highly processed" whereas it would be "whole grains" in the book (the appendices have more details on which foods go in which categories). Same for 100% whole grain bread. So the only qualm I might have is it could be healthier to include more healthy oil and less meat.
The article adds behavioral guidelines to cook at home and eat with people to get you to cook more. These guidelines seem both slightly more strict yet also makes the whole list easier to follow. I lost weight on the list I wrote above (agnostic healthy eating), but stopped following it after a while. Your success on the article's guidelines makes me want to try it.
I make an effort to a avoid foods made with biodiesel, as I am of the opinion that deodorized polyunsaturated oils are not appropriate for human consumption.
If I'm sort of lazy, I'll eat something made with palm oil, even though there is a lot of Omega 6.
I'm not afraid of carbs, so my usual bread replacement is potato or sweet potato. My usual lunch is a potato & meat & fruit. I'd probably add broccoli or something to that if I weren't lazy/cheap. I'm also not afraid of oil/butter/salt, so it's not hard to make the veggies taste good.
Ideal breakfast for me is eggs & meat & perhaps fruit, though I currently have only black coffee for breakfast on weekdays (mild intermittent fasting).
I might add that feeling "full" at meals has been a huge motivator for me. Skipping breakfast and not placing limits on what I eat otherwise so long as it's real food has worked extremely well psychologically; I don't feel deprived, and I can see myself continuing this for life.
Having stopped consuming processed sugar a few years ago, I can easily say this was the single change I've made with the largest impact on my health and quality of life.
When I started reading labels and stopped buying anything with sugar, corn syrup, evaporated cane juice etc., I automatically eliminated processed food.
As for food companies, their responsibility is to maximize profit which usually involves selling as much as possible at the highest profit margin possible.
Given that high profit margin excludes the possibility of expensive quality ingredients, the variables that remain are taste and perception. Thus, food commercials, stories, "healthy food fetishism" (and pushing same crap as such) and taste laboratories where scientists focus on making said crap palatable, tasty and if possible addictive.
Sugar is an addictive substance so it is almost always a part of this formula.
I grew up in the U.S. but in the past year, I've been able to spend a significant amount of time abroad, primarily in Europe and Japan.
The single biggest thing I've noticed: there are virtually no overweight people. And yet, no one is on some kind of obscure no-meat/no-carbs/no-fruit diet. People just live, eat the local food (which often has a ton of butter, salt, fat, etc.) and somehow still look 100% better than Americans.
My conclusion: obesity is caused by some combination of excessive portion sizes + over-processed food. It's not that complicated.
Unfortunately very true. So much of America is designed with the assumption that everyone has a car and there's no attempt to make anything pedestrian-accessible.
I live in San Jose and I honestly miss walking. I mean sure, I can walk, but I can't use it to go anywhere other than the 7/11 near my apartment without taking an hour or more out of my day. That's not to say I don't like living here (I do) but I guess that's just something you deal with when you trade a comparatively small college town (Santa Cruz) for a huge, spread-out city.
I used to live in London (England) and walk and tube everywhere. My first trip to the US was LA. I parked at a cafe and bought a coffee. We saw a store across the street so crossed it. Even though traffic was light and it was easy to do so without causing it to slow down the cars honked us for doing so. Jaywalking. I'd never really thought of Jaywalking outside of movies.
So we go in the store and afterwards make an effort to walk a couple of blocks down to the crossing so we don't get arrested or run down. When we get back to the car there's a tow truck trying to take it away because we were shopping across the street and no longer customers of this strip.
It was pretty amazing to us. We spent the rest of the trip driving everywhere, no matter how small the journey.
> When we get back to the car there's a tow truck trying to take it away because we were shopping across the street and no longer customers of this strip.
Does this not happen in other countries? It's not exactly common in the US, but you will see it dense areas sometimes where a) parking is limited and costs money and b) businesses provide parking free of charge to their own customers.
When you think about it from a business's perspective it makes sense. If a bunch of people who aren't your customers fill up your lot, and there isn't nearby parking or it costs money, potential customers will arrive and might leave without patronizing your business because they can't find a place to park.
Obviously it's annoying when it's enforced as overzealously as the above example.
