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 reduced 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 direct adverts, sponsorships, product placements, celebrity endorsements, tie-ins 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 sicker, the Guidelines and the 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 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.

Kelloggs Special K Cracker Crisps.

At home, I watch TV on my lap-top with ad and script-blocking plugins. As a result, I don't see any adverts on commercial TV, YouTube etc.

While visiting mum today, the TV was set to a commercial channel. During an ad break, there was an advert for Kelloggs Special K Cracker Crisps, with the following tag-line (emphasis mine):- Introducing New Special K Cracker Crisps, the deliciously moreish savoury snack that you can feel good about.

A serving (21 crisps weighing ~23g) provides only 95kcals. A box contains 100g which provides 413kcals. I wonder how many people will be able to stop after eating 21 of these crisps?

Walkers salt & vinegar crisps contain the following ingredients:- Potatoes, Sunflower Oil (25%), Rapeseed Oil, Salt & Vinegar Seasoning, Salt & Vinegar Seasoning contains: Flavouring, Dried British Vinegar, Salt, Citric Acid, Sugar, Potassium Chloride, Yeast Extract.

Kelloggs Special K Cracker Crisps S & V contain the following ingredients:- Tapioca Starch, Dried Potato, Wheat Flour, Salt & Balsamic Vinegar Seasoning (Lactose {from Milk}, Sugar, Acidity Regulator {Sodium Diacetate}, Salt, Flavourings (contains Barley), Sea Salt, Citric Acid, Balsamic Vinegar Powder, Rapeseed Oil, Dried Tamarind Extract, Yeast Extract, Black Pepper, Stabiliser {E450a}, Antioxidant {E304}), Sunflower Oil, Maize Flour, Oat Fibre, Salt, Emulsifier (E471).

With food engineering like that, I'm sure that they'll sell like hot cakes. Here's my opinion on how the fight against the obesity epidemic is going...

Not exactly rocket science, is it?

If Paul (astrophysicist) Jaminet met Jack (neurosurgeon) Kruse ;-)

The paleo diet was recently ridiculed as a food fad in Natural’s Not In It. It also came last in a US News Best Diets survey.

Ways of eating such as very-low-carbohydrate, low-carbohydrate, low-reward, paleo, primal, ancestral, just eat real food etc discourage the consumption of manufactured food products and encourage the consumption of produce. If a large percentage of the population stop filling their shopping baskets with manufactured food products and start filling them with produce, who suffers? Not exactly...

This is why the food manufacturing industry tries to ensure that the population gets the best nutritional and dietetic advice that money can buy. See also New study: Big Food’s ties to Registered Dietitians.

While libertarians and anarchists moan about freedom from government interference, the food manufacturing industry has the freedom to crap all over the aforementioned diets and influence people to buy manufactured food products. Morbidity is also very profitable for healthcare and drug companies.

I think that I've now flogged this particular horse to death!

It’s the Calories, Stupid.

I thought I'd mark my return to blogging by taking the piss out of a certain Diet Doctor for his post It’s the Insulin, Stupid, who takes (and tweaks) Fig 7A from Hyperinsulinemia Drives Diet-Induced Obesity Independently of Brain Insulin Production.

At first glance, Fig 7A looks like a CIH believer's dream come true (apart from the words "High Fat Diet").

Hyperinsulinemia → Obesity.

Obesity is caused by too much insulin. Game, Set and Match to insulin.

Not so fast! Let's take a look at the rest of Fig 7.

Figure 7. Revisiting the Current Model of Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes(A) The most widely accepted model of the pathogenesis of obesity and type 2 diabetes posits that a high-fat diet leads to obesity and insulin resistance (there is debate about the relative order and causality of these). In this widely held view, insulin resistance then leads to hyperinsulinemia, which is followed by β cell exhaustion, and then type 2 diabetes. The accepted model is incompatible with our results that put the insulin hypersecretion genetically upstream of obesity.(B) Our data support a model whereby insulin levels must be kept low to maintain energy expenditure in white adipose tissue via the expression of Ucp1. Our data do not address the order of subsequent events after obesity (outside the yellow box), such as insulin resistance and/or type 2 diabetes, since they were not observed in our studies. In other words, the effects of insulin gene dosage on obesity are independent of sustained changes in glucose homeostasis or insulin resistance.

↑ Peripheral Hyperinsulinemia → ↓ Uncoupling Proteins (WAT) → ↓ Energy Expenditure → ↑ Obesity.

Obesity is caused by a reduction in energy expenditure in these mice. Game, Set and Match to The Energy Balance Equation. It’s the Calories, Stupid. In these mice, energy expenditure is strongly influenced by insulin levels. In humans, not a lot. In humans, insulin can act as a stimulant or a sedative.

I'm not an insulin denier as is obvious from my other blog posts. I'm still restricting my carbohydrate intake to ~125g/day from whole foods.

I'm not a food reward denier. I've been using food reward principles to lose weight.

