Eating clean

SymbolismNZ · January 2017

Show me the evidence that consumption of marijuana in moderation has any health impacts, or psilocybin, or amphetamines.

You won't be able to, because ultimately all it does is create risk factors that you may become more than a moderate user.... those same risk factors are often quoted when comparing the impact of refined sugar to your neurology. In fact, several of the research papers I posted above did exactly that.

SLLRunner · January 2017

galgenstrick wrote: »

SLLRunner wrote: »

galgenstrick wrote: »

everher wrote: »

galgenstrick wrote: »

"Everything in moderation" is just as vague as "clean eating"...

I don't feel everything in moderation is vague at all. Moderation is something most people here have yet to learn.

I also think it's an especially important idea for some people who seem to think just because they don't consume sweets or soda or "junk" food they are going to lose weight or become "healthier".

I can't tell you how many posts I've read in the couple months I've been here that say, "I cut out all soda, candy, etc. but still haven't lost any weight".

Because people just start overeating on other things.

Eating anything in moderation is misleading and leads people to believe they can just forget about micronutrients as long as it fits their macros. You still need to eat primarily nutritionally dense foods in order to stay healthy. Most importantly, you can't quantify "moderation" so it's a pretty worthless term for trying to help people decide how to eat.

In the context of postings that promote cutting out certain foods to lose weight, moderation is not at all vague and/or misleading, and it does not imply that you don't pay attention to macros/micro nutrients.

How to eat has nothing to do with he actual loss of pounds, how much you eat does.

In other words, everything in moderation means to eat whatever you've been eating, just less of it.

Understood. I never advocate cutting out foods completely. However the term is still vague for someone that doesn't understand how weight loss works and how to stay healthy. Exactly how much chocolate cake is a moderate amount? How about carrots? I think telling someone to just eat exactly the same foods but less of them is bad advice. It will work for weight loss, no doubt -- but depending on what they're eating and what their background is it's probably not the healthiest lifestyle. People blow IIFYM way out of proportion. No, you shouldn't just eat whatever you want if it fits your macros and completely ignore the other nutritional aspects of your health. That's probably not what your advocating either, but that's what the term "moderation" implies which is why it's vague and misleading

Nowhere do I advocate not paying attention to your macros/micros/nutrition, so you are right- that's not what I'm advocating at all.

No, telling someone to eat what they've been eating just less of it is not bad advice in the context of weight loss because the only requirement to lose weight is to eat less calories than you burn. Hence, eat what you normally eat, just less of it.

Now, if someone were to ask about nutrition and said what types of foods they were eating, the answer may be a whole lot different because nutrition does not have anything to do with weight loss.

However, I advocate a diet that meets your calorie goals and is nutritionally balanced. Still, the nutritional balance has nothing to do with the actual mechanics of losing weight.

lemurcat12 · January 2017

SymbolismNZ wrote: »

deannalfisher wrote: »

IMHO, I hate the term clean eating - everything is healthy in moderation. others will probably address the sugar is an addiction statement

This is only true when it comes to your body weight, not so true when you're looking into body composition or impact on your neurology.

Let's focus on body composition first. What happens to the body composition of someone who eats maintenance calories (he or she doesn't need to lose) of a primarily nutrition-dense diet, that meets micro needs, more than adequate protein (let's say about 1 g / lb of LBM), includes sufficient healthy fats, fiber, etc., but also includes a little something extra every day -- sometimes ice cream (about 200-250 calories), sometimes high quality cheese, sometimes a glass of wine or beer, sometimes dark chocolate, sometimes a restaurant meal or homemade pulled pork, it varies?

The person also has a good progressive lifting program.

I know (from experience of these threads) that there is a big "Hey, what you eat doesn't matter as long as you're under your calorie limit" movement in this place

No, that is not what anyone is saying. Absolutely no one is saying that nutrition should be ignored if we are talking about what's healthy.

and that principles of CICO are all that should be obeyed

No one says this either. CICO just means that calories in vs. calories out determine what happens to weight. No one claims it says what you should do (it applies whether you gaining, losing, or maintaining, after all) in terms of nutrition or health (other than being overweight being unhealthy of course).

I see that you are a study collector and like to cherry pick those that deal with your pet issues and cite them as if a study proved anything. I prefer to discuss individual studies, since anyone can post a list of things and claim a point is made. But let's proceed to the studies.

Well, first the things I think I can skip as not relevant to the conversation being had:

that not getting your micro-nutrient balances right can impact your metabolism, immune system, cause inflammation, damage the ability for certain genes to activate within your body,

The person with the recommended moderate diet I described above is getting in the right micros.

that ingesting a combination of high fat and high sucrose in your diet creates stiffening/thickening in the arterial walls of your heart,

Hard to get high fat/high sucrose on the diet I described (a moderate diet), so again doesn't seem applicable.

that the circadian rhythm (day night cycles) impacts how our body absorbs nutrients

Not relevant at all to this discussion (I note that SideSteel responded in the other thread quite effectively to the same basic claim).

that fasting and intermittent fasting has some major health benefits

No, the studies are all over the place. I note that you seem to really enjoy the latest fads, which I recognize because I listen to lots of the kinds of nutrition podcasts that jump on them (it's a weakness).

Sucrose creating higher risk of issues in neural receptors: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907/

To post this as if it were consensus that sugar has an addictive effect seems dishonest to me when you must know there is not. Avena, the lead person on the study, is a proponent of highly palatable foods in general being addictive (although she doesn't think abstinence is possible or realistic, so it's clearly different than other sorts of addictions, probably just "kind of.") Anyway, this one is a rat study (rats react to sugar differently from humans) and also intermittent/excessive, so no, it does not indicate that some moderate sugar consumption in humans is going to injure your neurology, as you are claiming.

Also see no evidence of eating some sugar having a negative affect on body comp.

Sucrose + Fat causing higher risk of arterial damage:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2517483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24882067

Both animal studies, but pigs and primates at least. Anyway, high sucrose/high fat diets. I didn't get the specifics since they were animal studies, but not moderation or comparable -- are you trying to avoid the topic or do you not see that these are irrelevant?

