A calorie is not a calorie??

[reddragon4444]

Have any of you listened to the Huberman podcast episode with Dr. Lustig on sugar and processed foods? A lot of the more detailed biology discussion is way over my head, but I’m wondering if you all have any thoughts or personal experiences with reducing or eliminating processed foods from your diets.

 

[borisv]

@reddragon4444 If all you care about is weight loss, then a calorie is indeed a calorie. But health and longevity is more than just BMI.

II've reduced my processed food and sugar intake by 90% this year and I feel so much better--my cardio system, joints, skin and energy levels have all improved in a way that's totally separate from weight loss.

 

[sjameel68]

@reddragon4444 Saw a fitness influencer put it this way: A calorie is a calorie the same way a mile is a mile, it’s a unit of measurement.

But it’s a lot easier for your body to run a mile downhill than uphill. And it’s a lot easier for your body to get what it needs from some calories than others.

So to feel full, sleep well, grow muscle, and live healthier, you do want to care about where you’re getting your calories.

But to purely gain or lose energy stores (fat), a calorie is a calorie.

Edit: it’s this guy if you’re interested: https://www.instagram.com/scaseyfitness?igsh=bXlpbWR6bWU0a2Jl

 

[jdnc]

@sjameel68 Fuel is fuel but you don’t put diesel in a petrol engine and expect it to run the same.

 

[antponetteoaks]

@reddragon4444 I always think it's not so much about avoiding stuff that's bad, but getting stuff that's good. If I'm full of donuts I've got less room for meat and eggs and vegetables.

 

[andrewm12]

@reddragon4444 Calories are calories but there are tons of variables in how your body processes the calories, individual differences in basal metabolic rate, and how it burns calories through NEAT. It’s definitely individual and complicated. That said, there isn’t a difference with calories in a food whether it is processed or not.

What is true is that processed foods often are lacking fiber, are calorie dense with both carbs and oils, and are designed to be hyper-palatable making you want to eat more. I personally eat mostly whole food based and when I’m in a bulk it becomes hard to eat enough food to hit my calorie target. To hit my target I often need to add some processed calorie dense foods.

Also reducing overly processed foods has benefits beyond calories, especially if you eat a variety of foods including a lot fruits and vegetables.

Basically think of eating more whole food based as eating nutrient dense rather than calorie dense.

 

[maspelf]

@reddragon4444 Yes. I was in the best shape of my life when I maintained a clean diet. Quality matters, not just quantity (counting calories). Caloric intake is important, but the quality of those calories will make all of the difference in the world.

Eat clean. Train dirty.

 

[ishi]

@reddragon4444 Don't worry about it, it's been going over lustigs head for decades too

Layne Norton has made many easy to understand videos dismantling this pseudoscience and I'd suggest watching those to start

 

[andrewm12]

@ishi Seconding Layne Norton. He spells it out pretty good in layman’s terms and breaks down some of the myths.

 

[akumar983]

@reddragon4444 Sounds like bullshit to me from a weight loss perspective. But from a health perspective, every calorie is obviously not really nutritious. When I greatly reduced added sugars and processed foods I looked and felt so much better.

 

[jbrad01x]

@reddragon4444 A calorie is a unit of measurement, so it always a calorie. Caring about the nutritional content of foods is also kind of asinine within a certain context. Foods are not healthy or unhealthy, diets are. If you follow an 80/20 split of nutrient-dense foods to hyper-palatable, low nutrient density foods, you’ll likely be fine. It’s not nearly as complicated as the internet wants you to believe because almost everyone on the internet is selling you something.

There’s nothing like inherently bad about processed foods. Frozen foods are processed. Cutting meat is processing meat. You ask anyone what they’re actually afraid of in processed foods and they either can’t tell you or they say things like “chemicals” or “preservatives” without knowing which ones or why they’re even bad.

 

[amn]

@reddragon4444

Have any of you listened to the Huberman podcast

I'll have to stop you right here. Nope.

But yes, reducing ultra-processed highly-palatable food is a good idea. It tends to improve hunger and satiety signally, and makes maintaining a healthy bodyweight more likely to occur without requiring a ton of mental effort.

All processed foods are not bad. And unprocessed foods are not categorically better than their processed counterparts.

For example whey protein is highly processed, but very much a health promoting food.

