16 Comments
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Talltannedandtactful's avatar

The Oreos from Grammas time were objectively healthier than most modern healthfoods

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Ha, do you have an ingredient list for Oreos from back then?

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Nicolas Bourbaki's avatar

Well M.Pollan did get me on my journey with "Omnivores Dilemma" pointing out the Haber process and how much oil is in food. The M.Pollan quips are, to my mind just a way to point out that something is broken in the modern food chain. I don't think M. Pollan's advice is intended to be taken seriously as advice but rather as a musing on the state of food today. I could be wrong. I like him but don't take him seriously at all. Think fun dinner guest not a panelist on metabolic pathways and the roots of disease.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Yea, in that sense he (and similar pop writers) are probably useful. Get the ball rolling. But e.g. the "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" one is 1/3 useless and 2/3 wrong IMO.

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Nicolas Bourbaki's avatar

You are right. For example, CICO is trivially true and hopelessly misleading. Attempted explanations that don’t advance understanding are a distraction from our quest.

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Alan's avatar

I thought he was talking about Grandma not recognizing what the ingredient list was.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Nutrition labels were introduced in 1991 I think, so it's highly unlikely that grandma would've recognized ANY ingredient lists..

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Kirill Zaytsev's avatar

Hi, off-topic, sorry. New to low protein. Wondering if the researchers used bolus protein doses in most of the low protein research from your 2023 post? Because if there's an insufficient amount per meal, it there's no muscle protein synthesis triggered. Personally interested in preserving muscle and resistance training. But also wonder if there would be a difference in outcomes. On the opposite end, you can have one high protein meal per day(like 30g) to trigger MPS and still be well within 7-9% kcal target. Which is what I'm inclined to try. Also strange that the 2016 Lamming paper had the bcaa-restricted mice without much of an FGF21 spike, while still achieving glucose lowering and fatloss of the whole protein-restricted ones. What gives? I thought it was all FGF21 mediated.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I'm not entirely sure, but I think the way it works is that the animals are basically provided with pellet or paste food, and then can eat when/how much they want. Of course it could be that they gave them a day's worth of food, of which only 6% was protein - and thus they would have never gotten a bolus.

Could be that these details are in the study descriptions, but I don't recall now. You could check.

I am doing basically exactly what you describe; my lunch meal has ~25g of protein and I get a bit from my cream. Aka basically 1 bolus and a bit of "drip" in cream across the day.

I think FGF21 is part of it, but not the whole story. It also seems to not be sufficient - there are plenty of ways to induce FGF21 that don't necessarily lead to fat loss.

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Valentin's avatar

lol the boomers and before literally made crisco a thing

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Boomers aren't even grandparents tho, at least not my grandparents ;) Maybe if you're younger. Great-grandparents would've been born like 1900 or earlier for millennials like me?

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Valentin's avatar

you're right, regardless, crisco was introduced in 1918. I don't reject your frame, I'm pointing out that food started to go to shit even before our grandparents started cooking meals

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Tyler Ransom's avatar

Yes, my grandparents were born in the 1920s and 1930s. My great-grandparents were born in a wide range: 1880s-1910s. My wife's great-grandfather was born in 1874!

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I only knew one of my great grandparents, my great grandma. And I was 3 or so, I don't even remember it - but my parents assure me it happened, lol.

She must've been born around 1890-1910 I'd say, just from when my grandpa (her son) was born.

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Brett John's avatar

I hate these lazy responses to criticism of processed foods that deliberately obfuscate the point by being so literal with semantics. We use generic terms all the time like "seed oils" to refer to PUFAs when it's not a perfect term but gets the point across without burdening you with a lengthy multi paragraph article (see above) to make a simple point that most intelligent people reading in good faith understand. These are the same types of arguments used by manufacturers of cheap garbage "food" products. It also takes a complicated subject like health and simplifies it down to "eating" while ignoring a multitude of other factors like hormones, metabolic health, environmental chemicals, and nutrient factors. At the end of the day this entire article adds nothing to the conversation except that you dislike Pollan. Disappointing.

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Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I think I've explained pretty well why the term & classification is garbage? What exactly do you disagree on?

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