Too much insulin causing higher risk of neuro-degenerative diseases:
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~mboyle/COGS163/pdf-files/W7-Insulin and neurodegenerative disease- shared and specific mechanisms-review.pdf

Not likely to result from moderation. (Plenty of higher carb traditional diets have extremely low T2D rates.)

[quote[Excess refined sugar producing higher risk of oncogenes:
http://www.nature.com/onc/journal/v23/n38/full/1207716a.html[/quote]

That this is what you take from this long review is, uh, interesting. No, it doesn't actually say that.[/quote]

If your broad point is that nutrition matters, you aren't disagreeing with anyone.

lemurcat12 · January 2017

kayemme wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Hmm, related to the above, because I'm interested in the whole "eating in an old-fashioned way" thing, in part just as an exercise or out of interest,* I've thought a lot about the differences between how I eat and how ancestors of mine would have eaten. (I know a pretty good amount about family history on some sides of my family.) What always strikes me is how much more nutritious food I have available consistently, as well as ingredients and preparations that can be delicious and healthful that they wouldn't have known about or had available (that weren't known to me as a kid even -- Chicago in the 2010s is a lot more varied in the food choices than where and when I grew up). Yes, it's also harder because of all the choices and how easy and cheap it is, even if one cooks from whole foods, mostly, but it's healthier to have processed and "unnatural" things like frozen fish, produce easily available in January, etc. And that I can also have really good coffee and go out for Ethiopian, well, bonus!

*I'm always mad at those dress up and live like it's the 17th century (or whatever era) shows because they don't take it seriously enough. I'm always like "I'd be much better and really get into the exercise." Not that I've ever applied! ;-)

Between this and the post above, I think we'd get along pretty well!

I eat clean, but now I focus on lean. That's why sometimes I write it like (c)lean. I don't eat meat (incl. fish) nor dairy, and I keep all isolated fats to a minimum. I can see how a person could eat "clean" and still gain weight, especially if fats, meats, dairy & eggs are included in that definition (because they can be "clean" but they are not necessarily "lean").

I'm not a hater on meats/eggs/whatever, but I just don't eat them myself any more.

Thanks for all your elaboration. It was very insightful!

Ah. People use "clean" so differently. I am used to it meaning "no processed" (although people saying that always eat processed food IME, usually as much or even much more than me, now).

I actually don't particularly think I could gain on WFPB, which is what it seems you are. Some can, but I would find it hard. I just don't think I could sustain it long-term (I've done similar things for shorter periods) without being ethically committed and/or convinced it was the only way to have a healthy diet, which I'm not. I'm reasonably interested in it, though, and am glad it's working for you.

SymbolismNZ · January 2017

Cool; someone up for reasonable debate.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Let's focus on body composition first. What happens to the body composition of someone who eats maintenance calories (he or she doesn't need to lose) of a primarily nutrition-dense diet, that meets micro needs, more than adequate protein (let's say about 1 g / lb of LBM), includes sufficient healthy fats, fiber, etc., but also includes a little something extra every day -- sometimes ice cream (about 200-250 calories), sometimes high quality cheese, sometimes a glass of wine or beer, sometimes dark chocolate, sometimes a restaurant meal or homemade pulled pork, it varies? The person also has a good progressive lifting program.

The key things you mention are "adequate protein, maintenance calorie level, progressive lifting program" - the person will slowly change their body composition over time; they won't gain the same level of muscle mass as someone eating with a calorie abundance but due to the protein, calorie level and exercise, they will of course drop body fat.

Nothing wrong with high quality cheese, nothing wrong with wine either as very few wines add any refined sugar, they're relying on the natural sugars within the grapes (fructose) to aid in the process of fermentation and eventually the creation of alcohols, nothing wrong with pulled pork and the bulk of fine dining restaurant meals ( up until dessert) don't actually include too much refined sugar, as they're relying on caramelisation and other methods to provide the sweetness in the meal....

Ice Cream, Beer, Dark Chocolate (with sugar added) and say a BBQ sauce with sugar? It won't impact their muscle growth, it won't impact their calories, due to oncogenes however, it does place them at a higher risk that the cells they're damaging ( be it weight lifting, or sun bathing, or general aging) could become cancerous. It also places them at higher risk of accelerated neurodegenerative diseases and in the case of alcohol, if they weren't consuming enough water, could cause toxicity and damage to their liver.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

No, that is not what anyone is saying. Absolutely no one is saying that nutrition should be ignored if we are talking about what's healthy.

No one says this either. CICO just means that calories in vs. calories out determine what happens to weight. No one claims it says what you should do (it applies whether you gaining, losing, or maintaining, after all) in terms of nutrition or health (other than being overweight being unhealthy of course).

The majority of quotes I've seen so far in the "losing weight" or "food and nutrition" threads are in effect, "You can eat anything so long as it's inside your calorie boundaries" - now of course, people like yourself and quite a few others point out balanced nutrition as being key, but take for example the current discussion around a teacher sending a kid home, telling the mother that she shouldn't send him in with a poptart due to it being unhealthy; the validation there is "As long as it fits within the calorie goals, what harm does it do" - quite a bit actually, especially in the development of a child's brain.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

I see that you are a study collector and like to cherry pick those that deal with your pet issues and cite them as if a study proved anything. I prefer to discuss individual studies, since anyone can post a list of things and claim a point is made. But let's proceed to the studies.

You continue with this "cherry pick" ideal, but you'll notice in this thread I didn't bother bringing up the known fact that nutritional scientists have been bought off to give favourable trial results by the food industry, in particular confectionary and soda makers, hence "Refined Sugar isn't bad for you" being a prevalent "fact" of the industry.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

No, the studies are all over the place. I note that you seem to really enjoy the latest fads, which I recognize because I listen to lots of the kinds of nutrition podcasts that jump on them (it's a weakness).

Again - studies are all over the place when it comes to the impact of meal timing on weight loss/weight gain and while there are points of evidence that would indicate fasting does have benefits for weight loss, that's not the point I made, the point I made was that food timing had impacts on gene activation, on the restoration you get while being asleep, on the efficacy your body has to repair cells, and in the case of chemotherapy, to boost not only the efficacy of the treatment, but also reduce the damage to your immune system while undertaking chemotherapy..

