5 ms·

It's not just how many calories, but what kind, study finds

29 points by rf45 14y ago

jbwyme 14y ago
Is this news? I was under the impression that it was fairly common knowledge that all calories aren't created equally.
- martythemaniak 14y ago
  It is definitely not common knowledge amongst the general population. I believe low-carb diets (low carb, slow carb, paleo, etc) are well understood and praised amongst people with interest in nutrition and fitness, but it's still slowly making it's way into the general population.
  - mertd 14y ago
    > It is definitely not common knowledge amongst the general population. For a good reason. First and foremost, general population just needs to eat less, a lot less. Once we get past that point, macro-nutrient composition can be the next level of diet optimization.
    - bad_user 14y ago
      I like meat and meat keeps me full for longer periods of time, while at the same time whenever I eat rice, or potatoes, or pasta (without any meat) I feel hunger in 2 hours tops. I don't know if this is a property of high-fat versus high-carb diets, but either way it's a mistake to think in absolute terms. I also disagree that we have a weight problem because "we eat too much". I lost more than 40 pounds by cutting all the sugars from my diet, while still eating plenty of food.
      - mertd 14y ago
        I meant eating less in terms of calories.
        bad_user 14y ago
        I know what you meant, but I don't think this strategy works, mostly because "eating less calories" has to be a side-effect of a healthy diet not the goal, otherwise it isn't sustainable. I tried it myself and it didn't work. The mental pressure, the guilt when you go wrong, the bad moods you have when you can't satisfy some urge - all of these are culminating with depression, until finally you give up because being overweight suddenly doesn't seem so bad. Besides I've seen some statistics with the growth of the average caloric intake in the past couple of decades, compared with the growth of sugar intake and the growth of sugar in our daily diet has a much, much better correlation with the rise of obesity and diabetes. People should be encouraged to stop eating crap that they don't even like and start eating good and healthy food.
    - scdc 14y ago
      But why do they eat too much? Two things to consider: higher fat meals can make you feel sated sooner, so you eat fewer calories. Also, there is evidence that carbohydrates trigger an insulin release which activates a hunger response.
      - mertd 14y ago
        I never understood the satiety argument. Fat also packs more than twice the calories of carbs. It needs to fill you up twice as fast or keep you full twice as long for this argument to work. Besides, the body takes about 20 minutes to send the first "I am full" signal anyway. I can go through the majority of a large pizza within that time with my "normal" eating pace.
- crazygringo 14y ago
  There are a lot of people who insist that calories must be equal in terms of weight loss/gain, or else there would be violation of the laws of thermodynamics or something... To quote Gary Taubes, who tries to puncture this myth: The reason people believe we get fat because of overeating and sedentary behavior is because they believe the laws of thermodynamics somehow dictate this to be true. In particular the first law, which tells us that energy is conserved, so if a system takes in more energy than it expends, the energy contained in the system has to increase. If that system happens to be our fat tissue, than the fat tissue accumulates fat. That’s the logic. So if we eat more than we expend, we get fatter and the logic turns this around to say that we get fat because we eat more than we expend. And so, overeating and sedentary behavior are the causes. This is the logic that leads virtually every government health agency and independent health organization (the AHA, the AMA, you name it) to have some variation of this World Health Organization statement on its website or in its promotional material: “The fundamental cause of obesity and overweight is an energy imbalance between calories consumed on one hand, and calories expended on the other hand.”
  - kyberias 14y ago
    I don't understand how this quote from Taubes proves anything. If I stop eating, I will lose weight and eventually die. Also, if I eat more, I will gain weight. Thus calories must have SOMETHING to do with weight, right? I think Taubes is fighting a straw man here: I haven't heard anyone argue that eaten calories are stored in 1:1 ratio. But they have some causal relationship.
    - bitdiffusion 14y ago
      If you read the whole article, Taubes isn't saying that there is not a link between calorie intake and weight-gain - what he is saying is that it's not "causal" in any useful sense. Why exactly overweight people consume more calories is still a mystery and it's a gross oversimplification to discuss the law of thermodynamics when considering "why someone is overweight".
      - kyberias 14y ago
- seanalltogether 14y ago
  Except that many have been trying to prove they are created equal. http://www.slashfood.com/2010/11/09/eat-twinkies-lose-weight-one-mans-wacky-diet-that-worked/ http://www.slashfood.com/2010/11/09/eat-twinkies-lose-weight...
dnlhoust 14y ago
It should be noted that a kcal /is/ still a kcal; The adaption your body takes after being given different levels of macronutrients doesn't change that if you eat more than you expend, you will put on weight. Also, I'm surprised that they didn't trial a 60% protein, 20% fat and 20% carb diet!
- crazygringo 14y ago
  Actually, no. Here's an article that explains why this is not the case: http://garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/ http://garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/
  - dnlhoust 14y ago
    While an interesting read, it feels like I just read some long winded analogy describing metabolism? In the parent comment, I'm including bodily factors like metabolic reactions within "expend". The degree to which this makes a difference in overall expenditure is the un-quantifiable part; but adjusting your diet further to counter this lack of expenditure will still have the same effect. It still is a numbers game in my mind.
    - jerf 14y ago