This post will probably annoy some people. Before wasting your time writing a comment, please read my Moderation Policy.

A comment, a simile and insanity.

1) The comment: I'm just about to leave the following comment on Peter (Hyperlipid)'s blog post Insulin and the Rewards of overfeeding. I thought that it was so good at summing-up, I'll post it here first!
"All,

Insulin increases the amount of glucose & FFAs entering fat cells, muscle cells & the liver.

Insulin decreases the amount of glycerol & FFAs exiting fat cells & the amount of glucose exiting the liver.

Hyperinsulinaemia (which can produce sedation) results when one or more of the following tissues loses insulin sensitivity:- fat cells, muscle cells & the liver.

So, why do people keep saying that hyperinsulinaemia locks nutrients away in fat cells only, thus robbing other cells of nutrients, thus causing lethargy?

The relative insulin sensitivity of tissues determines the relative partitioning of nutrients into those tissues.

When tissues lose sensitivity to insulin, blood glucose control becomes impaired. This results in roller-coaster blood glucose levels after eating high-glycaemic carbohydrates. A rapidly-falling blood glucose level causes ravenous hunger. I have experienced this during medically-monitored tests (OGTTs & an insulin shock test).

Low-carb/ketogenic diets don't result in a roller-coaster blood glucose level and therefore don't cause ravenous hunger. Simples!

Overeating due to ravenous hunger is NOT gluttony, just as under-moving due to sedation is NOT sloth.

THIS is gluttony."

EDIT: This didn't go in my comment but should have:- "Low-carb/ketogenic diets result in the avoidance of moreish & calorific foods such as sweets, chocolate, cake, biscuits, pizza, Pringles etc. A single bite of such foods has a negligible effect on blood glucose & insulin levels, but encourages another bite and another and another ad nauseam, due to Food Reward.


2) The simile: I use similes. I used the simile "As happy as a pig in shit" in a comment somewhere on Woos blog. Now, you may (or may not) have noticed that my user-name is Nigeepoo. We Brits are obsessed by two things - The weather and our bowel movements. I find things to do with poo and farting amusing (schoolboy humour, I know!). I used the simile "As happy as a pig in shit" because it is amusing.


3) The insanity: According to Woo in the following comment:-
"Re: the comment...Sorry, not convinced.
You are basically refusing to admit your choice of words implied moral judgement. The phrase "happier than a pig in shit" is always applied to examples of people being content in immorality/bad behavior particularly gluttony and sloth... unless it is used ironically. Only an autistic or a non-english speaker would believe this crap."

Woo, you are as mad as a March hare. IMO of course, like everything I write. Duh!

Obesity is multi-factorial, spectra and other stuff.

This post is a hotch-potch of thoughts that are currently whizzing around in my brain.

1) Obesity: Like just about everything in life, obesity is multi-factorial. Each factor may have only a small impact on obesity. Tackling one factor alone won't solve the problem. Every factor has to be tackled, one at a time.

So, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announcing a ban on sales of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces in restaurants, delis, sports arenas, and movie theaters won't solve the obesity problem, but it will help.

EDIT: In shops and supermarkets in the UK, tobacco products now have to be kept out of sight. I'd like to see the same thing happen to Crap-In-A-Bag/Box/Bottle (CIAB).

2) Spectra: As also mentioned in my first link, there is a spectrum of fatness in the general population which probably follows a bell distribution curve. From skinniest to fattest, there are people who are:-
Extremely skinny. Very skinny. Skinny. A bit skinny. Average. A bit fat. Fat. Very fat. Extremely fat.

If you take somebody in a category who isn't currently consuming CIAB and introduce CIAB to their diet, what happens? They move to a category to the right. Therefore, it's possible for there to be very skinny people who consume CIAB. Therefore, anybody who (or should that be Wooo?) states that the existence of very skinny people who consume CIAB is proof that Food Reward doesn't exist is wrong.

3) Other stuff: I am concerned with people overlooking postprandial (a.k.a. nonfasting) triglycerides (a.k.a. triacylglycerols a.k.a. TAGs a.k.a. TGs) after eating large amounts of fat. According to Fasting Compared With Nonfasting Triglycerides and Risk of Cardiovascular Events in Women, serum TGs 2-4 hours post-meal are very significantly associated with Cardiovascular Events (fully adjusted hazard ratio [95% confidence interval] for highest vs lowest tertiles of levels, 4.48 [1.98-10.15] [P < 0.001 for trend]).

After 4 hours post-meal, serum TGs are cleared from circulation by being burned by muscles and/or by being stored in fat cells. See Figure 3B in Extended effects of evening meal carbohydrate-to-fat ratio on fasting and postprandial substrate metabolism.

Testing hypotheses - a rant.

