Ultraprocessed foods lead to obesity

[griffithee]

It is so interesting, in just this post alone there are several "diets" that are touted as being the best. The whole food no processed diet; the low carb; the low calorie diet, the meats are bad, only eat vegetables diet, and the blood sugar affects metabolism diet. No wonder there is such a problem with obesity in the world. Even the super smart people on ERE cannot reach consensus. There is no hope for the rest of mankind!!!! LOL

 

[braumeister]

It is so interesting, in just this post alone there are several "diets" that are touted as being the best.

I think the important learning to take away from the discussion is something that many of us have said over and over: Try different approaches and follow the one that works best for you. There is no "one size fits all" diet.

 

[HFWR]

Eat real food. Not too much.

 

[GrayHare]

Even the super smart people on ERE cannot reach consensus. There is no hope for the rest of mankind!!!! LOL

People look for an easy out, a hack, but the math can't be cheated. It's the same with spend vs save. The math is very simple, but a challenge to implement.

 

[NW-Bound]

Eat real food. Not too much.

Does real food cost more, and some people cannot afford it?

This opens up another can of worms.

 

[RetiredGypsy]

Does real food cost more, and some people cannot afford it?

Costs a whole lot less for me. I'll have to see if I can find my breakdown spreadsheet again.

 

[audreyh1]

It is so interesting, in just this post alone there are several "diets" that are touted as being the best. The whole food no processed diet; the low carb; the low calorie diet, the meats are bad, only eat vegetables diet, and the blood sugar affects metabolism diet. No wonder there is such a problem with obesity in the world. Even the super smart people on ERE cannot reach consensus. There is no hope for the rest of mankind!!!! LOL

Agree with Braumeister. There is no one size fits all diet, even though many seem to think there should be as some sort of ideal. There are genetic differences between people, and different states of metabolic health, and those things affect what diet may be best for optimal health. You have to figure out what works for you.

 

[NW-Bound]

Ultraprocessed foods lead to obesity?

More than that, it has caused blindness in people who eat no vegetables or fruits. Three cases have been reported in England.

A 25-year-old woman from Norwich, England, may be the third known person this year to lose her vision because of food - or rather, a lack of certain foods.

Jade Youngman hasn't touched a fruit or vegetable in 22 years, eating only pizza, plain pasta, french fries (or "chips" to her), and chicken nuggets, according to the Daily Mail.

In early September, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a case study of a teen boy in Bristol who went blind from nutritional optic neuropathy, Insider previously reported.

The teen, who subsisted on fries, white bread, chips and processed meats, had complained of tiredness, and received a diagnosis of anemia and B vitamin deficiency. A year later, he began to lose both his vision and his hearing. A severe lack of vitamin B, vitamin D, and other nutrients permanently damaged the boy's vision, leading to total blindness by age 17.

And an 18-year-old boy from Gloucester, England, was declared blind after eating nothing but fries, chips, and chocolate since he was two years old, according to the Daily Mail. He also reportedly had ARFID.

See: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/he...ead-to-womans-blindness/ar-AAI7Et1?li=BBnba9O


These people have a severe mental disorder. They would rather go blind and deaf than to eat regular food. I wonder if there was any supplement or vitamin that could have helped them.

 

[NW-Bound]

Costs a whole lot less for me. I'll have to see if I can find my breakdown spreadsheet again.

I was joking, as usual.

If you cook for yourself, food is so cheap in this country as a percentage of people's income, it's amazing.

 

[Ronstar]

And eating processed foods makes us want to eat even more.

A snippet of the snippet of the article in the op:

The second study, published this year, identified a new reason for weight gain. It found that people ate hundreds more calories of ultraprocessed than unprocessed foods when they were encouraged to eat as much or as little of each type as they desired. Participants chowing down on the ultraprocessed foods gained two pounds in just two weeks.

And from https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/carbs-make-hungrier-11828.html

The Insulin Effect
Sugars and refined grains are digested rapidly, creating a sharp rise in blood sugar levels. In response, your body pumps out a large dose of the hormone insulin, which causes your blood sugar to drop quickly. This crash leaves you feeling sluggish and hungry, so you may crave more carbohydrates to replenish your energy. This can create a cycle of overeating that's often difficult to break.
Your Brain on Refined Carbs
Along with affecting insulin levels, refined carbohydrates may also affect your brain, according to a study published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" in 2013. On two separate occasions, researchers gave participants a meal of high-glycemic-index foods -- those that create a significant rise in blood sugar -- and a meal of low-GI foods, which have less of an effect on blood sugar. They found that after the high-GI meal, subjects were hungrier and showed greater activity in brain regions associated with reward and cravings.

All of this makes a lot of sense based on my recent personal experience. I was about 20 pounds overweight and eating a lot of bad foods - ultra processed foods. I quit the bad foods a couple of weeks ago and starting losing weight. Started with a strict carnivore diet and transitioned into a keto diet. After 2 weeks off of processed foods, I'm not hungry anymore.