Obesity is almost completely dominated by diet. Moving to New York, ditching the car, and walking everywhere netted me maybe 150 calories in deficit over the most active days. That's a soda or a beer, or a typical American office snack. Exercise can't come close to making up for how calorie dense most of our 'convenient' packaged food is.
I don't buy it. I'm also a New York transplant, and even the folks here with unhealthy diets seem to be in massively better shape than those in car-centric American cities with similar diets. That also goes for folks in car-centric cities who have healthy diets but are still overweight.
My working theory is that walking all the time ramps up the metabolism. Regardless, the notion of a 1:1 relationship between calories consumed and calories "retained" seems suspicious.
[edit] regarding the "you can't outrun the fork" theory of weightloss (e.g. exercising at the gym won't offset a poor diet), I absolutely agree with you, but I think there's a difference between an hour or two of intense exercise every other day (a gym membership) vs a lifestyle of walking everywhere all the time.
As to why I think it’s different, here's a possibly dumb analogy: my building has this rooftop garden, and for the past few years, someone would walk up to the rooftop and water it a couple times a day with a hose. So far, so good.
Last year I decided it would be funny to install a drop irrigation system. Half a dozen times a day it trickles out water. Just drips, possibly less total water than the hose sprays.
Our yield last year was simply bananas. Plants growing taller than me in little pots and 16"-deep crates. The local plant expert explained to me that when plants get sporadic water, they grow roots deep to find more; when they get constant water, even if not as much, they "assume" water will be around whenever they need it and grow up instead.
I speculate that the human metabolism works in a similar way, and that ongoing, low levels of exercise is more beneficial to the metabolism than daily spurts of high intensity exercise.
> I speculate that the human metabolism works in a similar way, and that ongoing, low levels of exercise is more beneficial to the metabolism than daily spurts of high intensity exercise.
Research has shown that properly structured, high intensity exercise (10 minutes) is just as beneficial as low levels over a longer duration.
> Exercise can't come close to making up for how calorie dense most of our 'convenient' packaged food is.
Clearly you don't lift :). Just a joke, and I agree that diet is very important for losing weight, but if you work out well you can live on 4000 calories a day without gaining fat.
>My conclusion: obesity is caused by some combination of excessive portion sizes + over-processed food.
I disagree on portion sizes, based on my experiences in Japan.
In Japan - there is far less sugary products and they are less popular than in the states. (eg: soda). Even many of their "desserts" aren't that sugary (or tasty IMO...)
I stayed with a family during my time there. During home cooked meals it wasn't uncommon to have several servings - often times totaling more food than I'd ever eat in the States! While I would politely decline past the second serving [0] on the grounds of being full, the family I was staying with would often have several servings each. It was so much food! It felt like instead of one "double-size" serving they would have six "half sized" servings (slightly exaggerating # of servings).
I ate less than everyone in the family - they even commented on the fact many times! They were surprised I would always be full before they were and had expected an American to always be hungry (because of the "smaller portions" of Japan). I also ate with other families/visited other foreigners my family knew and it was always the same! Smaller portions but way more servings!
Restaurant serving sizes were more or less equal to the States except the drinks which felt like the largest sizes were equivalent to a kid's cup or a water cup you'd get at a fast food joint in the states. I was perpetually thirsty in Japan.
Also Japanese people walk/bike nearly everywhere as the public transport via trains is very practical and very convenient. The exercise certainly adds up.
America does have a "excessive portion size" problem per se, but "appropriate portion" should vary depending on what you are eating. In America, it often doesn't.
It's pretty easy to Google 2500+ calorie monstrosities that are served as a dinner in American restaurants. We have pastas with rich sauces (lots of butter, oils, or sugar), dishes with excessive cheese, and large amounts of deep fried ingredients... and many places serve a heck of a lot of this when you go out to eat.
Other countries have rich foods too, but my experience is that many cultures with very rich food often go light on the portion size (France comes to mind). Another set of countries have cuisine that normally is not very rich or excessively sweet (like you mention with Japan and the lack of sugary products). In many cases the food is flavored with spice instead of fats and sugars. For these type of foods, I bet you could easily match the portion size of one of those big American restaurant meals, and come nowhere near the calories.
