[fastoptimizer]

When in fact nothing can be blamed but our overconsumption of almost everything but vegetables and fruits.

I eat about 70% from my calories in carbs (some are refined), but it's just 2500kcal calories per day. I'm pretty sure the fact that average US citizen eats 3500kcal daily has more to do with anything than what particular ingredient one eats.

edit: some irrational unscientific and anegdotal statements require me to remove myself from discussion. thanks.. for the downvotes, I'm outta here boys! :wink:

[kentor]

Then the question is why do they eat 3500kcal? The hypothesis is that sugar does not make people feel full whereas fat does, so they eat more. A calorie is not a calorie.

[mobiuscog]

It would seem that calories don't provide any metric with respect to psychological effect, whether caused by the food or otherwise.

If only people had tried to point this out for many years...

[xurukefi]

I didn't check the science, but I'm pretty confident that "feeling full" is a matter of volume and not of calories. At least in my personal experience a really dumb and easy way to lose fat without feeling hungry was to eat food with a low calorie density.

[gohrt]

Not just volume, but the biochemical process of digestion. For example, food that takes longer to digest has more volume for longer time in your body. There are also complex interactions of chemical secretions to regulate chemistry in digestion.

[Practicality]

What foods are you referring to as "low calorie density foods"? I can imagine that most vegetables fit this classification... but why would you state it this way unless you are referring to something else?

[xurukefi]

I would define caloric density as the ratio of calories to weight. Refined sugar has a caloric density of 3.87 (387 kcal per 100gr), which is quite high. Most vegetables and fruits will probably have a caloric density <= 1. But I would also classify something like chicken breast (1.65) or turkey meat (1.89) as "low" in terms of caloric density. But it's not really about setting a threshold. It's more about being aware of how many calories you actually get per gram of food. It can make quite a big difference.

[hx87]

The goal isn't to "feel full", but to feel full and good for a long period of time. Otherwise, I might as well gorge myself on isotonic water.

[xurukefi]

I wasn't suggesting that feeling full is the goal. I was just trying to argue that calorie density is an important issue when it comes to obesity and overeating. Eating healthy food is, of course, important. But eating too much healthy food is not healthy ;).

If I had to choose between eating too much healthy food and eating enough unhealthy food, I would probably choose the latter. I think obesity is a bigger problem than poor nutrition.

[hx87]

Why would I eat too much if I eat calorie-dense foods? How full I feel in the long term has little to do with volume and more to do with how many calories I eat and how quickly they are digested.

[fastoptimizer]

> The hypothesis is that sugar does not make people feel full whereas fat does, so they eat more.

They still eat about 1500kcal of fat and protein - of which I eat about half the amount.

If you were really talking about feeling full, nothing makes you feel more full than a belly and guts filled with lovely starch/fiber from fruits and vegetables, which an average US eats little if not any.

[GordonS]

Yes, they make you feel full... until your blood glucose level drops 1-3 hours later, then you feel very hungry again.

By contrast, if I eat a fat and protein based meal, there is no blood sugar drop to instigate a 'fake' hunger signal, so I don't begin to feel hungry for 4-7 hours or so.

[mobiuscog]

Depends on the person. I can eat stupid amounts of fruit and vegetables... Low-carb is the only way I can not feel hungry.

Of course, the general population does like their carbs to be the refined type.

[hx87]

I can easily get full from starchy/fibrous foods, but then I feel hungry again 1 hour later. Fat/protein rich foods, in contrast, keep me full for 4-8 hours.

[jbb555]

I think that fruits have an issue too. The fruit we get today has been bred to contain a lot more sugar than they did originally. I'm not convinced that lots of fruit all the time is as good for you as it ought to be.

[fastoptimizer]

There hasn't been a study showing that calorie controlled fruit diet will cause you any harm (except potential malnutrition if fruit selection is not as varied).

Just like excessive consumption of protein (but with a calorie cap) in healthy people shows no harm, or similar studies on healthy, physically active people.