There are a lot of people who believe intermittent fasting helps with weight loss; I'm not one of them, I believe in essence intermittent fasting is giving people a smaller window to consume their calories and therefore they're consuming a small total number of calories on average, hence correlation != causation.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

To post this as if it were consensus that sugar has an addictive effect seems dishonest to me when you must know there is not. Avena, the lead person on the study, is a proponent of highly palatable foods in general being addictive (although she doesn't think abstinence is possible or realistic, so it's clearly different than other sorts of addictions, probably just "kind of.") Anyway, this one is a rat study (rats react to sugar differently from humans) and also intermittent/excessive, so no, it does not indicate that some moderate sugar consumption in humans is going to injure your neurology, as you are claiming.

So, in order to believe that refined sugar doesn't actually have a damaging impact on neural receptors, some of which for controlling appetite/feeling satiated, you have to ignore all of the mice/rat work studies that have been conducted and state that humans are different and that the same responses are not seen.

To do this, you also have to ignore the fact that in almost any other example of mice/rat work studies involving nutrition, neural receptors and cell reproduction, the evidence of responses almost always remain the same when human trials are conducted.

You also have to ignore that certain studies have been commissioned and paid for by people within the nutrition industry; just take a look at the RDI labelling on our food products ( mostly based out of research in the 50s and 60s with a few updates) versus now what most nutritional scientists would indicate to be RDI....

That's as close to "conspiracy theory" as I get; but I've seen enough information with the conclusion that refined sugar (not sugar in general) has a number of risk factors related to the above, in terms of "being addictive", I didn't make that claim, I did make the claim that it can inhibit the neural receptors responsible for appetite, and I've also made the claim that the more sugar you have in the diet, the more your brain tells you to consume.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Both animal studies, but pigs and primates at least. Anyway, high sucrose/high fat diets. I didn't get the specifics since they were animal studies, but not moderation or comparable -- are you trying to avoid the topic or do you not see that these are irrelevant?

If you read what I wrote in relationship, I used the example of high sucrose/high fat because it had references and experiments where it substituted a mixture (i.e high sugar, low fat, high fat, low sugar, etcetera) and it's findings had been interesting.

Also, writing off animal studies, pigs, primates - I mean I get that we dislike the fact that our inner mechanics are much the same as most other mammalian species; as I cited, most of the work done around cancer protein research, stem cell, cell regrowth, neural disorder and degeneration have all been conducted with mice and rats due to the fact that their responses are usually similar to what would be seen in humans. If this wasn't the case, why do you think the science industry still continues to murder (in the name of science) billions of rodents every year? Why would they waste their time?

Now just to clarify something, all sugars are not equal, (ga)lactose, fructose, dextrose are all required in our diets, the granulated table sugar form of sucrose however is not.

illyasHodrick · January 2017

jenilla1 wrote: »

illyasHodrick wrote: »

...Cut out oils...

Oils (and other healthy fats) help us absorb many of the nutrients in our foods - think of the fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A. For example, you absorb hardly any beta-carotene if there is no fat consumed along with it. It would be a mistake to eliminate all fats.

Olive oil, nuts, and other nutritious fat sources are NOT unclean foods. They are part of a healthy, balanced diet.

http://ucdintegrativemedicine.com/2015/04/the-good-bad-and-ugly-about-oils/#gs.r=F=XDY

It also oxidizes when you cook it, releasing cancer causing free radicals.

All processed foods are bad news. You'd have to eat 20 olives for one tsblespoon of olive oil. It still wouldn't be the, same either because the olives have fiber and more nutrients.

Wheelhouse15 · January 2017

SymbolismNZ wrote: »

deannalfisher wrote: »

IMHO, I hate the term clean eating - everything is healthy in moderation. others will probably address the sugar is an addiction statement

This is only true when it comes to your body weight, not so true when you're looking into body composition or impact on your neurology. I know (from experience of these threads) that there is a big "Hey, what you eat doesn't matter as long as you're under your calorie limit" movement in this place and that principles of CICO are all that should be obeyed but there are more than enough research papers now indicating that too much sucrose can cause issues in neural receptors, that not getting your micro-nutrient balances right can impact your metabolism, immune system, cause inflammation, damage the ability for certain genes to activate within your body, that ingesting a combination of high fat and high sucrose in your diet creates stiffening/thickening in the arterial walls of your heart, that too much insulin can lead to accelerated neuro-degenerative diseases, that excess refined sugar can cause your body to produce oncogenes that increase the risk of damaged cells to become cancerous (in particular sun damage and melanomas), that the circadian rhythm (day night cycles) impacts how our body absorbs nutrients, that fasting and intermittent fasting has some major health benefits, one in particular being that cancer patients who fasted between 48 and 72 hours before chemotherapy had greater efficacy of chemotherapy treatment, that certain compounds in foods like ginger and chili peppers have an impact on lowering the risk of certain cancer types, etc etc etc.

If you're only interested in "What does the scale say?" then the viewpoint that anything as long as it fits your calorie limit is fine, is definitely fine for you.

If you're interested in "What does the research suggest around lowering my risks of neurological disease, development of cancerous cells and heart damage?" then there are certainly foods you should eat as little as possible.

Research:

Sucrose creating higher risk of issues in neural receptors: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907/

Micronutrient Balance impacting metabolism, immune system inflammation and gene activation:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2585731/

Sucrose + Fat causing higher risk of arterial damage:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2517483/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24882067

Too much insulin causing higher risk of neuro-degenerative diseases:
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~mboyle/COGS163/pdf-files/W7-Insulin and neurodegenerative disease- shared and specific mechanisms-review.pdf

Excess refined sugar producing higher risk of oncogenes:
http://www.nature.com/onc/journal/v23/n38/full/1207716a.html

Day/Night Cycles causing an impact on how our body uses food:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/308/5724/1043

Fasting creating greater efficacy of chemotherapy treatments:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/cc.9.22.13954

Compounds within food lowering risk of lung cancer:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jafc.6b02480

I've looked through some of the studies you quote and I don't see how any of these mean anything to "clean eating" vs whatever the opposite is. First of, you make the mistake that many do that you think that those who are CICO adherents are somehow not looking at the nutrition but only at weight control and/or body composition. Second, none of these studies I've looked at actually show an effect outside of poor body composition, i.e. the animals were induced into poor health through diet as well as sedentary activity if you actually look closely. How can you tell? Because the results indicators are hypertension, high cholesterol, Type II Diabetes, and insulin insensitivity, all which are more indicative of weight issues than by mere diet.

