The western high-fat/carb diet also seems to cause Akkermansia populations to drop
The West, typically, eats a tiny, tiny fraction of the fat it used to. And also far less animal fat.
Do you know what went in soups, stews? Bones, with fat, for flavour, and energy, and nutrition.
What were pies made of? Pies, made to allow older apples and such, to be used past their best date?
Loads of animal fat in the crust.
And, especially in Canada, our pork is now leaner than beef was 50 years ago! And our beef is silly lean.
We eat far, far less fat than our ancestors, who would never throw away such valuable, nutritious calories.
If the simple metric is, why were we thin before, and overweight now? And if the answer is "our diet changed", then this logic means we should all be eating about 10x the calories we currently do, in animal fat, and tapering off the rest.
What if all those craving are just simply "the body needs more nutritious fat". Just like our ancestors ate.
What if we crave salty snacks, coated in vegetable oil (potato chips), because our body desperately wants salty fat?
Being overweight is far, far more unhealthy than eating more animal fat daily.
What if the cost of low fat diets, is an irresistable urge which causes weight gain?
If so, low fat diets are, therefore, very unhealthy... because being overweight is far worse.
I’d focus on getting fruit, vegetables, legumes, fiber, and everything that comes with it back into the western diet before I’d look at animal fat as the silver bullet we’re missing.
Too few animal products doesn’t seem like the thing the SAD is missing, either.
> Can't be the excess food intake. Like too much sweets and meat. No. Fat people are not eating enough fat. It's so simple.
There can be second order effects. For example, it's not that eating a bunch of animal fat will magically get or keep you thin. Instead, it's likely that eating fat you'll not eat as much of it, and even better: eat little to no sweets or other "junk".
I'm not convinced that eating too much meat gets people fat. By that, I mean the meat itself. What I've noticed when eating out, is that meat is often drenched in some kind of syrupy sauce. And I notice that whenever I eat such a meal, I'm left hungrier, or get hungry quicker afterwards, compared to if I eat the same quantity of meat but with just a few spices. Most of the times, I'll find there's too much meat, and not even finish it. But with the sauce? I'll only stop when I'm physically bursting.
Another poster touches on this, talking about satiety. It's very clear to me that some foods just give me the impression of being hungry and wanting to keep on eating them. And it requires a great deal of will power to not indulge. Bonus points for these foods being "bite-sized", when you figure "just one won't make a difference". Only issue is, "you can't eat only one", as the ad says.
There was a concerted effort to reduce fat intake in the United States throughout the latter half of the 20th century, and the timing of this effort lines up pretty well with the beginning of the obesity epidemic.
I enjoyed the documentary Fed Up which claimed that when the low fat craze was beginning, the industry had a lot of excess fat, so you also see a rise in cheese advertising around the same time.
That's almost zero carbs (if we're talking about "sausage" hodogs, and not "sausage-in-bread-bun" hotdogs)... fat makes you feel full faster and longer, and kimchi add vitamins and almost zero calories, so no wonder you're losing weight :)
Replace those with potato chips and chocolate, and you'll be fat very soon :)
I think the upshot of much of this research is that sugar and fat aren’t directly the issue. That gut bacteria actually have a much bigger impact on both energy expenditure and appetite than we thought. Insofar as diet has a major effect on obesity (in the epidemic sense we’re seeing in the US) it might be due to diet having a harmful effect on gut bacteria. Or it might not. It’s an intriguing hypothesis, and it’s disappointing to see it devolving into an argument about “not eating too many sweets.”
Then there’s the classic lean chicken and tequila diet[1] (plus green vegetables). It’s physically impossible to gain bodyfat on that diet because the storage form of protein is muscle and other lean tissue and the storage form of alcohol is there isn’t one. The body preferentially metabolizes ethanol for immediate energy needs over all other macronutrients. So if you have fat or carbohydrates in your diet they will get stored as adipose tissue, but if you stick to protein and ethanol you’re good.
The above is a joke. However it’s useful to know if you’re cutting and planning to attend an event where you’ll be consuming alcohol. Just skip all carbs and fat that day and eat protein and dietary fiber and you won’t set yourself back at all.
[1] Any lean protein source will do, including bison, grass fed beef, some fish, some pork cuts, and so on. Same for the ethanol, has to be pure spirits, no sugar mixers.
