> Half a century of food trends has created an environment where more than half the food consumed by American adults is ultra-processed, often optimized to hit the body’s fat and sugar sensors to release dopamine.
On first sight, this looks like optimization problem. Food is optimized as to be more pleasant than other food on shelves, so that particular food is selected more. The problem started when we had food that was so optimized to be tasty that it became irresistible for many people (like me). Cynical solution - make laws to make food more bland. Good solution - not found yet and this article also doesn't provide any solution, only states the problem.
[edit] - A little edit to add clarity that I'm not another "just do X" commenter.
As the saying goes, 'the human mind is a stationary target'. At some point the idea, that average people can build enough self-control to resist all those temptations that are constantly being optimized into being the most tempting they can be, just doesn't work anymore. Nobody would argue for giving kids free access to heroin and let them 'train their self control'.
> Nobody would argue for giving kids free access to heroin and let them 'train their self control'.
When most people argue against prohibition, they're not saying that making the bad thing available is great. They're saying that we can't effectively reduce the availability of things that people want, so when we attempt to do so, we end up with all of the negative externalities associated with prohibition without any of the actual prohibiting
At the same time: "Residents of states where cannabis has been legalized use marijuana 24% more frequently than those living in states where it remains illegal" -- Colorado University
This may be fine enough for weed, but what if harder drugs start being used 24% more? Even if they're in more pure form than from illegal sources, that doesn't sound like a net positive.
Oxycontin is perfectly legal and regulated such that only qualified professionals were able to prescribe and dispense it. And look how that turned out.
There's a whole lot of evidence that prohibition vs legalization each have negative effects and it is up to society to decide which is more appropriate in certain situations.
I doubt that food regulations are going to result in black market Doritos barons waging deadly turf wars in the streets. But I suspect it will result in food manufactures building a much worse product in response.
Do you have a link to the study? When I did a quick search I saw a pretty wide variety of numbers, not sure which one you are referring to.
Another way of writing that headline is potentially "cannabis users 24% more likely to admit to using cannabis when in a state where it's legal", or even "marijuana legalization brings cannabis users from out of state".
Even if the study you're referring to does effectively control for those two factors- I would hesitate to apply those results to a harder drug like heroine. Marijuana education and legalization are happening at the same time. The information on Marijuana is pretty promising and education may incentivize it's use for some purposes. I do not believe the same about heroine- education would probably disincentivize it's use.
If you need the government to tell you what to eat, I think were at a point where we let evolution fix this one for us... as for that is signs of a failed society.
Why is sugar not on your list of exceptions when excessive quantities of it are much more impactful on your health than everything on that list outside of out-right-poisons?
Obesity is killing a lot of folks before they grow old enough to develop Cancers.
I could classify food as narcotic substance. It's addictive for me, I've felt withdrawal symptoms very clearly and I really felt like a junkie on hunger when I dropped too much weight too fast. There is BIG a difference between "stomach empty" hunger and "PANIC_MODE: your cells require energy NOW" hunger.
You're saying something I don't think you intend - on a societal level America is being burdened with healthcare costs that are spiraling out of control... the failed society is the one that has failed to reasonably regulate food and is now burdened with extreme obesity epidemics and nutritional deficiencies.
It's easy to say "Just eat better" when you're wealthy but the working poor in America don't have any great options outside of switching to base staple foods like rice and beans... and that's difficult to do when good seeming fast foods are offered in abundance.
On a societal level "evolution" seems to be pretty clearly indicating that America was wrong on this one.
Individual self control vs corporate chemical addiction machines...
Regulation is a good thing - it helps citizens save their energy for their own lives, instead of having to reserve it for navigating an increasingly complex and profit-optimized society.
This is a form of the argument "we must protect people from themselves".
Look, there are a lot of religions out there that push feelings, take advantage of people and encourage false beliefs. We should help citizens save their energy for their own lives and regulate Buddhism as the required state religion. That way citizens don't have to navigate all these religions.
Usually education is the selected weapon against the latter, which means I could probably bastardize education into saying "we must protect people from themselves"
If you genuinely don't think the massive power imbalance between for-profit food providers and individual citizens should be regulated to prevent the use of addictive chemistry, do you also spend your time regularly arguing for all drugs to be legalized?
If healthcare costs were completely private - then sure, do whatever you want.
When a large portion of healthcare costs are public - then you might want to ban things with huge negative externalities in the form of future healthcare costs...
It's a little unfair to eat your cake and have the public pay for it later...
If you want to incentivize the lowest-cost option, you should be pushing for hydrogenated saturated fats and high-sugar diets and for people to take up smoking. Morbidly obese people tend to die quickly from cardiovascular failure in their 60s and end up costing substantially less than the ordinary population in health care costs over the course of their lives since they don't live to be octogenarians. Especially healthy, smart-eating, athletic people are actually the group that costs the most in total healthcare.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18254654/
"Because of differences in life expectancy, however, lifetime health expenditure was highest among healthy-living people and lowest for smokers. Obese individuals held an intermediate position."
"Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures. "
The linked article was published in PLoS Medicine, a high impact-factor journal.
0) Dying fast is clearly not an objective - if it was... Why ask people to eat unhealthy things instead of just killing them directly?
1) If you die at 17 - you never pay taxes. Dying fast != cost effective.
2) Unhealthy people that die at 17 can still have more healthcare costs than healthy people that live to 109. Age of death has little to do with healthcare costs.
