“It is the mark of an educated mind
to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it.”
Aristotle

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology.

The ability to entertain a thought and examine it from multiple perspectives, without necessarily accepting the premise of the thought, is a mark of an educated mind and a mature philosophy because it demonstrates a lack of fear for new ideas, a solid understanding of – and trust in – one’s own position and it implies a willingness to change one’s mind. Conversely, actively avoiding entertaining opposing thoughts, demonstrates a fear of those thoughts and implies an unwillingness to adapt to new ideas.

Entertaining thoughts that might contradict what one already believes is a cornerstone of science.   Scientists actively search for thoughts that might contradict established theories, even – sometimes especially – their own.  Aristotle’s quote above means that we can think about an idea without automatically accepting it. We can choose to look at things from an objective point of view and weigh the facts carefully before making a decision.

It ALSO means that it is unnecessary to make a decision to accept, or to reject, every single concept that crosses our minds.

As much as we might like the idea of trusting  the Body to tell us when and how to eat, sometimes our Body’s Hunger is a Lie.

Here are a couple of articles about the Science of Willpower, which discuss some of the reasons why the Body’s wisdom can’t always be trusted.

The Ghrelin Gremlin 
           by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.
                          Published on June 22, 2010 in Psychology Today

One of the most popular ideas in weight loss right now is:

 "trust your body's wisdom."
The body knows what it wants. The body never lies.
If you listen to signals like hunger and satiety, your body will never steer you wrong.

This is a lovely sentiment, and it's true that the body is a great source of wisdom.
Until it's not.

A new study presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society shows how the brain can be tricked by the body into overeating and choosing fattening foods over healthier choices. [1]

The study set-up was simple enough: bring in hungry participants and ask them to choose between high-calorie, high-fat foods (e.g. pizza, cake, chocolate) and less fattening foods (e.g. salad, vegetables, and lean protein). Not surprisingly, hungry participants preferred the less healthy choices. Their bodies craved energy. The researchers then had participants makes similar choices, but 90 minutes after eating a meal. They weren't as hungry, and they made healthier choices. They "listened" to their bodies and choose a more appropriate snack, given their fullness.

But the researchers didn't stop there. They were interested in whether they could mimic the effects of fasting by manipulating participants' level of a hormone called "ghrelin." Ghrelin stimulates appetite and plays a big role in the body's signals of hunger and cravings. It is typically regulated by things like how recently you ate your last meal and blood sugar level, making it a good signal of the need to eat. But it can also be influenced by many other things, including stress and sleep. This means that as much as you'd like to trust the body, the signal of hunger can be a lie.

Back to the lab: On one visit, participants who had recently eaten a full meal were injected with ghrelin. And this time, the participants behaved as if they were starving. They found the higher-fat, higher-calorie foods more appealing and were more likely to choose them--even though the body was actually quite satiated.

This injection was just a quick-and-dirty stand in for all the things that can push ghrelin levels up in the real world. If you're sleep deprived, your body is pumping out more ghrelin to get you to eat. [2]

It's a poor substitute for sleep, but high-fat, high-sugar foods are a source of the energy you desperately need. The same is true for stress. And research shows that high-sugar foods  - especially drinks, including sodas - artificially boosts ghrelin levels. [3]

This is one likely reason that soda and fruit juice consumption are both associated with obesity. The drinks themselves may not be a diet-breaker, but if you sip them all day, your body starts to lie to you. When it doesn’t, you'll be hungrier and more attracted to less healthy foods.

The bottom line: listening to your body needs to be balanced with mindful self-control. Know that not every craving is a message of wisdom from your stomach. Sometimes it's just a trick.

Studies cited:
1. The Endocrine Society (2010, June 20). Stomach hormone ghrelin increases desire for high-calorie foods. Presented by T. Goldstone.
2. Spiegel K, Tasali E, Penev P, Van Cauter E. Brief communication: Sleep curtailment in healthy young men is associated with decreased leptin levels, elevated ghrelin levels, and increased hunger and appetite. Ann Intern Med. 2004 Dec 7;141(11):846-50.
3. Lindqvist A, Baelemans A, Erlanson-Albertsson C. Effects of sucrose, glucose and fructose on peripheral and central appetite signals. Regul Pept. 2008 Oct 9;150(1-3):26-32.
            www . psychologytoday.com

The Diabolic Secret Powers of Junk Food
               by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D 
                            Published on September 18, 2009 in Psychology Today

It seems too clever, too diabolic to be true. A recent study shows that foods high in saturated fat -- ice cream, cheese, red meat -- cause your brain to secrete chemicals that tell the body to ignore biological signals of fullness (like leptin and insulin). The result: you don't "feel" full, and you keep eating. It's as if junk food had been shaped by the forces of evolution, learning to fool humans into ever-increasing consumption. And it explains why we seem to have an endless appetite for some foods, like pizza and a pint of Ben and Jerry's.

