Sieben,
I just edited and deleted a bunch of your posts in this thread. I’m asking you to observe the forum rules. Personal attacks are not tolerable.
I mainly use studies to show that the claims of low-carbers and the anti-fructose crusades are incorrect. But I’d be really interested to know what you think is wrong with comparing 2 calorie restricted diets, and observing that the group eating fructose loses more weight. It may not be true for everyone, but it was true for the people completing that study. If it was true for them it is probably true for many many other people.
No. I’m not. Don’t tell me what I’m doing. No one has asked what me what “the right” diet is so I haven’t given them an answer. I am completely open to the idea that there are outliers. People who don’t handle their carbs well. People who don’t handle fats well. People who are allergic to milk proteins, etc etc.
I am very fond of the saying “the best diet is the diet you can stick to”. “Simpler is better” is a close runner up. There are probably about 20 different valid dietary strategies that people are going to have different reactions to. I am not trying to come up with some one objective “right” answer and then tell everyone who eats differently that they’re wrong.
You’re taking it for granted that measurement = bad. But what if I find out that my body (for some reason) loses fat when I eat fewer overall calories? What if I don’t have the time or money to measure the effects of calorie restriction on my thyroid and leptin levels? For all practical purposes, there are things for which you can use the “scientific” approach to. If it doesn’t work, then figure out why and try something different. But if it does work, and there is a high probability it will, then you have saved yourself a lot of time and frustration by just hitting a 500 calorie deficit every day so that you still lose weight without your thyroid crashing.
And the complexity of the body is captured in controlled studies. Ceteris parabis, you know. It doesn’t matter how many thousands of different possible metabolic routes there are. Study X shows that when you do Y or Z, the differential is an extra 1 lb of fat loss. Very applicable. But we can also explain some of the complexity by observing that fructose goes preferentially to the liver, which sends a “fullness” signal to the brain, enhancing diet compliance and “tricking” the body into thinking its more fed than it really is.
But that’s just me being arrogant or something…
Aristophanes:
I mentioned that it was on controversial grounds of study, which you never responded to. Instead choosing to drone on about your knowledge.
Oh good. Shifting the goalposts. Yes we know fructose and high carb diets are controversial. But that doesn’t mean the answer is pretty clear. For normal people on normal diets, there is no reason to categorically ban either strategies.
Aristophanes:
And if you have all of the health problems…it would seem that you are the one that is “retarded.”
I don’t really have any health problems. At least none caused by my diet. I actually diet successfully. If I need to, I will upload pictures of me in 6-8 weeks with me at at most 7.5% bodyfat 6’1 195lb.
Aristophanes:
It is not difficult to eat healthy.
Red herring. Unsubstantiated anyway. People find it very hard to maintain certain diet protocols, depending on their habits, insulin sensitivity, and brain chemistry. There is no “right” answer.
Aristophanes:
One need not drink at all, but that would be silly. People have always made and consumed wine and meads. Wine coolers are stereotypically purchased by women who cannot handle their drink, that is all. I was making fun of you for being a woman.
AHAHA Y U SO FAHNNY?
Tell me I’m a woman when I squat/deadlift. But yeah red herring thanks.
Aristophanes:
Others simply point out that there are studies that are contrary to yours and you fly off the handle.
Their studies are bad. Mine are good. Their physiology is bad or nonexistent. Mine is good. This is not rocket science.
Aristophanes:
Maybe you could smoke a bowl. Oh, wait, your physiology is weak and compromised.
Zzzzzzz
Why?
I’d be less ticked off about it if you edited and deleted other people’s posts. Or is it okay if I call you a frail and weak woman and then laugh about it? Probably not.
Because I wanted to see if having objective scientific evidence would help grease the wheels of argumentation, and it does not. So the problem we encounter in politics and economics isn’t that we aren’t “scientific”, its just that people have a mental block and want to believe all sorts of self serving things even if it is directly contradicted by evidence and/or logic.
@Sieben: I’m not saying don’t read. I’m not even saying that nutritionists shouldn’t study. Study away. The point to remember is that even a controlled experiment is never really ceteris paribus. Plus, we’re overlooking an important historical point. Do you think this guy watched his carbs or fructose? I doubt it. To the extent his diet was considered, it was probably based on a combination of voodoo and instinct. I wouldn’t mind having his physique. My only point is that modern voodoo isn’t that much more applicable than their voodoo was. If we succeed, we succeed in spite of it not because of it.
Clayton -
Its like, so close though.
That’s a statue. But ancient people’s probably ate mixed meals, which are fine. There probably wasn’t an advantage to counting calories because food was expensive and scarce. Things are different now. Calorie counting is necessary for people with poor appetite autoregulation. Even a daily calorie surplus of 50 calories/day will average you gaining 7lbs/year.
