[omikun]

Try eating mostly honey and roots and see how much you can over consume. The problem in US is the variety of food and how engineered they are to be hyper palatable. Snacks are designed to pump sugar into the blood stream, with just enough salt, fat, or carbonation (in drinks) to mask just how much sugar is in everything. That's the reason why warm flat soda tastes disgustingly sweet.

It's not just sugar, but the amount of it, and how fast it is consumed, and how and when do we expend energy (walking after meals directly consume blood glucose b/c calve muscles don't have a glycogen store) impacts fat buildup and T2D. Check out books by Robert Lustig on the subject.

[462436347]

> The problem in US is the variety of food and how engineered they are to be hyper palatable

The best study done to date on hyperpalatable foods found that fat and sodium were the most common drivers of hyperpalatability:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.22639

> The HPF criteria identified 62% (4,795/7,757) of foods in the FNDDS that met criteria for at least one cluster. Most HPF items (70%; 3,351/4,795) met criteria for the FSOD cluster. Twenty-five percent of items (1,176/4,795) met criteria for the FS cluster, and 16% (747/4,795) met criteria for the CSOD cluster. The clusters were largely distinct from each other, and < 10% of all HPF items met criteria for more than one cluster.

(CSOD, carbohydrates and sodium; FS, fat and simple sugars; FSOD, fat and sodium; HPF, hyper-palatable foods.)

> Check out books by Robert Lustig on the subject

Lustig is a crackpot who relies on animal studies and mechanistic speculation, because the highest-quality RCTs (like the ones I cited) don't support his theory.

[tgaj]

>The best study done to date on hyperpalatable foods found that fat and sodium were the most common drivers of hyperpalatability...

No, that was not the conclusion from this study and it's absolutely not true. The only goal of this study was to "..develop a quantitative definition of HPF".

[amanaplanacanal]

Ummm, that's not an RCT. Unless you are talking about one you cited in a different comment?

[462436347]

Fizzino's HPF study, while not an RCT, is the most comprehensive study to date done on HPFs. She's also identified links between HPF proliferation and tobacco companies: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.16332

I cited RCTs in other comments pertaining to macronutrient intake and metabolic health. Lustig instead relies on mouse models and mechanistic speculation to make his case, because the RCTs in humans haven't shown sugar to cause all the ills he claims, without associated weight gain. Meanwhile saturated fat (given the available literature) ironically seems to be able to do much of what Lustig claims (impair insulin sensitivity, increase visceral fat), even without weight gain.