
Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intakeand Weight Gain: Randomized [pdf] - nabla9
https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdf/S1550-4131(19)30248-7.pdf
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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19930970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19930970)

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hombre_fatal
"[Dupe]" doesn't seem appropriate when so much time has elapsed that we can't
even comment.

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dang
On HN the turnover is about a year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).
If it were as short as two weeks, which is the commenting window, the same few
hot stories would get rediscussed over and over.

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dwheeler
I think it's more likely that this conclusion is true than that it's false.

However, the fine article says: "We admitted 10 male and 10 female weight-
stable adults".

That is a ridiculously small population to start with. Yes, yes, I know it's
expensive to have many participants, but part of the broader problem in
today's science is that too many experiments are accepted broadly even though
they are based on tiny sample sizes. This is an excellent justification for
conducting a larger study, not a conclusion in itself.

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mywittyname
From Table 3 Fasting Blood Measurement Baseline:

> PYY (pg/mL) 25.1 ± 1.9 34.3 ± 1.9

PYY is a hormone which regulates feeding in humans. From another study:

> Several lines of evidence suggest that low circulating PYY concentrations
> predispose towards the development and or maintenance of obesity. [0]

A highly processed diet reduces the levels of PYY in the blood by around
30-40%. That's pretty damning evidence.

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670018/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670018/)

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aznpwnzor
> Our study was not designed to identify the cause of the observed differences
> in energy intake.

Would be great to see a factor breakdown (obviously hard). I can see several
reasons why processed food leads to this result: chemically better tasting
(optimal flavor blast + salt/falt), mentally better tasting (i.e. comfort
food), or some deeper gut reasons?

because this then sets the agenda for how we fix this problem.

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aznpwnzor
another thing could be that it's just calorically dense if ad libitum is
encouraging people to eat until they're tastes are satiated

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ghostbrainalpha
"While we attempted to match several nutritional parameters between the diets,
the ultra-processed versus unprocessed meals differed substantially in the
proportion of added to total sugar (54% versus 1%, respectively)."

It's an interesting study, but I would still like to see more strict calorie
for calorie, and macro for macro match.

By allowing the participants to eat freely and by having so much more sugar in
the processed diet, all this really shows is that processed diet was leaving
participants more hungry so they ate more.

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thorwasdfasdf
>> "all this really shows is that processed diet was leaving participants more
hungry so they ate more. "

This is 99.9% of the reason why people are overweight.

Every biological being eats until they're full(the body stops sending hunger
signals). this is true for human, as it is ducks, monkeys, dogs or pretty much
any other animal. For many, eating junk food/processed foods, breaks this
satiety mechanism (and not just in the short run, there may be long term
effects that prevent people from going back to normal).

Not being hungry, having satiety is the holy grail of weight management.
Unfortunately, we don't have the means to produce satiety without calories.
Yes, fiber/protein/micronutrients densities do help a little, but it does not
help enough.

And there hasn't been enough studies on it. Other than the Holtz studies I
haven't found much done on this subject.

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ghostbrainalpha
There are a number of prescription weight loss medications that increase the
feeling of satiety. Maybe you meant that we haven't found a way to do it
without side effects?

[https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/weight-
manageme...](https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/weight-
management/prescription-medications-treat-overweight-obesity)