      I see this reaction all the time: "A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. If you want to lose weight, you just need to eat less." "Well, no, your body can react differently to different types of calories. If some calories tend to induce hunger and others don't, then it matters quite a lot which calories you consume." "Well, yeah, sure, everybody knows that." Well, no, everybody may "know" it, but when you're not looking, they'll slip "a calorie is a calorie" right back in. This matters. Either eating certain foods induces more calories to be consumed, in which case the key to dieting is to eat certain foods and not eat others and decades of consensus and advice are irredeemably, irretrievably wrong, or a calorie is a calorie and these sorts of studies are irredeemably, irretrievably wrong (as this is hardly the first one to suggest lower carb or lower GI diets are superior). Some people seem very comfortable just sort of sliding into the "sure, calorie type matters" whenever it is argued, but somehow not being willing to follow the logic that if calorie type matters, then certain further research and conclusions are called for that are sharply at odds with conventional wisdom, which has been very, very much that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie when it comes to weight gain. Conventional wisdom and decades of dieting advice have been deeply, profoundly, foundationally based on a calorie being a calorie being a calorie, and if that is not true, the conventional wisdom is deeply, profoundly, foundationally if you like, flawed. There's no two ways around this. (Though I absolutely, positively guarantee that if it does turn out that calorie type matters that this move will be used to slowly but surely rewrite the last 50 years of dietary history such that the conventional wisdom was always right and never said anything about calorie types not mattering. But it won't be true.)
aresant 14y ago
Summary: "Subjects burned more than 300 additional calories on average when on the very low-carbohydrate dietcompared with the low-fat diet." "Subjects burned 200 additional calories on the low glycemic index diet than on the low-fat diet." "Ludwig also didn't recommend a very low-carb diet even though it offered the best metabolic edge. Some measurements suggested it could be risky for the heart, he said." "The low-glycemic diet — which he has recommended for a long time — did not seem to have these problems, he said, making it the best bet." "A low glycemic index diet is rich in whole grains, fruits and vegetables and is designed to prevent sharp spikes in blood sugar"
- pkghost 14y ago
  Insulin not only causes your body to store more energy as fat, but also interferes with memory formation. *edited, more to the point.
tomrod 14y ago
Argh! The caption in this article makes a grammatical mistake that is a pet peeve of mine. I cringe every time I read or hear it! An example: "Not all the donuts are eaten." "All the donuts are not eaten." Assume some donuts have been eaten. Which is correct? As I understand English, the first is logically correct, but the second is typically used. I apologize now to all of you who have never noticed this before, as it may haunt you now for the rest of your lives.
- breadbox 14y ago
  The assumption that "natural language grammars" and "logic" are even on speaking terms will only bring you frustration, as you rail against perfectly correct constructions while the world rightly ignores you.
- crazygringo 14y ago
  When someone wants to negate the idea of a sentence, the negation is often placed in a spot that makes it unclear as to whether the sentence is being negated, or merely a smaller part of the sentence is being negated. This is a common occurrence in many languages and dialects. Of course it can be confusing, and sometimes even downright contradictory if you think too hard about it. But language is flexible, and most people just don't write with such rigorous logic. So, just mentally realize that, given the context, the most likely interpretation is: "all calories are not alike" = NOT("all calories are alike") If this is still haunting you, just do what Allie does: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better...
- rprasad 14y ago
  I think what he's saying is that the noun is poorlly chosen. The proper, unambiguous sentence should have been: "some of the donuts were eaten" or "some of the donuts were not eaten." The "not" is correctly used in either case, except in the edge case of "all" or "none".
kyberias 14y ago
Didn't this study have a terribly small sample size? 13 adults were divided into 3 groups. That is 4 people in each group. There must be major individual differences how their bodies react to different diets during a four week period. I don't see how this is statistically significant.
- dgottlieb 14y ago
  13 men and 8 women for 21 total people. The article also mentioned on multiple occasions the small sample size.
ImprovedSilence 14y ago
This is very much...not new news whatsoever. I thought it was pretty common knowledge you need different types of calories. This piece also seems to be pretty marketing/weight loss heavy, as opposed to proper nutrition. (I think for an active person, a proper diet is around 40% calories from protein, 30% from both fat and carbs?) or do I have protein and carbs swapped...?
- rprasad 14y ago
  The point was more than the caloric intake should be balanced across carbs, fats, and proteins (the exact ratios would vary depending on need). In other words, low-carb or low-fat were worse overall than a diet which did not artificially deflate consumption of fat or carbs.
mast 14y ago
Marion Nestle of the Politics of Food, wrote about this study early this week (http://www.foodpolitics.com/2012/06/does-where-calories-come-from-matter-to-weight-maintenance-a-new-study-says-yes-but-im-skeptical/ http://www.foodpolitics.com/2012/06/does-where-calories-come...) She's skeptical. Basically, she says you cannot really draw any reliable conclusions becuase of the short, highly controlled conditions of the study.
- kyberias 14y ago
  See: this is such a hot topic that Taubes-fans actually down-vote you without bothering to discuss or present some arguments. You brought some valuable information to the discussion and you got downvoted for that. Hurray, HN!
somesaba 14y ago
Really? I thought this was known already...you needed to do research to discover this? Now I didn't read the article, but if they did research to discover to what extent the exact differences result in, then that's fine I guess...but judging from the title that's not the case.