I don't actually think self-control is the answer because I think we should consider the effects on brains in sugar/fat to be like effects of other drugs on the brain, especially because we know shit like childhood trauma and poverty predisposes people to obesity.
CVD is a leading cause of death and remains a risk even without excess weight; one needn't discount everything other than weight as "falls prevention and other stuff".
I’m shocked by some of the replies to this comment. Are people seriously advocating for regulations against… stuff that tastes good?
No, thank you. Please don’t tell me what tasty things I’m allowed to create or consume.
Regulation of this type is just group punishment, but advocates believe it to be some kind of altruism.
“People are getting fat!” Okay, but I’m not, and honestly I eat tons of junk. Why punish everyone who likes tasty food? If you hate obesity so much, then outlaw obesity. That’s a stupid idea too, but at least it more closely aligns the regulation with the result you want.
I don't know if we should or shouldn't but it deserves more thought than you're giving it.
For one thing, I seriously doubt prohibition could ever be politically viable, but increased prices or reduced visibility and availability of processed high-calorie ready-to-eat foods might be in some situations. We've already seen some of this, like New York's soda tax or banning vending machines from public schools.
Public health regulations are not completely effective for everyone, but they can still be more effective than null on average. Raising prices, reducing availability or visibility, and other measures do usually work.
Prohibition is often cited as a failure, but in terms of public health, it absolutely was not. On the whole, people did drink less and there were public health and social benefits. The organized crime was a separate issue, and so was self-control, as the will of the people to drink played a part in its downfall as well.
Our steps toward cigarette prohibition, on the other hand, seem unlikely to be walked back. There will still be illegal cigarettes and people who smoke them, but there will be less smoking, and that's a public health win.
The entire food industry is aligned against individual self control. It's incredibly unlikely we can all be lone heroes standing against all that industrialized science.
It doesn't work for addictive substancies (like sugar), people will just pay more. We have sugar tax in Poland already and it didn't change anything. We also have 105% tax on cigarettes, yet still a lot of people smoke.
According to a 2019 review of research on sugar drink taxes, the taxes successfully reduced consumption of sugar drinks and reduced adverse health consequences.
Seems wrong to go after the consumers when we can question why we let companies line their own pockets by selling vices so successful that they are destroying everyone's health, yet so normalized that we don't think to question why we let megacorps do it.
I also think it's a scale thing. Selling grandma's cookies at the grocer? Fine. Megacorp optimized junk (and nothing else) sold at every 7/11 on the continent? Perhaps not so excusable.
> Megacorp optimized junk (and nothing else) sold at every 7/11 on the continent? Perhaps not so excusable.
It's excusable because it's just tasty food, which theoretically we are supposed not to eat too much. The problem is that this food became more tasty, convenient and sometimes cheaper (at least in time-value) than normally cooked food and we as a society don't even have enough time and knowledge to cook proper healthy food.
> (and nothing else)
Because it's cheap. There are many places where you can buy healthy food but it's more expensive.
It's also double-dipping; excessive subsidies via taxes, then add ANOTHER tax to offset the cheap prices caused by subsidies? Just have less insane subsidies!
(Yes, subsidies are necessary, national food security etc.; but a LOT is just from lobbying and corruption. Never gonna reduce them because of that, but we can dream.)
It's important to note that often, these taxes aren't imposed on consumers directly, but on distributors. Distributors and retailers just choose to price gouge rather than make a fraction of a cent less per ounce sold.
Even with that in mind, it's easy to say "why do we let megacorps do it"? Well, we don't, not necessarily. They just have the financial and legal resources to impose their will. A pigouvian tax is probably the easiest tool most levels of the US government has to restrict successful vices. Look at that link again. See how much money Coke, Pepsi, etc. were spending in Philadelphia and San Francisco to fight taxes that have solid legal standing. Localities taking action need to make sure they're bulletproof legally, or else the action will be reversed.
> Cynical solution - make laws to make food more bland.
This isn't cynical and it isn't that correct. The issue isn't taste as much as it's a desire to have ultra shelf stable foods. Fresh foods taste delicious on their own, the problem with American foods is all the preservatives and the never-ending escalation to add more sugar, salt and fat to everything that is consumed.
Preventing this devolution via regulation is the rational and reasonable solution that's been taken pretty much everywhere outside of the US - only when viewed through a hyper-libretarian lens does it make sense to allow food quality to drop to such extremes so that processed food companies could make marginally more money.
> Cynical solution - make laws to make food more bland
Ultra processed food is not really tasty but a combination of sugar and fats make it easy to overeat without enjoying it. French, Mediterranean and Japanese cuisines on other hand have a lot of delicious dishes but in these regions obesity is much less of a problem in the US.
Generally I don't like a nanny state but IMHO sugar tax is something to be considered.
Sugar tax doesn't work, just like cigarettes and alcohol tax, which in my country is 105% already, yet people still smoke, we also have sugar tax for sweet drinks and it changed nothing. When something is addictive (meaning it becomes a necessity), people will just pay more or search for "illegal" alternatives.
This feels hard to justify. Does it eliminate usage? Of course not, bans are the closest you can get to that. Seems somewhat safe to say it does reduce it, though.
This is not the case in Australia who has some of the highest costs ciggies [1]. FMC = factory made ciggies. RYO = Roll your own.