Also, the most interesting paper, your forth, was actually about a general condition of insulin dysfunction and did not discuss causes of this dysfunction. And your third citation was a study for a resveratrol supplement, and again is more indicative of a poor lifestyle in general since it deals with high body weight and cholesterol.

From your Nature article we can read this in the abstract, "The evidence for a role of energy balance, physical inactivity, and obesity has strengthened, while for dietary fat it has weakened." and from the summary we read, "A role for positive energy balance and obesity in carcinogenesis has been strengthened, while a specific role of dietary fat has weakened. Fruits and vegetables still appear to be protective for several cancers, but as a whole are weaker determinants than originally thought." so this doesn't really support your clean eating hypothesis so much.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be concerned about what we eat, but I'm confident you are assuming this as you have made such assumption as a whole for the CICO advocates. What we are talking about with CICO is that you don't have to adhere to a special diet to lose weight, and obesity is the biggest factor I can find even in what I've read from the papers you site, but to be healthy requires a bit more thought into what we eat. Nobody here ever advocates ignoring a healthful eating plan so the idea that CICO is not, or should not, be a "clean diet" is erroneous.

lemurcat12 · January 2017

SymbolismNZ wrote: »

Cool; someone up for reasonable debate.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Let's focus on body composition first. What happens to the body composition of someone who eats maintenance calories (he or she doesn't need to lose) of a primarily nutrition-dense diet, that meets micro needs, more than adequate protein (let's say about 1 g / lb of LBM), includes sufficient healthy fats, fiber, etc., but also includes a little something extra every day -- sometimes ice cream (about 200-250 calories), sometimes high quality cheese, sometimes a glass of wine or beer, sometimes dark chocolate, sometimes a restaurant meal or homemade pulled pork, it varies? The person also has a good progressive lifting program.

The key things you mention are "adequate protein, maintenance calorie level, progressive lifting program" - the person will slowly change their body composition over time; they won't gain the same level of muscle mass as someone eating with a calorie abundance but due to the protein, calorie level and exercise, they will of course drop body fat.

Yes, this is all what I believe too, based on the evidence. You were the one who claimed that not eating clean would affect body composition. This person is not eating clean.

Nothing wrong with high quality cheese

It's processed, so not "clean."

It's also high cal and relatively low nutrition, so fits my definition of an extra -- something I include after getting in all the things I need to get in (my basic diet) or as a taste-enhancer, compliment to a meal. Those who say focus only on nutrient-density and getting in the healthiest foods (although I think that's a wrong way to think of food) would generally sneer at cheese. I don't eat it for nutritional reasons, I eat it because it tastes good and makes my diet more sustainable by being more overall satisfying. Also, of course cheese would be bad for you if eaten in excess and in a way that crowded out other foods. That I don't do this (anymore) is why I consider eating in this way a form of moderation.

nothing wrong with wine either as very few wines add any refined sugar, they're relying on the natural sugars within the grapes (fructose) to aid in the process of fermentation and eventually the creation of alcohols

Again, it's an extra for reasons similar to the above. (I don't think wine with residual sugar and wine without are different in these respects except a lot of wine with residual sugar is plonk. A lot of dry wine is plonk too, and some extremely high quality wines have residual sugar--Sauternes, good ice wines, plenty of German rieslings, etc. My taste was always more for dry, but I can admit this. (I don't drink any more, but I can still be a wine snob when it comes to it.)

nothing wrong with pulled pork and the bulk of fine dining restaurant meals

Again, higher cal for the nutrients. Also, I realize you seem to be on the sat fat is totally harmless bandwagon, but the evidence still is that excessive animal protein and fat (sat fat from veg may be different) correlate to bad results. I take this with a grain of salt, but I find it weird and hypocritical to overemphasize some nutritional findings/advice and ignore others that are, from what I've read and researched, just as strong.

don't actually include too much refined sugar, as they're relying on caramelisation and other methods to provide the sweetness in the meal....

Right. (And butter for taste. Lots of butter.)

Ice Cream, Beer, Dark Chocolate (with sugar added) and say a BBQ sauce with sugar? It won't impact their muscle growth, it won't impact their calories

So NO effect on body comp then? Within the kind of diet I am discussing, of course? I thought you said otherwise?

due to oncogenes however, it does place them at a higher risk that the cells they're damaging ( be it weight lifting, or sun bathing, or general aging) could become cancerous.

Nothing you cited supports this claim. We have to focus on amounts, after all.

It also places them at higher risk of accelerated neurodegenerative diseases and in the case of alcohol, if they weren't consuming enough water, could cause toxicity and damage to their liver.

Again, dosage seems to be entirely ignored by you, which is puzzling, since this is what this thread is about. And in that you seem to ignore dosage only with added sugar (which is going to be no different to your body that fructose, glucose, and sucrose from fruit, once all the sucrose gets broken down), and not the other things I mentioned. Oh, and alcohol.

[continued]

Need2Exerc1se · January 2017

natashab61 wrote: »

Hi all,
I am no perfect clean eater but as I enter my mid 20s I would really like to make my diet to be predominantly healthy. I have a HUGE sweet tooth and I am aware sugar is an addiction. So any help or suggestions as to how to do this?

Focus on balance and nutrition. I think of balancing my diet in the same way I think of balancing other parts of my life such as work and play. I do the work that needs done, but I always allow time for play/relaxation.

Get the nutrients your body needs, but also allow for treats now and then, even if they are nutrient poor.

lemurcat12 · January 2017

lemurcat12 wrote: »

No, that is not what anyone is saying. Absolutely no one is saying that nutrition should be ignored if we are talking about what's healthy.