29 points by rf45 14y ago

jbwyme 14y ago

Is this news? I was under the impression that it was fairly common knowledge that all calories aren't created equally.

martythemaniak 14y ago
It is definitely not common knowledge amongst the general population. I believe low-carb diets (low carb, slow carb, paleo, etc) are well understood and praised amongst people with interest in nutrition and fitness, but it's still slowly making it's way into the general population.
- mertd 14y ago
  > It is definitely not common knowledge amongst the general population. For a good reason. First and foremost, general population just needs to eat less, a lot less. Once we get past that point, macro-nutrient composition can be the next level of diet optimization.
  - bad_user 14y ago
    I like meat and meat keeps me full for longer periods of time, while at the same time whenever I eat rice, or potatoes, or pasta (without any meat) I feel hunger in 2 hours tops. I don't know if this is a property of high-fat versus high-carb diets, but either way it's a mistake to think in absolute terms. I also disagree that we have a weight problem because "we eat too much". I lost more than 40 pounds by cutting all the sugars from my diet, while still eating plenty of food.
    - mertd 14y ago
      I meant eating less in terms of calories.
      - bad_user 14y ago
        I know what you meant, but I don't think this strategy works, mostly because "eating less calories" has to be a side-effect of a healthy diet not the goal, otherwise it isn't sustainable. I tried it myself and it didn't work. The mental pressure, the guilt when you go wrong, the bad moods you have when you can't satisfy some urge - all of these are culminating with depression, until finally you give up because being overweight suddenly doesn't seem so bad. Besides I've seen some statistics with the growth of the average caloric intake in the past couple of decades, compared with the growth of sugar intake and the growth of sugar in our daily diet has a much, much better correlation with the rise of obesity and diabetes. People should be encouraged to stop eating crap that they don't even like and start eating good and healthy food.
  - scdc 14y ago
    But why do they eat too much? Two things to consider: higher fat meals can make you feel sated sooner, so you eat fewer calories. Also, there is evidence that carbohydrates trigger an insulin release which activates a hunger response.
    - mertd 14y ago
      I never understood the satiety argument. Fat also packs more than twice the calories of carbs. It needs to fill you up twice as fast or keep you full twice as long for this argument to work. Besides, the body takes about 20 minutes to send the first "I am full" signal anyway. I can go through the majority of a large pizza within that time with my "normal" eating pace.
crazygringo 14y ago
There are a lot of people who insist that calories must be equal in terms of weight loss/gain, or else there would be violation of the laws of thermodynamics or something... To quote Gary Taubes, who tries to puncture this myth: The reason people believe we get fat because of overeating and sedentary behavior is because they believe the laws of thermodynamics somehow dictate this to be true. In particular the first law, which tells us that energy is conserved, so if a system takes in more energy than it expends, the energy contained in the system has to increase. If that system happens to be our fat tissue, than the fat tissue accumulates fat. That’s the logic. So if we eat more than we expend, we get fatter and the logic turns this around to say that we get fat because we eat more than we expend. And so, overeating and sedentary behavior are the causes. This is the logic that leads virtually every government health agency and independent health organization (the AHA, the AMA, you name it) to have some variation of this World Health Organization statement on its website or in its promotional material: “The fundamental cause of obesity and overweight is an energy imbalance between calories consumed on one hand, and calories expended on the other hand.”