My brain just exploded! On Why conventional view of obesity / FR is wrong, ItsTheWoo wrote "...there is not a doubt in my mind obesity is entirely 100% an illness, a disorder... "

According to ItsTheWoo's hypothesis, the increasing incidence of obesity all around the world since 1970 is 100% caused by the increasing incidence of illness all around the world since 1970. Seriously, WTF?

According to Nigeepoo's hypothesis, the increasing incidence of obesity all around the world since 1970 is significantly caused by the increasing influence of Crap-in-a-Bag/Box/Bottle (CIAB) manufacturers on the population by cunning marketing and on the Government by bribery lobbying since 1970.

The former results in increasing consumption of CIAB and the latter results in increasing subsidies on the raw materials used for manufacturing CIAB, making CIAB cheaper (also more profitable) than natural foods, thus increasing consumption of CIAB. See Why are Twinkies cheaper than carrots?

There are other factors causing increased obesity e.g. increasing numbers of towns/cities which discourage walking. See also Determinants of the Variability in Human Body-fat Percentage.

Highly-engineered and highly-calorific CIAB encourages subconscious over-eating via Food Reward. The hyper-secretion of insulin (compensatory hyperinsulinaemia) caused by the subconscious over-eating of CIAB causes subconscious under-moving by inducing drowsiness and lethargy, sometimes followed by the munchies if blood glucose goes too low. Insulin is just a hormone that is secreted for the storage of stuff and a reduction in the burning of stuff. Don't blame insulin for doing its job. If you have zero insulin (e.g. untreated type 1 diabetes), your body stops storing stuff and starts burning stuff uncontrollably. Before the invention of insulin injections, people with type 1 diabetes usually died within 2 years.

Subconscious over-eating is good for the profits of CIAB manufacturers. An increasing number of dyslipidaemic/hypertensive/depressed/diabetic/demented/w.h.y. people is good for the profits of health-care providers and drug manufacturers. These organisations currently make huge profits, so it's not going to be easy to change anything that will reduce them.

I deleted the last part of my rant as it was a bit too ranty, but I'm reinstating it in a toned-down form as I've mentioned it in the comments.

ItsTheWoo continually conflates subconscious over-eating and under-moving with conscious over-eating and under-moving (gluttony and sloth). The vast majority of over-fat people become over-fat due to subconsciously over-eating and under-moving. A tiny minority of over-fat people are gluttonous and slothful.

Telling people to consciously Eat Less, Move More doesn't work. This doesn't mean that Eat Less, Move More doesn't work. It means that Eat Less, Move More has to be done subconsciously. This is where low-carb/paleo/real food diets come into their own.

Rant over.

How stuff works, Part 2.

I'm the kind of person that likes to analyse everything to death (and make lists).

1) Here's what I wrote on Synthesis: Low-Carb and Food Reward/Palatability, and Why Calories Count:-
"I’m going to stick my neck out here and state that fat, sedentary people do better on low-carb diets because:-

Fat, sedentary people have severe muscular insulin resistance.
This results in chronic hyperinsulinaemia and acute hyperinsulinaemia on eating carbs (which causes lethargy & increased sedentariness).
Chronic hyperinsulinaemia impairs the Phase I insulin response.
This impairs the stability of the blood glucose control system, resulting in large fluctuations in blood glucose level on eating carbs.
A rapidly-falling blood glucose level causes severe hunger pangs (I’ve experienced this under medical supervision).
Severe hunger pangs cause overeating, resulting in increased fatness.
GOTO 1

Low-carb diets reduce the large fluctuations in blood glucose level. Once normal blood glucose control has been restored by bodyfat loss & exercise, low-carb diet is no longer required."

I added a hot-link that wasn't in the original comment. Thanks to Sam Knox for linking to that study.

Lethargy & increased sedentariness result in very few calories burned (BMR/RMR + TEF). Eliminating (lethargy & increased sedentariness) greatly increases calories burned without conscious effort (BMR/RMR + TEF + TEA + NEAT/SPA). This is why people on low-carb diets can eat more and still lose weight. The Energy Balance Equation still applies.


2) I've noticed that people conflate Food Tastiness with Food Reward. Here's my opinion:-

Excessive reward = Moreish. What your food tastes like is only vaguely relevant. Avoid eating moreish foods, unless you're a body-builder who's trying to bulk.

Here's what I wrote on Food Reward: “There’s Always Room For Dessert”:-
"I believe that obesity is physiological AND neurological (the proportions varying from person to person).

For example, one chocolate doesn’t disturb my blood glucose & insulin, but I still crave another. And another. Ad nauseam."

Physiological cravings take hours to kick-in.
Neurological cravings take seconds to kick-in.

Emily Deans wrote:-
"Multiple times I’ve used naltrexone (an opiate blocker) to stop binge eating. The cravings go away. It only takes a few weeks. It’s a nice way to undo addiction/reward without starving someone… not FDA approved."

That's pretty damning evidence for the existence of Food Reward. How can naltrexone block something that doesn't exist?

Finally Monsieur, a waffer-thin mint.