No one says this either. CICO just means that calories in vs. calories out determine what happens to weight. No one claims it says what you should do (it applies whether you gaining, losing, or maintaining, after all) in terms of nutrition or health (other than being overweight being unhealthy of course).

The majority of quotes I've seen so far in the "losing weight" or "food and nutrition" threads are in effect, "You can eat anything so long as it's inside your calorie boundaries" - now of course, people like yourself and quite a few others point out balanced nutrition as being key, but take for example the current discussion around a teacher sending a kid home, telling the mother that she shouldn't send him in with a poptart due to it being unhealthy; the validation there is "As long as it fits within the calorie goals, what harm does it do" - quite a bit actually, especially in the development of a child's brain.[/quote]

You are misunderstanding or ignoring context (an answer to a specific question). People do not say that nutrition is not important or to ignore nutrition. Period. It's really not even worth discussing. People agree that nutrition matters, but it is not necessary to eat a perfect diet (or even a nutrition-dense diet) to lose weight. Should you? Of course, it's better to have good nutrition for lots of reasons, but a lot of people are resistant to that or confused or think it's too hard, and for them they will still get benefits just losing.

I also strongly believe that as one loses and cuts calories one naturally cuts lower nutrient foods and includes more higher nutrient foods and satiating foods because, well, satiety.

I've known one person in my life who really did eat mostly fast food. She was at one point about 100 lbs above her ideal weight. She didn't want to change her diet, didn't want to cook, so just counted calories (it fit her personality, this was long before I ever did). I thought she was crazy, but she knew her diet was bad, she just didn't want to change it then and me saying anything wouldn't have been helpful--also, none of my business--and so I didn't. After she'd lost some weight she started phasing in cooking and by the end she was eating a mostly good diet, largely homecooked, still occasional fast food. Sometimes it's what you think you can manage, or baby steps.

Me? As I said above, I had a history of eating a pretty nutritious diet and still got fat. I hate fast food, am not a sugar fiend, so can't blame any of that. I cut back (and did refocus on nutrition, as well as letting go to "natural" hang ups that were just stressing me out and making things seem harder) and that worked for me. Giving me a huge list of rules not tailored to me (whether "eat 6 times a day" or "eat only between 6 am and noon" or never eat after 6 pm or "never eat processed food" or never let added sugar touch your lips (or animal products or grains or whatever) would generally not be useful. On the other hand, I've experimented with a bunch of things and found that education. It's because I was focusing on what works for me.

Now just to clarify something, all sugars are not equal, (ga)lactose, fructose, dextrose are all required in our diets, the granulated table sugar form of sucrose however is not.

I am comparing fruit sugar and common table sugar, primarily:

Fruit has a variety of sugars, but the most prevalent tend to be fructose, glucose, and sucrose, in varying degrees depending on the fruit. Your body easily breaks sucrose down to its component parts, fructose and glucose.

Table sugar is sucrose which gets broken down to fructose and glucose.

Therefore, to claim that table sugar in any amount is harmful, but intrinsic sugar from any source is fine is really senseless. When studies focus on the negative effects of high levels of sucrose in the diet (or added sugar), I think there are a few distinctions that might explain different results (as there seem to be no bad results from high amounts of fruit):

(1) diets with lots of sucrose tend to be less quality overall, even if you control for calories. If we are talking about moderate amounts this is not an issue.

(2) Lots of sugar on its own (without fiber or any other foods eaten with it) might be a problem. Fats don't always mitigate this effect (high fat + high sugar can be even worse for T2D than high sugar alone), so this could include eating lots of sugary sweets, and even more significantly perhaps a major source of sugar in the US diet is sugary drinks, which do get consumed alone often.

(3) Dosage matters, and consuming lots of fruit rarely means the levels of sugar we are talking about with the extremes for table sugar/HFCS. That's typically because fruit is more filling on average and also people who eat lots of fruit tend to be more diet conscious overall.

For all of these reasons, I think it's nonsensical to act as if a little table sugar is inherently going to hurt you, but a banana will not (and it won't). But is the amount of sugar in many diets a problem? Sure, of course.

But scapegoating sugar and pretending that a healthy diet is that which eliminates added sugar, regardless of anything else, is a poor approach to nutrition. Focusing on eating a healthful diet overall will necessarily limit sugar and also make sure other things are not consumed in excess and that the diet contains adequate nutrition.

[continued]

Carlos_421 · January 2017

SymbolismNZ wrote: »

Cool; someone up for reasonable debate.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Let's focus on body composition first. What happens to the body composition of someone who eats maintenance calories (he or she doesn't need to lose) of a primarily nutrition-dense diet, that meets micro needs, more than adequate protein (let's say about 1 g / lb of LBM), includes sufficient healthy fats, fiber, etc., but also includes a little something extra every day -- sometimes ice cream (about 200-250 calories), sometimes high quality cheese, sometimes a glass of wine or beer, sometimes dark chocolate, sometimes a restaurant meal or homemade pulled pork, it varies? The person also has a good progressive lifting program.

The key things you mention are "adequate protein, maintenance calorie level, progressive lifting program" - the person will slowly change their body composition over time; they won't gain the same level of muscle mass as someone eating with a calorie abundance but due to the protein, calorie level and exercise, they will of course drop body fat.

Nothing wrong with high quality cheese, nothing wrong with wine either as very few wines add any refined sugar, they're relying on the natural sugars within the grapes (fructose) to aid in the process of fermentation and eventually the creation of alcohols, nothing wrong with pulled pork and the bulk of fine dining restaurant meals ( up until dessert) don't actually include too much refined sugar, as they're relying on caramelisation and other methods to provide the sweetness in the meal....

Ice Cream, Beer, Dark Chocolate (with sugar added) and say a BBQ sauce with sugar? It won't impact their muscle growth, it won't impact their calories, due to oncogenes however, it does place them at a higher risk that the cells they're damaging ( be it weight lifting, or sun bathing, or general aging) could become cancerous. It also places them at higher risk of accelerated neurodegenerative diseases and in the case of alcohol, if they weren't consuming enough water, could cause toxicity and damage to their liver.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

No, that is not what anyone is saying. Absolutely no one is saying that nutrition should be ignored if we are talking about what's healthy.