Diet is just a part of a healthy lifestyle and a huge variety of diets can be healthy. This blaming of particular ingredient or macronutrients is unscientific, I as a skeptic dislike it very much.

Fruits are rich in fiber which slows down the absorption of their more "potent" sugars, not to mention that digestion of that fiber is far more taxing than digestion of something else.

Of course, if I were to eat excessive amount of calories it's quite probable I'd get the same symptoms as those people consuming the equivalent in refined sugars.

[redwards510]

I agree. People always spam the "eat fruits and veggies" meme but come on, what is in fruit? Sugar and some fiber, maybe some vitamins. You are still just eating useless sugar. Let's not delude ourselves that fruits somehow contribute to fulfilling daily macros in a significant way. I consider them a treat, not a staple.

[fastoptimizer]

Sugar isn't useless. It gives you energy to function.

If one overconsumes and allows for that useless sugar to circulate, or useless cholesterol, or useless anything from overconsumption, a plethora of interesting metabolic things happen in the body and some of them cause disease.

This is a very nice skeptical stance on how to observe food in this age of non-personalized medicine and nutrition:

https://atheismfaq.quora.com/Is-this-food-healthy

[balabaster]

They're not entirely bad though, like candy for instance, though perhaps they should be treated like candy. There appears to be some evidence that fibre suppresses the insulin response required to turn sugar to fat.

[gohrt]

The problem is that people say "eat fruits and veggies" but what they hear is "eat [sugary] fruits"

[tetraodonpuffer]

and don't forget about vegetables, I swear every year carrots get sweeter and sweeter, it feels with some carrot cultivars they are nearly as sweet as corn used to be (now corn often just tastes like candy basically to me, some varieties I can't stomach due to them tasting way too sweet)

note I do not eat any sugar or sweeteners and haven't for years, so maybe that's why I am more sensitive to this

[XorNot]

About a year ago I switched over to buying unsweetened, unsalted peanut butter. For about ... 2 days, I actually could tell the difference. Then it was fine. Then about 2 weeks later it tasted pretty much as I remembered peanut butter always tasting.

This gave me a serious moment of pause about how much sugar is added to manufactured foods.

[brandon272]

This is one aspect of sugar and fat that I find confusing. Is sugar in and of itself bad? If I like to eat sugar but am otherwise healthy (healthy weight, plenty of fruits and vegetables, plenty of exercise, etc.), am I still damaging my cardiovascular system?

[fastoptimizer]

Of course not.

Is sunlight bad because it can give you cancer?

Are apples bad because they contain cyanide in seeds you can accidentally consume?

Is red meat bad because it causes cancer?

Is alcohol bad because it causes cancer?

If you feel you're living a healthy lifestyle, you can easily check that by doing some medical tests. No diet related disease is going to invisibly attack you at a random moment in life.

Atherosclerosis is fairly visible. Diabetes too. With regular checks you can be sure you're fine.

[maxxxxx]

Sugar in itself is not necessarily bad in moderation. But the "normal" diet contains way too much and this makes it bad.

[_0w8t]

No - see studies mentioned in https://rawfoodsos.com/2015/10/06/in-defense-of-low-fat-a-ca...

Those shows that sugar on it its own is OK, what is problematic is mixing it with fat. I.e. as long as fat is less that 10%-15% of calories, sugar and carbohydrates are fine.

[romanr]

Sugar is poison. Search YouTube for Lustig lecture video.

[fastoptimizer]

Lustig is unfortunately a scientific crackpot. His lecture has many untruthful statements (like those about Japanese) and puts blame mostly on fructose.

As much as fructose does cause some interesting metabolic problems, unlike glucose, it still cannot be characterized as unhealthy (because the very Japanese he praises eat a lot of fructose and the studies are done on fructose extracts which can't even be reproduced with equivalent fruits in fructose amounts).

He makes equivalent claims to those made by Campbell in his China study that casein from milk causes cancer - of course it does if it's 20 freaking percent of your caloric intake (which is practically impossible to consume long-term).

