Fatty Foods May Cause Cocaine-Like Addiction 507
WrongSizeGlass writes "A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. The rats that gorged themselves on the human food quickly became obese."
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Informative)
How about the HFCS question?
For fuck's sake, there's HFCS in just about everything we eat these days. After the recent study, I went through my pantry. Wanted to see precisely how much of the stuff it was in.
- Hot dogs? CHECK.
- Oscar Mayer "deli meats" for sandwiches? CHECK.
- Breakfast cereals? Almost universal. If it has "modified corn starch", that's HFCS under a disguised name.
- Salty-type snacks? Check. Even the supposedly all-natural pita chips.
- Anything from Chef Boyardee. Check.
- Frozen pizzas waiting to be heated up? Check. Turns out they add HFCS to the goddamn tomato sauce.
The list goes on but I think you get the picture. We're being fed HFCS EVERYWHERE and we just saw a major study done showing an effect on HFCS, either by brain chemistry or satiety reflex, causing obesity. If they were feeding rats the same stuff in their "fatty foods" (and cheesecake is OMG FUCKING FULL OF IT)...
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:3, Informative)
"...and we just saw a major study done ..."
Surely you could provide a link for a major study that was just done.
HFCS is the same as sugar. That's what's being talked about it the thread you have decided to post in.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Informative)
Yet the news article says it's "fatty foods..." when in reality, it's sugary foods the rats were being fed, that fat being incidental.
No, it's sugary AND fatty foods that the rats were being fed. The summary ignores the sugar, but you're not being any better by ignoring the fat. When the rats get addicted to plain bread or just piles of granulated sugar, then we can talk about your theory.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:4, Informative)
>>>the sugar [and fructose-added corn syrup] lobby is strong...
Fixed. So-called "sugar free" foods that substitute sugar alcohols like sorbitol aren't much better. It's still all sugar and still has fattening properties. (Also gives you lots of gas due to the alcohol.)
More specifically: The fructose half of the sugar is the problem, not the glucose. Plain-old corn syrup (pure glucose) is not harmful to the body, since it's glucose that the body's cells need.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Informative)
Sugar is also high fructose and therefore also fattening.
Chemistry fail. Fructose is a sugar, but not all sugars are fructose. Glucose is not fructose.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:1, Informative)
>>>Some regulation is necessary like banning trans fats when an alternative can be used
Also ban sugar and replace it with an alternative like High Fructose CS. Oh wait..... is this one of the unintended governmental consequences?
Your analogy is terrible. There's nothing wrong with sugar in responsible serving sizes. Eating trans fats in responsible serving sizes still drastically increases [wikipedia.org] your risk of coronary heart disease:
"On a per-calorie basis, trans fats appear to increase the risk of CHD more than any other macronutrient, conferring a substantially increased risk at low levels of consumption (1 to 3% of total energy intake)"
Show me that with sugar or HFCS and then we'll talk about banning them.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Informative)
Here [princeton.edu] ya go.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:3, Informative)
They didn't try all the foods individually, otherwise they might find that bacon is not included. I too thought that they must mean "high fat + high sugar", or maybe just high sugar (but high fat + high sugar is the worst combination for packing on the pounds). If you try eating a load of bacon you'll get full after not too many calories, protein is very filling. I've been eating plenty of protein + fat and low GI carbs for months now and I'm not obese. Yes, I have been exercising also but if I'd been eating cake and ice cream this whole time I'd still be fat.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Informative)
How about the HFCS question?
For fuck's sake, there's HFCS in just about everything we eat these days. After the recent study, I went through my pantry. Wanted to see precisely how much of the stuff it was in.
- Hot dogs? CHECK.
- Oscar Mayer "deli meats" for sandwiches? CHECK.
- Breakfast cereals? Almost universal. If it has "modified corn starch", that's HFCS under a disguised name.
- Salty-type snacks? Check. Even the supposedly all-natural pita chips.
- Anything from Chef Boyardee. Check.
- Frozen pizzas waiting to be heated up? Check. Turns out they add HFCS to the goddamn tomato sauce.