No one says this either. CICO just means that calories in vs. calories out determine what happens to weight. No one claims it says what you should do (it applies whether you gaining, losing, or maintaining, after all) in terms of nutrition or health (other than being overweight being unhealthy of course).

The majority of quotes I've seen so far in the "losing weight" or "food and nutrition" threads are in effect, "You can eat anything so long as it's inside your calorie boundaries" - now of course, people like yourself and quite a few others point out balanced nutrition as being key, but take for example the current discussion around a teacher sending a kid home, telling the mother that she shouldn't send him in with a poptart due to it being unhealthy; the validation there is "As long as it fits within the calorie goals, what harm does it do" - quite a bit actually, especially in the development of a child's brain.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

I see that you are a study collector and like to cherry pick those that deal with your pet issues and cite them as if a study proved anything. I prefer to discuss individual studies, since anyone can post a list of things and claim a point is made. But let's proceed to the studies.

You continue with this "cherry pick" ideal, but you'll notice in this thread I didn't bother bringing up the known fact that nutritional scientists have been bought off to give favourable trial results by the food industry, in particular confectionary and soda makers, hence "Refined Sugar isn't bad for you" being a prevalent "fact" of the industry.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

No, the studies are all over the place. I note that you seem to really enjoy the latest fads, which I recognize because I listen to lots of the kinds of nutrition podcasts that jump on them (it's a weakness).

Again - studies are all over the place when it comes to the impact of meal timing on weight loss/weight gain and while there are points of evidence that would indicate fasting does have benefits for weight loss, that's not the point I made, the point I made was that food timing had impacts on gene activation, on the restoration you get while being asleep, on the efficacy your body has to repair cells, and in the case of chemotherapy, to boost not only the efficacy of the treatment, but also reduce the damage to your immune system while undertaking chemotherapy..

There are a lot of people who believe intermittent fasting helps with weight loss; I'm not one of them, I believe in essence intermittent fasting is giving people a smaller window to consume their calories and therefore they're consuming a small total number of calories on average, hence correlation != causation.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

To post this as if it were consensus that sugar has an addictive effect seems dishonest to me when you must know there is not. Avena, the lead person on the study, is a proponent of highly palatable foods in general being addictive (although she doesn't think abstinence is possible or realistic, so it's clearly different than other sorts of addictions, probably just "kind of.") Anyway, this one is a rat study (rats react to sugar differently from humans) and also intermittent/excessive, so no, it does not indicate that some moderate sugar consumption in humans is going to injure your neurology, as you are claiming.

So, in order to believe that refined sugar doesn't actually have a damaging impact on neural receptors, some of which for controlling appetite/feeling satiated, you have to ignore all of the mice/rat work studies that have been conducted and state that humans are different and that the same responses are not seen.

To do this, you also have to ignore the fact that in almost any other example of mice/rat work studies involving nutrition, neural receptors and cell reproduction, the evidence of responses almost always remain the same when human trials are conducted.

You also have to ignore that certain studies have been commissioned and paid for by people within the nutrition industry; just take a look at the RDI labelling on our food products ( mostly based out of research in the 50s and 60s with a few updates) versus now what most nutritional scientists would indicate to be RDI....

That's as close to "conspiracy theory" as I get; but I've seen enough information with the conclusion that refined sugar (not sugar in general) has a number of risk factors related to the above, in terms of "being addictive", I didn't make that claim, I did make the claim that it can inhibit the neural receptors responsible for appetite, and I've also made the claim that the more sugar you have in the diet, the more your brain tells you to consume.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Both animal studies, but pigs and primates at least. Anyway, high sucrose/high fat diets. I didn't get the specifics since they were animal studies, but not moderation or comparable -- are you trying to avoid the topic or do you not see that these are irrelevant?

If you read what I wrote in relationship, I used the example of high sucrose/high fat because it had references and experiments where it substituted a mixture (i.e high sugar, low fat, high fat, low sugar, etcetera) and it's findings had been interesting.

Also, writing off animal studies, pigs, primates - I mean I get that we dislike the fact that our inner mechanics are much the same as most other mammalian species; as I cited, most of the work done around cancer protein research, stem cell, cell regrowth, neural disorder and degeneration have all been conducted with mice and rats due to the fact that their responses are usually similar to what would be seen in humans. If this wasn't the case, why do you think the science industry still continues to murder (in the name of science) billions of rodents every year? Why would they waste their time?

Now just to clarify something, all sugars are not equal, (ga)lactose, fructose, dextrose are all required in our diets, the granulated table sugar form of sucrose however is not.

Dude...the stuff you're saying is so far in left field it's incredible and your posts are so lengthy that I don't have time to respond to everything you're saying so I'm just going to respond to your last little tidbit in bold.
1) Lactose is not required by the body. In fact, millions of people are incapable of even digesting it due to a lack of the enzyme lactase (lactose intolerance).
2) Dextrose is simply a form of glucose and need not be singled out from the other forms.
3) Sucrose is a compound consisting of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. There is nothing else in it and it breaks apart into the two simpler sugars within mere seconds of entering the intestines. It is literally the exact same chemical substance as the two sugars you say are beneficial. Therefore, saying that it is somehow detrimental to health while its component substances are beneficial is completely nonsensical.

ETA: Sucrose is also naturally occurring in fruits, as well. It's not just a refined, man-made substance, only available in processed foods.

lemurcat12 · January 2017

lemurcat12 wrote: »

You continue with this "cherry pick" ideal, but you'll notice in this thread I didn't bother bringing up the known fact that nutritional scientists have been bought off to give favourable trial results by the food industry, in particular confectionary and soda makers, hence "Refined Sugar isn't bad for you" being a prevalent "fact" of the industry.

