
Why Eating Fat Doesn't Make You Fat: Sources - jaybol
http://blog.massivehealth.com/post/16592941482/why-eating-fat-doesnt-make-you-fat-sources
======
nymacro
Carbohydrates are the most accessible source of energy for your body, but they
aren't the only one. For those interested in the mechanics of how fat can be
used as an energy source instead of carbohydrates I recommend looking up
Ketosis.

It is a huge misconception that "the more fat you eat the more fat you get."
Simply having excess energy intake (from any source) will gain you weight --
although the energy requirements for body maintenance is different for
everybody. Having a deficit will lose you weight. Of course it is a little
more complex than this, but generalising like this makes it simpler to
understand and follow.

Personally I keep a moderately low carb diet (I eat most of my carbs before
strenuous exercise) and eat high protein/fat.

\- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis>

\- Alternate infographic about drinking carbonated drinks:
<http://imgur.com/w6C0s>

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r00fus
Sand.

Interestingly, I was recently on a diet that (along with some basic points
system that reflected glycemic index/load goals) utilized some innocuous
looking pills... which had, as a main ingredient, silica.

These pills worked... when I ate them regularly, I ate less without effort. On
reflection this makes sense... perhaps our overly-cleansed (and refined) diet
lacks a very basic ingredient that our digestive tract had evolved to utilize
(not unlike birds' gizzards) and is now lacking?

~~~
Tossrock
Wait... really? My instinctive reaction is that sand would not be good for
your digestive system, but I guess I don't really know. Was (ahem) excretion
an issue?

~~~
r00fus
Can't remember, it was a couple of years ago. I don't remember anything
extraordinarily different other than I didn't eat as much.

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espeed
This is the same thing UCSF Professor, Dr. Robert Lustig, says in his
presentation, "Sugar: The Bitter Truth"
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>).

There is also a New York Times article on this entitled "Is Sugar Toxic?"
([http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=all)).

~~~
derleth
> Is Sugar Toxic?

When an article is written in this form, the answer is nearly always "no", as
it is in this case.

If sugar were toxic, nothing that eats fruit could survive.

~~~
ciupicri
According to that presentation sugar is toxic, but remember that the quantity
matters, too. Alcohol is toxic as well, but a glass of wine won't kill anyone,
whereas a barrel might put you in a coma.

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scoofy
Whenever i read much of this anti-carb stuff, i'm always concerned about how
different carbs affect the body. Taubes always blames the whole lot, but
people like Lustig distinctly go after fructose. I get that carbohydrates
probably affect the body in a negative light, but I certainly wish they would
study sugars independently.

~~~
dredmorbius
Lustig goes after fructose but points out that fructose and sugar are
metabolically equivalent. I believe he does so because fructose is more
prevalent in processed foods (cheaper, subsidized, and other policy-driven
historical accidents behind this).

~~~
ender7
Slight correction: sucrose (table sugar) and fructose are not metabolically
equivalent.

There's an enzyme in your duodenum which cleaves the sucrose molecule into one
fructose and one glucose molecule semi-instantly. In both cases, your body
ends up with a bunch of fructose. However, if you're eating table sugar, only
half of the resulting calories are from fructose; the rest are from glucose.

~~~
dredmorbius
"Fructose" in Lustig's case is HFCS. HFCS is (depending on the formulation)
~45% - 85% fructose, with the remainder being glucose, and a typical
formulation being close enough to 50-50 that it's a wash. Sucrose is a bound
molecule, HFCS is free fructose + glucose molecules.

So, while there are some differences (and I suspect there actually _are_
significant differences between HFCS and table sugar), for the most part,
eating a lot of foods formulated with HFCS is very, very similar,
metabolically, to eating a lot of foods formulated with table sugar.

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TomGullen
Excellent to see this, it's a western myth that eating fat makes you fat. It's
carbs.

Carbs are cheap, carbs are bad for you and carbs are often marketed as health
food.

We don't need carbs. We evolved eating meat and veg. Meat, veg and water is
the perfect diet. It's hard to stick to that diet though as carbs are so
highly accessible.

