Why our food is making us fat

[noxibox]

You have to take into account the amount of fibre and nutrients in the food and most importantly how your body metabolises food - and there is a world of biochemical complexity that renders any comparison between different food types based solely on their energy meaningless.

You don't really. Your body burns whatever energy is made available to it. Carbohydrates are usually it's first choice.

And energy out comparisons are also meaningless. Low impact exercise will tend to burn fat, while high impact will not.

You presumably mean intensity as impact is not relevant. If you're burning more fat, while your carbohydrate intake is being converted to fat instead of burned then why would the net result not be the same? Typically high intensity exercise is done for a shorter period, so the resulting energy consumption is the same. In general the amount of fat being burned is inversely proportional to the availability of carbohydrates to burn. Anyway eating more than you're using always matters.

Do you honestly believe that a steak and salad is exactly equivalent in effect to the same kilojoule quantity of chips and coke? Hint: one of these meals will cause your insulin to spike, the other one won't.

Insulin spike is irrelevant, unless you then proceed to eat more because you think you're hungry.

That's why I didn't say on its own

I am referring to the fact that that is exactly the way the warnings are typically presented (as though someone were living off such food and constantly eating).

[noxibox]

Not fructose but high fructose corn syrup.

I used to believe this too. As it turns out it's irrelevant. Sucrose and HFCS are quite similar in their fructose and glucose content. And the problem is always blamed on the fructose part.

[garp]

Can you point to a reliable source referring to fructose as poison?

There are plenty, part of a growing groundswell of research - here's a peer reviewed paper in the NIHPA showing that HFCS is associated with liver damage: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2922495/ . There are many other such studies, showing it's relationship with diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome. Or alternatively just watch this: http://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM - it goes into the detail of the biochemistry and even shows why HFCS causes similar liver damage to alcohol!

That's basically not true. If they get fat it is because they're inadequately active for their consumption level. Fructose can be a problem in high doses, but there again the problem is really overconsumption, not fructose, whether from HFCS, fruit juice or fruit.

It basically is true, sorry to say. Childhood obesity is a global epidemic and it is not solely down to activity levels. This litany of "energy in vs energy out" is absolute dinosaur thinking, nutritionally speaking. Of course exercise is beneficial, but you cannot explain away obesity and the inability of some people to lose weight purely on this basis. It is utterly useless to do so because some foods will cause your body to store fat and others don't no matter how much you exercise.

Do you have any idea of the quantity of sugar and particularly HFCS kids are bombarded with these days? NO level of activity is going to counteract the HFCS in the average amount of Cokes/Energy Drinks/Fruit Juices that kids consume daily.

[DrYes]

Lots more evidence supporting this in "good calories, bad calories" by Gary Taubes

His findings are debunked here:

I'd like to begin by emphasizing that carbohydrate restriction has helped many people lose body fat and improve their metabolic health. Although it doesn't work for everyone, there is no doubt that carbohydrate restriction causes fat loss in many, perhaps even most obese people. For a subset of people, the results can be very impressive. I consider that to be a fact at this point, but that's not what I'll be discussing here.

What I want to discuss is a hypothesis. It's the idea, championed by Gary Taubes, that carbohydrate (particularly refined carbohydrate) causes obesity by elevating insulin, thereby causing increased fat storage in fat cells. To demonstrate that I'm representing this hypothesis accurately, here is a quote from his book Good Calories, Bad Calories:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co...f-obesity.html

[garp]

You don't really. Your body burns whatever energy is made available to it. Carbohydrates are usually it's first choice.

So your body will digest 1000kj of ingested high fibre bran into the blood stream and metabolise it in exactly the same way that it will absorb 1000kj of pure sugar? Really?

You presumably mean intensity as impact is not relevant. If you're burning more fat, while your carbohydrate intake is being converted to fat instead of burned then why would the net result not be the same? Typically high intensity exercise is done for a shorter period, so the resulting energy consumption is the same. In general the amount of fat being burned is inversely proportional to the availability of carbohydrates to burn. Anyway eating more than you're using always matters.