Even more mind-blowing: the effect lasts three days. So an indulgent meal can make you more likely to keep indulging, undermining any resolution to get back on track with healthier choices. This dirty trick is specific to saturated fats; foods low in saturated fats but high in healthier fats do not show the effect.

This study nicely highlights some of the most important influences on willpower. For example, we tend to think that our choices are independent, and that choosing to eat dessert or smoke a cigarette tonight has nothing to do with whether we indulge tomorrow. In fact, our behavior is far less variable than we think, and each choice (to resist or give in) strengthens the likelihood of choosing to do the same again. This study illuminates one biological mechanism that may contribute to this phenomenon, at least when it comes to diet.

Most people also have a hard time distinguishing between the promise of reward and actual satisfaction. As this study shows, many foods high in sugar or fats activate areas of the brain that promise satisfaction, but do not trigger the biological process of satiety. Other temptations -- from reality TV to most addictive drugs -- follow a similar pattern, increasing craving but not leading to lasting satisfaction. So we keep chasing the reward, ignoring the fact that in the long run, we aren't really satisfied and only want more.

Finally, it highlights the potentially discouraging fact that our behavior is influenced by forces we aren't consciously aware of. Like studies showing that the size and color of your plate influences how much you eat, and the smell of a store influences how much you spend, this study reminds us that we are vulnerable to unconscious processes.

However, awareness is a powerful antidote to all of these challenges. If you know that eating certain foods is going to fool your appetite, you can prepare yourself to make more conscious choices. If you start paying attention to the indulgences that are most satisfying, you can reward yourself with them. And if you know that your choices today are likely to influence your choices tomorrow, you will be less likely to tell yourself, "Today I indulge, tomorrow will be different."

Study citation: Benoit SC, Kemp CJ, Elias CF, et al. (2009) Palmitic acid mediates hypothalamic insulin resistance by altering PKC-θ subcellular localization in rodents. The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 119(9), 2577-89.       
                www . psychologytoday.com

 

We now have enormous access to miscellaneous information via the internet. This means that a relatively intelligent, ordinary person, with a bit of formal education (such as myself), can be exposed to a myriad of possibilities…   together with little or no personal ability to determine the accuracy of the information provided.

Online time exposes us to ideas that are relatively new to us, and leads us to discover data and publications… including books and videos … that would have been otherwise unavailable to us.
Such exposure and discoveries make me think about things in ways I’ve not previously considered.  There are many great Theories in the world which modern Societies in general consider to be true…but .. chances are, some of them probably are not.

Along with many other people living in the “civilized” societies of the present, I am interested in my own eating and digestive process. Yes, eating is necessary for sustaining life, but I want to know more about how I can enjoy food  without getting fat.  In a way, eating is like sex. If there was no enjoyment in the process, people would be doing a whole lot less of it.

  So, what if the details we THINK we know about Food and the Digestive system are inaccurate?

I find it interesting to consider the possibility that much of the knowledge which we take for absolute truth about diet and nutritional information (which is often referred to as “conventional wisdom”), might be WACKED. When I say “wacked”, I mean “out of order, crazy, not in proper condition, screwed up, incorrect, so messed up it could be broken.”

What if?  

What if the state of our current knowledge regarding nutrition and the body is similar to that previous accepted Truth = “the world is flat”? Societies of the past functioned for long periods of history with what we consider now to be only minimal knowledge. Back in time, people did a great deal of traveling before they discovered that “the world is round”. We now tend to think of them as ignorant, but they were as knowledgeable and forward thinking as was possible at the time. People in the future might consider those of us who live here in the present, to be ignorant and backward.

   I recently read the following about how “calories” were discovered:

Up until March 16, 1896 at 10:30 am, food was just that – something we ate to stave off hunger and to grow. Food was nourishment and a source of “protein” (back then this meant even rice, potatoes and wheat), typically, about 12-15% protein was recommended. All foods were assessed for “protein.” There was “cheap protein” and “expensive protein,” but people didn’t equate meat with protein any more than gluten in wheat. It was a time of affordable nourishment as a priority. People were starving.

On that day in March, Wilbur O. Atwater began his now famous calorimetry experiments and fundamentally changed how we look at food forever. After locking a Dr. Olin Freeman Tower up in a small chamber for 5 days Atwater took measurements of Dr. Tower’s metabolism. Four days earlier Dr. Tower began eating a fixed “breakfast, dinner, and supper” and continued throughout the 5 days. He exited on March 21 having gained 2 lbs.

