DON'T OPEN THIS IS YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE SUGAR OR CARBS!
I have been rightly scolded for posting pictures of things I would never eat. I post them because they prompt reflections on what I do eat and how carbs affect our society. I still want to talk about that stuff, so if everyone can post carby pictures and thoughts in this discussion, so those that don't want to see such things, don't have to.
What is it that you do not eat?
Grass-fed beef?
Dairy products?
Grass? (a potential source of fibre for us non-ruminants)
I eat all that, even the grass on occasion. No, the photo is meant to be non-triggering. It's the photos below that might be a problem.
From my Facebook feed yesterday. Two different organisations fighting covid with sugar! 🙄
OMG.
The irony is strong with this one.
I especially love the ‘flatten the curve’ wording on the right. In my experience, cake doesn’t exactly flatten curves 🙄
LOL - I didn't even notice that! I was just bemused by the underlying idea that, hey, you got vaccinated, your risk is reduced, so it's totally OK to carry on eating rubbish that makes you ill.
I've done several rants on the persistence of the low-fat diet (which, IMO, is a prime reason lots of people had metabolic syndrome in 2020 and therefore died from COVID). I have to just laugh at this sort of thing because I'd probably get high blood pressure if I didn't.
Oh but ‘moderation’ and ‘you’ve got to treat yourself sometimes’.
I don’t think that people actually stick to a low fat diet, but it’s a spectacular fall from Grace as they are so hungry, that does the damage.
Yeah, that. It appears that a typical pattern is "being good" for a while followed by bingeing (ie., hunger) and self-loathing.
A larger family member does this. Is so carefully sparing with her low fat food all day, then eats three packets of biscuits late at night. She thinks it’s because she’s lonely (widowhood) but I think just hungry.
I think that's so much the pattern of the late night "snacking" we hear about so often. When members say they've been "good" all day and then go off the rails in the evening, I read that as existing on low fat stuff and lettuce leaves and then being ready to gnaw the table leg by evening
Lettuce has a lot to answer for. My husband still can’t believe he lost two stone without eating a single lettuce leaf.
😆
For me, it was the ryvita. And cottage cheese. In fact, ryvita topped with cottage cheese. I remember mixing in a little grated cheddar with the cottage cheese and popping it under the grill for a minute, so it would taste of something.
😯🤢🤮
Oatcakes. I ate about 20 during the course of a morning at work 🙄
I don’t think that people actually stick to a low fat diet, but it’s a spectacular fall from Grace as they are so hungry, that does the damage.
I am shocked to read this. It seems to be supporting to the pernicious belief that only fat can make you fat. Of course carbohydrates can make you fat 🤪
That belief is what made the consultant write a letter that implicitly called me a liar, because I told her I ate low fat and exercised regularly, but I was obese so it I must be lying.
My after dinner snacks were seconds or thirds of my low fat dinner, or crisp breads or other non-fattening 😂 foods.
Your relative, say she eats a kilogram (just a little more than 3 packets) of hobnobs, do you really think the 200g of fat is a bigger problem than the 600g of carbs? Would she be better off with a kilo of jaffa cakes, with only 80g of fat but 700g of carbs? Or a loaf of bread?
Oh dear. I think I meant but expressed badly, that low fat diets as typically followed are typically suitable for an anorexic mouse.
My relative would be better off with a slice of bacon wrapping her chicken breast, and a bit of butter on her green vegetables.
Yeah, I get that. I wasn't on a low fat diet, I was on a low fat WOE.
(the idiot consultant on a second visit said something like "carbs count too" 🙄. No wonder she was morbidly obese. I wonder if she has addressed that yet)
I was pretty sturdy on quinoa and chickpeas...
Once upon a time, I could make a whole meal for a whole family with zero added fat. And bread so "wonderful" you could eat it by itself. And we did. Lots of it. No meat, no nuts, no dairy....lots of bread. 😔
Ah yes. Home made bread. I made mine with spelt flour so it had magic health properties and was so nice I ate a loaf at a time. Nowadays I settle for being thin. Bread vs Cheekbones, the epic tale. Also featuring a smaller bum...
On Twitter a Wiltshire public health account posted a pic of iced cupcakes on ‘no diet’ day. What would you choose to eat today as it’s no diet day? It trilled. (Bacon and liver for lunch, beef for supper. Same as every day. And someone will tell me I shouldn’t eat so much bacon in a minute.)
