Comment by dilyevsky
1 year ago
It's calories. It's always been calories https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...
1 year ago
It's calories. It's always been calories https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...
Every time there is some discussion about weight here, somebody will come with the whole "there is no good or bad food, calories in/out is the only thing that matters" argument. And while technically correct it's also overly symplistic. The whole point about "bad" (processed) foods is that they make it very easy to take in a lot of calories without feeling sated.
Take an apple or orange juice for example. To eat the equivalent amount of fructose (or calories) that is contained in an orange juice, you will need to eat a lot of fruit, and like feel full before finishing, while the equivalent juice doesn't even register.
Anyone who says only calories matter should try tracking their calories, then eating processed food one day, unprocessed the next. If you stick to the same total calories, you’ll be very hungry the first day.
Laws of physics aren't rewritten because people are hungry when they eat way too much sugar.
Of course meal plans are more complicated than just counting calories.
2 replies →
Some people are hungry all the time regardless, so it doesn’t matter that much whether you’re hungry after you ate healthy unprocessed foods, or hungry after you ate sugary junk food.
I do think there’s a difference, though, between processed and unprocessed foods. My guess is that your body can extract more of the calories from highly processed foods than it can from unprocessed foods, or that extracting the calories from unprocessed foods takes more work, burning calories in itself.
The question is whether it is because it’s processed food by itself or missing micro/macro nutrients.
So what? It’s still calories in, calories out. Whether you feel full or not is another discussion.
4 replies →
It's more like cars. Different engines have different efficiencies. So filling up a few gallons at the pump will get you less pollution per mile on car A than in car B.
But regardless of the efficiency, if you overfill the tank and the fuel starts to spill on the pavement, that is not going into the milage but straight into the pollution bracket.
The idea that intake is irrelevant is just as ridiculous as the idea that everyone's metabolism is an exact clone.
I stopped drinking fruit juice when, randomly, one day I stopped and thought about how many oranges it takes to make an 8oz. glass of orange juice (and no one drinks 8oz. at a time, it's usually more like 12 or more). And though, "There's no WAY I would ever eat that many oranges in one sitting."
It's not how many calories you put in your mouth and swallow though. It's how many calories get taken in through your digestion system. Gut microbiome likely has an effect on that as well as a few other things.
If I overeat for one meal, then I won't have much appetite for the next. How satiated I feel immediately after eating doesn't matter much, it averages out over time.
For you. But not for everyone. Thus making “its calories” overly simplistic.
1 reply →
Fascinating. Japan's caloric intake per capita has declined since the peak in the early 90s. No wonder everybody here is so lean. I'm always shocked when I step off the plane in Germany or the US at how fat everybody is.
Fat taxes. [1] The Western world is/was adopting a fat acceptance mindset, at the same time Japan decided to start fining businesses and governmental regions for having overweight workers/residents.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax#Japan
Fat acceptance? Turn on any form of broadcast media and you are going to be inundated with products/lifestyles/coaching on how you can lose weight to get the body you want.
Random web hit claims 89% of American women are unhappy with their weight[0]
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/89-percent-of-amer...
7 replies →
It's just inspection is mandated, never like a tax. Wikipedia shouldn't refer random blog.
1 reply →
I had no idea!
> Japan's caloric intake per capita has declined since the peak in the early 90s.
Couldn't possibly have anything to do with its aging population (median age closing in on age 50). Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37878558
Older people tend to be fatter, so I don't think so.
1 reply →
That data is calorie supply, not consumption. It could be true that Japanese consume just as much as ever, but waste slightly less food than they used to.
Fair - and accurate anecdotally. Food waste is something that is way more avoided. Also, portions in restaurants are about 30% the size compared to the US, so a lot of food waste is avoided.
The point is the added calories aren't coming from sugar, contrary to what everyone here thinks. And even if sugar did somehow magically make you fat regardless of calories, sugar consumption has actually gone down, yet the obesity and diabetes epidemics have only gotten worse.
But, body weight increase is going to correspond to the "area under the graph" (the integral) and NOT the current level (the instantaneous value).
Yes, it's nice that we're getting sugar consumption back down to 1970 levels so we don't keep adding more obese people to the cohort, but that doesn't help everybody who gained weight prior to 2020.
From 1995 to 2005, people ate roughly an extra 10 pounds relative to 1970 of bodyweight in sugar every single year. That's an extra 100 pounds in bodyweight over 10 years if you don't adjust something else. That's huge. Literally.
Obesity isn't something that stays around if you consume less calories over 20 years.
4 replies →
Per the data, caloric supply dropped after/during the great recession (2007-2008) to the levels of about 10-20 years prior. Did obesity drop during this period, too?
Edit: It doesn’t appear to have had much effect per the data on the same website [1]. I suppose there are a number of reasons why it might not have had an effect on the top level numbers, though.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-a...
1. It dropped to like ‘97 level which was already too high
2. Pretty sure calorie intake is not uniformly distributed so if avg dropped bc some folks went from 5000kcal to 4000kcal a day it’s not going to reduce overall obesity rate
Calories absorbed vs calories expended is physics, but it doesn't explain why people are storing more calories over time.
The idea that all calories are the same is not even held by people who say "everything is just about calories". Ask them what you need to build muscle and they will say protein. Suddenly not all calories are the same.
Fructose is does not stop hunger as much and is more easily stored as fat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8G8tLsl_A4
> and is more easily stored as fat
Dietary fat is even more easily stored as fat, since it doesn't require the added step of de novo lipogenesis (DNL) like carbohydrate does, or the added steps of gluconeogenesis + DNL as protein does. And go look up recent photos of Lustig: he's fat (bordering on obese) himself.
Lustig: he's fat (bordering on obese) himself.
This is not relevant to arguments (with sources and statistics) about systemic obesity he presents.
If dietary fat is more easily stored as fat, why do keto diets work?
Also do you have sources or data that says what you are saying here?
2 replies →
Calories are equivalent to joules. Diesel fuel has lots of calories, but you probably won't get fat drinking it. (The human body can't process diesel fuel.)
Alcohol is also very caloric, and the human body can process small amounts of it. But replacing cola with alcohol won't have the expected effect either.
What is the expected effect here? Are you saying you can’t gain extra weight by consuming alcohol? Well that is simply not true - you just haven’t applied yourself enough
No, you cannot gain extra weight by replacing food with alcohol. You will get liver problems before you get obese.
It’s also smoking
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-total-daily-smo...