Another factor that probably doesn't help here is that America seems more soda oriented than many cultures, and that excessive use of sugar even applies to other drinks all down the chain (my impression is that other cultures use way less sugar on coffee, tea, alcoholic cocktails...). It all adds up.
Don't be fooled by appearances, obesity is a problem in Europe, too!
While the absolute numbers are lower in Europe versus the U.S., they're still very high. The numbers vary from 30% (UK) to 20+% in most other countries (vs ~35% in the US).
The reason you don't see overweight people on the streets is because they're not going out as much and are traveling by cars or .. just sitting at home.
I like the tone of this article. I do, however, believe that there is rather more science backing up low carb eating than the piece would have you believe.
Edit: Since I got curious and followed a bunch of other studies, here's a cool calculator based on some of that research and the (admittedly flawed) NHANES data
that what called (by /r/keto people) "lazy keto". which works only for some people. and for me, for example, doesn't work. You still have to monitor intake (again, said by /r/keto people) It is just easier to avoid hunger and energy losses while being on keto diet.
I like the tone of this article. I do, however, believe that there is rather more science backing up low carb eating than the piece would have you believe.
I recently changed my diet because I felt my energy levels were all over the place. I cut out processed carbs, and generally things with a high glycemic index. It took about three weeks to really get past sugary foods, but then my tastes started to change. I'm pescetarian (mostly vegetarian, occasional I'll eat fish), so protein is a challenge – I rely pretty heavily on eggs and yogurt. I also cut down on the amount of dairy I was consuming in general, switching to a macchiato for my afternoon coffee rather than a latte. Other than that, lots of vegetables in lots of variety.
Data point of one, but after a month I really started to feel a difference. I felt a lot better almost immediately, but some of that was likely placebo. I crash a lot less in the afternoons, and have higher energy in general. Physically the difference was more dramatic – lost a spare tire I was starting to cary around my mid section. Partially this was due to exercise – more energy led to commuting by bike a lot more than I was.
One thing I'd add to the article was the importance of changing your environment. When I first started it was difficult because most of the snacks at home were carbohydrate based – by changing the environment and stocking a lot more protein-based foods at home that were easy to prepare, it was a lot easier to make the transition.
I used to also be on a pescetarian diet and I thought it was the healthiest diet I have ever been on. Now, my family avoids beef because of the environmental problems of beef production, but we eat too much chicken and fish.
If I were rich, I would have a cook and eat macrobiotic or vegan, but to make tasty macrobiotic and vegan food yourself is a lot of effort.
These rules can be boiled down to an even easier set, don't eat sugars and don't eat grains. Make your body adapt to burning fat for energy and you'll feel better (no mid-day crash after a carb-heavy lunch) and lose weight. There is a lot of growing evidence that cancer feeds on sugar and low/no-sugar diets can even help prevent it from occuring.
Completely avoiding sugars and grains? That's not easier; you trade a less complicated rule for severe diet restrictions. Applying that rule about less processed foods will help with sugars and carbs too.
i.e. an apple and hard candy both have sugar, but the apple is a good idea. A cupcake and a loaf of whole-wheat bread both have carbs, but the bread (especially if it contains only yeast, flour, water, salt) will be way better for you.
It's not a severe diet restriction--you can't completely get rid of carbs but you can easily get down to 20-50g per day. Stick with eating proteins (meat, sausage, chicken, etc.) and most green vegetables. Some nuts and berries are ok too but be very careful about fruits (especially juices which are a massive glycemic spike without any fiber to balance it). After a few weeks you won't miss bread and grains at all. In fact on the rare occasions I have it I think pasta and grains are incredibly bland (try zucchini noodles with a spiralizer, it makes an awesome meal with some sausage and a bit of diced tomatoes and spices).
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadI personally have said fuck it. I takes drugs for pain with a liberal moderation and drink protein shakes to balance out my vice of eating pure sugar snacks. Glycemically I know its terrible but on the calorie scale and macro nutrients I am well nourished. Eh..I have some sense of guilt about potential glycemic shock from the spikes but I think my body can handle it. Trick is to know before its too late...
On it, he talks about commonly asked health questions (is coffee good for you?), and backs up everything he says with data and research (he tries to use meta-analyses when he can).