> The 25% tax increases was associated with immediate (−0·745 percentage points; 95% CI −1·378 to −0·112) and sustained reductions in prevalence (monthly trend −0·023 percentage points; −0·044 to −0·003), which were driven by reductions in the prevalence of smoking of FMC. The prevalence of smoking of RYO increased between May, 2010, and November, 2013, after the 25% tax increase. At the start of the pre-announced annual 12·5% increases, we observed an immediate reduction in smoking (−0·997 percentage points; −1·632 to −0·362), followed by decreasing overall prevalence (monthly trend −0·044 percentage points; −0·063 to −0·026) due to ongoing decreases in the prevalence of FMC smoking and a cessation of increases in the prevalence of smoking of RYO.
I’m not sure what the price is now, something like $40 a box of 20? These days you hardly see anyone smoke normal cigarettes.
The smoking and sugar consumption rate have both been declining in your country (Poland).[1][2]
So your statement that the tax is ineffective seems at best unfounded, and at worst, entirely false. It’s possible that there are other causes for the decrease, but you simply can’t say nothing has changed.
I feel like this is a classic example of trying to engineer a non-engineering problem. Isn't what we need to just maybe not eat so much? As an aside, most people's calories come mainly from carbohydrates anyhow.
> Isn't what we need to just maybe not eat so much?
It's easy to say "we JUST need to eat less". Everyone already knows this. I know this, but somehow it's very hard for me to actually eat less, I feel a lot of pain and can't concentrate when I try to eat less, which leads to eating more again. I've tried many times to just eat less, but it somehow doesn't work. I think that your idea is just not that easy.
Have you tried very low carb diets? I maintain a strict keto diet (<20g carbs/day), and when I'm in ketosis the hunger impulse is almost entirely gone. I'm very active - I train Brazilian jiujitsu and lift - and despite that, there are days that I'll just forget to eat because I'm not hungry unless there's food in front of me.
My brain is absolutely addicted to sugar, though, and if I start eating it I get just insatiably ravenous. The combination of sugar/fat/salt together is a perfect storm of "put all that into my face and don't stop until there's no more left" brain chemistry triggers, and how that's most of our prepackaged food is constructed now.
I've tried, didn't work for me. The best results was on a special diet I've created myself (based on weighing myself+food and slowly driving that sum down), but after going 116 -> 104kg I felt REAL hunger, where you feel that every cell of your body craves for energy, it was a month after ability to ignore normal "empty stomach" hunger. I went back almost all the way. No other diet came even close to any results, I couldn't even stick to most of them.
Dumb question, but do you drink coffee? Black coffee is a great appetite suppressant. For me, the "aha moment" was finding those specific foods which provoke or reduce hunger in me. Black coffee can keep hunger at bay for a LONG time for me, while even a small amount of white bread or processed sugar will turn on all the "feed me and don't stop" signals.
I definitely do think that the best diet is the one you can stick to. I've tried a bunch, but I've learned that the thing that works the best for me is learning how to eat to manage hunger rather than managing calories. Managing calories while being gnawingly hungry is just miserable, as you've attested to.
> Black coffee can keep hunger at bay for a LONG time for me, while even a small amount of white bread or processed sugar will turn on all the "feed me and don't stop" signals.
I drink a lot of coffe, but with sugar. I've tried slowly quitting sugar in coffee, but that only made my stomach ache and drinking it was very unpleasant. Without coffee, I would have to make some other caffeine providing solution, without it it's too hard to focus on coding for me (I can live without coffee just fine, I go cold-turkey for two weeks every year, but it's holdiays and I'm away from computer, so no need for coffee).
Yeah it's a hunger suppressant but it can wear out your adrenals if you use it that way regularly and very often. (spikes cortisol if you drink it on an empty stomach; I think it's either the chlorogenic acid).
Coffee is best with a meal; it raises the stomach acid, which improves digestion of the meal. Plus you don't get the cortisol spike when it's taken with a substantial meal.
Definitely wean yourself away from adding sugar to coffee. I have it without any sugar, but a bit of cream, and nible a pastry along side drinking the coffee. So if you can nibble on something sweet, absolutely skip the added sugar in the coffee.
I thought exactly like you for 20 years. That lower weight meant EXTREME hunger.
But what changed for me is the following, losing weight is HARDER than gaining weight. Gaining weight typically happens for me at a maximum of 2 pounds per month, over the course of a year with no dieting.
Why would losing weight, something that is harder than gaining weight, be expected to happen faster than gaining it? I set my goals to 2 pounds a month weight loss, and I almost never hit that goal. I usually come in about 1.5 pounds lost per month. I also get WAY more nutrients and vitamins than my body needs by eating lots of liver, and taking athletic greens. That way my "hunger" is always for calories and never for nutrient deficiency.
I've kept this up for almost 5 years now making it a life changing amount of weight loss.
We're similar, but I'm not strict keto. I do IF and will often forget to eat. For example, Saturday I wake up, weight workout, train jits for 2 hours, then it's ~12-1pm. If I don't think about eating right then and I get closer to 3pm, I'll just wait until dinner.
Before people say I'm weird and never get hungry, not true. Before IF, I used to wake up in the morning because I was hungry. Early in IF it was hard. But, the body adapts. You push through, and now I feel at my best mentally and athletically before my first feeding of the day.