I used to think that the type of food itself is what made me gain weight. But now I'm starting to understand that the processed foods stimulate hunger which drove me to eat more - of everything.

 

[audreyh1]

And eating processed foods makes us want to eat even more.

A snippet of the snippet of the article in the op:



And from https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/carbs-make-hungrier-11828.html

The Insulin Effect
Sugars and refined grains are digested rapidly, creating a sharp rise in blood sugar levels. In response, your body pumps out a large dose of the hormone insulin, which causes your blood sugar to drop quickly. This crash leaves you feeling sluggish and hungry, so you may crave more carbohydrates to replenish your energy. This can create a cycle of overeating that's often difficult to break.
Your Brain on Refined Carbs
Along with affecting insulin levels, refined carbohydrates may also affect your brain, according to a study published in "The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition" in 2013. On two separate occasions, researchers gave participants a meal of high-glycemic-index foods -- those that create a significant rise in blood sugar -- and a meal of low-GI foods, which have less of an effect on blood sugar. They found that after the high-GI meal, subjects were hungrier and showed greater activity in brain regions associated with reward and cravings.

All of this makes a lot of sense based on my recent personal experience. I was about 20 pounds overweight and eating a lot of bad foods - ultra processed foods. I quit the bad foods a couple of weeks ago and starting losing weight. Started with a strict carnivore diet and transitioned into a keto diet. After 2 weeks off of processed foods, I'm not hungry anymore.

I used to think that the type of food itself is what made me gain weight. But now I'm starting to understand that the processed foods stimulate hunger which drove me to eat more - of everything.

It’s even more than just the insulin/crash response. You can’t burn your own body fat when insulin levels are high.

What happens when insulin is chronically elevated? Insulin is a switch. When on, your body stores calories you don’t use immediately as fat. If it remains elevated due to constant snacking or ultimately insulin resistance, your body can’t burn its own fat for energy, and has to eat more calories to compensate. Vicious cycle.

That’s why intermittent fasting and/or carbohydrate restriction are so powerful for losing body fat. Intermittent fasting gives the body time for insulin levels to drop, thus allowing the body to use its own stored fat for energy. Sufficient carbohydrate restriction avoids having blood sugar levels high enough to cause a large insulin response and thus the body can use stored fat for energy at least part of the time. Very low carb diets switch the body to a primarily fat burning metabolism (ketosis) which makes it easy to draw down body fat stores as insulin levels are kept very low.

One of the most amazing experiences for me on a ketogenic diet was how after a couple of days any strong feelings of hunger simply disappeared. No cravings. Very freeing. Now my fasting insulin is at a healthy level, and my A1C quite low (in the 4s) so my body is easily able to use its own fat as energy when needed.

 

[athena53]

The study noted that people on the processed food diet actually ate more, which led to higher body weight. I can see two factors at work here. First, as others have noted, processed food is "engineered" to make you want more. They do studies on "bliss points" and "crave-ability". My mother once noted that if you eat sweet foods, they leave an aftertaste that can be alleviated only by eating more of it. When I was in HS I bought a bag of red licorice chews. I opened it when I got into the car and had eaten the whole bag by the time I got home. It scared the crap outta me. Now if I eat sweet foods, I take a reasonable portion, back away from the table or put the bag away, and drink water to get rid of any aftertaste.

Second: many highly processed foods lack texture and are meant to be devoured quickly- sliders, soft granola bars, french fries, "loaded" mashed potatoes with cream cheese. If you've ever been at a restaurant where one person orders a giant salad and the rest order more traditional fare, you'll know what I mean- salads take forever to eat. You actually have to chew every bite. I eat a lot of stir-fried vegetables and I think that's why I'm satisfied with fewer calories.

I pretty much stay away from processed foods (well, except for a pack of Nutter Butter cookies every time I donate blood). It's been far easier to maintain my weight.

 

[LRDave]

Eat real food. Not too much.

Amen....

 

[Chuckanut]

My personal N=1 experience is that the more processed foods I eat, the more excess weight I gain. When I eat food that more closely represents how it came out of the ground or off the animal, my weight stays at a good level. My 2¢. Take what you wish and leave the rest.

 

[RetiredGypsy]

My personal N=1 experience is that the more processed foods I eat, the more excess weight I gain. When I eat food that more closely represents how it came out of the ground or off the animal, my weight stays at a good level. My 2¢. Take what you wish and leave the rest.

I think that the caloric density of processed foods is so much greater. There isn't much of any water weight to dilute caloric density while also increasing food volume. It's so much easier to eat more calories of junk food.

Solid food anyway. Liquid calories are a different animal altogether, even more dangerous.

 

[Gumby]

Eat real food. Not too much.