Pretty sure it's still as simple as "eat enough calories. Eat enough vitamins and minerals to not get sick from a deficiency. Have enough fiber to keep the digestive system humming. Drink enough water."
On another note, I've recently given up sugar as an experiment after reading all the bad things about it (surprised it didn't even come up in the article!), and have had quite dramatic results. The first 3 weeks were a shock to the system and I had major withdrawal symptoms; cravings, sweating, migraines, insomnia even shaking. Then in the 4th week I was back to normal again and seeing lots of benefits. The biggest surprise for me was sleep; I used to need ~10 hours a night, but now wake up refreshed after 7! My skin on my face is also less red, acne on my back has cleared up 50%, excma on my arms nearly fully gone, and of course my waistline has reduced.
This was just from eliminating all the obvious processed sugars, ie. chocolate, cakes, desserts, honey, biscuits etc. Also only drinking water and eating oatmeal for breakfast. These days I don't have any cravings for them; the knowledge of all the long term problems they caused completely kills it for me.
Seriously, though, to address why people find it hard to follow such rules one has to look beyond nutrition and medicine. People don't just eat to fuel their bodies, they eat to fuel their minds i.e. for comfort and pleasure.
This is why (I think) that small amounts of caffeine and alcohol are good: for a given level of mental stimulation they reduce the amount of food needed. Reducing side effects from any one source reduces overall damage to the body.
How does one reduce one's overall level of self-stimulation? For want of a better word this is a spiritual problem. Having an objectively valuable purpose or problem to occupy the mind with is crucial, but perhaps there will remain 'ups' and 'downs'. Look to traditional religious teachings or the AA for advice. Which advice, again, is going to be mingled with falsehoods and irrationalities. Intermittent fasting is becoming fashionable and may be part of the solution; it certainly bring personal issues into vivid focus.
[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11981884/Cooking...
This is because poly- and mono-unsaturated fats had double bonds that oxidize rapidly. A free radical colliding with one of those double bonds will set off a chain reaction, resulting in rancidity.
In comparison, saturated fats have single bonds that do not oxidize as rapidly after a free radical challenge.
The processing step that the fake oils use will degrade the antioxidant capacity that you'd get from real, cold-pressed oil.
So, in summary:
PUFA's go rancid easily in absence of antioxidants.
Pure EVOO, though PUFA, has antioxidants that protect it.
If you buy "EVOO" in the US, it has possibly undergone processing (despite the label!), which means that it will have lower antioxidative capacity
Wiki article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil#Adulteration
Vegetables are good. Processed foods (including sugar) are bad. Mix in some fish and chicken from time to time. Don't pour salt all over it. There you have it. A healthy diet.
The bottom line is that eating healthy is not hard, nor is it prohibitively expensive. It's all about priority. If you would rather have the flat screen TV than a budget for Whole Foods, then that's your prerogative.
It seems everything that makes food more profitable also makes it less healthy. Perhaps the science is thin on things like caloric sources (quality vs quantity), preservatives, complexity of sugars, the effects of high processing of food, etc., but my anecdotal evidence and growing intuition aligns with the author's opinions.
For me personally, removing added sugars and processed foods and moving to a more "real foods" meal plan (meat, veggies, fruit) has been transformative.
I dunno- the longer you live, the longer I can sell shit to you.
That is, food corporations that practice methods that increase consumption to unhealthy levels - high sodium, high sugar, low satiating and cheap to produce foods (high-carb, high-yield meat products due to growth hacks like bovine growth hormone).
The food companies that choose not to play along are either niche health food companies, or they will go bust by not being able to compete in a commodity market.
Sarah Palin (1) would have you believe we should have the "freedom" to eat what we want. However, for the vast majority of Americans that's a straight up pipedream. We are "free" to eat whatever is available, and baring government intervention what is available is subject to the forces described in my previous paragraph (ie garbage optimized to make us over-consume).
The obesity epidemic WILL NOT be resolved until heavy government regulation comes into play in the food industry. Pretending otherwise is no different than those who pretend abstinence education prevents pre-marital sex.
1. Obviously I'm just using her here as poster child for a certain political ideology.
I don't know, in every town there is a grocery store that sells produce, raw meat, and other unprocessed foods. If your argument is that the shopper is so overwhelmed by advertising that he just can't help but choose poorly --- well, that's the dividing line between conservatism and liberalism.