Also like you, while I don't follow a strict keto diet, I cook most of my meals and stay pretty healthy including rice or potato only sometimes. If I go crazy and have a carb heavy meal, I do end up hungry the next day. Understanding one's body is the advantage of getting old I guess :D
Yup, I definitely think that IF is part of the magic. Ketosis makes IF easier, in my experience, because of that elimination of the hunger impulse. Even on the days I do eat, it's usually not til mid afternoon - I don't intentionally practice IF anymore, but my eating patterns tend to fall naturally into an 16/8 window.
It's very hard to adapt initially, especially if you grew up religiously starting the day with breakfast, but the difference is pretty evident once the adaptation happens!
Fat is more calorie-dense (9kcal/g) than carbohydrate or protein (4kcal/g), but it's also extremely satiating - it's very difficult to overeat fat-dominant foods, particularly if you aren't eating it in tandem with sugar. Most of the foods we think of as "fattening" are packed with a combination of fat and carbohydrate. Fat's also necessary for hormone production, so I'd be pretty wary of any attempt to replace it with something synthetic.
For example, it's easy to overeat McDonalds french fries (11g of fat - 99kcal, 31g of carbohydrate - 124kcal, and 3g protein - 12kcal) but it's significantly harder to overeat just beef patties (7g fat - 63kcal, 8g protein - 32kcal). If you ingested 1000 kcal of french fries (roughly 4 small fries) vs 1000 kcal of beef patties (roughly 11 patties), I'd be willing to bet that you'd be significantly more satiated with the beef.
Many of us older folks know that while this is both a correct answer to the question, it is also one of your typical butt jokes from the late 90s early 2000s.
Some sweeteners are just sugar plus another molecule to prevent absorption. That’s sort of what orlistat does to oils. It’s somewhat unpleasant because the oils just come out the other end instead of being digested.
Do we know if our bodies still produce insulin in preparation upon tasting something sweet? If so, does that cause harm to our overall metabolic performance?
Mainly hydrogenated, the article seems to draw a weird distinction between processed and organic foods but doesn't actually go that deep into the actual differences between them other than the psychological traps of eating processed foods.
Also, disable JavaScript, it's known to reduce your bodyfat by 10% and increase muscle mass by 10 kilos on average.
I eat a high fat diet of only beef and eggs -- as far as I can tell it is impossible not to look good naked if you really stick to this diet. I guess I'm just lucky to have discovered a diet that is easy for me to sustain over the long term and also allows me to be in top physical condition. Also, it clears up a dozen minor health annoyances that you barely knew you had, and the complete lack of fiber means you never fart and the volume of your poop falls by 80%. It also leads to exquisite dental health.
You’re getting downvoted which to me shows just how dangerous the “pass regulations” crowd actually is.
Modern advice about nutrition is confusing and muddled and contradictory, and if you lose 100 pounds eating only beef and eggs and that’s what’s working, to hell with all the people who want to put some tax on that, because that is CERTAINLY not going to be what the regulations advocate for eating.
You're either going to get a long lecture or quick dismissal - I'm on the same kind of diet and second what parent said, aside from the fact my health issues were more serious.
Anyway, for those so inclined, here's the ultimate lecture on dietary cholesterol not being detrimental, and on the contrary, very beneficial: https://youtu.be/r1mKC92tW0A
Here's an example of how dietary cholesterol can be beneficial: [Dietary cholesterol promotes repair of demyelinated lesions in the adult brain](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14241)
Not the OP, but I eat a high fat keto diet (mostly meat/eggs/high-fat dairy, leafy veggies, and some high-fiber nuts like almonds), get regular bloodwork, and my cholesterol is fine. Per my latest labs: 3.9 chol/HDL ratio (<5.0 is "healthy"), triglycerides at 67 ml/dL range ("normal" is <150 ml/dG), and c-reactive protein levels at 0.2 mg/L (<1.0 is low CVD risk, 1.0-3.0 is medium risk, 3.0+ is high risk).
Note that very low cholesterol is associated with increased all-cause mortality -- see Nina Teicholz's book The Big Fat Surprise to learn more about this.
No, but usually consulting with a doctor is prompted by symptoms. Their symptoms so far are...feeling much better and having a bunch of health issues resolved.
In fact, I had my annual checkup earlier this week. Things are looking good.
Heart Rate: 56
Cholesterol: 190
HDL: 70
LDL: 110
Triglycerides: 51
Note that very low cholesterol is associated with increased all-cause mortality -- see Nina Teicholz's book The Big Fat Surprise to learn more about this.
I’ve completely lost any sweet tooth that I ever had. Sodas and fruit juices taste sickening to me, and I have zero interest in dessert. The longer you stick with this diet the more you appreciate the negatives of cheating. I really don’t like the feeling of not eating only beef because I just feel so great when I do eat only beef.
Conclusion: Highly processed foods (HPFs) can meet the criteria to be labeled as addictive substances using the standards set for tobacco products. The addictive potential of HPFs may be a key factor contributing to the high public health costs associated with a food environment dominated by cheap, accessible and heavily marketed HPFs.
That's interesting. I guess I'd agree, Highly processed foods (HPFs) CAN meet the criteria, especially for some people more than others, but it does seem to make sense.
Anything that you cannot immediately tell what it is made from, basically. So a hamburger is HPV, piece of meat that you have cooked is not.
A cake is HPV because you need to know it is made of wheat, you cannot see it from it.
Alternatively, anything that goes through more than one stage of processing (so home-made marmelade is not HPV because it is just cooked fruit, but hamburger is).
>Anything that you cannot immediately tell what it is made from, basically. So a hamburger is HPV, piece of meat that you have cooked is not.