[brandon272]

http://www.stats.org/glaring-flaws-in-sugar-toxicity-study/

[UweSchmidt]

Individual food components can always be "blamed" relatively to their impact.

You may be accidentaly shifting blame to overconsumption. Something the sugar industry would do :-)

[sridca]

For the record I up-voted you for sensibly pointing out that the amount of food one eats matters (in regards to health) more than the particular ingredients. I guess it will take another 50 years before people begin to realize this.

[logicallee]

this is almost certainly wrong. (That nothing can be blamed.) I can't eat much sugar for medical reasons, so that means that entire aisles are basically unavailable to me. things like cereals, cookies, cakes, lots of delicious stuff. But there is something or someone (or some process or some state of affairs) to blame here.

Because check it out: stevia is delicious, and with splenda and all sorts of other zero-calorie artificial sweetener choices (going back to saccharine) it would be trivial to make almost all of those food choices in varieties that are artificially sweetened. what do you want to bet that the high fructose corn syrup or sugar industry has a say in directing the conversation that leads to these foods simply not existing? They literally don't exist in supermarkets: you make them at home.

why the fuck would an expensive premium food like this - https://www.specialk.com/en_US/products/protein-cereal.html have 20% by weight in sugar! Generally speaking what I've just linked is a great food, and it's premium and expensive and for those who are very health-conscious. It hardly has any calories, converting by multiplying the suggested serving by 3, it has only 360 calories in 100 grams, which contains 30g of protein (so that if you further multiply by three to get to your daily intake, you get to 90g of protein, enough for just about anyone, reaching only 1080 calories - so it seems great to me. you could literally consider this diet food.)

But it has 21 grams of sugar in those 100 grams. (I happened to find someone weighing 100 grams of cereal, though a denser one - here is what that looks like: http://blog.belm.com/wp-content/uploads/cerealpannacotta1.jp... -- * EDIT: also found someone who happened to weigh 20 grams of sugar, this is what that looks like: http://alcademics.typepad.com/.a/6a00e553b3da20883401a3fb659... (that's about 5 cubes of sugar.)).

Why does it have 21% by weight sugar! Why not use an artificial sweetener? Like, it's not even an option.

You can't really find stevia alternatives. The third ingredient in what I just linked was Sugar. Here is someone asking them to include stevia: https://community.kelloggs.com/kelloggs/topics/special-k-pro...

Like, what gives?

I realize that stevia might be expensive compared with sugar, but some people would likely pay for that. You can't get foods made that way though, unless you make it yourself.

why is that? There is someone to blame here. It's a dichotomy: you eat the 21 grams of sugar, or you don't eat the 100 grams of Special K Protein. It's not about overconsumption: it's about a lack of choice. Why doesn't the artificial-sweetener version exist, at all? There is something, or someone (or an abstract economic process, or something) to blame here. While "blaming" an economic process (or a lack of FDA mandate, or ... whatever) might sound bitter due to the phrasing, we can still ask what leads to this state of affairs. I don't usually like to play the "blame game" or put things in those terms, but in this case, I'm missing out on a lot of foods, so yes, I'll do it. If Coca Cola can do it, and get it everywhere, why can't dessert "foods" like oreos or breakfast cereal, do it? They simply don't exist in artificially sweetened versions. Why not?

[maxxxxx]

I also get headaches, fever and joint pain from taking in any sugar. It would be so nice to find cereals where I can add sweetener as needed. In theory they should be cheaper since they don't have to add sugar but in reality they don't even exist.

[DenisM]

Steel-cut oats. Add water and salt, microwave on medium for 12 minutes. Doesn't get any easier, or cheaper.

[maxxxxx]

I know. It just gets old over time. I wouldn't mind sugar free cornflakes for example. Or Ovaltine with Stevia.

[DenisM]

I hear you. I try slicing fruits or berries into it, as well as butter or sour cream. But that gets old as well.

Getting decent carbs that are not boring has proved surprisingly difficult for me.