AGH! My vacc centre had a full ice-cream van with free cake and icecreams and other stuff for everyone coming out of the centre!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I thought that was madness.
With all the attraction it had in the press lately I really wanted to try Caterpillar in my diet 😂
Yes! I am not to the manner born, so I was completely unaware of either cake. Apparently all the supermarkets have their own Cuthbert. Who knew?
The village bakery when I was a child had a version. All the hip kids had it as their birthday cake. I had a round home made one 🙄
I often think the cooking programmes on the tv should introduce lchf elements. I love Bake Off and master chef the professionals type programmes but they've not always healthy and those that are would leave me starving 😊 xx
I've noticed the current crop of TV chefs focus heavily on 'treats'. There is more than one series that's exclusively about cakes. I'm not saying there's no place for cakes in the world, but the participants are invariably overweight and their creations embody the malfunctioning tastes of overweight people - loads of sugar, frosting, etc. and very little subtlety or art. The phrase "food porn" is a pretty apt analogy.
It is very possible to make lovely keto cakes. But generally best not too often.
I totally agree!
I think this probably belongs here:
insider.com/oat-milk-health...
I'd just like to make it clear that I am not having a dig at TheMoaningViolet (who mentioned oat milk the other day). People have their likes and dislikes, and we all came to LCHF with some funny habits that we thought we wouldn't be able to drop (mine was coffee with three sugars in it). The article is worth reading because it's a good illustration of the sloppy thinking perpetuated by nutritionists that keeps people eating things that aren't good for them.
It's insidious because it is carefully constructed from narrow truths which are attached one-by-one to an overt lie:
"Sugar ... to your body, it's a preferred source of energy, created by breaking down chains of carbohydrates into glucose. It's true that eating too much refined sugar is linked to health issues, but ... "
and the half-truths follow that 'but', in sequence. The author thereby proves that, while "eating too much refined sugar is linked to health issues", eating refined sugar isn't linked to health issues. I'd also add that "linked to health issues" is a weaselly phrase if ever there was one. Why not say outright that eating large quantities of refined starch/sugar is the proximate cause of life-threatening chronic disease?
Clever stuff, really, and with my tinfoil hat on, I can't help but wonder why they go to such lengths to keep people eating sugar and heavily-processed food substitutes.
She's a beauty! Two of my favourites
For example, having oat milk in a bowl of whole grain cereal, along with some fiber, or in a smoothie with healthy fats and protein, is not at all the equivalent of drinking soda, Sweeney explained.
No, it's the equivalent of pouring soda on your cereal or adding it to a smoothie.
"I am flabbergasted that we are talking about the breaking down of carbohydrate bonds. This is a reflection of where we are in wellness and diet culture that we're pulling apart food into bare components,"
No! That is literally what the manufacturer is doing, taking a whole food and with mechanical force and enzymes, breaking food down into its bare components.
I wonder if that article is as successful as you think it is? The defence of oatmilk is so weak that it makes it clear to me that it's indefensible.
>> "I am flabbergasted that ...
I think that was my "favourite" bit too. What struck me there is that nutritionists as a group are endlessly holding arguments about the relative merits of fat, carbs, and protein (almost every paper you'll ever read characterises diet in terms of macronutrients, as if nothing else matters) and they rarely talk about food. And now here we are with a nutritionist who has discovered that talking about food instead of macros offers a threadbare excuse to keep on promoting sugary drinks.
The quasi-scientific posturing ('breaking down of carbohydrate bonds') is just laughable.
My fear is that most people will fall for the tone of the article and overlook the substance. Remember that the average man in the street didn't even take biology in high school and won't be aware that (for example) sugar is not "a preferred source of energy", or at least not in the sense that it's intended here. I'd be curious to know what proportion of the general public find it convincing. After all, oat milk sales have been going from strength to strength since about 2017.
I opened the link to read the article and saw this as the inserted advertising 😂😘
LOL! Nice bit of product placement there.
Did anyone click the link labelled something about "a healthy snack with your coffee"? it leads to insider.com/research-says-d... which is an astonishing piece about an experiment where they studied blood glucose responses to different scenarios of disturbed and undisturbed sleep and coffee, all including a sugary drink. On my first skim I wondered why they were drinking the sugary drink at all, and maybe try it without the drink. A close read lead to this disturbing explanation
"consuming a sugary drink upon waking with enough glucose and calories to simulate what might be in a typical breakfast"
How can you write that, and somehow think that the coffee is the problem?