"and the storage form of alcohol is there isn’t one."
Do you have a source for this? I would think at least secondarily it could cause fatty liver or beer belly, even if it's technically using the calories from other sources.
It’s been a while since I Google scholared this and I’m not interested in being an unpaid research assistant. I have no reason to lie, but if you want to check my claims you’ve got the tools at your fingertips.
The essence is that there is no metabolic pathway to convert dietary ethanol into lipids or glycogen. Any unused ethanol is excreted through the lungs or kidneys. Granted ingesting enough ethanol such that it’s too much for your immediate energy needs is a life limiting decision.
I'm 99% sure you're correct on the alcohol reference. From what I've read, alcohol cannot be stored but gets prioritized as caloric fuel for the body. Regarding lean protein, I'm also sure that protein gets broken down into glucose for fuel, and can be stored as such in fat. It's why the keto community is really big on such a relatively low percent of protein and high percent fat in their diet.
That diet probably works wonders because if you have ever tried to eat a bunch of lean meat, it's difficult to get through an entire chicken breast, let alone excess calories it would require you to put on weight.
Alcohol is metabolised to ATP and unused ATP will of course be stored as glycogen later. When glycogen storage are full, fat is deposited. Glucose is needed + ATP. High Protein intake will lead to gluconeogensis and create the glucose.
Please link to a metabolic ward study showing ethanol observably being converted into bodyfat through a glycogenesis to lipogenesis pathway. I only found ones saying it never happened, so I’m very interested in any counter example.
You just went from answering someone that asked you for a source with "I’m not interested in being an unpaid research assistant" to asking someone else "please link to a metabolic ward study showing..." in the same thread. Maybe people would feel a bit more generous with their time if you were willing to do the same?
> Regarding lean protein, I'm also sure that protein gets broken down into glucose for fuel, and can be stored as such in fat.
Glycogenesis is certainly a thing. However every metabolic ward study I read found that there was never a glycogenesis -> lipogenesis pathway observed. Instead excess protein was discarded renaly.
Note that it's called "beer belly" and not "alcohol belly". Beer has a not insignificant number of calories even if you don't factor in potential overeating from intoxication. If by "secondarily" you mean overeating while intoxicated I guess you could also factor in organ damage from drunk driving accidents or fights.
Not just overeating. If the body performs to use the alcohol as energy as claimed, then the normal amount of calories that you already ate would be stored instead of used. Alcohol and it's metabolites can directly cause organ damage.
Years ago I read about the massive amount of grease (food waste from kitchens) in the London sewer system and thought ~what went wrong in our (my/Western/Euro-centric) culture where we don't use the fat?
Also, if animal fat is important for our health, that's another reason we don't scale well as a species. Seven billion humans and life on the planet continues to groan.
Ties in with the thread about how comicbook stores aren't kid-friendly; we (the relatively wealthy, globally) have been growing accustomed to having whatever sideshow we want as the main course in life. It's an easier life for a few of us in the short run, and an interesting experiment. [0]
Pork raised on a small farm has ridiculously pure white fat. Heritage bacon fat turns clear as it is cooked. It's delicious, even unseasoned, and the texture is firm and pleasing. The flavor is nutty.
Industrially raised pork fat is disgusting. It is pinkish gray, milky, and stringy. It does not properly render during cooking (seems like too much connective tissue). It is mostly flavorless, or even acrid, and the texture is more chewy than firm.
The problem with the US farm system is that our food should be more expensive. Eggs, poultry, pork, beef, but also many vegetables. breads, etc, just don't have the dietary benefit that we had in the past. Garden grown celery is almost inedible raw - the flavor is so intense a single stalk can flavor an entire stew. Garden grown carrots are hearty and flavorful.
The quality of the food we are producing tends to be abysmal.
We can can unsaturated fat from olive oil and omega3 from walnuts/flax- or chiaseeds.
<add> ~70% of mankind lives close to water, ie have acces to fish (O3). There are tribes that that don't. When they shoot an ape, they eat the brain (O3) and intestines (unsaturated fats). The meat gets thrown away.
"What if all those craving are just simply "the body needs more nutritious fat". Just like our ancestors ate."
