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."
To quote the great Bob Saget (Score:5, Funny)
Re:To quote the great Bob Saget (Score:5, Funny)
Re:To quote the great Bob Saget (Score:5, Funny)
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No, it's sucked dork. You know you've reached a low point when you're willing to suck dork for your fix.
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Its a good point however if you could get cocaine/heroine for 99 cents, on ANY corner, in a drive through. If it was advertised on every nearly every billboard, if it was glorified on every commercial as a way to bring the family together or to just relax after a hard days work. If no one went to jail for making it. Then no one would to need to suck anything to get one either.
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The idea of cocaine or heroin being advertised as a way to get the family together is absolutely fucking hilarious.
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Nope. And no-one would if drugs were legal and cheap.
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Why would you quote Bob Saget who raped and murdered a girl in 1990?
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That was a real funny quote that actually got me thinking years back that cannabis might not be so bad as some people try to scare you into believing... Nobody sucks dick for weed, and nobody overdosed on the stuff *ever*... Sadly you can't say the same about fatty (or sugary) foods, the death toll is like 0 to a couple million. But I must note that there might be a slight c
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OK, so now... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Right, because Fat people are responsible for the first fatty foods they ate given to them by their parents just like a drug addict, right?
You are probably some young punk who is thin without having to work at it. I was that way, once. 165 lbs ad 5'11" when I got out of high school. Well believe me, even if you work at keeping thin, it's still possible to get fat no matter what you do.
And if you can't have respect for fat people, try a little sympathy.
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And if you can't have respect for fat people, try a little sympathy.
I feel sympathy towards overweight children because their parents are more than likely the cause. The parents should care more about making sure their child is healthy.
I do not, however, feel sympathy towards fat adults. I'm fat myself. I know it is within my power to correct the issue, I'm just lazy. I don't mean that I do nothing but sit around. I'm lazy about watching what I eat and in what portions. I expect a large number of overweight people have similar stories.
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Agreed... I have no one to blame but myself. It's not society's fault; it's not McDonald's fault (although I don't eat there anyway, but you get the idea).
I'm a work-a-holic right now, have two kids to chauffeur around, and don't take the time to eat right and exercise. When I make a conceivable schedule for a day and squeeze in proper meals and a workout around work and kids, my wife asks "where am I on your list?" It just doesn't all fit. But it's my choice, I just choose to continue taking my kids to
Re:Your just pissed because fat people live longer (Score:5, Funny)
The only place with less "socially acceptable" people is
Human food (Score:5, Funny)
This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. (Score:2, Funny)
Any questions?
Yeah, can I get mine over easy? It goes in the syringe better.
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"... people learned to purify or alter cocaine to deliver it more efficiently to their brains... This made the drug more addictive.
... We purify our food...we eat corn syrup."
Can High Fructose Corn Syrup now be listed as a controlled substance and dispensed only by prescription?
Availability (Score:2, Insightful)
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First they came for the Tobacco. But I was not a smoker, and so I said nothing
Then they came for burgers, but by then I was 400lbs. and couldn't leave the house.
But in all seriousness, I see this as gearing up for a fatty-food sin tax. Just as they are taxing and shaming lung-cancer out of existence, they're going to try and make the USA fit.
Now the question regards addiction strength. (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this mean fatty food is "that" addictive, or does this perhaps mean cocaine isn't that addictive? Though I suppose the mere notion of shades of "addictiveness" can be dishonest itself, considering the binary nature of addiction (you either are, or you aren't, and exhibit a different set of behaviors based on that).
Also, I wonder if this study holds true for various other pleasurable inputs. As far as anyone knows, cocaine acts by causing direct stimulation of the reward center, a property shared by (as far as I know) any behavior the brain seeks to reinforce, including eating energy dense foods, so I wonder if things like bathing and receiving affection could also demonstrate similar "cocaine-like addictions," witness OCD handwashing and narcissism.
Seems like the scientists continue to find supporting evidence for the brilliant motto, "Everything in moderation. Including moderation." Except probably cocaine.
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Cocaine causes direct stimulation of certain receptors within the brain associated with pleasure. Energy-dense foods cause _indirect_ stimulation of receptors. The problem with calling anything which stimulates pleasure receptors "addictive" (and therefore implicitly bad) should be obvious, unless y
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I've been doing a horrible job of clearly making my implications lately, lol.
I didn't mean to imply any sort of puritanical value, or even to imply that something "addictive" is bad. If anything, I'd say any act someone enjoys can reach the level of addiction given enough other coinciding factors, and addictive behavior is rarely even the "fault" of the specific behavior but more an emergent consequence of a number of things.