Thank you for sharing this, very interesting. I have just read it while drinking my coffee with some coconut milk (very unsatisfactory but the cream is arriving on Wednesday). I stuck with your recommendation yesterday and the scale is showing 300g less this morning, so thank you all for nudging me in the right direction.
I must say, you're braver than I am ... I tried putting coconut milk in coffee and it was orrible ...
The 300g drop is probably measurement noise or natural bodyweight fluctuations, but I'm glad to hear you've got cream on order ... I think you'll like it.
I out almond milk in my coffee when I read that the skeletal nutritionist from California advised no dairy. I put up with it for a day...
I ordered a coconut latte at a coffee shop. The barista messed up my order (put the drinks in the wrong cups that I gave him) and tried to make me use my friends cup and vice versa. I got a bit Karen-esque and told him I wanted just to get what I ordered and he remade them both.
Got to my table, tasted the latte. 🤢 But couldn't take it back after my performance, so sipped it slowly as my penance.
I have been getting creative in the kitchen, and developed a sweet treat that should appeal to sugar-holics and is only 4g net carbs per serving.
Recipe available on request.
I had to scroll a bit for the picture to come up...then I spit coffee and snorted. Thank you for making my day!
😆 ... I needed that!
Do you get frustrated with your friends? Sharing coffee with 3 friends and not eating the cake, while they are all moaning about the weight they have put on and can't lose, then then each sharing the sugary sweets they each have after dinner, and reassuring each other to that "you deserve a treat!"
Social proof is a marvellous thing. Especially if you're a corporation in the business of 'treats'.
I’ve forgotten what happens when you go out for coffee 🙄. However, if my memory serves me some people say ‘you ARE good’. Nope, I just know what will happen if I eat sugar after not having had it for so long. I will immediately feel drunk and not in a good way. Others are usually marvelling at how much strong coffee I can put away, so the cake point doesn’t come up. And still others look at my splendid arse and think, wise choice sweetheart, wise choice.I only know one person who ‘treats’ herself. And out of her lips it is the most irritating phrase in the world.
Have passed beyond frustration to a kind of resigned sadness.
I have friends who are now type 2 diabetic or on their way, can’t give up the sweet treats, although they know the possible consequences. I used to talk about the benefits of a low-carb diet, but no longer.
People may not be aware that sugar ranks alongside corn, wheat and rice in the world's primary sources of calories. Production of sugar cane and sugar beet together account for twice as much tonnage as the next nearest competitor (corn).
Of course, both of those products are mostly useless fibre, but it gives you some idea of the economic importance of sugar. There are strong incentives to keep people consuming it.
beef2live.com/story-top-50-....
That sent me down a different rabbit hole. The UK eats on average 30kg of sugar a year, so that's a little over 300kcal,so 10-20% of total calories, I guess. The Emirates it's over 200kg/year,so that is more than 2000kcal a day from sugar alone. How are they still alive?
Google tells me it's 36.5kg per capita for UAE, but even so ... that's insane. I think my net carbs (virtually none of which is sugar) is about 300kCal/day. And the average Brit is, presumably, still consuming the usual onslaught of potatoes and pasta and whatnot on top of that.
I see Brazil and Australia are the standouts on this map:
protectivity.com/sugar-cons...
The 214kg(!) for UAE has got to be a mistake ... surely? Perhaps it's because they have a lot of transient residents who aren't counted in the population census?
According to the NHS, the daily recommendation is 30g/day (10kg/year) but even that seems like quite a lot to me. The USDA suggest 10% of daily calories, max., which is not dramatically lower than what Americans are actually consuming.
Sugar consumption does have a reasonably strong correlation (0.6) with diabetes prevalence, despite outright denial from most authorities:
bmcpublichealth.biomedcentr...
That map is the same source I got the 214kg. I think it's very bad data. Their top 10 countries are completely different from most, and I don't think the data can be right.
