
Got a sweet tooth? Blame your liver - zoew
http://exactlyscience.com/archives/12114.html
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nfc
“How do we decide what and how much to eat? Maybe satiety consists of
different pathways that control different types of nutrients,”

This is a pet theory of mine. That, vastly simplifying, our bodies try to make
us eat until we have a sufficient amount of whatever number of elements they
need to function. The more varied you eat, the less you need to eat,
conversely, the more homogeneous your sources of food (bread, rice...), the
more you'll need to eat to try to get what is hardly there.

I have no idea whether this idea is mainstream between researchers but it
always seemed to me as feasible as a satiety mechanism as just counting
calories, and it explained quite well the observations I've made about myself.
Anybody here could point to the current state of the art in the field ?

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ashark
I'd expect multivitamins to have a strong effect on general satiety if that's
true. Do they?

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sudojudo
There's evidence that multivitamins are useless, and that they actually cause
health problems [1].

As for OPs theory, it's strange to think of such a thing happening during an
obesity epidemic, but many people do seem to be lacking basic nutrients in
their diet. I'm not sure how much we can trust our own guts when it comes to
seeking out nutritious foods; the majority of people go for sugar and fats
when they're hungry, instead of the fruits and vegetables that contain the
nutrients they're lacking. It seems our stomachs are not looking out for our
best interests.

[1] [https://hub.jhu.edu/2013/12/17/vitamins-might-be-
harmful/](https://hub.jhu.edu/2013/12/17/vitamins-might-be-harmful/)

~~~
sfeng
> many people do seem to be lacking basic nutrients in their diet

What's the evidence of that?

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tomsthumb
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22364157/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22364157/)

Note that 'required' likely means "less than the RDA" and that RDAs are often
set on the basis of "having less than this much will imminently lead to some
sort of dysfunction" as opposed to "the amount that actually makes your body
happy".

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synthecypher
I've got a real sweet tooth and excessively eat sweet things.

I also have a 23andMe account and looked up to see if I have the FGF21 gene?

I found that I have 2 SNP's on gene FGF21.

[http://i.imgur.com/qnRD5M4.png](http://i.imgur.com/qnRD5M4.png)

Any idea what this means relative to the study?

~~~
synthecypher
Delved further into the cited study.

"This revealed statistically significant associations between FGF21 rs838133
and increased consumption of candy, as well as nominal associations with
increased alcohol intake and daily smoking."

rs838133 is the first one in the table shown in image I linked to.

~~~
synthecypher
If you find this interesting and are interested in 23andMe please use my
referral link. ;)

[https://refer.23andme.com/s/jbacontrol](https://refer.23andme.com/s/jbacontrol)

