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Many foods intended for consumption fool the brain, bypassing the feeling of satiety, trying to make us eat more. The food we eat should be low in calories and as low in fat as the daily consumption of meat is not a good idea either: it leads to extra weight, according to Hotnews. To find out what meat should be avoided and what our diet should look like for a healthy life, a series of books have been studied that show, among other things, that the famous low-carb diets, presented through social networks, are not good. long-term. The entire diet industry is built on fake news, says Dr. Michael Greger, in the book “How Not to Diet.” According to him, the field of nutrition faces lies, and diet books are the worst. “Often, the strongest and most extreme voices drown out the well-informed,” wrote two nutrition teachers on diet books. “Money is also being made.” A lot of money. An article in The New England Journal of Medicine on the myths of obesity concluded: “False and scientifically unacceptable beliefs about obesity are ubiquitous” even in medical journals. In those cases, the only way to get to the truth is to study the original literature and read the original studies yourself, rather than believing what others say. According to Greger, a team of researchers has analyzed more than a thousand studies since 2000 to perform an analysis of foods that have led to long-term weight change. Not surprisingly, they found that bread, sweets, and dessert all lead to weight gain. Their main finding: high meat intake predicts weight gain. Those who eat a lot of meat tend to eat less fruit, whole grains and nuts, which can protect against weight gain. So does weight gain occur because we eat more animal products or because we eat fewer plants? Can it be something completely different? Those who eat a lot of meat tend to do less exercise, for example, or maybe just drink juice and eat buggers. At the same time, vegans are on average 40 pounds thinner than those on conventional diets, but that doesn’t mean cutting meat, dairy, and eggs will make you lose 40 pounds. “Those who eat healthy tend to live healthy, so it’s not really about diet. Maybe vegans eat in the city and work harder. To see to what extent meat is the independent factor that leads to obesity, we need to control both diet and non-dietary factors, ”says Greger. When researchers tried to account for these differences, controlling for some nutrition and lifestyle in terms of fiber and exercise, the link between meat consumption and weight gain remained strong. Over a 20-month period, for example, those who ate about 85 grams of meat a day were three times more likely to gain 5 or more pounds. Another study showed that for those who ate about 141 grams a day, the incidence of obesity increased 8 times in a year, compared to those who consumed 28 grams a day. To find out which meat is fattening, a study (called EPIC) was conducted. Thousands of dietary people have been monitored for many years. Poultry, says the book, appeared to be the one that gained the most fat. Consumption of poultry meat, especially chicken, has been associated with a threefold increase in weight compared to red meat, such as beef, and this after taking into account age, sex, level of physical activity, smoking (where was the case), the quality of the diet and the number of calories. The researchers, says Greger, responded to the challenge by coming back with a specific assessment of the subjects’ height and came to the initial conclusion: even when we consume the same number of calories, the more meat we eat, the bigger the belly grows.
“Reducing meat consumption is one of the main things that can be considered the optimal diet to lose weight. For more than a century, the main purpose of agriculture has been to keep farm animals as fat as possible. This led to an increase in calories. Chickens have 10 times more fat today than they did 100 years ago. Chicken, for example, now has 70% more calories coming from fat. Basically, birds now have more fat than protein. The little chickens have become the big chickens and that makes us big ones too “, explains Greger in” How Not to Diet “. The problem with modern food is that it is designed to eat as much as possible, writes Herman Pontzer in the book “Burn – New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Lose Weight, and Stay Healthy.” This process began thousands of years ago with the growth of plants and animals to improve some aspects of food, such as sugar and fats, while reducing the elements that make us feel full. Industrialization has taken this process to a whole new level. Most of the food we buy from the supermarket in boxes and packaging has been developed beyond what our ancestors would recognize. Fiber, protein and everything that makes you feel full (ie the feeling that you are tired of eating) have been eliminated. As a result, the addition of sugars and oils are today the main sources of calories in the diet, representing a third of the energy we consume.
“Our reward system is not prepared for the intensity of the signals that these processed foods provide. Our hypothalamus is too slow to quench our appetite and we consume excessively, ”says Pontzer. Taste engineering is a billion-dollar industry, with teams of researchers using an amazing range of techniques and additives to make food extremely enjoyable, without being satiating: foods that always make you want more. “These foods are designed to circumvent the reward and satiety system. In addition, the addition of fat and sugar, chemical flavors, are tested until an irresistible mix is found “, says Pontzer.
An obvious strategy to manage our weight and maintain good metabolic health is to build our diet around foods that are rich in nutrients, which do not contain many calories.
Susan Holt conducted a study at the University of Sydney in 1995, with a test on 38 different dishes to see what made people satiated two hours after eating 248 kcal. Fresh fruits, fish, steak and potatoes were the most filling. Processed foods such as bread, canned cereals, flavored yogurts were among the least filling, and rewards such as cookies, cake, croissants were even less filling. So the focus is on protein, fiber and energy density. Foods with more fiber, protein and fewer calories per bite were the ones that satiated people faster. Vegetables, fruits, meat and fish can be part of a healthy diet, as long as we avoid foods that make us overeat.
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