Both burgers and steaks are made from beef cattle; aren't they? I don't really understand why the prior preparation steps required to turn a steer into a cut of beef are not processing steps, whereas the relatively smaller actions required to grind a cut of meat and shape it into a patty are.
An omelette is a HPF but a boiled egg is not? It doesn't seem like a useful metric.
As for HPF, it seems to be a euphemism for hyper-palatable food, i.e. food that increases time and calories consumed before meal cessation. There's probably a threshold that captures 99% of the foods we are talking about while excluding 99% of the foods that are highly processed but not hyper-palatable.
For example, unsweetened dark chocolate (70%+ cacao) would certainly be highly processed but not something highly palatable to most people. Same with Grape Nuts cereal or bran buds. Unsalted saltine crackers also come to mind.
Palatability + calorie density seem like the best distinctions to focus on for this reason as processing is often used to increase palatability/density but not only used to increase them.
Highly palatable == makes you want to eat more? That sounds like circular reasoning: of course foods that make you want to eat more make you want to eat more.
Rephrasing or defining something doesn't make it circular because it's not an entailment. If B can be used to define term A, then B isn't a logical conclusion of something being A, it's just synonymous.
e.g. "Make you want to eat more" is still the operative difference here between a bag of potato chips and a bowl of lentils.
Years ago I switched to a diet free of processed foods (with an exception for hot sauces and other condiments), which means cooking everything yourself starting with basic ingredients. It seems to have had a lot of positive effects. It's nice to see some scientific confirmation (although mostly my original motivation was avoiding preservatives and weird additives like 'dough conditioner', 'processed soy protein', 'high-fructose corn syrup', etc.):
> "Experts like DiFeliceantonio believe we should make the distinction between highly processed foods and those made from scratch. Being aware of those differences is the first step in avoiding a long list of diet-related health issues..."
> "Highly processed foods can qualify as clinically addictive, both Gearhardt and DiFeliceantonio argue. According to what’s known as the rate hypothesis, the faster something affects your brain, the more addictive that substance will be. Many processed foods are essentially pre-digested to maximize the speed of dopamine release..."
Flooding the body with sugars also messes up the insulin response, leading to the development of type II diabetes over time. Eating complex carbohydrates that are slowly broken down to sugar and fed to the muscles/brain cells for energy, or stored as glycogen in the liver, appears to greatly reduce the chances of that outcome.
I generally thought that neurotransmitter de-sensitization at the cellular level wasn't involved with food choices, and was limited to alcohol/drug use. Interesting to see that's not true.
Incidentally this diet, which tends to be fairly low-fat/mid-protein but higher in carbs from roots/leafy greens/fruit-veg, could use a catchy name. When people ask I call it 'the peasant diet' but maybe 'the farmer's diet' is better?
People feel like civilization is a corrupting influence nowadays (look at books pointing blame at agriculture for our downfall). That is why Paleo caught on. So I would call it the 'primal diet' to harken back to ye olden golden times. And... quick Google, that's already a thing... and a name for this diet. Great minds yadda yadda yadda.
Yes it’s shocking looking at food labels in the US how hard it is to avoid even basic foods without added sugar, which most of the time do not have it in European equivalent products.
The easiest way is to avoid buying foods that are required to have labels. I do most of my shopping in the produce, dairy, and butcher section to avoid that.
I recently listened to a Huberman Lab episode[1] where he mentioned one of the strikes against highly processed foods was the emulsifiers and similar preservatives used to extend shelf live have a negative effect on certain nerves in your gut - which effects feelings of satiety due to not properly detecting certain nutrients.
There's also the NOVA scale of rating the amount of processing in food products.
most commercial dough conditioners could be eaten entirely by themselves with no ill effect outside of tasting kinda of gross.
They're mainly small amounts of vitamin c, citric acid to lower ph, and amylase enzymes extracted from malt -- the same stuff that makes your bread or beer. In fact most liquor and beer manufactures use alpha amylase or glucoamylase in some form, extracted and powered or natural.
I've recently been experimenting with a GLP-1 Agonist (Semaglutide) and it's had in incredible effect on my hunger levels and satiety. I find myself stopping in the middle of meals quite often and simply not enjoying the taste of what I'm eating as much. I wonder what the relationship between the dopaminergic effect of eating described in the article is with insulin secretion, blood sugar and GLP-1. I encourage anyone interested in this topic to look up GLP-1 Agonists very fascinating stuff.
My impression is that current thinking is that sugar is much worse for you than fat.
I hear fat being demonized or mentioned in the same breath as sugar and I think of all the 90s and earlier "low fat" trends which basically ignored sugar intake.
For 90% of the pastries that are available in my area (NY) the factories/bakeries seem to use sugar by the bucket-load in their recipes. Often it's hard to taste anything in some pastries, because the sugar overwhelms everything.
Probably is one reason why insulin resistance is becoming common.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadOn first sight, this looks like optimization problem. Food is optimized as to be more pleasant than other food on shelves, so that particular food is selected more. The problem started when we had food that was so optimized to be tasty that it became irresistible for many people (like me). Cynical solution - make laws to make food more bland. Good solution - not found yet and this article also doesn't provide any solution, only states the problem.
[edit] - A little edit to add clarity that I'm not another "just do X" commenter.