~~~
eurleif
Vegetables are mostly carbohydrates, so I don't know how you can say we should
eat vegetables but not carbohydrates.

~~~
PaulJoslin
Refined carbs / refined sugar seem to be the problem with most foods these
days. With the fear of 'fats' many food producers replaced the 'fat' with
refined sugars to add the flavour with less fat (on paper).

\- [http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/sugar-problem/refined-
sug...](http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/sugar-problem/refined-sugar-the-
sweetest-poison-of-all)

\-
[http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/nutrition/a/fructosedangers...](http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/nutrition/a/fructosedangers.htm)

~~~
dbbo
"Sugar" isn't the problem. It's fructose. Hard on the liver, can't even be
used by muscles.

~~~
natrius
That's only partially true, and would still be useless if it were totally
true. When people say "sugar", they're referring to sucrose, which is half
fructose. Even glucose on its own will spike your blood sugar, which will make
it harder to burn fat.

~~~
eurleif
Also, your body converts starch into glucose, so starch can spike your blood
sugar the same way. Fiber makes your body absorb glucose more gradually, which
is why it's important to eat starch and sugar as part of whole foods, rather
than in refined form.

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roshanr
While Fat may not make you fat, all fats are not alike and some fats may be
responsible for heart disease and cancer while others may actually be
beneficial. This post by Kurt Harris does a good job of explaining why lumping
together all fats is not a good idea: [http://www.archevore.com/panu-
weblog/2011/1/29/there-is-no-s...](http://www.archevore.com/panu-
weblog/2011/1/29/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-macronutrient-part-i-fats.html)
(PS: Unfortunately, he doesn't cite studies, but with some googling you can
find most of the studies).

Obesity itself is a complex topic and blaming it all on carbohydrates seems
too simplistic. Over at whole health source, Stephen Guyenet has written a
series of articles on the current state of research on insulin resistance -
[http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-causes-
in...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-causes-insulin-
resistance-part-i.html) Worth a read if you're interested in this topic.

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drucken
For those who have not seen it, I highly recommend the documentary "Fat Head
(2009)". It covers a wide variety of these issues in great detail but in very
entertaining way!

Here's a Youtube link to it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVEiYwFvKvU>

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pcurve
East Asians who eat two bowls of rice everyday must be the fattest people in
the world then.

This article is so ridiculous.

~~~
fhoxh
It's a common misconception that there are few overweight east Asians:
<http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobes/2010/868573/tab1/>

Further, much of the population of east Asia lives in poverty or near-poverty
conditions. Their portion sizes are small (i.e., total daily carbohydrate
intake is nowhere even remotely close to that of developed nations). In fact,
half a billion Chinese are living on less than $2 / day:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_Peoples_Republic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_Peoples_Republic_of_China)

Also, east Asians eat whole grain brown rice, not the fried, bleached,
processed, white rice that Americans typically eat, which is largely devoid of
nutrients and fiber.

For far more detail, visit page 226 of Gary Taubes' 'Why we get fat' book.

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kstenerud
_sigh_ yet another chapter in "X is bad for you! No, wait, X is good for you!
it's actually Y that's bad for you. No wait, it's actually Z!"

After decades of this I've decided they're all full of shit until someone can
come up with extraordinary evidence to the contrary.

~~~
daed
I don't think there's been much change in this area, it's been "eat in
moderation, eat a balanced diet and exercise" for as long as I can remember.

~~~
kstenerud
Yes, but what is "moderation"? What constitutes a "balanced diet"? They've
been moving targets for as long as I can remember.

Meanwhile we've gone through endless cycles of "cholesterol is bad",
"cholesterol is good", "only bad cholesterol is bad", "sugar is bad", "fat is
bad", "fat is good, but saturated fat is bad", "carbs are bad". Eggs have gone
through two complete revolutions of being bad for you and good for you. And
now the new pariahs include white bread, white rice, and potatoes. Madness.

~~~
daed
Here's the message I've been given, maybe it's changed without my noticing but
I think it's remained consistent -

balance means giving each variable in an equation similar weight. Eating only
one or two food groups is not optimal for health.