Not necessarily fat, but most produce has lower nutritional value than it did 100 years ago, at least for some nutrients. It sounds like there are a variety of potential causes - soil depletion, synthetic macro fertilizer ignoring micronutrients, selection or genetic modification for larger/faster varieties with plants unable to move enough of certain nutrients to the larger fruit load, longer storage times due to modern supply chains, etc.
> The West, typically, eats a tiny, tiny fraction of the fat it used to. And also far less animal fat.
We dont do the exercise of previous generations.
One study conducted around the early 1900's got ordinary people off the street to carry out a set of physical tasks. What stood out for me was the tasks and time it took to complete, todays special forces people would struggle to keep up with the physical exercise of those from the 1900's.
Yes our diets have changed, we can grow food more quickly, the nutrition of the food is different to that seen in the early 1900's and arguably less nutritious but satisfies the short term needs of an over populated planet.
One example, muscle density is in decline, for example US special forces know that black people have higher muscle density that Caucasians, this means Black people cant tolerate the cold or swim because they dont have the layers of fat seen in Caucasians. To the point Black US special forces have successfully sued the US military over Arctic deployments because they fail in this environment and the US military knew this before deployment.
What the science doesnt tell, is Caucasians used to have the same muscle density and limited amount of fat in/on their body as seen with Black Americans generally.
Carnitine is one of those chemicals which increases muscle density and its similar to Choline, main food source Beef Steak! Even ground beef has substantially lower levels, the mechanical processing removes some of it. Now this shows how science can obfuscate, look at the studies which show Choline aiding exercise and weight loss, Carnitine is structurally similar but studies on Carnitine generally dissuades people from using it for exercise enhancement. So if you didnt know about the structural similarity of the two, you wouldnt link their biological properties together.
There are a lot of chemicals like this and some chemicals which are generally seen as the best FORM to take are not always available in a unadulterated form of bulk consumer amounts, but only as a consumer end product adulterated with other chemicals you dont really wont and in some cases working against the chemical in question.
Diet is a very expensive absolute mind field, fortunately even the medical experts dont know it all because of their instance on injecting some chemicals still!
People seem shocked when they find out that high-fat diets can be hugely beneficial for weight loss. I couldn't lose weight if it wasn't for keto. And the plus side is once you're used to eating high fat foods, you're just not as hungry. I've been finding myself kind of forcing to eat just to get enough calories now. Although I will say, some of these low carb ice creams are delicious and pack a ton of calories and fat.
Protein too. Americans used to consume considerably more animal protein, especially red meat. For example the typical Union Civil War field ration included 20 ounces of meat. I don’t have any non military data, but I’d bet that the rations were modeled on the civilian diet.
Field rations are hardly representative of normal diets. Meat consumption has gone up since we invented industrialized meat farming, because meat got so much cheaper.
> Americans used to consume considerably more animal protein, especially red meat.
This is not true.
Per capita meat consumption has increased over the last century, with red meat consumption peaking in the 1970s. It looks like total meat consumption has increased about 40% since the early 1900s.
If you're going to falsify my claim that 19th century Americans ate more protein and red meat, you may want to find some sources that aren't talking about the 20th century.
The West, typically, eats a tiny, tiny fraction of the fat it used to. And also far less animal fat.
Do you know what went in soups, stews? Bones, with fat, for flavour, and energy, and nutrition.
What were pies made of? Pies, made to allow older apples and such, to be used past their best date?
Loads of animal fat in the crust.
And, especially in Canada, our pork is now leaner than beef was 50 years ago! And our beef is silly lean.
We eat far, far less fat than our ancestors, who would never throw away such valuable, nutritious calories.
If the simple metric is, why were we thin before, and overweight now? And if the answer is "our diet changed", then this logic means we should all be eating about 10x the calories we currently do, in animal fat, and tapering off the rest.
What if all those craving are just simply "the body needs more nutritious fat". Just like our ancestors ate.
What if we crave salty snacks, coated in vegetable oil (potato chips), because our body desperately wants salty fat?
Being overweight is far, far more unhealthy than eating more animal fat daily.
What if the cost of low fat diets, is an irresistable urge which causes weight gain?
If so, low fat diets are, therefore, very unhealthy... because being overweight is far worse.