Actually I believe that there is truth to both sides, but either side taken to the extreme leads to absurdity. Full faith in the individual, and full faith in government, are each flawed.
> no different than those who pretend abstinence education prevents pre-marital sex
May I suggest you look into that more?
You're free to believe that most humans are capable of making healthy eating choices by their own free will if you want (not trying to be catty, and I'm not sure that was the point you were communicating, just how I interpreted your comment), but the data overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/US...
At a certain point I believe it is important to protect people from themselves. Being too proud to admit that "humans can be taken advantage of using certain hacks/tricks" makes society as a whole weaker.
>Actually I believe that there is truth to both sides, but either side taken to the extreme leads to absurdity. Full faith in the individual, and full faith in government, are each flawed.
You and I agree on this point 100%. Currently I believe the FDA has allowed too much leeway with the food industry. I'm not foolish enough to think that it couldn't easily swing too far in the other direction as well.
The problem is, as hard as it is to predict the future, it is harder to predict farther into the future; and, once you set up a pot of "long term" honey, people have a chance to reorganize their affairs to siphon off said honey and if your idea is to not pay attention to their short term results, you set yourself up for a big long term surprise. Publicly traded companies are mostly companies that have products, markets, customers, service, etc. Generally, when they are losing money compared to other companies, it does not scream "we're pouring money into R&D, great things are around the corner!"
This boils down to, statistically speaking, short term results are actually the best indicator of long term results. You'd be foolish (statistically) to overemphasize long term hypotheticals in the face of short term losses.
TL;DR that financial markets are too tilted in favor of "short term" results is largely a myth. if it were not a myth, wealth would shift from the majority people who supposedly pay attention to short term results and toward people who ignore short term results leading to the end of the myth.
edit (couple above and): I'm not saying that long term projects and ideas and thinking don't ever pay off; I'm saying that saying that they are undervalued and therefore represent an opportunity is a stretch and requires proof that you most likely will not find if you look because others have looked.
My own experiences, especially related to corporations, seem to corroborate this.
To convey the intuition I'm trying to describe as quickly as possible, I think you're thinking of market data being useful to help you find the Old Faithful geyser, and once you find it you just need to hang around and scoop up the reliable expulsions. Coupled with the even worse idea that you can see it where nobody else can :) To continue the analogy, I think it's not Old Faithful you found, but a solar flare on the surface of the sun, and while waiting for the next one you are more likely to get scorched.
We aren't going to debate technical analysis here (or resolve it), the point I'm making overall is that people persistently believe that financial markets are leaving money lying around, that these people can see where nobody else can see it, and that is easy to bend over and pick up. I'm trying to use some fairly simple logic and explanation to say, "it's not that easy; if it was, how can you think an entire financial industry somehow can't see what you can see? Wall street hires people just like you."
If convexity isn't assumed, you're right back to my original point.
I don't think using terms such as convexity explains anything to anybody, but if it indicates to you that the market is too short term focused, you should just print money with a derivative security that prefers companies that lose money in the short term because that will with no effort uncover all the long term strategies...
For example, if you have control over a golden goose asset and managing it to maximize wealth is best achieved by sitting in a room with other oligopolists and carving up markets, that (1) may be best accomplished "in private" and (2) why share unfairly high profits if don't need to? This type of thing has occurred for example in the growth of cable TV companies, go public (yet maintain control) to get access to the capital necessary to grow your networks, then go private again (you already have control) to not have to dilute profit over and in the face of inefficient public regulation.
In any case, the idea that the market is too focused on the short term has been around for decades, and if the shift had occurred as you propose, then we wouldn't still be hearing it.
Theory aside, here's a thing that doesn't fit into any short-term models I know: Bell Labs. Take a monopoly business with a ton of spare cash, and throw that cash into a well. Build a city full of comfortable middle-class researchers and their families with no need to produce anything of immediate value, and keep it going for decades. Watch them invent a million amazing things that change the world, and then, once they get splintered into a bunch of smaller, short-term focused groups, watch them fade into insignificance.
If you are suggesting that rational behavior is emerging every time, or even much of the time, somebody says "Wall Street is too focused on the short term", I shake my head in sadness at the money you are planning to lose.