Essentially the basis of my Aristotelian Health Plan, the prime directive of which is "moderation in all things." Eat a balanced diet of food that, aside from your cooking it, is minimally processed. Don't eat too much of everything or of any one thing. Stop eating when you are full; you don't have to clean your plate. To keep your spirits up, treat yourself to something you crave every once in a while. Drink a little if you like, but don't binge. Exercise moderately; walking around is fine. Take the stairs instead of the elevator if you're going one floor up or two floors down. Get enough sleep, but not too much. Try to speak to another human being every day.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

Your metabolism can go up and down too. So if your metabolism drops, you can gain weight even when eating fewer calories. The human body is not a simple system. One key is to not let the metabolism go down, and calorie restriction can do just that. You really have to address any underlying metabolic problems.

Or maybe not. At least one study has shown that drastic calorie restriction results in a lower metabolism that doesn't recover.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...r-metabolism-is-slower-and-weight-is-back-up/

Six years after dramatic weight loss on the TV show "The Biggest Loser," most contestants in a recent study had regained the pounds - and on top of that, their metabolism had slowed and they were burning fewer calories every day than they did before their stint on the show.....

The group as a whole on average burned 2,607 calories per day at rest before the competition, which dropped to about 2,000 calories per day at the end.

Six years later, calorie burning had slowed further to 1,900 per day, as reported in the journal Obesity, May 2.

 

[6miths]

Or maybe not. At least one study has shown that drastic calorie restriction results in a lower metabolism that doesn't recover.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...r-metabolism-is-slower-and-weight-is-back-up/

I could be mistaken but I think that this is what audreyh1 was saying. Calorie restriction can reduce one's metabolic rate. I think that there are many studies supporting this finding and it makes sense. If there is a caloric deficit, the organism is going to slow its metabolic rate in an effort to prolong its survival until calories become plentiful again. And even when calories do become plentiful again, the organism may not increase metabolic rate immediately but instead choose to store calories as fat in anticipation of the next famine.

audreyh1 also hits on the another key point and that is that insulin promotes the storage of fat (regardless of what macromolecule is ingested - fat, protein or carbohydrate) and turns off the enzymes that liberates fat from fat cells and convert free fatty acids to ketones that are meant to be used by the body during the fasting state (which for most of human existence has been most of the time). It seems true that there is no single diet that works for weight loss. And while there are may be several that can lead to weight gain, the choice for most of the population of the world has been frequent ingestion of foods with high carbohydrate content.

 

[NW-Bound]

... Drink a little if you like, but don't binge...

This reminded me I have not had a hard drink in a while. So, I just went out and poured myself about a double shot of Bombay Sapphire on ice. No tonic on hand, but it's OK.

 

[audreyh1]

I could be mistaken but I think that this is what audreyh1 was saying. Calorie restriction can reduce one's metabolic rate. I think that there are many studies supporting this finding and it makes sense. If there is a caloric deficit, the organism is going to slow its metabolic rate in an effort to prolong its survival until calories become plentiful again. And even when calories do become plentiful again, the organism may not increase metabolic rate immediately but instead choose to store calories as fat in anticipation of the next famine.

Yes, I have linked to that Greater Loser disaster article here myself to illustrate how horribly wrong extreme calorie restriction plus extreme “just exercise more” can go. Many people think it’s simple to control the calories expended by your body. It is absolutely not.

 

[Ronstar]

Essentially the basis of my Aristotelian Health Plan, the prime directive of which is "moderation in all things." Eat a balanced diet of food that, aside from your cooking it, is minimally processed. Don't eat too much of everything or of any one thing. Stop eating when you are full; you don't have to clean your plate. To keep your spirits up, treat yourself to something you crave every once in a while. Drink a little if you like, but don't binge. Exercise moderately; walking around is fine. Take the stairs instead of the elevator if you're going one floor up or two floors down. Get enough sleep, but not too much. Try to speak to another human being every day.

Great words to live by!

 

[Eagle43]

Essentially the basis of my Aristotelian Health Plan, the prime directive of which is "moderation in all things." Eat a balanced diet of food that, aside from your cooking it, is minimally processed. Don't eat too much of everything or of any one thing. Stop eating when you are full; you don't have to clean your plate. To keep your spirits up, treat yourself to something you crave every once in a while. Drink a little if you like, but don't binge. Exercise moderately; walking around is fine. Take the stairs instead of the elevator if you're going one floor up or two floors down. Get enough sleep, but not too much. Try to speak to another human being every day.

+1

 

[seraphim]

I've been on a low carb higher fat diet for 21 months and have lost 45 lbs. I find I eat far less food than before as I am not hungry.

I just lost 34 lbs in under 4 months by going on a 1200 calorie a day diet. Ate mostly unprocessed food because I didn’t want the sodium. A 100 calories every 2 hours until dinner - 400 calories - then whatever is left over as an evening snack(s). Kept fat under 25% - as low as possible - carbs and proteins varied. Just got tired of being 214 pounds. Now I’m 180.

 

[travelover]

............ When I was in HS I bought a bag of red licorice chews. I opened it when I got into the car and had eaten the whole bag by the time I got home...... .

Mmmm...... Red Vines

 

[NW-Bound]

Red Vines has had America hooked since 1914. You don't shake a 100-year habit that easy. You don't need any narcotics, just sugar and flour to cause an addiction.