When most people argue against prohibition, they're not saying that making the bad thing available is great. They're saying that we can't effectively reduce the availability of things that people want, so when we attempt to do so, we end up with all of the negative externalities associated with prohibition without any of the actual prohibiting
This may be fine enough for weed, but what if harder drugs start being used 24% more? Even if they're in more pure form than from illegal sources, that doesn't sound like a net positive.
There's a whole lot of evidence that prohibition vs legalization each have negative effects and it is up to society to decide which is more appropriate in certain situations.
I doubt that food regulations are going to result in black market Doritos barons waging deadly turf wars in the streets. But I suspect it will result in food manufactures building a much worse product in response.
Another way of writing that headline is potentially "cannabis users 24% more likely to admit to using cannabis when in a state where it's legal", or even "marijuana legalization brings cannabis users from out of state".
Even if the study you're referring to does effectively control for those two factors- I would hesitate to apply those results to a harder drug like heroine. Marijuana education and legalization are happening at the same time. The information on Marijuana is pretty promising and education may incentivize it's use for some purposes. I do not believe the same about heroine- education would probably disincentivize it's use.
Do not: Dictate or attempt to control what food consumers choose.
Exceptions: Tobacco, carcinogens, hallucinogens, narcotic substances, poisons... See "safety"
Obesity is killing a lot of folks before they grow old enough to develop Cancers.
Let's do this another way though.
What are the criteria for being added to your exceptions?
It's easy to say "Just eat better" when you're wealthy but the working poor in America don't have any great options outside of switching to base staple foods like rice and beans... and that's difficult to do when good seeming fast foods are offered in abundance.
On a societal level "evolution" seems to be pretty clearly indicating that America was wrong on this one.
Regulation is a good thing - it helps citizens save their energy for their own lives, instead of having to reserve it for navigating an increasingly complex and profit-optimized society.
Look, there are a lot of religions out there that push feelings, take advantage of people and encourage false beliefs. We should help citizens save their energy for their own lives and regulate Buddhism as the required state religion. That way citizens don't have to navigate all these religions.
If you genuinely don't think the massive power imbalance between for-profit food providers and individual citizens should be regulated to prevent the use of addictive chemistry, do you also spend your time regularly arguing for all drugs to be legalized?
When a large portion of healthcare costs are public - then you might want to ban things with huge negative externalities in the form of future healthcare costs...
It's a little unfair to eat your cake and have the public pay for it later...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18254654/ "Because of differences in life expectancy, however, lifetime health expenditure was highest among healthy-living people and lowest for smokers. Obese individuals held an intermediate position."
"Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures. "
The linked article was published in PLoS Medicine, a high impact-factor journal.
0) Dying fast is clearly not an objective - if it was... Why ask people to eat unhealthy things instead of just killing them directly?
1) If you die at 17 - you never pay taxes. Dying fast != cost effective.
2) Unhealthy people that die at 17 can still have more healthcare costs than healthy people that live to 109. Age of death has little to do with healthcare costs.
I lost 80 pounds eating Johnsonville Beddar Cheddar Sausages and sauerkraut every day for six months, definitely something that’s “too fatty”.
I was CTO for a healthcare network.
Weight loss was the primary focus for population health - because the data massively supports this.
SDOH [1], falls prevention and other stuff, while important, take a far backseat as far as overall health impact.
[1] https://health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/social-deter...
I didn't.
And yes, CVD is a huge issue. Obesity directly contributes to it, independent of other factors [1].
Which is why most population health stuff is targeted at weight loss.
From a population health standpoint, it has the biggest impact with well understood interventions.
FWIW, I helped deliver CMS certified DPP programs that were funded by private payers. Their data was clear on all this.
[1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000973
No, thank you. Please don’t tell me what tasty things I’m allowed to create or consume.
Regulation of this type is just group punishment, but advocates believe it to be some kind of altruism.
“People are getting fat!” Okay, but I’m not, and honestly I eat tons of junk. Why punish everyone who likes tasty food? If you hate obesity so much, then outlaw obesity. That’s a stupid idea too, but at least it more closely aligns the regulation with the result you want.
They, too, can be taken and handled with care and moderation, yet are outlawed (even if sometimes only at the "distribution/dealing" level)
For one thing, I seriously doubt prohibition could ever be politically viable, but increased prices or reduced visibility and availability of processed high-calorie ready-to-eat foods might be in some situations. We've already seen some of this, like New York's soda tax or banning vending machines from public schools.
Prohibition is often cited as a failure, but in terms of public health, it absolutely was not. On the whole, people did drink less and there were public health and social benefits. The organized crime was a separate issue, and so was self-control, as the will of the people to drink played a part in its downfall as well.
Our steps toward cigarette prohibition, on the other hand, seem unlikely to be walked back. There will still be illegal cigarettes and people who smoke them, but there will be less smoking, and that's a public health win.
So how can we control the food industry?
Since they are rational market participants, we can infer that self-control doesn't work at scale.
What was made worse?
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1038507/poland-share-of-... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1197501/poland-monthly-c...
According to a 2019 review of research on sugar drink taxes, the taxes successfully reduced consumption of sugar drinks and reduced adverse health consequences.
I also think it's a scale thing. Selling grandma's cookies at the grocer? Fine. Megacorp optimized junk (and nothing else) sold at every 7/11 on the continent? Perhaps not so excusable.
It's excusable because it's just tasty food, which theoretically we are supposed not to eat too much. The problem is that this food became more tasty, convenient and sometimes cheaper (at least in time-value) than normally cooked food and we as a society don't even have enough time and knowledge to cook proper healthy food.