Not true. While the energy consumption might be the same, the intensity at which the body requires the energy has a bearing on where the body finds the energy. It's now quite well established that low impact exercise like walking is more effective at burning fat.

Insulin spike is irrelevant, unless you then proceed to eat more because you think you're hungry.

No again. For a number of reasons, not the least of which is the insulin resistance and ultimately diabetes in the long term that continually spiking insulin causes. High insulin is known to increase fat storage and/or inhibit conversion of fat to energy.

[noxibox]

So answer this:
A person consumes 100 calories of carbohydrates, then does exercise that burns say 70% fat and 30% carbohydrates. Where does the other 70 calories of carbohydrates go?

So your body will digest 1000kj of ingested high fibre bran into the blood stream and metabolise it in exactly the same way that it will absorb 1000kj of pure sugar? Really?

So you really believe the body has some separate method of metabolising those two carbohydrates? Go ahead, explain them. Now let's say both people don't eat for a few hours. Does the person that ate the sugar simply do without energy because the sugar was, potentially, initially processed faster?

While the energy consumption might be the same, the intensity at which the body requires the energy has a bearing on where the body finds the energy. It's now quite well established that low impact exercise like walking is more effective at burning fat.

Which as it turns out is not relevant. It simply doesn't matter because if the body is burning fat and you're supplying further fuel, that has to go somewhere. If the exercise you're doing is mostly burning carbohydrates the body will switch to fat when they run out, even it's preference is 100% carbohydrates for that particular intensity of exercise. Burn rate matters too. Low intensity exercise burns calories much slower.

It is true that amount of fat used by the body is related to the availability of carbohydrates.

It basically is true, sorry to say. Childhood obesity is a global epidemic and it is not solely down to activity levels.

As it turns out in the US food consumption has gone up and activity levels have gone down. They unfortunately do keep some records. This fructose bugbear, as the cause of obesity, has been shot, skinned and stuffed at this point. You gain fat by eating more than you're using. That is established. If you want to argue otherwise, then you need to explain the mechanism by which it happens.

here's a peer reviewed paper in the NIHPA showing that HFCS is associated with liver damage: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2922495/

Says maybe by looks of it. Says fructose could be a red herring. They don't know. They're also relying on unreliable data as the foundation of usage. Plus it doesn't look like they're studying a wide population. Nowhere however do they use the term poison that I can find. You'll find that almost anything you can eat is long term going to appear to cause problems. It's notoriously hard to pin it on any one factor.

Dr Lustig's talk has been thoroughly debunked. He makes a number of baseless claims.

[bdt]

This appears to be a good spot to toss The Physics Diet article in here - linky only so as not to disrupt the flow here. And, while I'm at it, The Hacker's Diet deserves a mention too...

[garp]

So answer this:
A person consumes 100 calories of carbohydrates, then does exercise that burns say 70% fat and 30% carbohydrates. Where does the other 70 calories of carbohydrates go?

Why do you assume that everything we swallow gets fully digested and wholly metabolised/converted into fat/energy? This is by far the biggest logic flaw in those who parrot "energy in vs. energy out". It's just too simplistic. The journey from food crossing our lips to it ending up being in a fat cell is a long, complex winding road that varies between different types of food. High fibre carbohydrates may end up never being fully digested while highly soluble sugars and alcohols may hit our bloodstream literally minutes after being ingested. Even once food has been absorbed via the digestive tract, the factors that determine what ultimately just gets excreted or what ends up being stored depends on complex biochemistry. So a person may consume 100 calories of carbohydrate, but how much of it actually absorbed and what is available to burn during exercise is highly dependant on the type of food, on factors ranging from it's physical structure to its chemical composition, not to mention the unique characteristics of the individual. Calories are not calories.

