Have you ever seen or even heard of a person who is obese who doesn’t eat hyperpalatable foods? (That is, they only eat naturally tasting, unprocessed, “healthy” foods).
This seems like the occam’s razor expanation to me. Some of our new flavour/texture combinations are so rewarding that they easily overcome the natural stop signals, leading to excess caloric consumption in most (to a variable degree), which leads to weight gain in some.
A study which gave its participants a 1000cal/day dietary surplus found while some participants gained 14kg of fat over the course of the study (I think it was for 3 months), others gained as little as 4kg. As one would expect, there is genetic variance in one’s vulnerability to the effects of a harmful caloric surplus, and there is probably also genetic variance in one’s susceptability to hyperpalatable foods.
Have you ever seen or even heard of a person who is obese who doesn’t eat hyperpalatable foods? (That is, they only eat naturally tasting, unprocessed, “healthy” foods).
Tried this for many years. Paleo diet; eating mainly broccoli and turkey; trying to get most of my calories from giant salads. Nothing.
Might not be the right place to ask this question but: Have you tried bariatric surgery? I’m sure you’ve done a bunch of research and was wondering if you hadn’t because of something you’d read, or you had and it didn’t work, or some third thing.
The study I would like to see is giving obese people unlimited access to only natural foods for 3 months. They could add salt and spices, but no oil and definitely no sugar. The diet would be lean(ish) meats, fruits, vegetables and legumes (unsure if allowing nuts is a good idea as they’re extremely calorie dense, but technically they should be allowed under this definition).
I would be surprised if this didn’t work. Under this model I view hyperpalatble foods as equivalent to an addictive drug for obese people. Just as if you have a poor phenotype for alcoholism, you should avoid alcohol altogether, if you have a poor phenotype for the overconsumption of hyperpalatable foods, and a poor phenotype for the conversion of those extra calories into fat, you should avoid hyperpalatble foods.
People get fat eating fruits, which are obviously ‘natural’, and are basically candy. A lot of natural foods fail on the actual criteria (Cashews also fail, for instance.). Does it fill you up? Does it make you not want to keep eating (physical signals)? Are you satisfied enough (psychologically) to be done? Did it give you the nutrients you need (both for your health and to prevent cravings)? Is all of this finished before you ate too many calories?
Are you implying that there are examples of people like BDay mentioned, who are obese despite only eating fruits/nuts/meat/veggies? Or just that people can get fat while including fruit in the diet? I’d be surprised and intrigued if it were the former.
I’ve tried the whole foods diet, and I’ve personally found it surprisingly hard to overeat, even when I let myself eat as many fruits and nuts as I want. You can only eat so many cashews before they start to feel significantly less appetizing. And after I’ve eaten 500 cal of cashews in one sitting, the next time I’m feeling snacky, those cashews still sound kinda meh. Fruit is certainly easier to eat, but still after the fourth or fifth clementine I feel like “ok that’s enough” (and that’s probably only ~300 calories). Whereas I could easily eat 500 cal of candy without breaking a sweat.
I think one major roadblock to overeating with fruit is that it takes effort to eat. You have to peel an orange, or cut up a kiwi or melon, or bite off the green part of a strawberry. There’s a lot more work involved in eating 500 cal of fruit than there is in unwrapping a candy bar or opening a party size bag of chips.
So all of this rambling is just to say that I’m somewhat skeptical of the claims that “fruit (nuts) are mostly sugar (fat) and are calorie dense, and you can overeat them just like you can with junk food”. I think it’s surprisingly hard in practice to do so (and it’s much less enjoyable than overeating junk food).
Fruits have lots of fibers. Fibers both reduce sugar absorption in the guts and slow it down, evening the amount of sugar that gets in the blood stream over time (avoiding peaks that cause mass insulin production followed by a sugar dip when insulin keeps being produced while sugar intake drops, causing sudden fatigue). Fibers also fill the stomach, stretching it which signals satiety. You only get those benefits if you eat the whole fruit. In juices, slushies and the like, the fibers have been cut in small pieces and they effect is significantly reduced.