> (and nothing else)
Because it's cheap. There are many places where you can buy healthy food but it's more expensive.
(Yes, subsidies are necessary, national food security etc.; but a LOT is just from lobbying and corruption. Never gonna reduce them because of that, but we can dream.)
Even with that in mind, it's easy to say "why do we let megacorps do it"? Well, we don't, not necessarily. They just have the financial and legal resources to impose their will. A pigouvian tax is probably the easiest tool most levels of the US government has to restrict successful vices. Look at that link again. See how much money Coke, Pepsi, etc. were spending in Philadelphia and San Francisco to fight taxes that have solid legal standing. Localities taking action need to make sure they're bulletproof legally, or else the action will be reversed.
This isn't cynical and it isn't that correct. The issue isn't taste as much as it's a desire to have ultra shelf stable foods. Fresh foods taste delicious on their own, the problem with American foods is all the preservatives and the never-ending escalation to add more sugar, salt and fat to everything that is consumed.
Preventing this devolution via regulation is the rational and reasonable solution that's been taken pretty much everywhere outside of the US - only when viewed through a hyper-libretarian lens does it make sense to allow food quality to drop to such extremes so that processed food companies could make marginally more money.
Ultra processed food is not really tasty but a combination of sugar and fats make it easy to overeat without enjoying it. French, Mediterranean and Japanese cuisines on other hand have a lot of delicious dishes but in these regions obesity is much less of a problem in the US.
Generally I don't like a nanny state but IMHO sugar tax is something to be considered.
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/... and most of the other links I'm seeing all point roughly to decent results. No panacea, but that is rather unfair for any policy.
> The 25% tax increases was associated with immediate (−0·745 percentage points; 95% CI −1·378 to −0·112) and sustained reductions in prevalence (monthly trend −0·023 percentage points; −0·044 to −0·003), which were driven by reductions in the prevalence of smoking of FMC. The prevalence of smoking of RYO increased between May, 2010, and November, 2013, after the 25% tax increase. At the start of the pre-announced annual 12·5% increases, we observed an immediate reduction in smoking (−0·997 percentage points; −1·632 to −0·362), followed by decreasing overall prevalence (monthly trend −0·044 percentage points; −0·063 to −0·026) due to ongoing decreases in the prevalence of FMC smoking and a cessation of increases in the prevalence of smoking of RYO.
I’m not sure what the price is now, something like $40 a box of 20? These days you hardly see anyone smoke normal cigarettes.
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2...
So your statement that the tax is ineffective seems at best unfounded, and at worst, entirely false. It’s possible that there are other causes for the decrease, but you simply can’t say nothing has changed.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1038507/poland-share-of-... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1197501/poland-monthly-c...
what is needed is a good fat substitute. that is where most of the calories come from
It's easy to say "we JUST need to eat less". Everyone already knows this. I know this, but somehow it's very hard for me to actually eat less, I feel a lot of pain and can't concentrate when I try to eat less, which leads to eating more again. I've tried many times to just eat less, but it somehow doesn't work. I think that your idea is just not that easy.
My brain is absolutely addicted to sugar, though, and if I start eating it I get just insatiably ravenous. The combination of sugar/fat/salt together is a perfect storm of "put all that into my face and don't stop until there's no more left" brain chemistry triggers, and how that's most of our prepackaged food is constructed now.
I definitely do think that the best diet is the one you can stick to. I've tried a bunch, but I've learned that the thing that works the best for me is learning how to eat to manage hunger rather than managing calories. Managing calories while being gnawingly hungry is just miserable, as you've attested to.
I drink a lot of coffe, but with sugar. I've tried slowly quitting sugar in coffee, but that only made my stomach ache and drinking it was very unpleasant. Without coffee, I would have to make some other caffeine providing solution, without it it's too hard to focus on coding for me (I can live without coffee just fine, I go cold-turkey for two weeks every year, but it's holdiays and I'm away from computer, so no need for coffee).
Coffee is best with a meal; it raises the stomach acid, which improves digestion of the meal. Plus you don't get the cortisol spike when it's taken with a substantial meal.
Definitely wean yourself away from adding sugar to coffee. I have it without any sugar, but a bit of cream, and nible a pastry along side drinking the coffee. So if you can nibble on something sweet, absolutely skip the added sugar in the coffee.
But what changed for me is the following, losing weight is HARDER than gaining weight. Gaining weight typically happens for me at a maximum of 2 pounds per month, over the course of a year with no dieting.
Why would losing weight, something that is harder than gaining weight, be expected to happen faster than gaining it? I set my goals to 2 pounds a month weight loss, and I almost never hit that goal. I usually come in about 1.5 pounds lost per month. I also get WAY more nutrients and vitamins than my body needs by eating lots of liver, and taking athletic greens. That way my "hunger" is always for calories and never for nutrient deficiency.
I've kept this up for almost 5 years now making it a life changing amount of weight loss.
Before people say I'm weird and never get hungry, not true. Before IF, I used to wake up in the morning because I was hungry. Early in IF it was hard. But, the body adapts. You push through, and now I feel at my best mentally and athletically before my first feeding of the day.
Also like you, while I don't follow a strict keto diet, I cook most of my meals and stay pretty healthy including rice or potato only sometimes. If I go crazy and have a carb heavy meal, I do end up hungry the next day. Understanding one's body is the advantage of getting old I guess :D
It's very hard to adapt initially, especially if you grew up religiously starting the day with breakfast, but the difference is pretty evident once the adaptation happens!