- kyberias 14y ago
  I don't understand how this quote from Taubes proves anything. If I stop eating, I will lose weight and eventually die. Also, if I eat more, I will gain weight. Thus calories must have SOMETHING to do with weight, right? I think Taubes is fighting a straw man here: I haven't heard anyone argue that eaten calories are stored in 1:1 ratio. But they have some causal relationship.
  - bitdiffusion 14y ago
    If you read the whole article, Taubes isn't saying that there is not a link between calorie intake and weight-gain - what he is saying is that it's not "causal" in any useful sense. Why exactly overweight people consume more calories is still a mystery and it's a gross oversimplification to discuss the law of thermodynamics when considering "why someone is overweight".
    - kyberias 14y ago
seanalltogether 14y ago
Except that many have been trying to prove they are created equal. http://www.slashfood.com/2010/11/09/eat-twinkies-lose-weight-one-mans-wacky-diet-that-worked/ http://www.slashfood.com/2010/11/09/eat-twinkies-lose-weight...

dnlhoust 14y ago

It should be noted that a kcal /is/ still a kcal; The adaption your body takes after being given different levels of macronutrients doesn't change that if you eat more than you expend, you will put on weight. Also, I'm surprised that they didn't trial a 60% protein, 20% fat and 20% carb diet!

crazygringo 14y ago
Actually, no. Here's an article that explains why this is not the case: http://garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/ http://garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/
- dnlhoust 14y ago
  While an interesting read, it feels like I just read some long winded analogy describing metabolism? In the parent comment, I'm including bodily factors like metabolic reactions within "expend". The degree to which this makes a difference in overall expenditure is the un-quantifiable part; but adjusting your diet further to counter this lack of expenditure will still have the same effect. It still is a numbers game in my mind.
  - jerf 14y ago
    I see this reaction all the time: "A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. If you want to lose weight, you just need to eat less." "Well, no, your body can react differently to different types of calories. If some calories tend to induce hunger and others don't, then it matters quite a lot which calories you consume." "Well, yeah, sure, everybody knows that." Well, no, everybody may "know" it, but when you're not looking, they'll slip "a calorie is a calorie" right back in. This matters. Either eating certain foods induces more calories to be consumed, in which case the key to dieting is to eat certain foods and not eat others and decades of consensus and advice are irredeemably, irretrievably wrong, or a calorie is a calorie and these sorts of studies are irredeemably, irretrievably wrong (as this is hardly the first one to suggest lower carb or lower GI diets are superior). Some people seem very comfortable just sort of sliding into the "sure, calorie type matters" whenever it is argued, but somehow not being willing to follow the logic that if calorie type matters, then certain further research and conclusions are called for that are sharply at odds with conventional wisdom, which has been very, very much that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie when it comes to weight gain. Conventional wisdom and decades of dieting advice have been deeply, profoundly, foundationally based on a calorie being a calorie being a calorie, and if that is not true, the conventional wisdom is deeply, profoundly, foundationally if you like, flawed. There's no two ways around this. (Though I absolutely, positively guarantee that if it does turn out that calorie type matters that this move will be used to slowly but surely rewrite the last 50 years of dietary history such that the conventional wisdom was always right and never said anything about calorie types not mattering. But it won't be true.)