[maxxxxx]

To make it even worse I also can't handle fruits and berries. They also give me headaches because of their sugar. Getting decent carbs is really hard.

[saint_fiasco]

When cooking, sometimes the taste of the ingredients isn't everything. Have you ever forgotten to put salt to something you were cooking, and then tried to add salt after cooking to correct it? It doesn't taste the same because in addition to just tasting salty, the salt was supposed to participate in some chemical reaction while it was being cooked.

Artificial sweeteners taste like sugar, but they lack its other chemical properties. Just because stevia works just as well as sugar when you put it in your tea, doesn't mean it will work well as part of a complex recipe or processed food.

[logicallee]

certainly. I imagine the Coca Cola company put a ton of research into formulating Coke Zero and getting it accepted as well.

I'm not saying it's a simple substitution. But it's certainly possible, since there are home recipe versions. Nobody asked for parity - it doesn't have to taste the same.

But I'm already talking about a food - Protein Special K - that I expect to already taste like crap compared with some pure sweetness like Honey Nut Cheerios or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. We're talkking about why even a food that does not have to meet as high a standard, that is literally a diet food for fitness-conscious people, still includes 20% sugar by weight?

So while I get what you're saying, it's still a perplexing state of affairs. It's not as though SOME of the cereals came in stevia versions, and some didn't. None of them do. Doesn't exist.

It's possible, it's easy - you can make it at home. It's not available.

And we have an example from the Coca Cola company and its diet coke / coke zero, which are great products, of getting the marketing and other parts right. You can get it everywhere, even McDonald's.

I'm not asking why there isn't a "diet big mac" that has 0 calories -- clearly an impossible goal.

I'm asking why entire aisles, such as the cookie aisles, breakfast cereal aisles, cake aisles, have no product choices, despite this being possible, with artificial sweeteners or stevia (at any price or in limited availability).

It just doesn't make sense. There is something/someone/some state of affairs, to blame here, and the fact that it's not a simple substitution isn't it. I don't need every product to come in a stevia version. But none of them do. This is perplexing, weird, and tells me that there is something/someone/etc to blame. Because you can look up recipes and see that it's easy. When I put artificial sweetener on my oats, I'm literally doing it at home. But no oat mix comes with that. I have to mix it myself. And this is true along many product categories.

Why? There is something fishy here. There is something/someone/some economic process/some state of affairs to blame.

[logfromblammo]

As an experiment, I would try saturating the cereal with water and fermenting with Saccharomyces and Acetobacter to get the sugars out.

I have a hunch that it would taste absolutely horrible, though. I'm not sure there would be enough stevia in the world to bring it back to palatable.

Personally, I would probably prefer to just eat some chicken eggs if I wanted protein for breakfast. That's 160 kcal/100g, with 1g sugar and 13g of protein--as 100% complete protein. And eggs are about $5/kg or less in the US.

I'm not even certain why anybody health-conscious would ever bother with boxed cereals at all, for exactly the reason parent points out--sugar. If I wanted complex carbs in my breakfast, I'd boil a potato, cool it overnight, and heat it back up with the eggs in the morning. No flakes or nuggets are necessary. No sweeteners are necessary. If desired, ketchup is plenty sweet enough for that potato.

But crap.... why can't they make ketchup with stevia, or just unsweetened ketchup? It's back to the same problem. If you can't eat sugar, the American grocery store is mostly a colorful wasteland of foods you just can't touch.

Munchies, munchies, everywhere, and all the cupboards creak; Munchies, munchies, everywhere, nor any speck to eat.

[okreallywtf]

To be honest, I don't like the taste of stevia. It tastes a lot like other sugar substitutes (like aspartame) to me. That being said, I've had it used in cooking (without knowing it) and thought it tasted OK. Maybe in commercial foods they make it taste more like existing sugar substitutes because thats what is expected by people who already seek out sugar free foods?