1/ United Arab Emirates - 214 kg per person, per year
2/ Djibouti - 193 kg per person, per year
3/ Belize - 106 kg per person, per year
4/ Bahrain - 93 kg per person, per year
5/ Mauritania - 87 kg per person, per year
6/ Cuba - 68 kg per person, per year
7/ Belarus - 62 kg per person, per year
8/ Guyana - 60 kg per person, per year
9/ Malaysia - 57 kg per person, per year
10/ Israel - 56 kg per person, per year
A friend in Australia sent me this link
abc.net.au/news/2021-05-21/...
The military has been ordered to stop holding morning teas which celebrate diversity and inclusion,
My friend was rightly outraged at the ministry stepping in to prevent the military recognising diversity, but after googling that 28% of the defence forces is overweight, maybe it the morning teas themselves they should be banning.
Does this look like a meal people who "must at all times be focused on our primary mission to protect Australia's national security interests" should be eating?
(though yay! for old school fairy cakes and not the terrible American style cupcakes)
18 months ago I was happy to see one of these things and terrified of the other. That's still true, but the roles are reversed.
Found in a posh part of London. Avocado ice cream served in avocado skin, with nut butter stone. Apparently 60% avocado, dairy and irony free. Also around £10
Sorry, you will have to turn your computer on its side.
😱🤣 … oh… just… WOW.. that’s hilarious
Off to dinner in a pub, paid for by someone else. Options were chicken or vegetarian.
Any bets on whether I will need a second meal when I get home?
🤔
This looks bizarre... totally bizarre! .. and yuk. I hope people are not wasting their money on it!
From Facebook. Top shelf is Skinny Sauces. All is low carb junk.
That's an awful lot of "skinny sauce"! I wonder does this person intend to bathe in it or something? I see they have a bag of salt and vinegar pork scratchings - I've tried those and though they were very nice.
My "junk food" cupboard is full of high end dark chocolate and various seed and nut products, different tahinis, nut butters, halva and a jar of 86% hazelnut, 13% cacao spread. Like this person, I also have several packets of the M&S seed crackers in there. I did do a little stockpiling 🤭of them after the shortage.... just after they were released.
There are also some very high carb items in my "junk food' cupboard; a box of rose and violet creams and a tin of chocolate coated cherries. At the back is the Christmas pudding we didn't get round to having on Christmas day.
Lol!! Snap... my "junk food" cupboard has 2 lonely christmas puddings languishing at the back. I'm also a very surprised convert to high end 99/100% dark chocolate. I did not expect to like it or to find it so satisfying!
Maybe this person does still also eat all the good stuff too... but it makes me so frustrated when some people say with a straight face that they don't feel well "on keto", or that "keto doesn't work"... and they're totally missing the point, and really just eating all this nonsense. Very sad and frustrating!
Lovely thank you gift. Once I removed the tea and coffee, I will find someone to donate it to.
I was at a train station late at night. I was happy I had food with me, because the vending machines contained nothing but carbs and a few bottles of water.
I am sure the contents is based on demand. I wonder if anyone would pay for these, even if they offered them 🤔 ocado.com/products/m-s-span...
Fantastic! I haven’t come across these yet— the chorizo chips— I’ll give them a go
I've seen them in the wild at M&S, but at £60/kg, I have resisted them.
I’ve been having the odd bag of pork scratchings but nice to try something new
Enjoy!
I would buy the chorizo crisps, but I am happy with actual chorizo for now.
I’ll be interested to try. It’s really the dry crunchy texture I’m after- sometimes i crave certain food textures!…. So pork scratchings do the trick usually. I’m. Not very inventive Though. Probably there are other obvious foods that would work.
I have tried them - couldn't resist. They are nice and pretty much as you would imagine. It's disappointing that there are hardly any in the bag. They are very thinly sliced - I think you could make a thicker version perfectly well at home;
greatbritishchefs.com/how-t...
This (coincidentally) appeared in my YT feed today. That recipe looks simpler and more successful
Meat chips 😍 What could go wrong?
Watch it. It looks like you could lose a tooth!
"My teeth aren't breaking, that's the texture we are looking for" 😂
Really enjoyed the chorizo crisps. They're on offer at the moment so stocked up with a few packets. Very satisfying 
OK, I will try them.
Even though they are expensive per kg, I guess I do not need a kg of them!
Yes, I was even contemplating not finishing the 25g bag. As compared to the 45g bag of pork scratchings when somehow they’re really more-ish. The chorizo crisps much more satisfying.
