= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
army1987 comments on Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 3: Did the US Government Give Us Absurd Advice About Sugar? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (152)
Yes, but I've recently read some comment on some blog stating that in the US, even if you tell people you're on a diet, people will often pressure you into eating high-cal stuff “just this once” (IME the same applies to southern Italy, where there indeed are plenty of big people), whereas in Japan you'd be told “weren't you supposed to be on a diet?” and given stern looks by everyone.
So ISTM that in places like southern Italy (and I'd guess the US too, though I've never been there) “you should be thinner” is used much like belief as attire and not decompartmentalized, or else people are expecting you to achieve that by magic (or maybe by fasting whenever in private or something).
It's the first time I'm trying to lose weight and it's amazing how much energy other people are putting into making it take as much willpower as possible. "Just this once" indeed... For some reason people are also trying to convince me that high calorie foods actually don't contain many calories.
Fat people are also likely to be harassed if they're seen exercising. I think the simplest explanation is that people's beliefs are apt to be incoherent.
A map comparing regions of italy will not tell you much about how italy compares to other countries. A brief search:
http://gamapserver.who.int/mapLibrary/Files/Maps/Global_Obesity_BothSexes_2008.png
... shows that Italy seems to have less obesity than most Western nations.
Italy as a whole does (which is another piece of evidence not exactly supporting Taubes, BTW), but some regions in the south have rates of obesity comparable to that of Germany.
(I know, unfair comparison, if you could cherry-pick one region of Germany it'd probably have even more obesity, yadda yadda.)
(Anyway, unless you want to not be obese as a terminal value rather than because of the health effects, comparing the prevalences of CVDs would be more useful than comparing those of obesity. See also the French paradox, which does support Taubes.)
Exactly. Really, if you look at this map, the less obese regions almost invariably have lower fat/carbs ratio in their common cuisine. Especially the whole of Asia inclusive of Japan.
As of the success of Taubes's diet, this works too . The question which diet is the best for not making you want to over-eat or the easiest to stick with has very little to do with the question of which diet is the most healthy. And the answers to the former question are likely to have more to do with culture, sociology, and psychology, than with metabolism.
In particular, I'd expect the Twinkie diet to work wonders if the main reason you eat a lot is out of boredom or nervousness, rather than actual hunger.
Or simply because carbohydrates are generally more satiating than fats .
The thing about Taubes, is that he's writing for the mainstream audience - i.e. people who have no independent knowledge of the topic besides what Taubes chooses to tell them.
<nitpick>It doesn't seem to me they've tried to distinguish different types of carbs -- as far as I can tell they didn't rule out (e.g.) starch being more satiating than fats but fats being more satiating than sugar.</nitpick>
That's the wrong nitpick, but you shouldn't dismiss it as just a nitpick. One interpretation is that the issue is fiber, not starch vs sugar. The abstract does mention that glycemic index is a useful axis to consider, but it also generalizes to all carbs, which is silly.
Well, it's part of the mainstream that you shouldn't be getting significant fraction of your dietary intake from sugar, right?
I was just nitpicking, not defending Taubes. I'm editing the grandparent to make it clearer.
Nah, I was genuinely wondering. I'm not in the US, I don't know if you guys have had a mainstream opinion that excessive drinking of coca cola is absolutely fine, or some other ridiculous heresy like that. (I suspect not, but then Taubes acts as if yes. I don't think even regular people ever thought that sugars were totally ok and couldn't make you fat)
I'd be wary of generalizing results across genetically different populations, though -- for example, a diet with plenty of dairy and wine seems to be fine for Caucasians but I wouldn't recommend it to East Asians.
... am I trippin', or is Israel missing from that map? There's a scrap of color to the south and a dot near Tel Aviv.