The list goes on but I think you get the picture. We're being fed HFCS EVERYWHERE and we just saw a major study done showing an effect on HFCS, either by brain chemistry or satiety reflex, causing obesity. If they were feeding rats the same stuff in their "fatty foods" (and cheesecake is OMG FUCKING FULL OF IT)...
That's a major reason why I limit the amount of processed foods I eat. I've been doing this for a long time and cook most of my food from scratch. It does not really take a lot of time and the quality of my meals has improved greatly.
A while back, I came across this article by Michael Pollan and I agree with it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html [nytimes.com]
"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants."
Avoid processed/prepackaged stuff as much as possible.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:1, Informative)
How about the HFCS question?
For fuck's sake, there's HFCS in just about everything we eat these days. After the recent study, I went through my pantry. Wanted to see precisely how much of the stuff it was in.
- Hot dogs? CHECK.
- Oscar Mayer "deli meats" for sandwiches? CHECK.
- Breakfast cereals? Almost universal. If it has "modified corn starch", that's HFCS under a disguised name.
- Salty-type snacks? Check. Even the supposedly all-natural pita chips.
- Anything from Chef Boyardee. Check.
- Frozen pizzas waiting to be heated up? Check. Turns out they add HFCS to the goddamn tomato sauce.
The list goes on but I think you get the picture. We're being fed HFCS EVERYWHERE and we just saw a major study done showing an effect on HFCS, either by brain chemistry or satiety reflex, causing obesity. If they were feeding rats the same stuff in their "fatty foods" (and cheesecake is OMG FUCKING FULL OF IT)...
Its in the cereal, and the sausage, and the freaking ketchup. If you aren't meticulous in your label checking when you shop, it will be in every aspect of your meals. Even the damn cows are fed it to fatten them up. Watch the movie King Korn to find out what how the US Government is ultimately responsible for the overdose of corn in our lives.
1) Princeton Link: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/
2) King Korn the movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1112115/
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Informative)
>>>the sugar lobby is weak (USA). That's why there is so damn much HFC in everything.
Bzzzz. The sugar lobby is STRONG and have erected protective tariffs that raised cane sugar's cost to artifically-high levels. Therefore companies look for cheap alternatives (HFCS). This is a classic case of how government laws, which appear good on the surface to protect American sugar workers/farmers, actually cause unintended and harmful consequences.
The sugar tariffs should be removed, so we can import cheap sugar from elsewhere (like Brazil) and therefore make HFCS too expensive to use.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Informative)
The link was to an article about a assemblyman who wants to BAN salts in NY, and cut salts in manufactured products.
This is not the same as requiring proper and correct food labeling.
When people complain about the nanny-state, they aren't complaining about companies having to tell you, correctly, what's in their products, it's when the state says you can't do something as opposed to making the decision yourself based on correct labeling.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:1, Informative)
Double Fail
Sucrose (Table Sugar) Is Glucose and Fructose combined. Thus normal sugar also has fructose in it. No one eats pure glucose (it tastes terrible.)
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Informative)
The difference between "Fructose" and "Sucrose" (table sugar) is significant, biochemically.
Sucrose is a Glucose + Fructose molecule, linked by a glycosidic (read: "Oxygen atom") bond. The body uses an enzyme, Sucrase, to split up that sucrose into its glucose and fructose componenets.
Sucrase acts, indirectly, as regulator of sorts -- when a whole lot of sucrase is being used, the body observes that change and reacts accordingly, "Hey, we're good on sugar!"
But with High Fructose Corn Syrup, the need for Sucrase is bypassed, leaving that regulatory system out of the loop.
The Sugar lobby may be big, but the Corn lobby is much, much, bigger. And it's heavily subsidized. The main reason HFCS is cheaper than sugar is because of government subsidies.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:3, Informative)
Though I agree, I ask of you to suggest some numbers, some reasonable proportions rather than "much" and "reasonable".
Without knowing any physical characteristics of the person in question, their target weight and what their exercise regiment is like, assigning values is pretty pointless, and possibly misleading. Filling in "much" and "reasonable" is an exercise best left to the individual.