Atwater’s measurements included both the change in temperature and the oxygen consumed/carbon dioxide produced. For the first time – food, mostly meals, had a number.

They went on to perform many experiments on how the body digests and absorbs the energy and then assigned “caloric content” of these foods based on experimentally measured averages. Remember, we didn’t know about vitamins and minerals yet – that begins 30 years later. Atwater was simply ascribing a caloric content to protein, carbohydrate, fat and alcohol. The question answered: How did the body react to food when input, waste, heat and composition were precisely measured? Did the laws of thermodynamics apply to people and food?

Eat, swallow, and poop. Now, we have a quantification of energy.

Atwater changed everything we knew about food. He made some groups angry, like the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, for suggesting alcohol actually had calories, but he defined the notion of digestibility of food based on protein, carbohydrate fat, and alcohol energy content. He had good goals and unbelievable attention to detail, but he warned that these numbers shouldn’t be used too much outside the bounds of the food combinations that were studied.

On the not-so-helpful side of things, Atwater inadvertently launched the now common “macronutrient wars.” With this new data, the beef and wheat industry could go head-to-head on “affordable protein.” These battles have raged on for a century and soon food was being ubiquitously labeled with “proteins, carbs and fats” and today, diet dogma abounds on the mythical ratios for health.

When Atwater began these investigations, we were still trying to validate Lavoisier’s work a century earlier that equated the chemistry of a burning candle and the Human body’s digestion of food.

Atwater wasn’t a fan of bread and simple sugars and advocated that more legumes and vegetables be incorporated into the diet. People thought of food very differently then – remember, nourishment. After Atwater died, we learned so much more about the role of vitamins and minerals, but at that time it was much more simple and in some ways, easier to make decisions. When the first food pamphlet (after his death) was published in 1916 – Food For Young Children by Caroline L. Hunt, I’m sure it wouldn’t have met his approval had he been alive. In it, you can see the beginnings of what would be a century dominated by special interest and food political agendas.

In the little over a century between 1796 and 1900 Lavosier and Atwater made HUGE progress on energy and in the last century we’ve made progress on vitamins and minerals.

We have taken Wilbur Olin Atwater’s life work and reduced it to … pervasive, unintelligible, and misguided recommendations for people.

The key to weight loss AND health is to start talking about food, and not label it with macronutrient names based on a fictional notion that the most significant factor of a food is the majority of the macronutrient present within it.

 The above-article comes from the personal blog of Ray Cronis, which is known as Thermogenex, located at www.hypothermics.com. It says that

Ray Cronis studied chemistry in undergraduate and graduate school and began his career as a Material Scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. During his 15 years at NASA, he worked on a microgravity material science, physical & analytical chemistry, and space station environmental control an life support systems. Ray co-founded Zero Gravity Corporation with Peter Diamandis and Byron Lichtenberg - creating the world's first private parabolic flight operation. He is not a medical doctor, but is informally currently exploring the issue of weight loss by way of basic thermodynamic principles.

  Click the link if you’rd like to see “Food For Young Children” (1916) by Caroline L. Hunt, which is the pamphlet referred to in the article above.

As part of my Dieting Hobby, I often consider things such as these,  simply because I find them interesting and/or inspiring.  I don’t feel it necessary to make a personal decision as to whether the ideas are truly “correct” or “incorrect”. Here at DietHobby my philosophy is: 
 Take what you like and leave the rest. 

Yesterday, my article was about the

Difference between Correlation and Causation.

Below are two examples of media
handling the same recent health research study.

 

 

7 Daily Servings of Fruits, Veggies Best for Happiness,
Study Finds 'Strive for 5' might need an update. 
        Oct. 12 (HealthDay News) 

"People who eat seven servings of fruit and vegetables a day have the highest levels of happiness and mental health, according to a new study.

In a joint effort with Dartmouth University, researchers at the University of Warwick examined the eating habits of 80,000 people in England and found that mental well-being rose with the number of daily servings of fruits and vegetables, peaking at seven servings a day.

The study, which appears in the journal Social Indicators Research, defied a serving as about 80 grams (2.8 ounces).

"The statistical power of fruit and vegetables was a surprise. Diet has traditionally been ignored by well-being researchers," study co-author Sarah Stewart-Brown, a professor of public health, said in a university news release.

Further research is needed to learn more about the reasons behind the findings, she added.

"This study has shown surprising results, and I have decided it is prudent to eat more fruit and vegetables. I am keen to stay cheery," study co-author Andrew Oswald, a professor in the economics department, said in the news release.