Amazon is an apt antithesis ... though obviously an outlier.
Amazon is pursuing a long term strategy, and it's a public company, and it's getting funded, it's not getting starved for capital. i.e. the market is working, its strategy is being valued, there is no evidence of a market failure. (that is why I covered myself in my previous comment by saying "overemphasize" rather than simply saying emphasize.)
what would be your "antithesis" example would be other similar ideas that were floated and funding dried up because investors "stupidly" didn't get what a great long term idea it was. Of course, nobody can know what woulda coulda, and I'm not saying anybody can; what I'm saying is, if somebody thinks that markets don't properly weigh the long term over the short term, they are essentially saying that they want to sink more of their money into these (hypothetical) "losers" and I'm saying, please don't, it's a bad idea to assume that you know more than people actually in that industry.
I'm also not saying "don't think you have better ideas" and I'm not saying "don't pursue your good ideas" etc. I'm saying, don't think that financial markets are stupider than you. Don't think that the world is this hugely unfair place where all the people with money don't know a good idea when they hear about it, and that all these people with no money have all these great ideas that money seems to make people blind to (which is what "markets just don't get long term like I do" is saying)
This is touched on a bit in the Omnivore's Dilemma, people without heavy encouragement otherwise, have a rough limit on how many calories they will consume in a day. As a food company that has sufficient market penetration, you're stuck growing your profits at the same rate as the population. To get around this, you'll either need to increase your profits per calorie (sell less for more, cheaper ingredients, etc) or increase the amount of calories people are eating, through marketing and/or formulating your foods in such a way to encourage more consumption.
I think most companies opt for both, there's a lot of limits/diminishing returns on the making food cheaper side of things, but on the human consumption side, there's a lot of room for growth until everybody is morbidly obese. The bigger you are, the more calories you need to consume to keep that weight. More calories consumed is more money for food producers.
Personally I'm very happy to pay a premium for food I know has been prepared with good ingredients.
They are the one that pushed the food pyramid and all the anti-fat craze.
ps: said that earlier, my body made me change diet, you discover a lot of sensations you don't sense with the average industrial diet (everything is fuzzed by sugar and fat). It's not easy though because you lack all the hoops all these sweet meals gave you before, and your brain crave them a lot. Without a change in culture/lifestyle and real constraints (disease) it seems impossible to achieve on long term.
[1] there's a research department in some English univ. dealing with consumer buying reflex optimization, they investigate the package-sound-crispiness / buying ratio
There are two sides to this: it's cheaper to supply unhealthy food, but only when people buy it. Other brands (Whole Foods, Amy's frozen foods, arguably the entire "cooking show" industry) are built around fetishization of the healthy eating. This is why the recent ruling on displaying "added sugars" is so important, even if many more similar steps are necessary for people to make educated, healthy decisions when hungry. If we can convince corporations it is in their profit margins' interest to provide healthier food—ideally because consumers assign value to the nutritional content instead of just calories—we'll see widespread health benefits.
That said, you're completely correct, which is why there are systemic problems with the diets of the lower class. Why buy real food when you can feed yourself (or your kids, or your relatives) with cheaper food that is easy to eat? There's simply no reason for those brands to invest in cheaper, healthier food when it would be harder to sell and couldn't piggyback off shared food processing (e.g. processed sugars, grains, meats, proteins).
Essential foods (eat more of these than the other types of foods):
1. vegetables
2. fruits
Recommended foods:
3. nuts, seeds, and healthy oils
4. high-quality meats and seafood (by this he means "wild-caught fish and shellfish, only the highest-quality farm-raised seafood, the leanest meat cuts, and meats from wild game and free-ranging animals fed natural diets". Also eggs.)
5. whole grains
6. dairy
Acceptable foods (eat less of these than the other types):
7. refined grains
8. low-quality meat and seafood ("all processed meats and all but the leanest cuts of unprocessed meats" as well as "seafood that does not meet the quality standards of watchdog organizations such as the Aquaculture Stewardship Council" are in this category)
9. sweets
10. fried foods
No particular category is required if you don't want to eat them, as long as you eat more of each grouping than the one below it.
