What are your unpopular opinions about health / fitness?

WAIT.

EELS????????

Not my opinion; but, this is my doctor's opinion. And, it is unpopular in some circles. That is, if you take in fewer calories than are needed to maintain your body weight, you'll lose weight. I've never heard so many dissenting opinions to such an assertion - except for some political discussions.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

cmriverside wrote: »

oh, ffs. I could have gone the rest of my life without that Google search.

You know, I was going to just pretend I hadn't seen that and ignore it. Now I can't. Thank you very much!

;-)

Right???!?!?!!?!

*side-eyes the non-transparent balsamic vinegar bottle.*

Comments interspersed between quoted passages below.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

mph323 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

mph323 wrote: »

amusedmonkey wrote: »

I'm curious about one thing, why is it ACV specifically? I'm partial to raspberry vinegar and hate the taste of apple cider vinegar. Could we make the former trendy please?

Isn't it something about the "mother" or some other weirdness specific to ACV?

Yes, I think so (though the popularized mythology probably also depends on Bragg and other acolytes/profiteers talking it up more abstractly).

In reality, I don't think "the mother" is inherently ACV specific: "Mother" is simply the culture that makes vinegar happen (just as you need culture to make yogurt yogurt, or sourdough sourdough).

I'm a science fan-girl, big time, but also a bit experimental in my behavior, when I think there's a moderately high probability bet to be made involving a food I find tasty, and that's clearly been evolution tested for safety. ACV (with mother ) is one.

There's some interesting (but inconclusive and non-definitive) science growing around human gut microbiome diversity. We definitely don't know enough to be prescriptive. Nonetheless, I personally feel there's enough "interesting stuff" that it makes sense to make it a point to regularly eat pro/prebiotic foods that are delicious, time-tested, and nutritious.

For me, that includes foods like kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut, miso, raw ACV, and the like. I see no down side (though some do need to avoid salt-cured fermented foods because of health issues).

This might be unpopular.

Interesting about the "mother" - I didn't realize vinegar was made with a culture. I agree that as a fermented food ACV could potentially have some positive impact on gut microbiome diversity. I'm with AmusedMonkey, though, wouldn't any type of vinegar have the same effect? Why ACV in particular?

ACV seems to be the only one that's widely available raw, unfiltered and unpasteurized. If other types of vinegar were available in that form, they'd have the same effect (or lack thereof ) AFAIK.

Edited: typo

I think that's probably the explanation.

I also give some possible credence to the idea of fermented foods having a positive effect on the gut microbiome and I include them in my diet (although I always have since there are many I like, so this is hardly a big deal). I'm just not sure why it's always ACV alone and not fermented foods in general (people are asking about drinking ACV, not adding sauerkraut to a meal daily, for example), and a positive effect on the gut biome over time doesn't account for the idea that you lose weight just from drinking it* or that it improves digestion (which is something I often think may be more perception than well-documented in any reliable way) or the like.** (I do think there's something about insulin spikes that might be relevant to T2D or IR folks.)

I think the ACV & weight loss nonsense is a whole different conceptual world from any actual uses/effects/potential benefits of ACV as fermented food -
completely separate memetic vectors.

More significantly, none of that would justify the focus on just ACV, because the gut biome is affected by so many things (including vegetables and fibrous foods, for example, is supposed to be positive, and if one is ignoring that kind of thing -- I know you are not -- but thinking ACV will be magic, I think it's a matter of ignoring the forest for the trees), and again that's not really about weight loss. With insulin spikes, clearly overall diet will matter more, such as choosing carb sources with fiber and combining carbs with protein and fat (as in consuming them in the context of a full meal).

Long-winded way of saying I agree with "why not try something if there are no drawbacks and you enjoy it anyway" but I see that as quite different from insisting that consuming a drink of vinegar (especially if one dislikes it) has magical immediate effects or causes weight loss, which is what I keep seeing.

Absolutely. I frequently comment in those threads to say that I personally saw zero difference in weight loss rate when drinking ACV daily for weeks at a time during weight loss, as compared with when not drinking it for other weeks at a time during weight loss.

But when ACV becomes a total joke line, we may have created a small baby/bathwater situation.

Don't get me wrong: I'd never argue that people ought to or must drink ACV, especially if they don't enjoy it.

* I'm actually puzzled by this somewhat, as I keep reading that one effect of the microbiome is how efficiently you digest your food and access the calories, but it would seem that being able to access calories and digest efficiently is a good thing, meaning your gut is working well, and not a bad thing. I wonder if it's that your gut microbiome is adapted to what you eat, so you will be better at digesting fibrous foods (for example) and accessing the micronutrients from them when you eat more and have the resultant gut biome needed to deal with those foods (and maybe that plays a role in cravings, but clearly it can be outweighed by other things). So the alternative would be that you perhaps end up with different species when consuming lots of high cal foods of certain types and over time end up being able to access the calories from those more efficiently (and digest them even more easily) than someone not used to eating those foods. So in theory when you first shift the diet to such foods or if you include them rarely maybe you'd get slightly fewer calories from them than someone who ate them a lot, but clearly that would not be something that lasted over time, but would be affected by diet -- whether or not one included ACV. So this idea that people get too many calories from food because there's something wrong with their gut microbiome has never made sense to me. (Not saying you are saying that, but it's something that comes up on MFP from time to time. Anyway, I do need to read more about it.)
*

A few things, based on my reading (I wish I had cites; I don't, but I hope you'll be willing to believe they weren't Mercola-esque sources: li'l ol' lady's got no time for those kindza sources;) ), also from memory, so shaky in spots, i.e., just my interested-amateur understanding and opinions:

* Microbiome does adapt to one's eating practices, and seemingly quite quickly. Somebody did a small crossover study in which long-term vegetarians agreed to begin eating meat, and meat-eaters to eat vegetarian. Microbiome was tested before and during/after. There were significant changes, more quickly than researchers had anticipated. IIRC, it was a week or two.

