Free will? It's just an illusion! How the Food Product Industry gets people to dance to their tune, part 3.

Cont'd from Free will? It's just an illusion! How the Food Product Industry gets people to dance to their tune, part 2.
 
Derren Brown shows how easy it is to manipulate your thoughts, by the use of subliminal images.


I may have mentioned it somewhere on this blog, but everyone is different. The reactions of the kids in the "I ate all your Halloween candy" video in the previous blog post varied from total melt-downs, through feigned deaths, through tears, to "That's all right!". Candy/sweets have different importance to different people and people's suggestibility varies from "Very easy to manipulate" to "Very hard to manipulate".

There's engineering of foods to be as moreish as possible. "The trouble is, they taste too good!" (Crunchy Nut Cornflakes), "Bet you can't eat just one!" (some savoury snack made from refined starch, salt & flavourings) and "Once you pop, you can't stop!" (Pringles). As Harry Hill once said "The problem with heroin is, it's rather moreish!" Although addiction to pure table sugar isn't a thing, addiction to hyperpalatable foods is a thing (which can be blocked by Naltrexone). See Food cravings engineered by industry and Sugar addiction: pushing the drug-sugar analogy to the limit.

Then there's the incessant marketing, including sponsorships, product placements, celebrity endorsements, cartoon characters on packaging to appeal to kids etc. See The Money Spent Selling Sugar to Americans Is Staggering and It’s Not Your Imagination: Celebrities Hawk Pretty Much Only Junk Food.

Then there's the bribery lobbying of government to:-
1. Water-down Dietary Guidelines so that crap-in-a-bag/box/bottle (CIAB) meets them. As people get fatter and fatter, the Guidelines and government get the blame.
2. Subsidise the ingredients of CIAB so that it's cheaper than produce.

Then there's corruption of science e.g. getting doctors to advertise cigarettes years ago. Organisations with vested interests are created, to promulgate conflicting dietary information. Is it any wonder that the public distrust science and scientists?

Edward Bernays' manipulation techniques have worked exceedingly well. If you're too fat and someone says to you "Nobody made you over-consume that crap", point out the above.

What can you do? You can't sue Food Product manufacturers, as their products don't immediately harm you. See How Ultra-Processed Foods Are Killing Us. Hit them where it hurts i.e. in their bank accounts, by eschewing CIAB and basing your diet on whole, minimally-refined animal and vegetable produce. CIAB should be treat foods, not staple foods.

Finally, here's a nice video on how to form good habits for life.


Cont'd on Free will? It's just an illusion! How the Food Product Industry gets people to dance to their tune, part 4.

Free will? It's just an illusion! How the Food Product Industry gets people to dance to their tune, part 2.

Cont'd from Free will? It's just an illusion! How the Food Product Industry gets people to dance to their tune, part 1.

Remember the video "YouTube Challenge - I Told My Kids I Ate All Their Halloween Candy 2015"?


Some of those kids reacted as if their life had just come to an end!

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about psychotherapy, so I don't know how accurate the information is in Hypoglycemia and Neurosis.

Please don't pacify crying babies/toddlers/children with sugary crap.

Cont'd on Free will? It's just an illusion! How the Food Product Industry gets people to dance to their tune, part 3.

Free will? It's just an illusion! How the Food Product Industry gets people to dance to their tune, part 1.

Cont'd from Public Service Announcement: Calling all Low-carb, Low-fat and Veg*n advocates.

I feel a music video coming on! It's Not Safe For Work!


Start of clarification.
I've noticed some confusion over the term "Crap-in-a-bag/box/bottle" (CIAB). My previous post received the following comment, which I'll annotate.
"Is highly processed the problem? Yes.
Tinned tomatoes are processed, what's wrong with including those in your diet. Nothing, other than the fact that they're too salty for me if they're tinned in brine.
What about low sugar baked beans? Nothing, other than the fact that they're too salty for me.
What's wrong with a burger if all it is, is minced beef? Nothing.
Other processed food:
Smoked mackerel Fine.
Frozen peas Fine.
Milled porridge oats Fine.
Parma ham Fine.
Cheese Fine.
Nitrate free bacon Fine.
Prunes Fine.
Almond butter Too calorie-dense & moreish for me.
Filtered milk Fine.
Low sugar jam Fine.
Roasted chestnuts Fine.
Haggis Fine. I think."

CIAB is stuff like French fries/chips, chips/crisps, "fast food", take-aways, pizzas, biscuits/cookies, chocolate, sweets/candy, sugar-sweetened beverages, sugary cereals etc.
End of clarification.

In How to lose weight and get slim by eating "fast food" for 180 days. I showed that it's possible to be healthy on a diet of fast food, if you have a plan and you stick to it. The vast majority of people who eat fast food don't have a plan!