People also never achieved peak leanness and muscalarity till they started controlling their calories. Even in the bad old days when Arnold was a bodybuilder they controlled calories by just “eating less” and “staying hungry”.
Instinct is fine in the environment which instinct developed. We are no longer in that environment.
This comes to mine. I’m sorry its another one of these voodoo studies.
But, alas, it is subjective. You cannot prove either way. Unless you are omniscient.
Moderator note: personal attacks removed. -Nielsio
Its not subjective. Its science. Sorry.
Don’t care.
Except if you knew anything about body composition, you’d know that my stats aren’t frail or feminine.
Okay, I’m still confused as to why it really matters whether a person avoids the consumption of HFCS and maybe wants some disclosure on its use in foodstuffs? Consider the fact that many millions of Type 2 Diabetics have a hard enough time trying to keep their blood sugar levels in balance because the fact that many products get HFCS labelled in a such a way that makes it seem like there is none (or any other related sugar products). I don’t think it makes sense to outright ban HFCS, but I think it should be open to consumer choice not to have everything they eat sweetened as we have here in the US (I kid not about this. I’ve had friends from the UK eat US bread and ask if it was pound cake.).
Well… while I would question whether HFCS is “bad” for people who are pre diabetic, since fructose doesn’t really raise blood sugar, the sentiment is fine. I don’t load up on sugary foods and I would actually appreciate it if my wine coolers and beer had nutrition facts on them so I could see how many of what kind of carb was in them, what kind of micronutrients they have, etc.
The best way to control your intake is just to eat whole foods. There is a wide enough variety. What you seem to be talking about is this sort of grey zone between processed vs whole, where people want to eat “healthy” but still want to get substantial calories from processed foods. Its possible I guess.
HFCS is bad for the population since it’s used in everything we eat, dude. It wouldn’t be any better if used sugarcane either. But the negative impact from HFCS comes from its economical and ecological impact.
On the economical impact, the US government subsidizes corn to make HFCS available at a price lower than the global price of sugarcane, which does two things. First, it distorts the market demand for sweeteners toward HFCS and other corn products rather than similar existing products on the market. Second, it allows the current sugarcane farming interests to reap the windfall of the higher price they charge for sugarcane in the US (20 cents vs 10 cents a pound, the last time I checked the figures on it).
On the ecological impact, corn is a beast when it comes to topsoil nutrient drain, which means you need to liberally use fertilizers to keep them going. Also, corn requires more water than most other crops, which makes it a drain on groundwater and surfacewater sources. And finally, the liberal use of the fertilizers to sustain corn crops means the runoff of the fertilizers aides in algae blooms which kill off local fish and plant life (these blooms consume the oxygen and other nutrients in the water).
So, no, there’s no net positive to having HFCS. Banning it won’t stop it, but repealing the corn subsidy would probably end its use entirely and possibly force the companies to realign many of their foodstuff recipes to being less sweetened over time since sugarcane isn’t going to be that much cheaper once they all start to demand it as a substitute (pretty obvious, duh).
But why pick fights? Why subjectively value being right so much? Why spend precious hours of your life in conflict? Why fight human psychological biases which, by the way, may be supported by perfectly valid evolutionary drivers?
Well, those are both true things. But if it weren’t for HFCS subsidies and sugar tariffs we’d use sucrose instead like other countries. Sucrose is so close to HFCS metabolically though that people can’t really blame it for causing any net health problems.
Well I’m not going to pick fights indefinitely. I was picking fights recently because I wanted to test the hypothesis that having objective scientific data made debating easier. It doesn’t. In fact the whole point of this thread was to discuss THAT idea, though I’m happy to share with Scrooge since he seems reasonable.
Aristophanes,
The warning I gave to Sieben counts for you as well. I’ve moderated two of your posts.
Notice, I didn’t dispute that, but you’re not listening. In the other countries, it’s not common to liberally use sugars in all their foodstuffs. In the US it is. Why? Because we’ve subsidized corn and thus made one type of sweetener much cheaper than the rest. That means, once you have a global demand increase for sugarcane, that means the price goes up (microecon 101, obviously), which means it’s not cheaper to make everything super-sweet. In fact, it means it’s cheaper to find either some sugar alcohol substitute (or equivalent) or just change strategies away from the liberal use of sweeteners in every foodstuff. That would be a boon in terms of health and the market in one shot.
The first thing for you to worry about is your own posts. If a problem is pointed out about them, then you’re asked to take responsibility.
If you think other people bring the forum down because of their posting style, you can make use of the ‘report abuse’ option, or you can message me. This is very much encouraged if you come across a problem, because not all posts are neccessarily read by moderators. That’s what happened here. I was just scanning through this thread and the problem with your posts stood out to me first.
Plus, your whole thing about science being objective? That’s one thing I could easily dismantle here, but that’s a whole other thread to make for some other time.