Some of the differences between the two are that the linked article would allow "low-quality" meat as long as it isn't processed, but doesn't include as much "healthy oil" or dairy. Another difference is the article would consider a whole grain cereal to be "highly processed" whereas it would be "whole grains" in the book (the appendices have more details on which foods go in which categories). Same for 100% whole grain bread. So the only qualm I might have is it could be healthier to include more healthy oil and less meat.
The article adds behavioral guidelines to cook at home and eat with people to get you to cook more. These guidelines seem both slightly more strict yet also makes the whole list easier to follow. I lost weight on the list I wrote above (agnostic healthy eating), but stopped following it after a while. Your success on the article's guidelines makes me want to try it.
If I'm sort of lazy, I'll eat something made with palm oil, even though there is a lot of Omega 6.
Salads for lunch
Ideal breakfast for me is eggs & meat & perhaps fruit, though I currently have only black coffee for breakfast on weekdays (mild intermittent fasting).
I might add that feeling "full" at meals has been a huge motivator for me. Skipping breakfast and not placing limits on what I eat otherwise so long as it's real food has worked extremely well psychologically; I don't feel deprived, and I can see myself continuing this for life.
When I started reading labels and stopped buying anything with sugar, corn syrup, evaporated cane juice etc., I automatically eliminated processed food.
As for food companies, their responsibility is to maximize profit which usually involves selling as much as possible at the highest profit margin possible.
Given that high profit margin excludes the possibility of expensive quality ingredients, the variables that remain are taste and perception. Thus, food commercials, stories, "healthy food fetishism" (and pushing same crap as such) and taste laboratories where scientists focus on making said crap palatable, tasty and if possible addictive.
Sugar is an addictive substance so it is almost always a part of this formula.
The single biggest thing I've noticed: there are virtually no overweight people. And yet, no one is on some kind of obscure no-meat/no-carbs/no-fruit diet. People just live, eat the local food (which often has a ton of butter, salt, fat, etc.) and somehow still look 100% better than Americans.
My conclusion: obesity is caused by some combination of excessive portion sizes + over-processed food. It's not that complicated.
Don't forget lack of exercise from a car-centric transportation culture.
I live in San Jose and I honestly miss walking. I mean sure, I can walk, but I can't use it to go anywhere other than the 7/11 near my apartment without taking an hour or more out of my day. That's not to say I don't like living here (I do) but I guess that's just something you deal with when you trade a comparatively small college town (Santa Cruz) for a huge, spread-out city.
So we go in the store and afterwards make an effort to walk a couple of blocks down to the crossing so we don't get arrested or run down. When we get back to the car there's a tow truck trying to take it away because we were shopping across the street and no longer customers of this strip.
It was pretty amazing to us. We spent the rest of the trip driving everywhere, no matter how small the journey.
Does this not happen in other countries? It's not exactly common in the US, but you will see it dense areas sometimes where a) parking is limited and costs money and b) businesses provide parking free of charge to their own customers.
Obviously it's annoying when it's enforced as overzealously as the above example.
My working theory is that walking all the time ramps up the metabolism. Regardless, the notion of a 1:1 relationship between calories consumed and calories "retained" seems suspicious.
[edit] regarding the "you can't outrun the fork" theory of weightloss (e.g. exercising at the gym won't offset a poor diet), I absolutely agree with you, but I think there's a difference between an hour or two of intense exercise every other day (a gym membership) vs a lifestyle of walking everywhere all the time.
If not, what's the difference in that and gym-exercise?
As to why I think it’s different, here's a possibly dumb analogy: my building has this rooftop garden, and for the past few years, someone would walk up to the rooftop and water it a couple times a day with a hose. So far, so good.
Last year I decided it would be funny to install a drop irrigation system. Half a dozen times a day it trickles out water. Just drips, possibly less total water than the hose sprays.
Our yield last year was simply bananas. Plants growing taller than me in little pots and 16"-deep crates. The local plant expert explained to me that when plants get sporadic water, they grow roots deep to find more; when they get constant water, even if not as much, they "assume" water will be around whenever they need it and grow up instead.