Re:Yeah, I can see that... (Score:4, Informative)
The one thing about these foods that I don't agree with is that the poor need to eat them because they can't afford food that is good for them. That's a load of rubbish.
It's not because they're cheap. It's because they're cheap and easy. Poorer people generally need to work longer hourers to earn enough to get by. If they're part of a family, then both parents generally need to work in order to support it. It's hard to come home after ten hours on the job to face preparing and cooking a fresh meal.
Also, canned vegetables are generally artificially sweetened.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:4, Informative)
Uhh... (Score:3, Informative)
Government policy in the United States is designed to promote obesity by socializing the costs of obesity. The first cost is the food itself, which the government pays for in the forms of, to name two, food stamps and the earned income tax credit. Everyone in the United States is required, by law, to pay for food to feed fat people. Really. The second cost of obesity, greatly increased medical care, is now socialized as well.
Uh, dude, America has the LEAST socialized health and welfare policies of the first-world nations. I don't think you can blame socialized medicine for the obesity epidemic when we don't have universal health care like all those skinnier nations do, and we have a much weaker safety net for people who can't afford food on their own. If you want an insight into how government policy influences food choices, you might instead want to look into farm subsidies for certain kinds of produce.
Re:Funny... (Score:3, Informative)
Which studies are these? Last I checked, there is no consensus on what diets lead to weight loss consistently over all populations. In fact, there's a growing body of evidence that indicates that there may be a widely varying set of diets for people of different genetic backgrounds. Which would explain why so many cultures eat carb-heavy diets and are far healthier than Americans. (Not that there aren't other factors, of course.) Scientific American (I think) had an article on it a few months ago.
Also, physics *does*, broadly, explain the caloric in/out. If you eat fewer calories than you expend, you will lose weight because the energy has got to come from somewhere. The problem is in account for energy consumed and energy used. Different people apparently process food differently, so isn't as simple as figuring out the total energy freed up in oxidizing the food.
Our cultural bias against fat skews the research (Score:2, Informative)
The news article uses the headline "fatty foods" but that simply reflects the cultural bias against fat.
And the article also reflects the bias that everything begins in the brain. Check out this researcher's faculty page [scripps.edu]. He's obviously focused on the brain exclusively.
But seminal research like Good Calories Bad Calories [amazon.com] shows us that the reactions are mediated by hormones. Brain effects follow the hormonal influence that makes us eat.
And carbohydrates, not fat, cause insulin release (and chronically elevated insulin levels in people who eat large amounts of carbs, i.e. almost everybody) which causes our cells to suck nutrients and glucose from our blood stream. This makes us hungry, so we eat more. And insulin causes our fat cells to store fat. Our liver converts fructose directly into fat. GCBC also provides a large amount of documented evidence that
Eating fat by itself causes no insulin response, and proteins have a much lower insulin response. Diets like the PaNu [paleonu.com] approach take advantage of this. The idea that saturated fat (which our bodies are composed of) is somehow bad for is is incredibly wrong. The modern research over the past 50 years that has got us to the deadly dietary guidelines that we still provide to diabetics today (low fat, high carb) is thoroughly researched in GCBC. I'd really recommend that anyone with an interest in this field (or just in losing weight) check out GCBC and PaNu.
Article is misleading. Only worry about sugars ! (Score:2, Informative)
This article fails to distinguish between fats and fast-burn carbohydrates.
There is much evidence that fast burn carbs are addictive due to the way that they cause boom-bust cycles of glucose levels. At peak glucose levels the body frantically tries to take glucose out of the blood stream and store it (ultimately as fat). It does this by dumping large quantities of insulin into the blood. The problem is that when the supply of glucose has dried up, the insulin is still there, and this causes a glucose crash, and intense hunger/food cravings. Boom bust causes you to eat too much and makes you fat. It only takes a few grams of sugar to have this effect. The powerful sugar lobby do not want you to know this.
But the effect of fat is less clear.
Fat have had an unfairly bad press. Granted some types of fat are moderately bad for you, and granted that when mixed with sugars, they make it easier to eat far too many calories.
However it is not clear that fats in themselves are in any way bad for your. Whereas sugars are the real enemy.