I've been up all night and am now rambling. I hope I haven't said anything too stup
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Also, I wonder if this study holds true for various other pleasurable inputs.
Yes. All this research shows is that pleasurable stimuli are reinforcing. Fatty foods activate reward pathways in the same way cocaine does. But so does sex, gambling, shopping, video games, etc. Choose your poison.
mmm (Score:2)
Solely focused on consuming food... (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming that rats and humans are somewhat similar in their responses, this paints a really sickening and embarrassing picture of fat people. Although they are harmed physically by their obesity, they continue at their own detriment. Maybe they really are like the obese rats who continue to eat food in the face of physical pain, when the healthier rats have been scared away.
Re:Solely focused on consuming food... (Score:5, Interesting)
There might be some other interpretations as well. For example, if the brain chemistry provides such a powerful compulsion, then my sympathy for people in this category goes up, because leaving a donut in the box might be as hard as a coke addict leaving a line on the table.
Or maybe the obese rates are those that had no self-control to start out with. If that's the case, the severe obesity might simply be a visible indicator of a very real character flaw. (Although I have serious questions about the meaning of "moral failure", if brain chemistry determines a person's actions.)
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Or maybe the obese rates are those that had no self-control to start out with. If that's the case, the severe obesity might simply be a visible indicator of a very real character flaw. (Although I have serious questions about the meaning of "moral failure", if brain chemistry determines a person's actions.)
Unless you're going to invoke some mythological explanation like a soul, brain structure and chemistry determine all of a person's actions. We may be extremely complex and chaotic (in the formal mathematical sense), but we're still automata, just like everything else in a deterministic universe.
Re:Solely focused on consuming food... (Score:4, Insightful)
Until science offers a completely predictive model of behavior and thoughts, it would be premature to assume that a soul (in the classical definition) does or doesn't exist. Just as there are "God in the gaps" belief patterns, there can also be "science in the gaps" belief patterns.
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I think that depends on whether or not the universe is deterministic. Maybe. I haven't had nearly enough education or coffee to speak intelligently on this topic.
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It also has possible implications for for the culpability of others in the illness of the obese. With drugs, we might blame the addicts, but then we'd probably also blame the drug dealers and try to throw them in jail. Where does McDonalds stand?
Re:Solely focused on consuming food... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Posting anonymously in case any future insurance company is reading this.)
> Although they are harmed physically by their obesity,
> they continue at their own detriment.
I'm in a 12-step program for compulsive eating (ceahow.org), recovering since 06-Sep-2002.
Before program, I was >300lbs (I'm ~6'3"). I used to eat US$25 at McDonald's every meal. Or 2 large delivery pizzas. Or I'd get 2-3 normal person's carry-out dinners and eat those myself.
Eventually, I was diagnosed with type-II diabetes. I was put on Actos. Actos is an insulin sensitizer which is, IIRC, supposed to make my body better use the insulin my weakened pancreas could produce.
One of the side effects was, when I binged, my blood sugar would quickly crash and my vision would blur. I couldn't read, had trouble seeing well enough to drive. So I planned my binges on staying home.
I had physical, tangible proof my behavior was damaging me *every single time I did it* and yet I continued.
It was about the high.
When I ignored the craving, concentrated on not eating ("Don't eat don't eat don't eat don't eat"), the pressure would build. I would give in to the craving to simply get rid of the pressure, so I could on with my day. The longer I'd go (hours, usually), the harder I'd snap.
I know this article shows a single rat study that may or may not be scientific proof of a causal link in humans. All I can say is I see myself in the rats' behavior. I sympathize with what the rats were going through.
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I had this buddy who was pretty big, sort of like the captain from Wall-E. I'd seen him eat in many social situations and noticed he ate about the same amount of food I did. Thought it was kind of odd that he'd be so large eating a normal amount of food every time I saw him but... weird.
Then later another buddy told me the two of them went to a burger place for lunch, and each got a regular hamburger. Then afterwards after they'd said goodbye he noticed him sneak back and buy 2 more burgers.
So all this t
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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Canning depletes many nutrients, and check the labels -- a lot of canned goods (as well as everything else) have loads of corn syrup. The best way for the poor to eat healthy is to grow a garden; that's what I did when I was poor, and what's more the food tastes a lot better than anything you can buy.
Second best is the most expensive, that's at the farmer's market.
