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    Mendosa

    mendosa.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2010

    Mendosa is the site of diabetes writer David Mendosa, covering glycemic index, satiety and noninvasive glucose monitoring.

    Visit blogHN submissions
    HealthScience
    What HN says

    HN commenters link it for history and physics of noninvasive glucose monitoring and for the satiety index research on foods like potatoes.

    Stats for nerds
    17HN people shared it
    2linked in comments
    2story points
    Jul 2022last shared
    2010people per year2022

    Top posts on HN

    1. 1
      What Satisfies – The Satiety Index
      6 people · 1 points · first shared 2010 · Discussion on HN
    2. 2
      The Pursuit of Noninvasive Glucose: “Hunting the Deceitful Turkey”
      4 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · Discussion on HN
    3. 3
      Stefansson1
      2 people · first shared 2015
    4. 4
      The%20Pursuit%20of%20Noninvsive%20Glucose,%20Fourth%20Edition.pdf
      2 people · first shared 2016
    5. 5
      Gilists
      1 person · first shared 2015
    6. 6
      Glucowatch
      1 person · first shared 2017
    7. 7
      Fluke
      1 person · first shared 2011

    What HN people wrote when they linked it

    • aaronblohowiakJul 2010

      You will continue to have cravings for about a month after you give up shitty food. Your body associates a level of sweetness and/or saltiness with the amount of calories that it is getting. Modern foods mess up that calibration (disrupting grehlin and so on, watch "The Bitter Truth About Sugar" on youtube for the biochem explanation.) Anyway, you will eventually relent.

      The hack for your motivation and behavior is an attitude adjustment. When you get the craving, you are feeling the craving and you are really getting a signal from your body. It takes some effort, but you can try to actively look at the signal as saying "this is the pain of detoxxing, no pain, no gain." If you take the craving as a signal that you are doing something right, then it can help motivate you to continue on the right path.

      You can also look into recording the foods that YOU find are healthy and induce satiety disproportionate to their caloric load. Or, for some research about people in general, you can look here: http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm

      My go-to satisfying things are frozen grapes and yogurt.

      Edit: interesting research by Nutrition Data in estimating the "fullness factor" of foods: http://nutritiondata.self.com/topics/fullness-factor

    • randcrawOct 2015

      Your comment prompted me to look up the GIs for brown and white rice. I checked several sources. Unfortunately GI numbers vary significantly depending on brand and preparation (and perhaps source).

      Here are some GI values for rice from the Mendosa GI list...
      http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm

      The nominal GI of white rice is 73. But various brands and preparations can cause the GI of NS white rice to vary from 43 to 90. Long grain varies from 50 to 76. Uncle Ben's in a pouch runs around 48.

      The nominal GI of brown rice is 68. But again, brand and preparation introcuces much variance, from 50 to 87.

      The nominal GI of converted boiled white rice trends lower at 38 (Uncle Ben's) but can run as high as 87.

      However from an authoritative article of 1000 foods in Diabetes Care from 2008, the GI of white rice is 89 and brown 50.
      http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-eating/glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods

      In the end, it seems you have to be very careful about exactly which products and preparations you're comparing.

    • safety1stJul 2022

      I agree that potatoes are high GI and that this idea is counterintuitive.

      My observation was simply that research exists which substantiates this counterintuitive idea (quite a bit of it I believe, the satiety index has been around since 1995).

      I'm sure it would spark an interesting discussion if someone had time to dive into the research and the studies.

      http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm gives an overview and mentions a few of the studies.

      As an aside, this potato diet supposedly allows salt and oil - which is all you need to make french fries. French fries did not score well on the satiety index.

      Boiled potatoes did.

    • thorwasdfasdfJan 2020

      It's not that simple. Yes, dairy fats lend themselves to satiety but that doesn't mean all fats do. There's lots of unhealthy fats and even some healthy ones that don't lend themselves to higher satiety: take a look at the Holtz Satiety studies: http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm

      They clearly show Croissants, cakes, Doughnuts and even Peanuts have very low satiety. Sure, eggs, cheese and beef do okay, but they're still beaten by apples, oranges, oatmeal and potatoes.

      And, let's not loose sight of the fact that health is important too, and there's lots of fats out there that don't do your health good.

    • evanchenAug 2010

      The problem with "solutions" like this is that they don't really fix the problem where it lies. Weight gain is attributed to caloric surplus, there's no two ways about it.

      Drinking water before a meal will help you feel a little fuller and ultimately, eat less. People ignorant to nutrition will begin to use this as a free pass to eating even more poorly.

      If you really take a step back and look at this, what they are suggesting is filling up with less calorie dense foods (water being the ultimate example), preferably with a high satiety index (here's a list: http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm).

    • gwernNov 2018

      > In a blog update, Verily cited here insufficient consistency in the correlation between tear glucose and blood glucose concentrations to support the requirements of a medical device.

      Continuing the extremely long and varied history of failures in non-invasive glucose testing, especially those attempting to measure proxies rather than the blood itself: See John Smith's _The Pursuit of Noninvasive Glucose Blood Tests: "Hunting the Deceitful Turkey"_ http://www.mendosa.com/noninvasive_glucose.pdf

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