aresant 14y ago

Summary: "Subjects burned more than 300 additional calories on average when on the very low-carbohydrate dietcompared with the low-fat diet." "Subjects burned 200 additional calories on the low glycemic index diet than on the low-fat diet." "Ludwig also didn't recommend a very low-carb diet even though it offered the best metabolic edge. Some measurements suggested it could be risky for the heart, he said." "The low-glycemic diet — which he has recommended for a long time — did not seem to have these problems, he said, making it the best bet." "A low glycemic index diet is rich in whole grains, fruits and vegetables and is designed to prevent sharp spikes in blood sugar"

pkghost 14y ago
Insulin not only causes your body to store more energy as fat, but also interferes with memory formation. *edited, more to the point.

tomrod 14y ago

Argh! The caption in this article makes a grammatical mistake that is a pet peeve of mine. I cringe every time I read or hear it! An example: "Not all the donuts are eaten." "All the donuts are not eaten." Assume some donuts have been eaten. Which is correct? As I understand English, the first is logically correct, but the second is typically used. I apologize now to all of you who have never noticed this before, as it may haunt you now for the rest of your lives.

breadbox 14y ago
The assumption that "natural language grammars" and "logic" are even on speaking terms will only bring you frustration, as you rail against perfectly correct constructions while the world rightly ignores you.
crazygringo 14y ago
When someone wants to negate the idea of a sentence, the negation is often placed in a spot that makes it unclear as to whether the sentence is being negated, or merely a smaller part of the sentence is being negated. This is a common occurrence in many languages and dialects. Of course it can be confusing, and sometimes even downright contradictory if you think too hard about it. But language is flexible, and most people just don't write with such rigorous logic. So, just mentally realize that, given the context, the most likely interpretation is: "all calories are not alike" = NOT("all calories are alike") If this is still haunting you, just do what Allie does: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better...
rprasad 14y ago
I think what he's saying is that the noun is poorlly chosen. The proper, unambiguous sentence should have been: "some of the donuts were eaten" or "some of the donuts were not eaten." The "not" is correctly used in either case, except in the edge case of "all" or "none".

kyberias 14y ago

Didn't this study have a terribly small sample size? 13 adults were divided into 3 groups. That is 4 people in each group. There must be major individual differences how their bodies react to different diets during a four week period. I don't see how this is statistically significant.

dgottlieb 14y ago
13 men and 8 women for 21 total people. The article also mentioned on multiple occasions the small sample size.

ImprovedSilence 14y ago

This is very much...not new news whatsoever. I thought it was pretty common knowledge you need different types of calories. This piece also seems to be pretty marketing/weight loss heavy, as opposed to proper nutrition. (I think for an active person, a proper diet is around 40% calories from protein, 30% from both fat and carbs?) or do I have protein and carbs swapped...?

rprasad 14y ago
The point was more than the caloric intake should be balanced across carbs, fats, and proteins (the exact ratios would vary depending on need). In other words, low-carb or low-fat were worse overall than a diet which did not artificially deflate consumption of fat or carbs.

mast 14y ago

Marion Nestle of the Politics of Food, wrote about this study early this week (http://www.foodpolitics.com/2012/06/does-where-calories-come-from-matter-to-weight-maintenance-a-new-study-says-yes-but-im-skeptical/ http://www.foodpolitics.com/2012/06/does-where-calories-come...) She's skeptical. Basically, she says you cannot really draw any reliable conclusions becuase of the short, highly controlled conditions of the study.

kyberias 14y ago
See: this is such a hot topic that Taubes-fans actually down-vote you without bothering to discuss or present some arguments. You brought some valuable information to the discussion and you got downvoted for that. Hurray, HN!

somesaba 14y ago

Really? I thought this was known already...you needed to do research to discover this? Now I didn't read the article, but if they did research to discover to what extent the exact differences result in, then that's fine I guess...but judging from the title that's not the case.