After that is frozen; I always thought I hated peas until I ate fresh ones, turns out it's just canned peas I hate, frozen are almost as good as
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.
Cocaine may cause fatty food-like addiction (Score:2)
There, CNN, fixed your headline for you.
Funny... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, unlike these rats, I did not eat cheesecake, frosting or other foods high in refined carbs. But this POS study doesn't bother to differentiate between high-fat/high-carb, high-fat/low-carb, etc, let alone about the balance or type of fatty acids present in the food (e.g. grass-fed bacon vs. grain-fed). This is not science, not even close.
Re:Funny... (Score:5, Interesting)
Low carb diet is the best diet for losing weight because it works with the body's systems. Carbs are the primary fuel. Take away the primary and it goes to secondary. Be aware of the risks of organ damage and aware of what you intake and you will be fine.
Problem with the low-carb diet is that it is hard to maintain. HARD to maintain. All casual foods are ridiculously high in carbs. Still, when you can do it, it works every time and works extremely well.
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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,
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You think kicking food is hard, try sleep! (Score:2, Funny)
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Fas is fat (Score:2)
Duh. Biologically We've Still In The Savannah. (Score:3, Insightful)
Millions of years of evolution makes animals crave high calorie fatty food and eat as much of it as possible, because they never know when they're going to get the opportunity to do so again. Human beings are no different.
gotta love the footer fortune (Score:2)
Loud burping while walking around the airport is prohibited in Halstead, Kansas.
Why I am not surprised ? Oh... (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me [wikipedia.org]
Super Size Me... (Score:2, Interesting)
In the Documentary Super Size Me, several Doctor's noted the same behavior and stated that Fatty Foods found in Fast Food restaurants (McDonald's in this example) were equal to cocaine in terms of addiction.
I can't compare... (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't compare to drug addiction, because I've never experienced that, but a high is definitely present.
Sometimes, with my tinfoil hat on, I've wondered if Taco Bell was slipping something addictive into the food that makes me keep coming back.
Reward System (Score:2)
Headlines like that are not helping obese people (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this is another case where the media turn something that might be good: increased understanding of how obesity works, into something bad: telling obese people that they have no control over their behaviour, fueling the "it's no my fault, I have a serious illness" justification for doing nothing to help themselves.
It's more neurological than genetic... (Score:2)
As we come to understand more and more about neurology and genetic, an increasing amount of studies on human obesity are shifting from a genetic focus to a neurological focus.
Dr. David Kessler, former FDA commissioner and someone who has struggled with weight in his own life, has an excellent book out called The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite [amazon.com]. NPR [wbur.org] has done some very good interviews with him.
He admits that he started his study expecting to head down the road of genetics
Addictive behavior also results from stress... (Score:4, Interesting)
The "Rat Park" experiment showed that addictive behavior results from stress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park [wikipedia.org]
"""
Rat Park was a study into drug addiction conducted in the late 1970s (and published in 1980), by Canadian psychologist Bruce K. Alexander and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.
Alexander's hypothesis was that drugs do not cause addiction, and that the apparent addiction to opiate drugs commonly observed in laboratory rats exposed to it is attributable to their living conditions, and not to any addictive property of the drug itself. [1] He told the Canadian Senate in 2001 that prior experiments in which laboratory rats were kept isolated in cramped metal cages, tethered to a self-injection apparatus, show only that "severely distressed animals, like severely distressed people, will relieve their distress pharmacologically if they can." [2]
To test his hypothesis, Alexander built Rat Park, a 8.8 m2 (95 sq ft) housing colony, 200 times the square footage of a standard laboratory cage. There were 16-20 rats of both sexes in residence, an abundance of food, balls and wheels for play, and enough space for mating and raising litters. [3] The results of the experiment appeared to support his hypothesis. Rats who had been forced to consume morphine hydrochloride for 57 consecutive days were brought to Rat Park and given a choice between plain tap water and water laced with morphine. For the most part, they chose the plain water. "Nothing that we tried," Alexander wrote, "... produced anything that looked like addiction in rats that were housed in a reasonably normal environment." [1] Control groups of rats isolated in small cages consumed much more morphine in this and several subsequent experiments.
The two major science journals, Science and Nature, rejected Alexander, Coambs, and Hadaway's first paper, which appeared instead in Psychopharmacology, a respectable but much smaller journal in 1978. The paper's publication initially attracted no response. [4] Within a few years, Simon Fraser University withdrew Rat Park's funding.
