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passive_fist comments on Open Thread, December 2-8, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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It doesn't sound like you're being neutral on this.
"Sugary crap" is just shorthand for "the sugary stuff everyone agrees is bad for you." The badness of e.g. sugary soda is pretty uncontroversial among nutritionists, "low-carb" or otherwise.
It was my impression that dieticians recommend avoiding processed sugar because of the lack of nutrients, thus making it easy for a diet high in processed sugar to have too many calories and not enough nutrients. Also, that in people with a genetic predisposition to insulin resistance, diets high in sugar have been shown to be correlated with developing insulin resistance and diabetes.
I have never seen a professional dietician refer to 'sugary stuff' as 'bad for you'.
That terminology has always confused me. What, sucrose is not a nutrient? Why not?
Not to mention that this is talking apples and oranges -- calories are a term from the physics-level description and nutrients are a term from the biochemistry-level description.
The correct word is micronutrients. Perhaps some people mistakenly interchange the words.
I doubt anyone's confusing physics with biochemistry when they talk about these things.
Mass media uses "nutrients" in the sense of "a magical substance, akin to aether or flogiston, that makes you thin and healthy". It is mostly generated by certificates of organic farming and is converted into its evil twin named "calories" by a variety of substances, e.g. anything connected to GMOs.
Ok. You clearly have a different kind of mass media there.
"It's got electrolytes."
You're right that sucrose can indeed be considered a nutrient, but I'm just using the word to refer to essential nutrients i.e. molecular groups that you need to consume in your diet for the proper functioning of human biochemistry and cannot be substituted for anything else. As Nornagest says, these are vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids and essential fatty acids. Sucrose is not any of these so it is not an essential nutrient.
I don't see why 'comparing apples and oranges' invalidates the argument, though. What difference does it make if they refer to different processes?
I also agree that nutrition is extremely contentious and politically charged.
Well, essential nutrients are a bit different thing, but even that doesn't really help. The issue here is that there is an unstated underlying assumption that everyone needs all the essential nutrients and the more the better.
To give an example, iron is an essential nutrient. Without it you get anemia and eventually die. So, should I consume more of this essential nutrient? In my particular case, the answer happens to be no -- I have a bit too much iron in my blood already.
Unsurprisingly, for many essential nutrients you can have too much as well as too little. And yet the conventional wisdom is that the more nutrients the better.
Human biochemistry is very complicated and all the public discourse about the diet can manage is Less calories! More nutrients! Ugh.
(yes, I know, I'm overstating things for dramatic effect :-P)
Does anyone actually think that the optimal amount of calories is zero and the optimal amount of nutrients is infinity? I haven't seen many people taking a dozen multivitamins a day but otherwise fasting, so...
(If what they actually mean is that more people in the First World are eating more calories than optimal than fewer, and vice versa for certain essential nutrients, I'd guess they're probably right.)
Then again, it's hard for most people to think quantitatively rather than qualitatively, but that doesn't seem to be a problem specific to nutrition.
It's common for people to think that they (or others) should consume less calories and more nutrients. They generally stop thinking before the question of "how much more or less?" comes up.
And sometimes they are right.
True that, but that doesn't seem to be specific to nutrition.
(That said, I am peeved by advice that assumes which way the listener is doing wrong, e.g. “watch less TV and read more books” rather than “don't watch too much TV and read enough books”.)
Breatharians come close, but I guess the only nutrient they acknowledge is sunlight/vitamin D.
I once tried to plan a very simple diet consisting of as few foodstuffs as possible. Calculating the essential nutrient contents I quickly realized that's not possible and it's better to eat a little bit of everything to get what you need, unless of course, you take supplements.
Yes, that's the idea behind Soylent but I'm rather sceptical of that concept.
Anyone else notice at least three of the soylent guys seem to have this unusual flush on their cheeks? Is this just sheer vitality glowing from them or could there be something else going on? :)
I've seen several pictures of Rob and his face seems to be constantly red.
Do you know if their Soylent recipe uses carrots or other pigmented vegetables? It could be an accumulation of the coloring. (This apparently happened to me as an infant with carrots. Made my face red/orangish.)
I agree with you that 'more nutrients!' is not sound advice, but again, I never said anything like that, not even implicitly.
Human biochemistry is indeed very complicated. That's exactly why I responded to ChrisHallquist's remark about 'sugar being bad', because I feel that that is vastly oversimplifying the issues at hand. For instance, simple sugars like fructose exist in fruit, and not necessarily in small amounts either. Yet I don't think he would argue that you should avoid all fruit.
I am not arguing against you...
Well, ChristHallquist is reading Taubes and for Taubes insulin is the devil, along with the carbs leading to it :-/
What do you mean by small amounts? In the context of Taubes claiming that people are drinking soda because they don't realize it's unhealthy, this is the amount you're comparing it with. (For comparison, that's the amount in fruits.)
In this context, I'd take "nutrients" to refer loosely to the set of things other than food energy that we need to consider in diet: vitamins, dietary minerals (other than sodium, usually), certain amino acids and types of fat, and so forth. That doesn't map all that closely to the biochemical definition of a nutrient, but I don't expect too much from pop science, especially not in a field as contentious and politically charged as nutrition.
Oh, I don't expect much from it at all, but unfortunately this terminology is pervasive and, IMHO, serves to confuse and confound thinking on this topic.