The thing that this perspective doesn’t take into account is hunger. It’s all fine and well to say control your calorific intake, but willpower is a finite and limited resource and if it’s the mechanism used to manage calorific intake it will inevitably fail you. Especially when self-control relies on glucose levels in the blood and the aforementioned willpower is being used to reduce those glucose levels.
In the absence of fructose, fat consumption is controlled through the suppression of hunger by the CCK feedback loop. In the absence of fructose, carb consumption is controlled through the insulin/glucagon feedback loop.
Fructose just gets converted into fatty acids without any control loop, leaving you laden with excess fatty acids and still hungry.
Sucrose, which is sugar, is 50% fructose. So it’s not just Americans with their high fructose corn syrup who are being bombarded with calories that our hunger can’t see, it’s anyone eating foods sweetened with sugar.
jaschen@lemm.ee 1 year ago
TLDR: calories in, calories out.
qwertyqwertyqwerty@lemmy.one 1 year ago
I’ve always personally believed in low-carb diets, but I still agree that calories in/out is the main factor for weight gain. That being said, some calories are not calculated right. I remember reading a study on Almonds that said something like 33% of the calories from Almonds are not absorbed, so “100-calorie” packs of almonds are only 66 calories. In this way, not all calories are the same because the way we calculate them isn’t right all of the time. Also, calories in/out doesn’t account for foods that are unhealthy for other reasons, or could cause you to eat more than you would otherwise, like HFCS.
jaschen@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Very true. I like to reduce the complexity of foods. Just getting someone to eat the correct amount of calories is more than 1/2 the battle. Getting them to eat healthier food is the next huddle.