"""
Many people in today's industrialized society are under a lot of stress. Creating healthier communities may help reduce addictive behavior. One example of how to do that is here:
"About the AARP/Bluezones Vitality Project"
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about [bluezones.com]
Another is here:
"Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy"
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C [google.com]
Vitamin D deficiency from being indoors too much also contributes to obesity and depression.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml [vitamindcouncil.org]
For more on breaking out of a "pleasure trap" leading to obesity, see these:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm [healthpromoting.com]
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508 [amazon.com]
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X [amazon.com]
That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-carb (Score:5, Interesting)
If you consider what the most fast and junk food are:
pizzas, hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, sandwiches, kebab rolls, baguettes, kfc's fried chicken, pan pizzas, nuggets and so on.. like this illustrative image shows [dropbox.com].
It's not only high-fat thats the problem, but also high-carb. I never really crave for high-fat but low-carb food and my body feels a lot better with low-carb food. It's the combination of high-fat and high-carb that is bad, and leaves all the fat in your body because carbs burn first.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Interesting)
High fat is not the problem at all. Try gorging yourself on a block of good cheddar and see how much you can eat and how addictive it is. It's not. The addiction is all in the sugars, starches and carbohydrates in general.
Now to read the actual paper:http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nn.2519.pdf
"The cafeteria diet consisted of bacon, sausage, cheesecake, pound cake, frosting and chocolate" - in other words, full of sugar!!! 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. But of course, the sugar lobby is strong...
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:4, Interesting)
Bacon is sugary? Sausage is sugary? Granted, the cake entries are both high-fat and high-sugar, but saying all the food items are high-sugar is wrong. They are all high-fat, though.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of sausages actually contain a lot of carbohydrates. If you eat sausages, you should go with the ones that are almost full meat. The common belief is that bacon is some extremely fatty food, but it really isn't if you don't mix it with carbohydrates. It's salty though, and that's not really good either.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One nice thing about bacon, particularly if you like it crispy, is that you can cook a good chunk of the fat out of it. Sure, it's not great for you, but crispy bacon in moderation isn't too bad.
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but crispy bacon in moderation
Now there's two things I never thought I'd see in the same sentence!
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Before / After ban (Score:3, Insightful)
After the ban "against excessive salt in processed foods" : :
- People who don't like too salty food and people with medical problems (hypertension)
buy processed foods.
- People who like salty food and who don't give crap about their health :
buy processed foods.
sprinkle some additional salt before consumption.
---
Before the ban : :
- People who like salty food and who don't give crap about their health
buy processed foods.
- People who don't like too salty food and people with medical problems (hyper-tension) :
to
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You have it backwards - that bill would allow people to choose by adding their own salt to food, instead of having it arrive with some unknown quantify of salt in it already. As I read it, that bill did not ban restaurants from having a salt shaker on the table. (If so, I would oppose it). So it doesn't actually restrict salt, it just makes it "opt in" instead of having no choice.
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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 eatin
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:5, Informative)
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> Those "studies" must be BS, because nobody ever said "man I'll suck your dick" for a pack of sugar.
I recomend you don't ask your nan what she did back in the war to get by then.
In conclusion supply / demand. If sugar were as restricted as coke your dick would be sucked for it just as much.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:4, Insightful)
Buy your girlfriend some nice chocolates. You might be surprised.
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:4, Informative)
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:4, Interesting)
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:5, Funny)
the sugar lobby is weak (USA). That's why there is so damn much HFC in everything. It's the corn lobby that's strong
Although there appears to be (or have been at one time) a 'sugar Mafia'; years ago, in a restaurant, I noticed that the packets of sugar had an interesting set of statements on the back:
The last line had everyone at the table laughing at the mental image of the sugar Mafia coming around to strongarm cooks... "That's a tasty-looking cake you got there... be a shame if something happened to it."
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Reminds me of this advertisment [google.com] in the July 23, 1956 issue of Life, claiming that eating sugar "...offers a new way to more effective weight control."
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.
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Pasta is not good, not least because wheat is generally not good for you. Naturally occurring sugar is still sugar - it matters not. With fruit you may get a few extra nutrients with it, but it doesn't make the sugar content itself any better for you.
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)...
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"...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)
Here [princeton.edu] ya go.
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>>>HFCS, either by brain chemistry or satiety reflex, causing obesity
You think replacing High Fructose CS with Sugar is better? Because it ain't.
Sugar is also high fructose and therefore also fattening.
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: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.