So you really believe the body has some separate method of metabolising those two carbohydrates? Go ahead, explain them. Now let's say both people don't eat for a few hours. Does the person that ate the sugar simply do without energy because the sugar was, potentially, initially processed faster?

I'm not sure which two carbohydrates you're referring to, but yes, the body does burn both fat and carb when you exercise in varying ratios depending on the intensity of your exercise.

As it turns out in the US food consumption has gone up and activity levels have gone down. They unfortunately do keep some records. This fructose bugbear, as the cause of obesity, has been shot, skinned and stuffed at this point. You gain fat by eating more than you're using. That is established. If you want to argue otherwise, then you need to explain the mechanism by which it happens.

No. You actually don't necessarily gain fat by eating more than you're using. The body has the ability to eliminate excess, within reason. You do, however, gain fat when your body is flooded with starches and sugars all the time and the consequent metabolic imbalance sets in process a chain reaction that causes the body to store fat. And while HFCS is certainly not the sole cause of this, it's the worst possible form of synthetic sugar, likened to the "crack cocaine" of sugars. Another big part of the problem is the completely incorrect MYTH that we should consume a low fat diet for cardiac health which stems back to a 50-odd year old comparative study that has since been found to be based on wishful thinking.

I'm a little amazed that you say that HFCS does not cause obesity - go ahead and exclusively eat and drink products full of it constantly for a few months and then let me know how it worked out for you, okay? Good luck with that. By the way, the HFCS producers lobby is very active and they spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars annually defending their product with the message that calories are calories and the only reason you get fat is because of energy in vs. energy out equation. Sound familiar?

They desperately want you to believe that a 550 kilojoule can of Coke is identical in outcome to a 550 kilojoule salad.

[Sinbad]

As it turns out in the US food consumption has gone up and activity levels have gone down. They unfortunately do keep some records. This fructose bugbear, as the cause of obesity, has been shot, skinned and stuffed at this point. You gain fat by eating more than you're using. That is established. If you want to argue otherwise, then you need to explain the mechanism by which it happens.

Mechanism has been explained but you choose to ignore it.

[Freaksta]

I'm going low carb lol

[garp]

This appears to be a good spot to toss The Physics Diet article in here - linky only so as not to disrupt the flow here. And, while I'm at it, The Hacker's Diet deserves a mention too...

The Physics Diet may be tongue in cheek and based on the first law of thermodynamics but makes the following common mistakes of assumption:

1. Assumes that our bodies are perfect converters of 100% of the energy in ingested food.
2. Assumes that all ingested forms of food are equally converted to energy.
3. Assumes that our body can only either use or store all ingested energy and is incapable of eliminating excess.

If it was really that simple, nobody would willingly be overweight.

I'm not sure about the hackers diet, though, seems mildly obsessive compulsive.

[noxibox]

Mechanism has been explained but you choose to ignore it.

The mechanism is increased consumption and decreased activity. The figures show that is the cause. Not a particular macronutrient. I've mentioned one reason why people over-consume. No-one has however explained a mechanism whereby consuming only energy your body requires can lead to gaining fat. In other words the body effectively starving itself by storing energy it needs, so that someone consuming exactly the amount of energy they use per day steadily progresses toward obesity.

Why do you assume that everything we swallow gets fully digested and wholly metabolised/converted into fat/energy? This is by far the biggest logic flaw in those who parrot "energy in vs. energy out". It's just too simplistic.

No it isn't. It is always energy in and energy out. Go tell a trainer you want to lose fat, but you're going to keep eating more energy than you're consuming. Complain when you don't lose fat in spite of energy in versus energy out being wrong.

I don't assume everything gets fully digested. If it isn't fully digested, then it isn't energy in. What you're telling me is not a counter to that, but rather that some foods are mislabelled, perhaps due to the inadequacy of measuring the energy content. Fact remains if you're consuming more than you're using it has to go somewhere.

So, referring, once again to your exercise example, where does that additional energy in go if someone is burning fat instead of carbohydrates?