Currently, many Western governments recommend that people eat five servings of fruit and vegetables a day to protect against heart disease and cancer, the release noted.

While the study found an association between fruit and vegetable servings and well-being, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship."

 

 Here’s another take on the same Research.

Study: If You're 'Keen to Stay Cheery,'
7 Fruits and Vegetables a Day
        By Lindsay Abrams 
        Oct 14, 2012 (the Atlantic)

"On the psychological side of dietary recommendations

PROBLEM: We go on about eating for health, but we're usually talking about the physical side. The World Health Organization recommends five servings of fruits and vegetables a day for your body, but not much is known about how much is best for psychological well-being.

METHODOLOGY: Economists and public health researchers from the University of Warwick, in conjunction with Dartmouth College, used data from several randomized, cross-sectional surveys that accounted for the eating habits of about 80,000 people living in the U.K. The fruits and vegetables typically consumed by each person were compared with their life satisfaction, mental well-being, presence of mental disorders, self-reported health, happiness, nervousness, and how often they "feel low."

They factored in as many variables as they could think of, including other the rest of their diets, alcohol, and lots of demographic, social and economic factors.

RESULTS: A "remarkably robust" pattern was found, in which "happiness and mental health rise in an approximately dose-response way with the number of daily portions of fruit and vegetables." While in some cases it rounds out at the recommended five per day, well-being appears to peak at seven.

In many cases, the improvements associated with fruit and vegetable consumption were substantial. For example, the authors explain that "When comparing small and large levels of fruit and vegetable consumption per day, the effect corresponds to between 0.25 and 0.33 life-satisfaction points. To put that in perspective, the known (huge) effect of being unemployed corresponds to a loss of 0.90 of a life-satisfaction point."

CONCLUSION: The findings are "consistent with the need for high levels of fruit-and-vegetable consumption for mental health and not merely for physical health."

IMPLICATIONS: This isn't a definitive randomized trial, but it's an interesting correlation that warrants more research. Economist Andrew Oswald in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick seems pretty convinced, though. As he put it, "This study has shown surprising results and I have decided it is prudent to eat more fruit and vegetables. I am keen to stay cheery."

Aren't we all, Professor Oswald. Aren't we all.

The full study, "Is Psychological Well-being Linked to the Consumption of Fruit and Vegetables?" will be published in the journal Social Indicators Research. "

 At the end, both of these articles specifically admit that this study involves only a correlation, not causation.

However, do you join me in thinking that a typical reader of these articles will come away believing that new research says that they would probably be happier if they ate more fruits and veggies? And… that one of the reasons they now feel unhappy, could be because they don’t eat ENOUGH fruits and vegetables?

One of the most common errors in the press is the confusion between correlation and causation in scientific and health-related studies.

In theory, these are easy to distinguish … an action or occurrence can CAUSE another (such as smoking causes lung cancer), or it can CORRELATE with another (such as smoking is correlated with alcoholism). If one action causes another, then they are most certainly correlated.

But just because two things occur together does not mean that one caused the other, even if it seems to make sense.

In general, we should all be wary of our own bias. We like explanations. The media often concludes a causal relationship among correlated observances when causality was not even considered by a research study itself. Without clear and definite reasons to accept that one thing CAUSES another, the fact that a correlation exists is all we should accept. Again, two events occurring in close proximity does not imply that one caused the other, even if it seems to makes perfect sense.

Once upon a time, this type of error wasn’t too bad.
If one ate a berry and got sick, it was wise to see meaning in that data. (Better safe than sorry). The same goes for a red-hot coal. Only one touch will give all the correlations needed. Being bullied by a primitive world of nature, it's far worse to miss a link than it is to make one up. A false negative yields the greatest risk.

Now conditions are reversed.
People in modern civilization are bullies over nature. New claims about causation are often made so we can make large interventions in nature. A false positive today often means approving drugs that have no effect, or imposing regulations that make no difference, or wasting money in schemes to limit unemployment. Now, as science grows more powerful and government more technocratic, the stakes of correlation…. of making counterfeit relationships and bogus findings,… grow larger and larger. A false positive is now more burdensome than it's ever been. The only thing we have to fight this attitude is the catchphrase. “correlation is not causation”.

I suggest that we be very cautious in the way we allow media claims to influence us into making personal changes in our own behaviors, ... especially in relation to the way they tend to limit our personal choices of the foods we eat, and the way they tend to add to our personal expense and health risks through recommendions of unnecessary drugs. 

Mistaking correlation for causation finds a cause that simply isn't there.