
Is fat killing you, or is sugar? - pablobaz
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/is-fat-killing-you-or-is-sugar
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LyndsySimon
I moved to a ketogenic diet on January 9th of this year. I weighed 318 pounds.
As of this morning I weigh 282 pounds. That's 36 pounds lost - 11.3% of my
body mass - in 77 days, and I have not yet changed my nearly non-existent
exercise habits.

My goal is to get 80% of my calories from fat, no more than 20% from protein,
and to consume a maximum of 20g of carbs per day. I intend for this to be my
diet going forward; this is not something I am doing temporarily to lose
weight.

I've done a good deal of research on this topic, and my conclusion is that the
human body is not equipped to deal with the massive amounts of simple
carbohydrates that it gets in today's world.

~~~
thatswrong0
Do you find that you have to put more effort into cooking / eating with the
new diet?

~~~
LyndsySimon
At least initially, absolutely. It completely changed the way my wife and I
shopped and we all but stopped eating out.

After a month or so it seems to have leveled out. We collected a dozen or so
recipes we liked and were easy to make, and we knew what we could and could
not get at restaurants.

At this point, the net effect is that we spend more money on food, eat at home
more often, and often order modified meals at restaurants (e.g. chicken
fajitas, but instead of tortillas, rice, and beans we'll just have guacamole).

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Overtonwindow
I don't know if it's fat or sugar that's killing us. I lost 50 pounds just
eating balanced, healthy, nutritious meals. I reduce my sugar intake but
didn't eliminate it. In fact I stuck to my twice weekly energy drinks and
occasional candy bars and milkshakes. However my meals were regimented to
include protein, vegetables, very rarely bread, rarely cheese, stopped
drinking milk, and cooked everything at home from scratch. Less eating out.
The only thing I truly eliminated from my diet was packaged foods, and highly
processed meals in a box. So no more Cheeseburger Macaroni. So really, maybe,
it's not sugar and fat, it may just be the highly processed cheap foods,
microwaved stuff, etc.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Is eating out really that bad? Restaurants cook so much better than me. I know
fast food is bad, but a salad or steak? Don't make me give up my restaurants!

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justboxing
> Restaurants cook so much better than me.

It depends on what you mean by 'better'. Taste better, or nutritiously better.

My friend here in San Francisco runs a Pakistani-"Indian" restaurant on
Jackson St, and during Christmas week I helped him out in the kitchen as his
staff was thin (just moving food in and out to customers' tables, taking back
dishes etc, no cooking)

This may not be the case at all restaurants, but I was pretty horrified at how
the average restaurant around the corner operates. They put loads of salt,
cream and butter in everything. Vegetables and meats are purchased in bulk
from restaurant supply stores and are rarely fresh. If a customer didn't like
an entree, they'd just make a new one with more salt, cream (if applicable)
and butter. They have 4.5 star average reviews on YELP. Always packed on lunch
hour and evenings during the week.

In his (Owner / my friend's )own words "Anything can be made to taste great if
you throw in salt and butter".

Some Indian restaurant use oil and a dash of butter even in their Basmati
rice!

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Still, not talking carbs or sugar right? The old 'fats are bad' and 'salt is
bad' legend dies hard. They are really our savior if moving from carbs to veg
and meat.

~~~
Overtonwindow
Oh, animal, definitely animal.

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curtis
What if it's not simply too much sugar, but rather too much sugar combined
with too little exercise?

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ardit33
Sugar is a major problem as right now it gets pumped in almost every food. It
is addictive and people are more likely to re-buy those products.

If you think you are avoiding sugar in your diet by avoiding the usual culprit
(processed juices, soda, desserts), think again. Now sugar is being injected
into everything, processed meat, soups, etc...

I just bought some Jerkey at Trader's Joe. Each serving contains 10-11 grams
of protein and, 5 or 6 grams of sugar. That's one teaspoon and a half of
sugar! A packet, ( a normal snack), has 3-4 servings, and you end up with 5+
teaspoons of sugar that if you didn't look at the nutritional labels you
wouldn't know. Normally jerkey shouldn't have any, (or maybe one gram and
best).

This is just one example, but the pumping of sugar is becoming so pervasive
that it is almost impossible to avoid.

~~~
quacker
I recently checked the sugar content in some Prego pasta sauce. It was
something like 50+ grams of sugar in a smaller size jar (depending on the
variety of the sauce). When I did the math, the sauce was contributing 25-30
grams of sugar per meal - similar to a can of soda. I found another sauce with
1/3 the sugar content at my grocery store. (And of course, pasta is not the
thing to eat if you're looking for low carbs, but the point stands)

There has been tons of advertising about the health benefits of cereals, but
cereal has tons of sugar. Honey Nut Cheerios have 10g of sugar per serving.
Corn flakes have 8g per serving. Frosted Flakes have 11g. Some of the few low
sugar varieties are Kix, Cheerios, and Rice Krispies. Even then, the added
milk will have 10g of sugar.