I'm not sure which two carbohydrates you're referring to

It was your example.

You do, however, gain fat when your body is flooded with starches and sugars all the time and the consequent metabolic imbalance sets in process a chain reaction that causes the body to store fat.

That's the problem, overconsumption. Plain and simple. The body does not need a metabolic imbalance to store fat. It does it automatically, to protect us, when there is more food energy being consumed than can be used. It is not a sign of disease or fault in the body.

The body has the ability to eliminate excess, within reason.

There is no way the human body would want to eliminate excess energy gained from food. It must by it's nature store anything extra in case there isn't another meal for a while. That's why we put on fat.

Another big part of the problem is the completely incorrect MYTH that we should consume a low fat diet for cardiac health which stems back to a 50-odd year old comparative study that has since been found to be based on wishful thinking.

It is a myth, which funnily enough has been replaced by myths about carbohydrates.

If it was really that simple, nobody would willingly be overweight.

Not true. I've known plenty of people who simply love their food. To lose their additional weight they'd have to give that up, and perhaps even never be able to return to their present level of consumption. Or they'd have to get more active. Not something they're particularly enthusiastic about either.

I'm a little amazed that you say that HFCS does not cause obesity - go ahead and exclusively eat and drink products full of it constantly for a few months and then let me know how it worked out for you, okay?

If I ate exactly the same quantity of calories as I do now it would be impossible for me to get fat by eating sugar. I'd feel hungry often definitely, but I can't magically get fat when my body needs that energy. It just does not work that way.

[Sinbad]

You're taking a very simplistic view. People are not machines, and when people feel hungry, or feel cravings, they WILL eat.
If they eat sugary calories, that DO NOT satisfy them, they will eat to excess.
HFCS is proven to interfere with the mechanism that tells your brain that you've eaten enough.
And in this case, intake > usage means you put on weight.

If you're in a ketogenic state, and you don't eat carbs, and your intake > usage (which is not so likely given the complete lack of cravings, the stable blood sugar etc), YOU WILL NOT PUT ON WEIGHT. Your body has no mechanism to store this excess. In fact, you'll probably continue losing weight.

I have lost 15kg in the last few months, by cutting out carbs.
I eat 3 meals a day. Bacon, eggs, cheese, steak, chicken, some salad, more eggs, more steak. WAY more calories than I consume in my sedentary job sitting behind a computer all day, then driving home and watching TV.
If I start exercising, I lose weight even faster.

So my experience proves your opinion incorrect.

[garp]

You're taking a very simplistic view. People are not machines, and when people feel hungry, or feel cravings, they WILL eat.
If they eat sugary calories, that DO NOT satisfy them, they will eat to excess.
HFCS is proven to interfere with the mechanism that tells your brain that you've eaten enough.
And in this case, intake > usage means you put on weight.

If you're in a ketogenic state, and you don't eat carbs, and your intake > usage (which is not so likely given the complete lack of cravings, the stable blood sugar etc), YOU WILL NOT PUT ON WEIGHT. Your body has no mechanism to store this excess. In fact, you'll probably continue losing weight.

I have lost 15kg in the last few months, by cutting out carbs.
I eat 3 meals a day. Bacon, eggs, cheese, steak, chicken, some salad, more eggs, more steak. WAY more calories than I consume in my sedentary job sitting behind a computer all day, then driving home and watching TV.
If I start exercising, I lose weight even faster.

So my experience proves your opinion incorrect.

I can add my +1 to this. It just doesn't seem to get through to some people that the simplistic energy in/energy out equation is a complete myth because our bodies control what energy we retain depending on the metabolic processes attached to different types of food.

[noxibox]

Underestimation of energy intake by 3-d records compared with energy intake to maintain body weight in 269 nonobese adults.
Low energy reporters vs others: a comparison of reported food intakes.
Underestimation of energy intake in a group of young female university students of Madrid
Normal weight men and women overestimate exercise energy expenditure.

But no, it's not that, it's their evil food making them fat.