Between the ages of 5 & 8, I spent my 12d/week (that's 5p/week, for those of you who are too young to remember £,s,d.) on sweets. Aniseed balls were 4 for 1d. I also ate French Fancies (small sponge cakes covered in fondant icing) and drank Corona Lemonade (~15% sugar content) at home.

How did I get such a ferocious sweet tooth? Here's the probable answer:- Farley's Rusks.

Look at the health-washing on the Heinz web-site.
"Farley’s Rusks have been loved by mums and babies for generations. Each rusk is lovingly baked using baby grade ingredients."

Let's take a look at the baby grade ingredients:-
"Wheat Flour, Sugar, Palm Oil, Raising Agents (Ammonium Carbonates), Calcium Carbonate, Emulsifier (Monoglycerides), Niacin, Iron, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Vitamin A, Vitamin D."

The first three ingredients are refined starch, refined sugar and refined fat. The refined sugar content is 29% by weight. Perfect food for a baby! The previous sentence may contain traces of sarcasm.

Cont'd on Free will? It's just an illusion! How the Food Product Industry gets people to dance to their tune, part 2.

Why using macronutrient percentages is so wrong.

From http://sciencelearn.org.nz/Contexts/Food-Function-and-Structure/Sci-Media/Images/Macronutrient-percentages

1. Deception

Consider Lies, damned lies and statistics, part n+1. Riera-Crichton et al.  

Relative fat intake in %E decreased and obesity increased.

The conclusion:- "Carbohydrates are fattening and fat is slimming." Yeah, right!

Absolute fat intake in grams/kcals increased after healthy eating guidelines (which weren't low-fat guidelines) came out in 1980, according to More Thoughts on Macronutrient Trends.

Gary Taubes & Nina Teicholz use this deliberate misrepresentation of data to create the false narrative that low-fat healthy eating guidelines caused the obesity epidemic in the US. It's a pack of lies.

2. The terms "Low Fat" and "High Fat" are meaningless

Take 55g of fat (500kcals), 125g of protein (500kcals) and 375g of carbohydrate (1,500kcals). It adds up to 2,500kcals, with a percentage C/F/P split of 60/20/20. It's a High Carb, Low Fat diet.

Now remove 125g of carbohydrate to leave 250g of carbohydrate (1000kcals). It now adds up to 2,000kcals, with a percentage C/F/P split of 50/25/25. It's still a High Carb, Low Fat diet.

Now remove another 125g of carbohydrate to leave 125g of carbohydrate (500kcals). It now adds up to 1,500kcals, with a percentage C/F/P split of 33/33/33. It's now a Medium Carb, Medium Fat Zone diet.

Now remove another 62.5g of carbohydrate to leave 62.5g of carbohydrate (250kcals). It now adds up to 1,250kcals, with a percentage C/F/P split of 20/40/40. It's now a Low Carb, Highish Fat diet.

Now remove another 62.5g of carbohydrate to leave 0g of carbohydrate (0kcals). It now adds up to 1,000kcals, with a percentage C/F/P split of 0/50/50. It's now a Very Low Carb, High Fat diet.

So, 55g/day of fat can be Low Fat, Medium Fat, Highish Fat or High Fat. Which leads to...

3. Confusion

When someone sees the term LCHF (Low Carb, High Fat), they think it means "Eat less carbohydrate and eat more fat". As changes in bodily stores are determined by Energy Balance, eating more fat leads to a slower rate of weight-loss (or even weight-gain), not a faster rate of weight-loss.

By all means cut the consumption of "bad" carbs, like burgers in buns, chips/fries, crisps/chips, pizza, cake, biscuits/cookies, chocolate and sugar sweetened beverages.

However, if you believe that "good" carbs like vegetable produce, legumes, whole grains and whole fruits make you fat and sick, you need to have your head examined, unless you're in the tiny percentage of the population who have genetic carbohydrate intolerance.

See also Insulin Resistance: Solutions to problems.

Why (LDL particle) size matters.

Having gone through the math(s) with several people, I thought I'd stick it in a blog post for posterity.

I know that this is a diagram of a chylomicron, but bear with me!

Cholesterol synthesised in the liver is exported in LDL particles. The more cholesterol that's synthesised, the more particles there need to be to carry it.

∴ LDL-P (particle number) ∝ LDL-C (total amount of cholesterol)

The particles are roughly spherical with a very thin wall (consisting of a phospholipid mono-layer, the yellow wiggly lines with a green end bit in the above diagram).

Volume of a sphere = 4/3 * π * r³, where r = half the diameter.

If there's a 10% reduction in LDL particle size, the volume reduces to 0.729, relative to the original size. Therefore, to carry the same amount of cholesterol requires 1/0.729 = 1.37 times more particles, which is a 37% increase in the number of LDL particles, relative to the original size.