I was mildly addicted to sweet chilli crisps before I gave up carbs, but decided to swap them for Ryvita's version, as that was healthier 😂
I remember this today, and looked at the ingredients. I think the crisps were healthier, as they had much less sugar.
Ingredients: Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Wholegrain Rye Flour (8%), Sugar, Olive Oil, Honey (2%), White Balsamic Vinegar, Sweet Chilli Seasoning (2%) (Salt, Garlic Powder, Dextrose, Onion Powder, Tomato Powder, Maltodextrin, Paprika Powder, Sugar, Natural Flavouring, Yeast Extract, Parsley, Barley Malt Vinegar Powder, Chilli Powder, Black Pepper, Lemon Juice Powder), Salt, Chilli Powder, Paprika, Dried Coriander
At least there is no rapeseed oil, so that's something.
Haha.. snap! I thought I was being so healthy eating box loads of these each week, the seeded ones. And for a special touch I would load them with fat free cottage cheese. Thank god I found this forum!
Oh, classic "cardboard" ryvita? I remember it well. I didn't have to worry about my weight as a young woman, except of course I did worry about it. So at the beginning of each summer I would grab a random magazine, and follow a diet for a few weeks to get beach ready.
Every 5th meal or so would involve Ryvita and cottage cheese. I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about it.
👋 Cosmo501
I know. Me too. It’s all just so wrong. I was slim, and absolutely teeny tiny in my 20’s. then my mum had some sort of heart event which I’ve never known the details, and we all were scared into “eating healthily”… the family motto jokingly was “is that the healthy option “…. ie low fat low salt. Thus began my spiral into obesity! … and siblings also. Grrrrrr….
I've been reflecting how my parents mostly had shorter lives than their parents and their siblings. I wonder if them switching to margarine was a factor.
Yes it’s a miserable thing to contemplate. My parents are definitely a lot less mobile than my grandparents were at the Same age. Disgusting margarine. Makes my skin crawl thinking about it.
I progressed through the range over the years…
Yesterday I cooked for friends and wanted to do an impressive dessert. I heavily adapted this peanut mousse bar recipe to make it sugar free and as low carb as possible.
theguardian.com/food/2021/j...
I omitted the maple syrup, swapped the sugar for erithrytol and used very dark sugar free chocolate chocolate instead of milk chocolate. I used cream in the place of milk. I also added a little salted caramel flavouring. I considered swapping the peanuts for pecans but I didn't have any in the house.
It’s made of cream and has quite a bit of sweetener and lots of peanuts so hardly something to eat every day.... but it was seriously impressive. You would not have been able to tell it was a keto dessert. It was like a less sweet, mousse snickers bar. I added quite a bit of salt. Delicious.
I also really fancied some ice-cream and made the keto mason jar ice-cream from the Diet Doctor website. Super easy and really quite impressive IMO.
My God, that sounds amazing.
I will be there in 10 minutes 🥄
It does sound very impressive! I hope your lucky guests enjoyed your efforts.
Hi all
Thought I would share this new chocolate I tried. It's 70% cocoa (cocoa mass and butter) and 30% full cream milk power.
It's not the lowest carb at 17g per 100g, 12g of which are sugar. So not as low carb as a 100% chocolate which is typically about 8g carbs.
But it's not too bad.
It is a similar taste to 100% chocolate in that it is not sweet and it's very intensely chocolatey but it's also creamy in flavour and mouthfeel. Something a bit different from any chocolate I have ever tasted before really.
Similar to 100% chocolate it's the kind of thing I can't really eat more than 2 or 3 squares of.
That looks good. Where did you find it? I can see it online, but I haven't seen it in shops.
I've never seen it in the shops Subtle_badger. I ordered it after reading a review in the Guardian. I ordered from cocoarunners.
...... It's my birthday next month so I confess I also ordered another bar (not low carb) that is too triggering even for the trigger thread!
It totally fits my macros. I still drink lattes. In fact, I am enjoying one right now, and it's made with semi skimmed, as this Cafe doesn't have whole milk 😔
IIFYMs then why not? Enjoy! 😊🥛☕🍫
I had never ordered from cocoa runners before; they are clearly quite an eccentric company and they just emailed me this very long rant about calories;
Myths about Calories
One of the most misleading dietary rules is “count the calories and you’ll lose weight”. Calorie calculations are based on experiments made over a century ago that even then were acknowledged as "broad brush".