It's not necessarily the degree and extent of processing that matters. What matters is the intent of the processing:

• If it's to make the food irresistible to eat, then it's probably not in your interests to eat it very frequently, because the amount you consume has been engineered to be too much.
• If it's to fortify, make food safer to eat, or extract essential nutrients from food to make it more convenient to eat, I think this is a very positive use of food processing.

The amount of processing in making orange juice would barely register to most people as processing, but it is. And it's bad, because it extracts all of the fiber, making the juice alone far easier to consume too many calories, and with virtually none of the benefits of eating orange.

 

[chitraephraim]

@reddragon4444 In terms of weight loss/gain, CICO is all that really matters. That said...

Insulin response has a big impact on several health markers and impacts appetite (ghrelin). Adherence to your nutrition plan will be much easier if you stay away from the processed, high sugar, calorie dense foods.

Finally, just because its considered a "natural" food, don't assume you can eat a much of it as you want. Nuts, for example, are extraordinarily calorie dense.

 

[dawn16]

@chitraephraim Are they though? I read somewhere that you don’t digest all of the calories in nuts cause they go down in hard little pieces that pass right through you.

 

[louis2017]

@dawn16 Depends how you eat them. If you have nut butters then you get all those delicious calories.

It seems like they’re saying almonds, for example, are something like 19% less caloric. So they’re still up there in terms of caloric density. Pistachios are estimated at only 5% less caloric.

 

[halinka]

@reddragon4444 I listened to the podcast episode and thought it was super interesting. The study he mentioned that stood out to me the most was about drinking a liter of water, milk, soda, or diet soda daily and the resulting weight changes over time. I can't find the study online, but I remember water led to weight loss, soda to gain significantly, milk to maintain, and diet soda led to a slight gain. That was the one that really got me, because by CICO diet soda should have the same effect as water. I've mostly cut fake sugars now and subjectively I feel less hungry.

 

[johnny1984]

@reddragon4444 I had to, because I have hyperinsulinemia. Can't eat much processed sugar and processed carbs. I still eat trash food from time to time but not as much as before.

 

[mrbentley]

@reddragon4444 I haven’t listened to that remotely. However, I do remember some semblance of truth in that your body is able to break down and utilize every calorie of sugar and processed foods, where as raw vegetables and fruits may have so many calories but your body can only process so much of it to utilize as energy, so 100 calories of apples >100 calories of sugar.

I am also not a scientist, nor really know how true that really is. But it is something I’ve read and heard in multiple places. However, I think I’ve grown accustomed to being skeptical about almost everything around nutrition.

Also, obviously being well nourished means more energy and better moods. Better moods and energy means better workouts.

 

[jbrad01x]

@mrbentley That isn’t the case. If your body cannot digest something (such as insoluble fiber), it does not contribute to calorie counts. It passes right through you with no contribution to energy stores.

100 calories is always 100 calories.

You can argue that the thermogenic effect of proteins versus fats and carbs is different but even then that doesn’t mean that 100 calories is actually not 100 calories. It simply means that more energy is required to digest some macronutrients than others. But we can’t really accurately measure that so focusing more on it is a pretty big waste of time.

 

[mikeb34]

@reddragon4444 Age 56, my overall POV, reinforced by my lean adult weight fluctuating from 155 to 205+:

CICO. Period.

Studies done with carb overfeeding seem to demonstrate a greatly increased resting EE, and a lot smaller contribution to denovo lipogensis than is often quoted. In theory it might be slightly easier to absorb a small surplus of carbs without gaining fat if you are already eating relatively low fat, than it would be to absorb a surplus on a high fat diet.

Other research showed a slightly larger decrease in body fat by cutting dietary fat over an identical calorie value of dietary carbs when in an overall deficit.

That said, these are VERY modest effects compared to overall CICO. Almost all the negatives associated with this or that diet only appear in individuals at higher BMI. Eating at maintenance with a moderate bodyfat % almost any diet high enough in protein and micronutrients will be "healthy".

Other than that I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as junk food, but there is such a thing as an appropriate portion size for a given food item. For nutritionally weak foods, that serving size might be very small indeed. If you have to cut too much whole food items to make way for processed or luxury foods, you're going to see and feel it at some point.

The whole sugar obesity insulin link fell apart back when Attia and Taubes own research disproved the theory. US per capita sugar consumption peaked in 1972.