I am aware of what you are talking about, as well as alleged influence by other sources and the wide range of studies that exist (not all of them, but the general types and major ones). To insist that "refined sugar" (which isn't really even a thing chemically -- if you mean sucrose, say so, and tell me how that's different, really, from glucose and fructose) is proven to be harmful without consideration of dosage and that basically everything else is not harmful I know you are cherry picking.

the point I made was that food timing had impacts on gene activation, on the restoration you get while being asleep, on the efficacy your body has to repair cells, and in the case of chemotherapy, to boost not only the efficacy of the treatment, but also reduce the damage to your immune system while undertaking chemotherapy..

Given the chemotherapy bit, not relevant. But also you haven't shown that this is independent of sleep disturbance. Is sleep important? Of course.

There are a lot of people who believe intermittent fasting helps with weight loss; I'm not one of them, I believe in essence intermittent fasting is giving people a smaller window to consume their calories and therefore they're consuming a small total number of calories on average, hence correlation != causation.

We agree on this. (I've considered IFing, but currently think focusing on eating three meals only serves that same effect for me and I enjoy that pattern more.)

lemurcat12 wrote: »

To post this as if it were consensus that sugar has an addictive effect seems dishonest to me when you must know there is not. Avena, the lead person on the study, is a proponent of highly palatable foods in general being addictive (although she doesn't think abstinence is possible or realistic, so it's clearly different than other sorts of addictions, probably just "kind of.") Anyway, this one is a rat study (rats react to sugar differently from humans) and also intermittent/excessive, so no, it does not indicate that some moderate sugar consumption in humans is going to injure your neurology, as you are claiming.

So, in order to believe that refined sugar doesn't actually have a damaging impact on neural receptors, some of which for controlling appetite/feeling satiated, you have to ignore all of the mice/rat work studies that have been conducted and state that humans are different and that the same responses are not seen.[/quote]

Not at all. First, you are distorting the study even with rats. Forging neutral pathways is not the same thing as damaging. Also, again, it's about specific patterns of eating.

That said, yes, rodents are different from humans, both in how their brains respond to stimulus AND in how they respond to sugar specifically and certain types of studies. I have more information on this, but don't have time to find all the relevant stuff now, so will table this and get back to it. Remind me if I forget where this is and don't get back in the next few days. (One of my sources is a low carb proponent even.)

I am not saying it's a bad study, or useless, but to go from this to "sugar is addictive in humans" is wrong (for a lot of reasons), and that's why no one credible is doing that (and Avena talks about hyperpalatable foods, not merely sugar -- you know, many of those things you told me above were harmless).

For the record, I think eating CAN BE a behavioral addiction in humans. Probably humans are much more prone to behavioral addictions than rodents, who presumably don't deal with cycles of shame or eating to shut down feelings.

Both animal studies, but pigs and primates at least. Anyway, high sucrose/high fat diets. I didn't get the specifics since they were animal studies, but not moderation or comparable -- are you trying to avoid the topic or do you not see that these are irrelevant?

If you read what I wrote in relationship, I used the example of high sucrose/high fat because it had references and experiments where it substituted a mixture (i.e high sugar, low fat, high fat, low sugar, etcetera) and it's findings had been interesting.

You merely listed a bunch of studies probably thinking that was sufficient. Anyone can do that, and it's not useful, as we can all find studies that support us (and you jumped all over the place, which is why I suspected cherry picking and not genuine attempt at conversation).

I get the sense that you've decided we are all idiots and you are here to educate us and that throwing some sites while cause us to shut up and think you know it all. Sorry, doesn't work like us, many of us have done tons of reading in the past and can read studies and know that one study means squat in terms of proving any point in a discussion like this.

Also, writing off animal studies, pigs, primates - I mean I get that we dislike the fact that our inner mechanics are much the same as most other mammalian species; as I cited, most of the work done around cancer protein research, stem cell, cell regrowth, neural disorder and degeneration have all been conducted with mice and rats due to the fact that their responses are usually similar to what would be seen in humans. If this wasn't the case, why do you think the science industry still continues to murder (in the name of science) billions of rodents every year? Why would they waste their time?

I did not write off animal studies and I approved using pigs/primates (because in many relevant ways they are closer to us), but there are differences, which is why they are never sufficient, but indicative.

WinoGelato · January 2017

I don't know if OP is still around or scared off, but trying to get this thread back to what she initially inquired about...

@natashab61 you said you are looking to make your diet more healthy. That's fantastic, there are lots of ways to do that. What does a typical day look like for you today? Are there particular areas you feel like you are lacking? Are there any dietary restrictions that you have for either medical reasons or preference?

You brought up "Clean Eating" and as you can see, that tends to be a bit of a hot topic around here, since the definitions vary so greatly and are so subjective. You also said that you believe sugar is addictive, and well, that's a whole other thread/topic but if you search the forums you'll find plenty of prior discussions on that one.

If you are still interested in continuing the discussion, maybe let us know what your specific questions or areas of need are so that people can offer some suggestions on how to incorporate more nutrient dense foods into an overall healthy diet.

lemurcat12 · January 2017

WinoGelato wrote: »

I don't know if OP is still around or scared off, but trying to get this thread back to what she initially inquired about...

@natashab61 you said you are looking to make your diet more healthy. That's fantastic, there are lots of ways to do that. What does a typical day look like for you today? Are there particular areas you feel like you are lacking? Are there any dietary restrictions that you have for either medical reasons or preference?

You brought up "Clean Eating" and as you can see, that tends to be a bit of a hot topic around here, since the definitions vary so greatly and are so subjective. You also said that you believe sugar is addictive, and well, that's a whole other thread/topic but if you search the forums you'll find plenty of prior discussions on that one.

If you are still interested in continuing the discussion, maybe let us know what your specific questions or areas of need are so that people can offer some suggestions on how to incorporate more nutrient dense foods into an overall healthy diet.

Good points -- think there were some on topic responses early on, but yeah the debate-y stuff should be kicked off. It doesn't actually even have anything to do with clean eating (I think the posts specifically on that were more on topic--the study stuff seems kind of out of the blue).

Carlos_421 · January 2017

SymbolismNZ wrote: »

deannalfisher wrote: »

IMHO, I hate the term clean eating - everything is healthy in moderation. others will probably address the sugar is an addiction statement

I know (from experience of these threads) that there is a big "Hey, what you eat doesn't matter as long as you're under your calorie limit" movement in this place and that principles of CICO are all that should be obeyed

Having that much experience to able to make such a diagnosis of these forums would be quite impressive considering you've only been here for five days.
However, the feat is mitigated by the fact that you're dead wrong in your assessment.