Quite how a unit of measurement originally applied to steam engines and then adapted by nutritionists who stuck people in copper cells for a week at a time to measure their food, breathing and faeces became the mainstay of so many diets is peculiar.
And focusing on "calorie counting" distracts from the difference between “food like substances” (such as ultra processed, mass produced chocolate) and “real foods” (like craft chocolate). Calorie counting isn’t a path to healthy eating or even losing weight.
Chocolate is demonised for being high in calories. It is indeed true that a craft dark chocolate bar will contain more calories than a bar of ultra processed, mass produced chocolate that is packed full of additives, preservatives and sugar (sugar is not calorically dense). But this certainly doesn’t mean that “low calorie” snacks (including confectionery and chocolate) are “healthier” or good for your waistline.
To unwrap these misconceptions, it’s worth understanding the history of calories and unpicking the challenges posed by over focusing on “calories”, low fat foods, etc.
THE HISTORY OF THE CALORIE … FRANCE
Given France’s culinary tradition, it’s appropriately ironic that the man credited with first coining, and then defining, the calorie was a Frenchman - Nicolas Clément. Nicolas was not a chef or nutritionist. Rather he was an entrepreneur who also held one of the first chairs in industrial chemistry at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris. And his students record him using the term calories to measure how steam engines convert heat into work, specifically defining a calorie as the quantity of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by one degree.
Whilst Clement is now credited with inventing the term calories another French chemist, Antoine Lavosier, laid the groundwork that enabled it's rapid adoption. Back in 1780 Lavoisier designed a tool to measure how guinea pig’s breathing would heat up ice. He called this device a "calorimeter" and then adapted it to measure the heat from various mechanical experiments and chemical reactions.
In the late 19th century scientists in Germany, keen to improve farming efficiency, used calories and calorimeters to measure how different animal feeds impacted cattle’s weight gain by weighing them, and monitoring their respiration. Note the link between nutrition and respiration is key -- we lose weight and burn calories via breathing (yes, that’s right .. we lose weight almost entirely via breathing -- see the blog for more on this, but Lavosier was definitely onto something).
…. THE USA
Turning this work on cattle and animal feeds to “modern” calories counting and diets involved a couple of extraordinary hops
The man generally credited with putting calories at the heart of HUMAN nutrition and dieting is an American, Wilbur O. Atwater, who studied in Germany (and Atwater generously credits these scientists, especially Voit, Rubner, Henneberg and Stohmann, in much of his work). Atwater’s work was designed to people spend their “hard earned wages” on more “calorifically and nutritionally effective foods” -- as far as can be understood, dieting wasn’t on his agenda.
Atwater first experiments were with a “bomb calorimeter” - basically a chamber-like device where food samples are burned, heating up the surrounding water. The amount of food that needed to be burnt to raise the temperature of the surrounding water by one degree gave Atwater a benchmark to calculate the “calories” of different foods (this is where the phrase “burning calories” comes from) and come up with some general rules.
But measuring food energy in a bomb calorimeter is obviously different from the way a human body digests, and uses, food. Basically we don’t “consume” everything we eat -- some foods we can’t digest and we will “excrete” (mainly via our bowels). Atwater called the difference between what we consume and excrete “available energy” (nowadays known as metabolisable energy). And he calculated it through simple arithmetic -- taking the total energy produced by burning the food sample and subtracting this from the energy not used by the body (i.e. excreted matter).
To measure this excreted matter, and to control for other variables, Atwater performed thousands of experiments on volunteers on over 500 different foods in what he called a “respiration chamber”. See the blog for more images, but the “respiration chamber” sounds somewhat like a prison and not much fun. Volunteers were asked to spend a week in a “box of copper incased in walls of zinc and wood (where) he lives—eats, drinks, works, rests, and sleeps. … the temperature is kept at the point most agreeable.. in the chamber are a small folding cot-bed, a chair, and a table….. (the chamber is) 7 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 6 feet high. Food and drink are passed into the chamber through an aperture which serves also for the removal of the solid and liquid excretory products, and the passing in and out of toilet materials, books, and other things required for comfort and convenience"
Armed with the results of the “bomb calorimeter” and the “respiration chamber” Atwater could work out the “calorie count” of different foods. And in 1894 Atwater published his findings in the USDA Farmer’s Bulletin under the title “Foods: Nutritive Value and Cost”. In this he categorised three basic food types-- protein, fats and carbohydrates. And to each of these food types he assigned different calorie “counts”. The basics for the calculation have been tweaked, but have remained basically the same ever since -- proteins and carbohydrates are assumed to contain 4 kCals per gram and fats and lipids to have 9 kCals per gram (for more on the somewhat esoteric distinction between kCals and Cals please see the blog). And even today when you look at the calorie count on any food, it will be based on a simple calculation on the amount of protein, carbohydrates and fats in the food multiplied by these “Atwater” factors.