I was not stating that I believe a whole foods diet won’t be helpful for many people, just pointing out that not all whole foods are good if you need to lose weight. Most diets work a little, and whole foods is one people find easy to understand (and, I suspect, to live with.) It isn’t just better than nothing, it could genuinely be useful.
I am implying that adding fruit to a diet is not helpful whatsoever to weight (unless you want to gain weight and just need more calories.) Fruit makes many people much hungrier due to very high sugar and general carb counts, and causes both physical and psychological cravings, while not providing the fats and proteins people need to stop craving food. I do not know of someone trying a fruit only diet (which would be very stupid), so I can’t say I have evidence that they would be fat if eating only fruit.
I do agree with you that the minimal extra effort to prepare the fruits for eating does often help reduce the amount eaten, but I would say this works much better for people that don’t have significant physiological cravings to eat. If you are normal weight and healthy, it isn’t that bad to eat fruit once in a while, just like a cookie or two won’t hurt you. For people that actually have trouble due overeating, fruit is still very binge-able. (Fruit cravings are definitely something I’ve seen a lot of in the obese people I know.)
Minimally processed meats and most vegetables are not prone to fattening people, while I believe certain nuts (like cashews) are. Cashews are not particularly satiating (notably, the body only finds saturated fats satiating, not unsaturated), and do not fill the stomach either. For the same (high) number of calories it would be vastly harder to eat it in meat than cashews, even if you like meat more. I have nothing against fat being part of the diet, but cashews just don’t work that well.
edit: moved a paragraph, changed the spelling of a word
And then there is the issue of availability in nature. Most fruits are only available seasonally in nature but we have fixed that. This temporary availability in quantity may be IMHO what drives binge eating of sweet foods. Because in nature it is a case of use it or lose it.
Have you ever seen or even heard of a person who is obese who doesn’t eat hyperpalatable foods? (That is, they only eat naturally tasting, unprocessed, “healthy” foods).
This seems like the occam’s razor expanation to me. Some of our new flavour/texture combinations are so rewarding that they easily overcome the natural stop signals, leading to excess caloric consumption in most (to a variable degree), which leads to weight gain in some.
A study which gave its participants a 1000cal/day dietary surplus found while some participants gained 14kg of fat over the course of the study (I think it was for 3 months), others gained as little as 4kg. As one would expect, there is genetic variance in one’s vulnerability to the effects of a harmful caloric surplus, and there is probably also genetic variance in one’s susceptability to hyperpalatable foods.
Tried this for many years. Paleo diet; eating mainly broccoli and turkey; trying to get most of my calories from giant salads. Nothing.
Might not be the right place to ask this question but: Have you tried bariatric surgery? I’m sure you’ve done a bunch of research and was wondering if you hadn’t because of something you’d read, or you had and it didn’t work, or some third thing.
The study I would like to see is giving obese people unlimited access to only natural foods for 3 months. They could add salt and spices, but no oil and definitely no sugar. The diet would be lean(ish) meats, fruits, vegetables and legumes (unsure if allowing nuts is a good idea as they’re extremely calorie dense, but technically they should be allowed under this definition).
I would be surprised if this didn’t work. Under this model I view hyperpalatble foods as equivalent to an addictive drug for obese people. Just as if you have a poor phenotype for alcoholism, you should avoid alcohol altogether, if you have a poor phenotype for the overconsumption of hyperpalatable foods, and a poor phenotype for the conversion of those extra calories into fat, you should avoid hyperpalatble foods.
People get fat eating fruits, which are obviously ‘natural’, and are basically candy. A lot of natural foods fail on the actual criteria (Cashews also fail, for instance.). Does it fill you up? Does it make you not want to keep eating (physical signals)? Are you satisfied enough (psychologically) to be done? Did it give you the nutrients you need (both for your health and to prevent cravings)? Is all of this finished before you ate too many calories?
