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posted by janrinok on Saturday November 19 2022, @05:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the take-your-protein-pills-and-put-your-helmet-on dept.

'Protein hunger' drives overeating, large-scale population study shows:

A year-long study of the dietary habits of 9,341 Australians has backed growing evidence that highly processed and refined foods are the leading contributor of rising obesity rates in the Western world.

The new study, in the latest issue of the journal Obesity conducted by the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre (CPC), was based on a national nutrition and physical activity survey undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), and further backs the 'Protein Leverage Hypothesis'.

First put forward in 2005 by professors Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson, the Protein Leverage Hypothesis argues that people overeat fats and carbohydrates because of the body's strong appetite for protein, which the body actively favours over everything else. Because so much of modern diets consist of highly processed and refined foods – which are low in protein – people are driven to consume more energy-dense foods until they satisfy their protein demand.

[...] "It's increasingly clear that our bodies eat to satisfy a protein target," added Professor David Raubenheimer, the Leonard Ullmann Chair in Nutritional Ecology at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences.

"But the problem is that the food in Western diets contains increasingly less protein. So, you have to consume more of it to reach your protein target, which effectively elevates your daily energy intake.

[...] Participants with a lower proportion of protein than recommended at the first meal consumed more discretionary foods – energy-dense foods high in saturated fats, sugars, salt, or alcohol – throughout the day, and less of the recommended five food groups (grains; vegetables/legumes; fruit; dairy and meats). Consequently, they had an overall poorer diet at each mealtime, with their percentage of protein energy decreasing even as their discretionary food intake rose – an effect the scientists call 'protein dilution'.

Journal Reference:
Amanda Grech, Zhixian Sui, Anna Rangan, et al., Macronutrient (im)balance drives energy intake in anobesogenic food environment: An ecological analysis [open], Obesity, 30, 11, 2022. DOI: 10.1002/oby.23578


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Sunday November 20 2022, @12:07AM (3 children)

    by RamiK (1813) on Sunday November 20 2022, @12:07AM (#1280565)

    Factories don't stock on flour since the mill's supply is always stable thanks to wheat grains having a 30 years shelf life.

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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday November 20 2022, @12:39AM (2 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 20 2022, @12:39AM (#1280567) Journal

    Factories may not, but other places do. And shelf life can determine what they prefer to stock.
    (Actually, the reason white rice became popular in China was because of it's increased shelf life. I'm not sure who made the decisions, though. It could have been the British, since I think they either developed the process, or developed the way to do it cheaply. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_polisher [wikipedia.org] )

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    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2022, @07:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2022, @07:21AM (#1280622)

      Ironic that the Chinese are now bringing nuclear technology to the backward British. But at least they won the 1966 World Cup worth more than any investment in talent and reality.

    • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday November 20 2022, @12:40PM

      by RamiK (1813) on Sunday November 20 2022, @12:40PM (#1280660)

      the reason white rice became popular in China was because of it's increased shelf life

      Sorta but not quite. Technically rice similarly stores for 10-30 years just like wheat. The problem is that the husk adds a lot of useless volume even before removing the germ and barn ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJgDswVRuXA [youtube.com] about 8 minutes into it when harvesting or a minute before planting ) so some processing is called for before shipping regardless and the extra step to removing the germ and barn ( and getting superior shelf life ) is trivial at that point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lRH7AjdgXk [youtube.com] ( lowest tech video I could find of modern rice milling as done in Iran showing how the polishing step from brown to white doesn't even enter into it while functioning as a form of QC so not doing it is just wasteful ).

      Anyhow, in the US and China mills are required to fortify white rice with the missing B vitamins so you're only missing 0.5% fibers and maybe some water content? Honestly I only know this stuff from last year when Japan issued some 300 years of rice futures and I dug into the whole grain futures thing out of curiosity mostly so I'm no expert.

      Regardless, the point I'm trying to convey is how "processed foods vs. whole foods" categorization deals with the micro-nutrients removal and how fortification is already used to address the issues that was found out in the past so adding protein powder into the mix now is a valid solution that's well within standard practices in the industry. So, it's not a question of "communication" so much as a question of who the target audience is and how the quacks on TV talking about "natural" and "organic" are just being ignorant of how food is made.

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