The simplicity of the calorie system proved irresistible. It was used during the first world war to help work out what agricultural crops to plant and animals to rear. And after the war, authors started to write articles and books to help people diet. One of the most famous of these was by Dr Lulu Hunt Peters, titled “Diet & Health”, and from 1922 to 1926 it consistently was in the NY Times Top 10 best seller list. Read it today and it's hard to believe it isn’t an article (or blog) from any current dietary magazine (or website).
WHY A CALORIE MAY NOT REALLY BE A CALORIE
From the get go, the problems of Atwater’s calculations were apparent (and to be fair, he acknowledged many of them). And his calculations were NOT designed for dieting. They were designed to help people, and farmers, figure out which foods were better “nutritional value” for their hard earned dollars.
In no apparent order, here are some examples of the problems with “calorie counting” to diet
The way protein is metabolised by the body is radically different to the way carbohydrates and fats are metabolised. To quote Dr Giles Yeo “Atwater’s calculations never took into account the energy it takes our cells to metabolise food in order to use it … a calorie of protein makes you feel fuller than a calorie of fat, because protein is more complex to metabolise. For every 100 calories of protein you eat, you only ever absorb 70”.
And it’s not just protein calories that work differently -- in 1973 Merill and Watt of the USDA “revised” the Atwater Factors noting that variations of “digestibility” in carbohydrates could mean you can absorb between 32% to 98% depending on which carbohydrate you ate (ie for some carbohydrates, only 32g of a 100g portion will be digested, for others it’s 98g)
How food is cooked (and prepared) also radically alters how it can be metabolised .. as is what you cook together (e.g., making it more digestible and therefore higher in calories)
Your genes also make a massive difference to how you absorb foods too (again Giles Yeo’s book is eye opening here -- see the blog); and he has some pretty sobering studies from Professor Clare Llewellyn of UCL showing how socio-economic status impacts the heritability of body weight varies from 40% for middle class families to 70% for those who are “food insecure”
Your microbiome similarly makes a huge difference (again read any of Tim Spector's books for more on this, see here)
So basically the nature of the protein/carb/fat; the way the are cooked, what else you eat it with, your genes, your socio-economic circumstances and your microbiome all mean that the effective calories you eat mean that a food listed as having 100 calories could effectively be metabolised by you to generate anywhere from 20 to 99 calories.
But because almost all packaged foods list their calculated calories and because it seems so simple, many people do “count the calories”. Counting calories can convey an impression of control. But counting calories is also very misleading and may encourage people to believe that a low calorie, ultra processed snack (or chocolate bar) is better for them.
SO WHAT TO DO?
It is REALLY clear that some foods (and drinks) are unhealthy. And fattening. But you won’t be able to work this out by looking at their calorie count.
A far better approach would be to avoid ultra processed foods -- including almost all mass processed chocolate and confectionery with their additives, preservatives, hydrolyzed added fats, sugars, etc.
The best advice is to first “check the ingredients”. If there is an ingredient listed that you don’t have in your kitchen and/or if your grandmother wouldn’t recognise the ingredient, why are you considering eating this? And please, please, try to ensure you know where the bars are made and beans are sourced -- again, see here.
And don't fixate on calories. The listed numbers need to be adjusted by so many factors that they are effectively as useful as the proverbial chocolate tea pot.
Far better to follow the simple advise of Michael Pollan "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" -- and in particular focus on the first two words "Eat Food". Not low calorie food stuffs that are ultra-processed and mass produced.
