Tuesday, October 19, 2021

What Is The Most Fattening Food?

I came across this paper recently:


"Changes in Diet and Lifestyle and Long Term Weight Gain in Women and Men” (Mozaffarian et al., 2011)

From the illustrious New England Journal of Medicine.

The most notable authors (apologies to the rest!) are F. B. Hu—Frank Hu, the current Frederick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (Harvard University, 2021a); D. Mozaffarian—Dariush Mozaffarian, Dean of Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy (Tufts University, 2021); and W. C. Willett—Walter Willett, the previous Frederick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the aforementioned Harvard School  (Harvard University, 2021b), and until 2017 the chair of the department of nutrition—per Wikipedia as of this writing.

The three are the Holy Trinity of the Nutrition Establishment of the United States, and, by extension, the world. Combined, the three have written countless papers, editorials, and opinion pieces on the subject of health and nutrition.

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29 comments:

  1. What’s scary is not the unilever it’s that there are 9 (nine!) NIH grants. In other words, we paid for this crap.

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  2. Who eats plain boiled potatoes? They are either adorned with (lots of) butter or gravy.

    Actually, find potatoes have a noticeable bitter taste, unless heavily salted and adorned with fat.

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    1. Lots of people eat plain boiled potatoes. It's an ingredient in lots of dishes, like stew, or the dread New England Boiled Dinner I grew up eating.

      I guess it helps if part of your family is Irish. LOL

      But they are definitely improved with salt and butter!

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    2. OK, my family wasn't Irish. Aside from stew, only things we boiled potatoes for were for making mashed potatoes or potato salad, both of which had dairy product, margarine, or mayonnaise, the latter two of which are of course full of PUFAs.

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    3. Tucker, I loved our version of New England Boiled dinner, which we made with left over ham bone. My father and I would fight over the pork fat and of course, we still put lots of butter on our potatoes, along with the broth! (My red hair puts me in the Irish/Scottish ancestry column).

      Guess the difference is where I grew up (near Brad Marshall) lots of local dairies, hence LOTS of butter used on everything.

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  3. So I don't feel so bad about my monthly surrender to potato chips, because I only eat the rare ones that are fried in avocado or olive oil. I preferred Boulder Mountain's coconut oil chips, but they were recently discontinued, and I haven't been able to find an alternative. (I tried making my own but it's just not the same.)

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  4. There was a point in the 80s or 90s where CSPI pressured McDonald's and other fast-food restaurants into switching to vegetable oil from a saturated deep-fry fat for their french fries. Since this study started in the 80s, and french fries are one of the items studied, I'm just curious, is this switch reflected in any of the numbers? Not that I consider that kind of study very accurate or useful anyway...

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    1. It was 1990, and it was McDonalds. Most of these studies started in 1986, so the early populations would have had less seed oils, correct.

      Most frying was done in some form of seed oils even then, as it had been pushed since 1961.

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  5. Hi, nice work, data Vs. Conclusions.

    One of the original commenters from 2011 also noticed this potato dilemma.

    From discussions
    "No single metric appears to capture these complexities. Our findings highlight gaps in our (mechanistic) understanding...” my brackets and cherry picking.

    Missing: biochemistry. Sat fat bashing? Luckily only once thermodynamic laws. It is all Cico with behavioral!

    In Europe there are chips fried in olive oil. An oddity, maybe only in southern countries.

    French fries outside is rarity nowadays (oil). Home fries of sweet potato in coconut oil has replaced them. Briefly warmed up in owen grill to evaporate some moisture before frying once. No worries of soaked oil within potatoes, it is only ok!
    JR

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    Replies
    1. Nice find, JR! That's not just a commenter, that Joseph Hibbeln of the NIH, who published the following year a paper titled "Dietary linoleic acid elevates endogenous 2-AG and anandamide and induces obesity".

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  6. Any thoughts on why nuts might be associated with negative weight change? Do they count peanuts as nuts? Nuts are generally high in LA. Could it be that the LA in nuts isn't well absorbed? Or is that only wealthy people consume nuts and they're not going to McDonalds?

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    Replies
    1. I'd suggest it's the latter, if you're eating nuts you're probably eating less junk food.

      It's a marker for a healthier diet.

      Delete
  7. Not directly related to this specific post but somewhat related. Robb Wolf talks about working with Reno FD to try and improve health, through diet, and was hopeful to expand to other FD's.

    Well, think there is a new opportunity for FD's to listen to alternative diet information: https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/american-treatment-kit-movement-begins

    If there was an opportunity, think this may be it.

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  8. If you wanted to gain weight (ie, muscle, you are a lifter who wants to bulk) BUT avoid PUFA, what would be your go-to food? Milk? Mashed potato? Rice?

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    1. Or go for ground beef, dirt cheap, healthy and contains connective tissue for growing strong sinews. Kind regards, Gerlach.

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    2. Yes, agreed. Ground beef is totally under-rated.

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    3. Most of the fitness gurus say “gotta eat carbs to build muscle bro”… but yeah I like ground beef a lot.

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    4. Muscles are built of meat, not carbohydrates. 😉

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  9. I watched your interview on Dr berry YouTube I agree with you completely I looking forward to reading your work thank you I wish you had a YouTube I enjoyed listening thank you again

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  10. Please talk about the behavioral aspects of eating too many PUFA's. Any articles you've found citing that it makes people anxious, aggressive (yelling stop) and generally, disagreeable? And.. Do you believe in keeping score of daily intake of Omega 6 /Omega 3 (Should our ratio be one to one?)




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    1. That's a great idea, Patti. There are lots of really good papers in that direction, in fact.

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  11. Dr DiPatrizio of UC Riverside gave a zoom lecture which I watched yesterday in real time through UC Irvine. Title "Pretty gutsy: endocannabinoids in peripheral tissues make you eat" I will contact him and see if it can be loaded on to youtube so everybody can access if they wish. Many mechanisms were worked out. However, punch line an antagonist of CB receptors with peripheral activity only will stop mice from getting fat without the pyschiatric side effects of rimonabant. Rimonabant is very powerful drug in humans on a "Western" diet...as powerful as knockout CBr's. Of course the "Western" diet used in mice model was corn oil gavage. Admitted when I questioned about the LA....he responded YES, his experiments show minimal carb effect but high response to LA (increased 2AG and AEA). Make mice fat and endlessly hungry but not for veggies. the mice went for 'Potato chips". Answer to all that....of course...a drug to antagonize perhipheral CBr's. It does work. I intend to ask him how he is funded. Other investigators wanted to know if it matters whether you smoke the THC or put it in the various stuff to eat. No intentions at all to curb the THC or the LA in the diet.

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    1. Hap, can you get me in touch with him? I'd like to do an interview...

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  12. I think I can contact him . I've asked for contact info from our Neurobiology department who sponsored the presentation. Is this for a podcast purpose? He might want to know more about it.

    somebody asked, although he never answered, if adding 18:3n-3 to the diet would be helpful...you know lets get on the Omega 3 bandwagon.

    Anyway, if you need my personal email once I have the information for you, I am happy to provide.

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    1. Yes, it's for a podcast. I'm in the process of starting my own, and he'd be a great guest. His research figures heavily in my epic, in-progress obesity post.

      Just DM me on Twitter... Shouldn't post emails in public.

      Delete
  13. you are right about that. but I thought you might not receive DM's.
    You might want to search for him on the internet and see publications.

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    Replies
    1. From you, I'll get them. ;) I tried to DM you in the past, and you didn't seem set to receive them.

      I've already got a database of DiPatrizio's papers.

      Delete

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