I speculate that the human metabolism works in a similar way, and that ongoing, low levels of exercise is more beneficial to the metabolism than daily spurts of high intensity exercise.
just a theory IANA scientist obviously
Research has shown that properly structured, high intensity exercise (10 minutes) is just as beneficial as low levels over a longer duration.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
Clearly you don't lift :). Just a joke, and I agree that diet is very important for losing weight, but if you work out well you can live on 4000 calories a day without gaining fat.
I disagree on portion sizes, based on my experiences in Japan.
In Japan - there is far less sugary products and they are less popular than in the states. (eg: soda). Even many of their "desserts" aren't that sugary (or tasty IMO...)
I stayed with a family during my time there. During home cooked meals it wasn't uncommon to have several servings - often times totaling more food than I'd ever eat in the States! While I would politely decline past the second serving [0] on the grounds of being full, the family I was staying with would often have several servings each. It was so much food! It felt like instead of one "double-size" serving they would have six "half sized" servings (slightly exaggerating # of servings).
I ate less than everyone in the family - they even commented on the fact many times! They were surprised I would always be full before they were and had expected an American to always be hungry (because of the "smaller portions" of Japan). I also ate with other families/visited other foreigners my family knew and it was always the same! Smaller portions but way more servings!
Restaurant serving sizes were more or less equal to the States except the drinks which felt like the largest sizes were equivalent to a kid's cup or a water cup you'd get at a fast food joint in the states. I was perpetually thirsty in Japan.
Also Japanese people walk/bike nearly everywhere as the public transport via trains is very practical and very convenient. The exercise certainly adds up.
[0] Always have seconds if the cook offers!
It's pretty easy to Google 2500+ calorie monstrosities that are served as a dinner in American restaurants. We have pastas with rich sauces (lots of butter, oils, or sugar), dishes with excessive cheese, and large amounts of deep fried ingredients... and many places serve a heck of a lot of this when you go out to eat.
Other countries have rich foods too, but my experience is that many cultures with very rich food often go light on the portion size (France comes to mind). Another set of countries have cuisine that normally is not very rich or excessively sweet (like you mention with Japan and the lack of sugary products). In many cases the food is flavored with spice instead of fats and sugars. For these type of foods, I bet you could easily match the portion size of one of those big American restaurant meals, and come nowhere near the calories.
Another factor that probably doesn't help here is that America seems more soda oriented than many cultures, and that excessive use of sugar even applies to other drinks all down the chain (my impression is that other cultures use way less sugar on coffee, tea, alcoholic cocktails...). It all adds up.
While the absolute numbers are lower in Europe versus the U.S., they're still very high. The numbers vary from 30% (UK) to 20+% in most other countries (vs ~35% in the US).
The reason you don't see overweight people on the streets is because they're not going out as much and are traveling by cars or .. just sitting at home.
https://www.reddit.com/r/keto
~180K members of that subreddit. I guarantee you, if you cut your carbs to below 20g/day, you will lose at least 3lbs a week (no exercise required).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15615615
Edit: Since I got curious and followed a bunch of other studies, here's a cool calculator based on some of that research and the (admittedly flawed) NHANES data
https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/bwp/
Data point of one, but after a month I really started to feel a difference. I felt a lot better almost immediately, but some of that was likely placebo. I crash a lot less in the afternoons, and have higher energy in general. Physically the difference was more dramatic – lost a spare tire I was starting to cary around my mid section. Partially this was due to exercise – more energy led to commuting by bike a lot more than I was.
One thing I'd add to the article was the importance of changing your environment. When I first started it was difficult because most of the snacks at home were carbohydrate based – by changing the environment and stocking a lot more protein-based foods at home that were easy to prepare, it was a lot easier to make the transition.
If I were rich, I would have a cook and eat macrobiotic or vegan, but to make tasty macrobiotic and vegan food yourself is a lot of effort.
IMNSHO, it might seem that way from the outside, but it's really very little effort to prepare and eat vegan meals.
The only actual problems are all social :(
EDIT: for example, people downvoting me for being vegan.
Why is protein a challenge even if you were fully vegetarian? What about all the nuts and legumes?
i.e. an apple and hard candy both have sugar, but the apple is a good idea. A cupcake and a loaf of whole-wheat bread both have carbs, but the bread (especially if it contains only yeast, flour, water, salt) will be way better for you.