CHOCOLATE AND CALORIES
Gram for gram, sugar is lower in calories than chocolate (and many artificial ingredients and additives are lower still). So mass produced chocolate appears “better” than Craft Chocolate in terms of calorie count -- for example:
CALORIES PER BAR
MASS MARKET , ULTRA PROCESSED CHOCOLATE:
Maltesers (37g)
187
Creme Egg
187
Kit Kat (4 finger)
233
Mars Bar (58g)
260
Bounty (57g)
268
Snickers (58g)
296
CRAFT CHOCOLATE EXAMPLES:
Menakao 45% Milk and 72% Dark (70g)
391 - 451
Standout Coconut Milk (50g)
316
Amaro Piura Peru, 75% Dark (70g)
390
Gram per gram, craft chocolate bars contain more chocolate - which is far more filling (and nutritious) than sugar and all the other additives, flavouring agents, e-numbers, etc. in low calorie, mass produced chocolate snacks. So craft chocolate has a higher calorie count (note: the bars are also bigger in most of the cases above). But (normally) you savour a few squares of craft chocolate at a time. In contrast ultra-processed, mass market chocolate is also designed to be scoffed. So you end up eating the whole bar .. and, depending on the time, mess up your appetite for lunch, dinner, etc. (again, savouring craft chocolate is great at any time .. especially after a meal to explore your "second stomach", see last week's email here)
So this weekend, check the ingredients (and ideally, identify where the bar has been crafted and source of beans). Don’t get distracted by calories. And please see below for a few very different craft chocolate bars that you can savour (and ignore the calorie counts).
😂 they are nerds! 🤓
gutenberg.org/files/15069/1...
Interesting 🤔 it's exactly the same diet that hasn't been working for always!
Meanwhile, tesco emailed me about "sweet sandwiches". I clicked the link, and was appalled. It reads like a confession from a recovering bulimic.
63g (16 teaspoons 😱) of sugar per serving.
Baby tries heroin for the first time 😱
Pretty disturbing! Poor baby ☹️
I watched it on youtube and some of the comments are even more disturbing than the video TBH. I hate things like this.
Ugh. You made me look.
So, I've caught a virus (no, not that one!) and resorted to my favourite palliative. So after no sugar for a year or more, I have had 4 teaspoons of sugar in the last 24 hours, including a cup at about 1am when I couldn't sleep.
And I can tell. I normally fast until noon and often much longer, but I awoke ravenous this morning. Hopefully I don't show any other signs of harm from it.
I will use the last sachet before bed, but otherwise stick to capsules from now on.
Oh dear. Sorry to hear you are ill. Hope you feel better soon Subtle_Bagder! 💐 🍗🍲
I used to love Calpol - not just as a child. I'm pretty sure that's mostly sugar. The other remedy I liked was loads of fresh lemons and hot water with sugar dissolved in it.
I'm on holiday and just ate nearly all of a very large calzone... and I'm about to eat halva so I have out-carbed you! Plus you have a good excuse.
Take care and feel better
💙
I am looking forward to the time I get to decide if I should stay low carb in Italy 😋
Thanks for the well wishes. It's just a cold, but I haven't had one since the before times, so I had forgotten how rotten it feels.
It's a taste of the new normal, I think. I gave me self a LTF every day for first 3 days, and have been vigilant about mask wearing. I did visit a cafe, but only because we found a table well away from others, and my companion was happy to accept the risk. I disinfected the table before leaving. I think this is what colds and flu will be like forever more.
Walked past an American Candy store in London. One window was devoted to breakfast cereals. A cursory examination tells you the cereals are indeed candy.
I made this meme for Healthy Eating, but I couldn't attach it to a poll, so you guys get it.
Got to layer those carbs.
Chip butty, anyone?
I must admit I could still demolish a chip butty. Chip shop chips, white bread, butter but that picture looks revolting. Pasta in bread is definitely not for me.
I thought i would get a bag of chips to go with my chicken when i was away in the caravan. Its a holiday right..... I walked up to the chippy and stood in the cue, by the time i'd moved a few places and neared the door i detoured to the spar and bought a pre-made salad instead lol When it came to it, i just didn't want chips. Not sure if i was disappointed or pleased 😂😂 xx
I still pinch a couple if my other half has a chip shop tea but can’t eat more than a few . Well done on your changing taste buds. 😀
Oh i think i would be pinching too if they were there in front of me. When i'm making snacks for the kids at school at the moment i'm eyeing the bread crusts up while i'm there. Oh to toast one and lavish it with butter..... So far i haven't seccumbed!! 😁 x
Advice please to help my parents reduce their carbs, on a budget...