For example, it's easy to overeat McDonalds french fries (11g of fat - 99kcal, 31g of carbohydrate - 124kcal, and 3g protein - 12kcal) but it's significantly harder to overeat just beef patties (7g fat - 63kcal, 8g protein - 32kcal). If you ingested 1000 kcal of french fries (roughly 4 small fries) vs 1000 kcal of beef patties (roughly 11 patties), I'd be willing to bet that you'd be significantly more satiated with the beef.
I was shocked when I tested myself after buying the diabetes friendly "Sugar Free Worther's Original" candy.
I've done some web searching but haven't found any results inspiring confidence.
Saturated, like what's found in breast milk?
Monounsaturated, found in avocados?
Hydrogenated, like in margarine?
Also, disable JavaScript, it's known to reduce your bodyfat by 10% and increase muscle mass by 10 kilos on average.
Please don't do this in Web sites.
Modern advice about nutrition is confusing and muddled and contradictory, and if you lose 100 pounds eating only beef and eggs and that’s what’s working, to hell with all the people who want to put some tax on that, because that is CERTAINLY not going to be what the regulations advocate for eating.
Anyway, for those so inclined, here's the ultimate lecture on dietary cholesterol not being detrimental, and on the contrary, very beneficial: https://youtu.be/r1mKC92tW0A
Here's an example of how dietary cholesterol can be beneficial: [Dietary cholesterol promotes repair of demyelinated lesions in the adult brain](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14241)
Heart Rate: 56
Cholesterol: 190
HDL: 70
LDL: 110
Triglycerides: 51
Note that very low cholesterol is associated with increased all-cause mortality -- see Nina Teicholz's book The Big Fat Surprise to learn more about this.
Heart Rate: 56
Cholesterol: 190
HDL: 70
LDL: 110
Triglycerides: 51
Note that very low cholesterol is associated with increased all-cause mortality -- see Nina Teicholz's book The Big Fat Surprise to learn more about this.
Are you really able to give up all desserts 100%? Or do you just do beef and eggs like 95% of your calories?
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/add.16...
A cake is HPV because you need to know it is made of wheat, you cannot see it from it.
Alternatively, anything that goes through more than one stage of processing (so home-made marmelade is not HPV because it is just cooked fruit, but hamburger is).
Both burgers and steaks are made from beef cattle; aren't they? I don't really understand why the prior preparation steps required to turn a steer into a cut of beef are not processing steps, whereas the relatively smaller actions required to grind a cut of meat and shape it into a patty are.
An omelette is a HPF but a boiled egg is not? It doesn't seem like a useful metric.
As for HPF, it seems to be a euphemism for hyper-palatable food, i.e. food that increases time and calories consumed before meal cessation. There's probably a threshold that captures 99% of the foods we are talking about while excluding 99% of the foods that are highly processed but not hyper-palatable.
For example, unsweetened dark chocolate (70%+ cacao) would certainly be highly processed but not something highly palatable to most people. Same with Grape Nuts cereal or bran buds. Unsalted saltine crackers also come to mind.
Palatability + calorie density seem like the best distinctions to focus on for this reason as processing is often used to increase palatability/density but not only used to increase them.
e.g. "Make you want to eat more" is still the operative difference here between a bag of potato chips and a bowl of lentils.
> "Experts like DiFeliceantonio believe we should make the distinction between highly processed foods and those made from scratch. Being aware of those differences is the first step in avoiding a long list of diet-related health issues..."
> "Highly processed foods can qualify as clinically addictive, both Gearhardt and DiFeliceantonio argue. According to what’s known as the rate hypothesis, the faster something affects your brain, the more addictive that substance will be. Many processed foods are essentially pre-digested to maximize the speed of dopamine release..."
Flooding the body with sugars also messes up the insulin response, leading to the development of type II diabetes over time. Eating complex carbohydrates that are slowly broken down to sugar and fed to the muscles/brain cells for energy, or stored as glycogen in the liver, appears to greatly reduce the chances of that outcome.
I generally thought that neurotransmitter de-sensitization at the cellular level wasn't involved with food choices, and was limited to alcohol/drug use. Interesting to see that's not true.
Incidentally this diet, which tends to be fairly low-fat/mid-protein but higher in carbs from roots/leafy greens/fruit-veg, could use a catchy name. When people ask I call it 'the peasant diet' but maybe 'the farmer's diet' is better?
"Agricultural Diet"....
For whatever reason everything in the American diet is cut with sugar (HFCS mostly), never understood this. Maybe corn subsidies?
There's also the NOVA scale of rating the amount of processing in food products.
[1] I think it was this episode: https://hubermanlab.com/effects-of-fasting-and-time-restrict...
most commercial dough conditioners could be eaten entirely by themselves with no ill effect outside of tasting kinda of gross.
They're mainly small amounts of vitamin c, citric acid to lower ph, and amylase enzymes extracted from malt -- the same stuff that makes your bread or beer. In fact most liquor and beer manufactures use alpha amylase or glucoamylase in some form, extracted and powered or natural.
Consuming sugar is fine.
Consuming fat and sugar is not fine.
I hear fat being demonized or mentioned in the same breath as sugar and I think of all the 90s and earlier "low fat" trends which basically ignored sugar intake.
Probably is one reason why insulin resistance is becoming common.