Are you implying that there are examples of people like BDay mentioned, who are obese despite only eating fruits/nuts/meat/veggies? Or just that people can get fat while including fruit in the diet? I’d be surprised and intrigued if it were the former.
I’ve tried the whole foods diet, and I’ve personally found it surprisingly hard to overeat, even when I let myself eat as many fruits and nuts as I want. You can only eat so many cashews before they start to feel significantly less appetizing. And after I’ve eaten 500 cal of cashews in one sitting, the next time I’m feeling snacky, those cashews still sound kinda meh. Fruit is certainly easier to eat, but still after the fourth or fifth clementine I feel like “ok that’s enough” (and that’s probably only ~300 calories). Whereas I could easily eat 500 cal of candy without breaking a sweat.
I think one major roadblock to overeating with fruit is that it takes effort to eat. You have to peel an orange, or cut up a kiwi or melon, or bite off the green part of a strawberry. There’s a lot more work involved in eating 500 cal of fruit than there is in unwrapping a candy bar or opening a party size bag of chips.
So all of this rambling is just to say that I’m somewhat skeptical of the claims that “fruit (nuts) are mostly sugar (fat) and are calorie dense, and you can overeat them just like you can with junk food”. I think it’s surprisingly hard in practice to do so (and it’s much less enjoyable than overeating junk food).
Fruits have lots of fibers. Fibers both reduce sugar absorption in the guts and slow it down, evening the amount of sugar that gets in the blood stream over time (avoiding peaks that cause mass insulin production followed by a sugar dip when insulin keeps being produced while sugar intake drops, causing sudden fatigue). Fibers also fill the stomach, stretching it which signals satiety. You only get those benefits if you eat the whole fruit. In juices, slushies and the like, the fibers have been cut in small pieces and they effect is significantly reduced.
I disagree only in that I don’t think the amount of fiber is sufficient to make up for it.
I was not stating that I believe a whole foods diet won’t be helpful for many people, just pointing out that not all whole foods are good if you need to lose weight. Most diets work a little, and whole foods is one people find easy to understand (and, I suspect, to live with.) It isn’t just better than nothing, it could genuinely be useful.
I am implying that adding fruit to a diet is not helpful whatsoever to weight (unless you want to gain weight and just need more calories.) Fruit makes many people much hungrier due to very high sugar and general carb counts, and causes both physical and psychological cravings, while not providing the fats and proteins people need to stop craving food. I do not know of someone trying a fruit only diet (which would be very stupid), so I can’t say I have evidence that they would be fat if eating only fruit.
I do agree with you that the minimal extra effort to prepare the fruits for eating does often help reduce the amount eaten, but I would say this works much better for people that don’t have significant physiological cravings to eat. If you are normal weight and healthy, it isn’t that bad to eat fruit once in a while, just like a cookie or two won’t hurt you. For people that actually have trouble due overeating, fruit is still very binge-able. (Fruit cravings are definitely something I’ve seen a lot of in the obese people I know.)
Minimally processed meats and most vegetables are not prone to fattening people, while I believe certain nuts (like cashews) are. Cashews are not particularly satiating (notably, the body only finds saturated fats satiating, not unsaturated), and do not fill the stomach either. For the same (high) number of calories it would be vastly harder to eat it in meat than cashews, even if you like meat more. I have nothing against fat being part of the diet, but cashews just don’t work that well.
edit: moved a paragraph, changed the spelling of a word
Given the massive changes in fruits from selective breeding, I disagree. I would classify most fruits in the hyperpalatable category.
How many of the bananas in the article below are you going to eat?
https://www.sciencealert.com/fruits-vegetables-before-domestication-photos-genetically-modified-food-natural
And then there is the issue of availability in nature. Most fruits are only available seasonally in nature but we have fixed that. This temporary availability in quantity may be IMHO what drives binge eating of sweet foods. Because in nature it is a case of use it or lose it.