There is absolutely not any kind of movement that promotes ignoring nutrition or that CICO is all that matters for health. On these forums, there is a constant flow of new users coming in worried that they won't lose weight despite having a calorie deficit because they had a few cookies before bed. Many of us are quick to reassure them that there is no magical/demonic properties to sweet treats that will cause them to gain weight while in a caloric deficit. This is not in any way similar to claiming that a nutrient dense diet is unimportant.

Carlos_421 · January 2017

natashab61 wrote: »

Hi all,
I am no perfect clean eater but as I enter my mid 20s I would really like to make my diet to be predominantly healthy. I have a HUGE sweet tooth and I am aware sugar is an addiction. So any help or suggestions as to how to do this?

Getting this thread back to addressing your question.

I think a good first step would be to learn about nutrition (reading the stickied threads would be a good start).
In learning about nutrition, you'll learn what your body needs (macronutrients (protein, fat, carbs (including fiber)), micronutrients (vitamins, minerals) and energy (calories)).
You'll also learn that all foods are essentially just varying assortments of the macronutrients, micronutrients and energy your body needs. Some foods have more energy than others (calorie dense) and some have more nutrients than others (nutrient dense).
Many of the foods deemed "unclean" are simply calorie dense or just aren't very nutrient dense. The incorrect concept behind clean eating is that these foods need to be avoided. The truth, rather, is that maintaining a nutrient dense diet overall (rather than worrying about individual foods) is what matters for health and maintaining a calorie deficit is what matters for weight loss.

It's also worth noting that sugar is not actually an addictive substance. There are mice studies which show that sugar causes a dopamine release just like everything else that makes us happy (including foot rubs, back massages, running, a clean house...) and that mice prefer sugar (food) over drugs (not food) but there are no studies that show sugar overrides the neurological processes in the way that drugs like cocaine do or that it causes a chemical dependency.

WinoGelato · January 2017

Carlos_421 wrote: »

natashab61 wrote: »

Hi all,
I am no perfect clean eater but as I enter my mid 20s I would really like to make my diet to be predominantly healthy. I have a HUGE sweet tooth and I am aware sugar is an addiction. So any help or suggestions as to how to do this?

Getting this thread back to addressing your question.

I think a good first step would be to learn about nutrition (reading the stickied threads would be a good start).
In learning about nutrition, you'll learn what your body needs (macronutrients (protein, fat, carbs (including fiber)), micronutrients (vitamins, minerals) and energy (calories)).
You'll also learn that all foods are essentially just varying assortments of the macronutrients, micronutrients and energy your body needs. Some foods have more energy than others (calorie dense) and some have more nutrients than others (nutrient dense).
Many of the foods deemed "unclean" are simply calorie dense or just aren't very nutrient dense. The incorrect concept behind clean eating is that these foods need to be avoided. The truth, rather, is that maintaining a nutrient dense diet overall (rather than worrying about individual foods) is what matters for health and maintaining a calorie deficit is what matters for weight loss.

It's also worth noting that sugar is not actually an addictive substance. There are mice studies which show that sugar causes a dopamine release just like everything else that makes us happy (including foot rubs, back massages, running, a clean house...) and that mice prefer sugar (food) over drugs (not food) but there are no studies that show sugar overrides the neurological processes in the way that drugs like cocaine do or that it causes a chemical dependency.

This is one of the best and most succinct explanations of nutrition I have seen, as well as a great way of summarizing one of the key arguments of why sugar is not actually chemically addictive.

Well Done Carlos! Oreo for you!

Carlos_421 · January 2017

WinoGelato wrote: »

Carlos_421 wrote: »

natashab61 wrote: »

Hi all,
I am no perfect clean eater but as I enter my mid 20s I would really like to make my diet to be predominantly healthy. I have a HUGE sweet tooth and I am aware sugar is an addiction. So any help or suggestions as to how to do this?

Getting this thread back to addressing your question.

I think a good first step would be to learn about nutrition (reading the stickied threads would be a good start).
In learning about nutrition, you'll learn what your body needs (macronutrients (protein, fat, carbs (including fiber)), micronutrients (vitamins, minerals) and energy (calories)).
You'll also learn that all foods are essentially just varying assortments of the macronutrients, micronutrients and energy your body needs. Some foods have more energy than others (calorie dense) and some have more nutrients than others (nutrient dense).
Many of the foods deemed "unclean" are simply calorie dense or just aren't very nutrient dense. The incorrect concept behind clean eating is that these foods need to be avoided. The truth, rather, is that maintaining a nutrient dense diet overall (rather than worrying about individual foods) is what matters for health and maintaining a calorie deficit is what matters for weight loss.

It's also worth noting that sugar is not actually an addictive substance. There are mice studies which show that sugar causes a dopamine release just like everything else that makes us happy (including foot rubs, back massages, running, a clean house...) and that mice prefer sugar (food) over drugs (not food) but there are no studies that show sugar overrides the neurological processes in the way that drugs like cocaine do or that it causes a chemical dependency.

This is one of the best and most succinct explanations of nutrition I have seen, as well as a great way of summarizing one of the key arguments of why sugar is not actually chemically addictive.

Well Done Carlos! Oreo for you!

Thanks. Hopefully OP comes back to see it.

natashab61 · January 2017

Thank you all for the amazing responses

SymbolismNZ · January 2017

I'd go through and collect all of the "Yeah, eat that ice cream, as long as you're under your calories" but I really can't be bothered.

The reality is most of you are working off of opinions and insights that were formed in the 50s and 60s around RDI, micro nutrient level and the impact of certain foods on your diet; a small example "Yeah, they use lots of butter to make it taste good" - yet ingesting butter (so long as you're not also pounding a ton of carbs at the same time) and being within your calorie limit is absolutely fine.

I'll leave you guys in the 50s and 60s, I'll continue to work off of the realities of the 00s and 10s.

Eating clean

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