* I agree with your speculation that a "better" gut flora population would mean getting better access to nutrition from food, including calories. Keep in mind that the gut bugs themselves eat in order to live/thrive: Often, they're harvesting things that we don't digest, which is why certain types of fiber are important. (There's some speculation is that this is related to why people who ramp up fiber too fast can get gassy - bugs gorging and micro-tooting. ).

* There are provocative hints that gut microbiome may have effects well beyond digestion per se, including levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin, and in the immune system.

* Sadly, I remember little of what I've read about the very (so far, IMU) nondefinitive research about gut microbiome and obesity. Keep in mind that if there's a causal/ contributory connection, it could be either through the absence of some beneficial bugs, or the presence of unhelpful ones; and that the effect could be on body biochemistry, not simply digestive efficiency. (I'm not positing any particular effect or mechanism here; just opening up potential considerations.)

** I do think there's evidence that it helps with a specific problem, namely reflux, but that would not be a reason that it would be helpful for people who don't suffer from reflux, of course. And that leads into something that puzzles me when people speak generically about issues with digestion -- there are so many, so what specifically are they thinking ACV helps with? I think a lot of this can be suggestion in that I know I've assumed that yogurt helps with digestion and would probably say I feel better in general when consuming yogurt, except if you actually asked me to explain how and how I know that, I don't think I could. Instead, when I happen to be feeling really good at times I've been consuming yogurt, my mind -- which already suspects a link and so is looking for one -- is likely to note that I had yogurt. At times when I don't feel so good and haven't my mind will take note of that. Not explaining it well, but I think it's similar to how when you get a new car all of a sudden you notice everyone has that same make and color car. (This also happened to me, anyway.)

I've read that stomach acid insufficiency has increased incidence as we age. One possible benefit, therefore, might be the simple effect on digestion of simply increasing stomach acidity temporarily. As someone with a slight tendency toward IBS-C, that contributes to my inclination toward n = 1 experiments.

And sure, foods can have a placebo effect. Not so sure about cars, though - I've never been a car gal.

P.S. I think we see a lot of both placebo and nocebo effects around here, wound in with ideas about "good" foods, "bad" foods, orthorexic eating, etc.

amusedmonkey wrote: »

Vinegar in general (not specifically ACV) is good for those who are insulin resistant. It slows down the blood sugar spike some. I'm not against experimentation with every day substances, either. I just think most claims, even those that have a grain of truth, are overblown. I'm all for fermented foods, but I got turned off raw vinegar when a bottle we forgot about developed eels so I'll get my live culture elsewhere. With the amount of yogurt I eat this shouldn't be a problem. (And yes, "the mother" is the bacterial culture that turns alcohol into vinegar and is not unique to ACV).

If you have a fish tank, vinegar eels make a great fish food (many hobbyist fish breeders will culture them intentionally to feed to tiny baby fish).

JerSchmare wrote: »

nndarden wrote: »

I have a “friend” IRL that think he eats more than he burns and loses weight. He eats LCHF. He also idolizes Dr Fung, and others. I’ve tried to point out to him that it is impossible to eat more than you burn. While he refuses to track calories, even for one day, he told me, “I know for a fact that I eat more than I burn and I lose weight. I don’t need to track my calories or prove anything to you”. Ok snowflake.

Technically you can EAT more than you burn and lose weight. You just can’t METABOLIZE more than you burn and lose weight. There is a limit to how much bile and pancreatic enzymes ones body can release, without which fats clump together in the digestive system and are eventually excreted.
Steatorrhea is the term for pooping undigested fat. At 9 calories per gram, imagine how many calories could be in one big stinky floating crap.
It’s a terrible way to beat CICO, but is absolutely a real thing.

I absolutely believe in the Hawthorne Effect--that people work harder when others are watching--therefore competitions in the workplace, having friends on FitBit and MFP make people reach their fitness goals faster.

deannalfisher wrote: »

k8andchr1smom wrote: »

I absolutely believe in the Hawthorne Effect--that people work harder when others are watching--therefore competitions in the workplace, having friends on FitBit and MFP make people reach their fitness goals faster.

how is this unpopular?

Perhaps not in your life, but in my workplace. "Puts too much pressure on us" "I can never do as much/well as them so screw it" "I don't want people to know what I do"

lemurcat12 wrote: »

I think it depends on the person.

psychology of motivation would concur with you - its the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation - do you do it for you or do you need an external influence (either positive or negative)