[logicallee]

You say "who already seek out sugar free foods" but even these people (such as me) are not being sold a product in any of the categories I've mentioned. Stevia and other artificial sweeteners have lots of sales (and you can find boxes of the stuff in literally any grocery store) but there is some process that prevents any of these making it into any product in the mentioned categories, period. Even if people do it themselves. It doesn't make sense to me. What prevents anyone from selling in an assembled form, what people use these things to make? Sales of sweeteners are not low. Lots of people are buying them. Obviously they're buying them to make sweet stuff. so it's not like we're talkiing about "why isn't stevia available in grocery stores." We are talking about "why isn't anyone putting it into cereals, cakes, cookies, in any one of a bunch of categories. why is it entirely missing from whole aisles of the grocery store." I am saying there's something to blame for this. It's not the fact that they don't taste as good (which I'll grant.) I mean, you have people buying plain things and buying stevia to put on it, but you don't have anyone selling the things with stevia in it. Why not?

There's something fishy here. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy by the sugar and high fructose corn syrup industry, but that would certainly have high explanatory power and is the MO mentioned in the article we're reading about....

[fastoptimizer]

I'm a diabetic and I eat 70% of calories in carbs. I make sure they are all low GI.

My statement was mostly about average people, not sick people. I'm fairly sure diseased individuals are an exception and have to make sure to put their disease in remission (or to meet their genetic predispositions) with proper diet plans.

[brandon272]

Coca Cola has a stevia version that seems to be very niche. I rarely see it, nor have I tried it. But I wonder why it hasn't been pushed more, especially in a market where your product is increasingly demonized because of the 30 - 40g of sugar each serving contains.

[brianwawok]

Don't move from sugar to fake sugar. Move from sugar to other flavors.

Using fake sugar is like a diet, and diets don't last. Lifestyle changes do. Like making every thing you eat not need to be sweet.

[ashark]

I think it helps to visualize a soda container as filled with M&Ms or some other candy. You'd feel like a disgusting lard-ass if you had a big cup full of M&Ms with your meal and kept getting refills on it, right? In fact it'd probably seem like such an obviously-bad idea that, even if you really liked cups full of M&Ms, you'd only have them occasionally, as a treat, and you'd still feel kinda guilty about it.

Look at soda that way, and it gets way easier to turn it down. It's basically candy. When you have three glasses of it with a meal (remember when US restaurants didn't do free refills? That was probably a good thing) that's gross and obviously terrible. When you even have a little with most meals it's still gross. A rare treat? Fine, go ahead.

[logicallee]

not true. you can drink diet coke or coke zero for decades and nothing bad will happen.

why do you want to tell me not to eat dessert foods like american cereals for breakfast, or oreos, in some artificially-flavored version. you're simply wrong that this would make my change in lifestyle "not last." I'm not even overweight.

[brianwawok]

Ultimately I only care insofar as I will be in the hook for your medical bills in 20 years. It's your body.

[logicallee]

my Coke example was actually the fact that Diet Coke has existed for decades, and it and Coke Zero are available everywhere. They taste fine. I don't care about a stevia version. I drink lots of diet coke or coke zero (don't have a very strong preference) and want to eat lots of artificially flavored oreos the same way. I can certainly do that: if I take twelve hours to read and track down ingredients and make them myself or something. these products are not made by nabisco, and oreo is just one example. it's the best-selling cookie in america and comes in all these ridiculous flavors:

http://torispilling.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/OREO-FLAV...

including literally "swedish goldfish" which is disgusting on its face, and also actually disgusting as reported here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/4x4lgz/swedish...

and

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4xzdml/my_dad_eats_...

So it's just disgusting.

But if you google Stevia oreos (which wouldn't be disgusting) you get...home recipes to make them.

why? Why, in all of these flavors, including abominations such as swedish goldfish, does stevia not exist?

It doesn't add up. 100%, there's something, someone, some process, some state of affairs to blame here.. . .

[ChoGGi]

Thanks, now I want Oreo to come out with a salmiakki version

Edit: Never mind I see Alex already reviewed a knockoff brand http://www.salmiyuck.com/2010/02/black-domino-salmiakki-chil...