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Study Confirms That Processed Foods Key to Rising Obesity

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

hubie writes:

'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: 1) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 20 2022, @02:32AM (3 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 20 2022, @02:32AM (#1280583) Journal

    I've read a couple articles over the past few years, explaining how artificial sweeteners contribute to obesity.

    Your taste buds send signals to the stomach, which anticipates some good, sweet fruit, or some such. Stomach gears up to process sugar, along with whatever accompanies the sugar. After some time, stomach decides it was a false alarm, there is no sugar coming. Stomach sends a signal to the brain, "Hey, I was anticipating some good stuff, and never got it! I'm hungry!" So, brain obeys stomach, and looks around for munchies to fill that empty spot.

    Better to drink the sugar-sweetened beverage to start with. Or, better yet, just drink water, or milk, or plain unsweetened tea or coffee. None of those sends false alarms to the stomach, that remind you how empty the stomach is.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2022, @07:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2022, @07:24AM (#1280623)

    Stomach sends a signal to the brain, "Hey, I was anticipating some good stuff, and never got it! I'm hungry!" So, brain obeys stomach, and looks around for munchies to fill that empty spot.

    That's why we developed THIRST interceptor. The only product guaranteed to INTERCEPT your thirst. Look at these CAPITAL LETTERS! You know to obey.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by istartedi on Sunday November 20 2022, @07:59AM

    by istartedi (123) on Sunday November 20 2022, @07:59AM (#1280633) Journal

    I'm really not that big a fan of memes, but something about this made me want to jump on over to a generator and throw this together [imgflip.com].

    --
    Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.

  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday November 20 2022, @02:24PM

    by RamiK (1813) on Sunday November 20 2022, @02:24PM (#1280673)

    Currently, it's seems the consumption of acesulfame potassium in soft drinks leads to reduction in energy intake:

    In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we found that in individuals who were healthy, EI was significantly reduced after consuming a blend of Asp/Ace-K compared with sugar and water controls; however, the data were insufficient to establish if the reduction in EI was linked to subjective appetite or changes in postprandial blood glucose or the incretins GLP-1 and GIP.

    ( https://academic.oup.com/advances/advance-article/doi/10.1093/advances/nmac072/6691418 [oup.com] )

    However, the EU been running (2020-2025 I believe) a massive collaborative project experimenting with and reviewing different sweeteners over fairly large sample sizes and different experimental settings for everything from safety to sustainability that is producing new papers every other month so there's more to learn: https://sweetproject.eu/ [sweetproject.eu] https://sweetproject.eu/sweet-new-investigators-group-update/ [sweetproject.eu]

    Still, so far, sweeteners in soft drinks are almost definitely preferable to non-diet soft drinks and probably even just drinking water.

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