∴ LDL-P (particle number) ∝ 1/LDLsize³

As it's LDL particle number that determines the infiltration of LDL cholesterol into the media of artery walls, it's advisable to keep cholesterol synthesis to a minimum by keeping fat intake to a reasonable level * (i.e. not Nutritional Ketosis level) and keeping LDL particle size to a maximum by keeping sugars & fast starches intake to a reasonable level*.

Before someone asks, what I mean by a reasonable level is a level that is burned by the body without having a chronic excess. An acute excess can be stored, provided that mean intake is less than mean burning.

How COULD I write a post about LDL-P and forget to include THIS?

Bray et al shows that a calorie *is* a calorie (where weight change is concerned).

Continued from Everyone is Different, Part 3.

EDIT: I made an error in stating that all of the extra calories came from fat, in the fat overfeeding phase. Thanks to commenter CynicalEng for pointing that out. It doesn't change the conclusion at all.

At 01:17 on 6th June, during a Facebook discussion, Fred Hahn told me:-
"Nigel Kinbrum - read this please.
Bray, et al. Shows that a Calorie is Not a Calorie and that Dietary Carbohydrate Controls Fat Storage.
Perhaps you'll learn something from a real expert who teaches metabolism to medical students at the largest medical school in the country."

So I did.

At 02:22, I replied:-
"Thanks for that. I read Feinman's blog post about Bray et al http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3777747/ some time ago.
There's a fundamental error in Feinman's analysis. As LeonRover pointed out in his comment http://feinmantheother.com/.../bray-et-al-shows-that.../...
In Diets:- "Absolute carbohydrate intake was kept constant throughout the study."
Also, in COMMENT:- "The extra calories in our study were fed as fat, as in several other studies, and were stored as fat..."
Oh, whoops! That may be why it was rejected by the editor."

Here's Figure 6 from Bray's study.

From http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3777747/

Some Definitions:-

LBM = Lean Body Mass
FM = Fat Mass = Body Fat

Weight change = (LBM change + FM change)

Weight change varies from ~+3.5kg (@ +2,500kJ/d) to ~+9.1kg (@ +5,900kJ/d).

(Maximum weight increase)/(minimum weight increase) = 2.6
(Maximum kJ/day increase)/(minimum kJ/day increase) = 2.36

∴ A calorie *is* a calorie (where weight change is concerned) ± some inter-personal variation.
∴ Insufficient protein can result in LBM loss (this is bad).
As LBM has a lower Energy Density (~400kcals/lb) than FM (~3,500kcals/lb),  LBM loss can increase weight loss, when in a Caloric Deficit.
See The Energy Balance Equation, for a simple explanation, and The Dynamics of Human Body Weight Change, for an incredibly complicated one!


I was rather chuffed when Alan Aragon left the following comment at 04:34:-
"Nigel is correct. From Bray et al's text:
"The extra calories in our study were fed as fat, as in several other studies [33,34], and stored as fat with the lower percentage of excess calories appearing as fat in the high (25%) protein diet group. The higher fat intake in the low protein group probably reduced nutrient absorption (metabolizable energy) relative to the other groups and this would have brought the intake and expenditure closer together in this group.""

Feinman has deleted his blog post. However, his post I Told George Bray How to do it Right is still there. I believe that Dr. George A. Bray M.D. sort-of did it right.

Dr. George A. Bray used a "weight maintenance formula" in all three groups for the weight maintenance phase. He then changed the formula in all three groups to low-P, med-P and high-P formulas, for the fat overfeeding phase. Carbohydrate grams remained constant in all three groups for all phases, but additional fat grams were fewer in the high-P group than in the low-P group, for the fat overfeeding phase.

I would have used the low-P, med-P and high-P formulas for the weight maintenance phase and for the fat overfeeding phase, to equalise the additional fat grams in all three groups.

Continued on Everyone is different Part 4, Fallacies and another rant!

Lipoproteins & apolipoproteins: E, by 'eck.

In December 2008, I wrote about Cholesterol And Coronary Heart Disease , where I used a limousine metaphor to describe how cholesterol & fat are transported around the body. Here's a diagram of a chylomicron lipoprotein "limousine". Chylomicrons transport dietary fat (triglycerides) & cholesterol from the gut to the liver & other tissues. As there's much more dietary fat than dietary cholesterol, the contents are mostly fat.

A chylomicron. T=Triglyceride C=Cholesterol. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipoprotein

The lipoprotein "limousines" vary a lot in size.