Moderation - not eating more calories than you burn throughout the day.

edit - I agree with you about the ever rotating axis of nutritional evil. It's
BS. I think part of the reason we go through it though is people ignoring the
basic advice I mentioned earlier that's held for so long. Why eat broccoli
when I can eat McDonalds? Exercise is hard. ETC

~~~
kstenerud
It's not just that; it's the temporal nature of what constitutes a balanced
diet (i.e. what the variables are, and what amounts are "correct"). Here's a
short history of the USDA Food Pyramid, for example: [http://www.healthy-
eating-politics.com/usda-food-pyramid.htm...](http://www.healthy-eating-
politics.com/usda-food-pyramid.html) (note: this is from a site pushing the
low-carb diet, and is suitably slanted in that direction, but is useful for
illustrative purposes)

And that's just in the USA. Every country has their own ideas on what is
"balanced".

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brianmwang
It's ridiculous to claim that you can eat as much protein and fat as you
desire and not gain weight.

~~~
nessus42
What's your evidence for this? I've definitely lost weight going on a low
carbohydrate diet, and I ate as much protein and fat as I wanted. (I tried to
keep the fats mostly "good fats".) Maybe if you don't eat any carbohydrates,
you just don't end up wanting to eat as much.

~~~
b3b0p
Did you track caloric intake (accurately) on a daily basis? Do you have a base
line estimate of how much you burn?

Eating as much as you want can be different things for different people. I
know if you gave me a rib eye and eggs cooked in butter or eggs and bacon I
could more than eat my fair share of calories burned for the day in that
single sitting. No problem. I've done it, multiple times.

I found I got fatter on a too high fat diet. The amount of food, in
quantity/volume, not calories, was less since fat has double the calories of
carbs and proteins and I always could fit in more.

~~~
nessus42
No I didn't track caloric intake. Why would I do that? One of the selling
points of these low carb diets is that I wouldn't have to track such things --
that all I would have to do is not eat many carbs and that I would lose
weight.

I'm certainly not claiming that this style of diet would work for everyone,
but it certainly seems to work for many people. One thing I noticed is that
when I wasn't eating carbs, that eating a rib eye with eggs and butter and
bacon didn't seem nearly as appealing in large quantities as it otherwise
would have. The diet did take away a lot of the pleasure of eating, which may
be in part why it worked. I just ended up not being terribly excited by foods
without carbs in them and consequently perhaps didn't over-eat. I would have
killed for a saltine, though.

Another thing I noticed is that I wouldn't lose weight if I ate lots of nuts.
It seems likely that the reason for this fact is that nuts are just too high
in fat to eat in large quantities and continue to lose weight. But the diet
warned against eating many nuts.

In any case, I think the point is not that you can eat _any_ amount of fat and
protein and lose weight, but rather than you can eat as much as you will end
up _wanting_. (With the exception of nuts.) And that you won't end up feeling
hungry.

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dbbo
Technically, it is energetically easier to store dietary fat as adipose as
opposed to carbohydrate.

The problem most people have is that they eat enough carb to satisfy their
daily energy demands, and the fat they've eaten will be stored. Keep in mind
that almost all muscle tissue and the brain prefer glucose (which usually
comes from starch) over anything else, although some vital organs run mainly
on fat, particularly at night.

Our digestive system is very efficient. The bottom line is this: if you eat
more calories than you expend, you will gain weight.

~~~
hackinthebochs
The hidden assumption here is that your body puts forth the same amount of
effort to store fats vs carbs. This isn't borne out by the evidence. Cells
uptake nutrients in response to insulin. Your body produces insulin in much
greater amounts in response to carbs vs fats. This is necessary: free floating
glucose is toxic to certain organs. Fats on the other hand can exist in your
bloodstream without any acute damage.

~~~
Myrth
are you sure? [http://www.empowereddoctor.com/eating-fatty-foods-
inflames-b...](http://www.empowereddoctor.com/eating-fatty-foods-inflames-
blood-vessels-fat-cover)

~~~
hackinthebochs
Informative, thanks!

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Craiggybear
We've known fat isn't fattening for years.

Its nonsense.

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hackermom
Insulin.