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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:5, Insightful)
I've been doing this weird thing lately.... "cooking". From base ingredients. I don't mean some kinda "all natural" kick, but most of my meals are cooked using basics. Flour. Sugar. Water. Various cooking oils. Beef/Chicken/Vegetable stock. Spices. Rice. Pasta in reasonable amount. Vegetables - fresh or fresh frozen -- which should take up a larger portion of your meal than they probably do. I also started exercising* a few times a week, and eating reasonable proportions -- and as a result of those changes have lost forty pounds and counting. I still eat the crappy stuff with too much HFCS and excessive fat (I've a mental addiction to cheeze-its and butterfingers) but in moderation.
THe problem here isn't HFCS. It's not fatty foods. If anything, part of the problem lies in looking for external factors to blame. It's eating too much food, too regularly, and most of us not getting any significant exercise*. In my case, for a long time it was lack of knowledge of when is "enough" to eat .(Hint - if you feel full when you're done eating, you've eaten far too much.) Once you have that knowledge, it's also lack of willingness to exercise self control.
The point of this mini-rant: look to yourself when trying to find a reason. For the vast majority of people, it starts and ends there. If you think it's HFCS -- ok, fine. But HFCS in quantity is far easier to avoid than you make it sound. Hell, fresh bread takes 30 minutes of actual time once a week, without even using a bread machine. Most other alternatives are as easy; or come with a slight increase of time in exchange for healthier food that tastes as good or better.
* By "exercise" I'm not talking about anything drastic. I started walking my dogs for 30 minutes at a brisk walk, 4-5 times a week. I also started using stairs instead of elevators for up to three flights at work and not just one flight. More recently I've started running, but that's after I lost most of the weight and I do it because (amazingly) I find that it feels good.
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Wait, suggesting that we're eating bad foods is "looking to external factors to blame", but suggesting that we're eating too much food isn't? I don't see the difference.
The difference is between blaming the foods you eat, and accepting responsibility for your choice to consume them -- and there *is* a choice.
Beyond that, *everything* has HFCS in it. If you go to the grocery store and buy bread and apple juice, each of those probably have corn syrup in them.
Fresh meats don't. Frozen and fresh vegetables don't. Potatoes (even several brands of instant potato) don't. There's a huge list of things that *don't* have it -- but that depends on the types of things you're looking to buy.
Yes, it's theoretically true that we could expect people to cook all their own meals from scratch, never go out to eat, bake their own bread and juice their own fruits.
Nowhere did I say "all" or "never" though. I still go out. I still eat store-bought bread (though not as often). I still eat quick meals. I
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HFCS isn't everywhere. It's just in all the crappy food that you have in your pantry.
Did you think about what you were posting before you posted it?
Re:That happens when its BOTH high-fat and high-ca (Score:4, Insightful)
High fats aren't the problem - high carbs are, especially the kinds in corn syrup and sugar (starches are a little less bad, but still bad overall).
Note that you need some, but not as much as you get in some of these foods.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not only high-fat thats the problem, but also high-carb. I never really crave for high-fat but low-carb food and my body feels a lot better with low-carb food. It's the combination of high-fat and high-carb that is bad, and leaves all the fat in your body because carbs burn first.
High fat versus low fat ... high carbohydrate versus low carbohydrate ... the problem is probably better defined as incorrect portion sizing. High fat or high carbohydrate foods are only themselves the problem when you give them to a mindless animal that has a stomach evolved to pack in as much as it can when given to it. When you give a dog five pounds of bacon, it will eat as much as its stomach can hold. It'd do the same thing with a deer carcass but would more than likely get less fat and less calori
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>>>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?
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I disagree about the Baguette, monsieur. It's just bread, not particularly fat, though with a lot of slow sugar. It's basically cereals, and in a healthier form that what you yankees eat for breakfast. But then, it has to be made daily, and also purchased daily by walking to the boulangerie du quartier before breakfast, which explains why you understand nothing about it :-p
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If you do any real exercise then you need a pretty high proportion of your total calorie intake in complex carbs . It's worth distinguishing between simple carbs and complex carbs, You don't really need much sugar in your diet, but you need a reasonable amount of complex carbs.
If you're a total couch potato you're going to have health issues whatever kind of diet you take.
Though I agree, I ask of you to suggest some numbers, some reasonable proportions rather than "much" and "reasonable".
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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.
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First post should have been OMNOMNOM!!
Re:That explains a lot. (Score:5, Funny)
"A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin.
Like heroin and alcohol, food is so addictive that the withdrawal symptoms can kill you! Just say NO to eating!
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,