(a) VLDL (b) chylomicrons (c) LDL (d) HDL. 
From http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/triglycerides-vldl-and-industrial.html

Apolipoproteins are the "chauffeurs" which determine to where lipoproteins transport stuff.
Apo A is found mainly on HDL, which transports fat & cholesterol from tissues to the liver.
Apo B is found mainly on LDL, which transports cholesterol from the liver to tissues.
Apo C is found on HDL when fasted, but moves to chylomicrons & VLDL when fat is eaten.
Apo D is found mainly on HDL and is is associated with an enzyme involved in lipoprotein metabolism.
Apo E is found mainly on chylomicrons & IDL and transports lipoproteins, fat-soluble vitamins, and cholesterol into the lymph system and into the blood. In the CNS, Apo E transports cholesterol to neurons. Defects in Apo E result in hyperlipidaemia , cardiovascular & neurological diseases, and is the E referred to in the title.

There's also Apo H, which is a β-glycoprotein involved in the binding of cardiolipin. It has nothing to do with the above lipoproteins.

Defending the indefensible: Gary Taubes and *that* statement about gluttony.

Here's another "video" (it has sound and static images only). As I haven't learned how to embed a YouTube video that starts at a specific time, here's a link to it and a picture of it:- Gary Taubes' "Why We Get Fat" IMS Lecture On August 12, 2010 (Part 8 of 8), starting at 8 minutes and 13 seconds in.

To quote: "You can basically exercise as much gluttony as you want, as long as you're eating fat and protein."

Itsthewoo told me that Taubes was being ironic i.e. he was joking. I call bull-shit on that, for the following reasons.

1) You don't joke about something as important as diet, in a video that's likely to be heard by many people.

2) If you are foolish enough to joke about something as important as diet, you make 100% certain that listeners know that you're joking, by stating in the very next sentence that the preceding sentence was a joke. Taubes didn't do that.

3) I didn't hear chortling or any other audible clue that Taubes was joking. Did you?

I therefore conclude that itsthewoo is hearing (and seeing) the world through "cognitive bias" Weird Filters , resulting in her hearing what she wants to hear. Sorry!

Metabolic Inflexibility: What it really means.

Here's a picture from Metabolic Flexibility and Insulin Resistance.

The Metabolically-Inflexible (MI) & Insulin Resistance

Here's another picture.

Fig 2. ● = Metabolically-Flexible (MF). ○ = Metabolically-Inflexible (MI).

Salient points:
1) Excess serum FFA a.k.a. NEFA is bad.
2) Respiratory Quotient (RQ) a.k.a. Respiratory Exchange Ratio (RER) changes due to dietary changes are more sluggish in the MI than in the MF.
3) Under Insulin Clamp conditions, RQ/RER is lower in the MI than in the MF, due to impairment of glucose oxidation and non-oxidative glucose disposal.

I have posted this because of Danny Roddy's post Is Supplemental Magnesium A Surrogate For Thyroid Hormone? , which leads onto A Bioenergetic View of High-Fat Diets.

In the first article, Danny Roddy writes:-
"Additionally, taking magnesium while actively engaging in a diet or lifestyle that reduces the respiratory quotient (e.g., high-fat diet, light deficiency, excessive exercise) seems pretty silly. For example, as a rule, diabetics have a reduced respiratory quotient (Simonson DC, et al. 1988), tend to have higher levels of free fatty acids or NEFA (Kahn SE, 2006), and are often deficient in magnesium (De Valk HW, 1999)."

The second sentence (diabetics have a reduced respiratory quotient...and are often deficient in magnesium) seems to contradict the first sentence (...taking magnesium while actively engaging in a diet or lifestyle that reduces the respiratory quotient seems pretty silly).

Simonson DC, et al. 1988 is Oxidative and non-oxidative glucose metabolism in non-obese type 2 (non-insulin-dependent) diabetic patients.
"In conclusion, during the postabsorptive state and under conditions of euglycaemic hyperinsulinaemia, impairment of glucose oxidation and non-oxidative glucose disposal both contribute to the insulin resistance observed in normal weight Type 2 diabetic patients. Since lipid oxidation was normal in this group of diabetic patients, excessive non-esterified fatty acid oxidation cannot explain the defects in glucose disposal."

Impaired glucose oxidation with normal lipid oxidation lowers RQ/RER. Therefore, lower RQ/RER must be bad, right? Wrong. From the above study:-
"...euglycaemic insulin clamp studies were performed..."
Remember Salient point 3)? Simonson DC, et al. 1988 is an insulin clamp study, the results of which don't apply to free-living people (who aren't insulin clamped).

See also Determinants of the variability in respiratory exchange ratio at rest and during exercise in trained athletes. RER/RQ increases & decreases with increases & decreases in exercise intensity. This is Metabolic Flexibility (MF). Sorry, Danny.

Fructose: this may blow your mind.

Hat-tip to Beth@WeightMaven for posting a link to this.

 Nicked from sodahead.com

Watch the following video.