The hungry brain
"From an obesity and neuroscience researcher with a knack for engaging, humorous storytelling, The Hungry Brain uses cutting-edge science to answer the questions: why do we overeat, and what can we do about it? No one wants to overeat. And certainly no one wants to overeat for years, become overweight, and end up with a high risk of diabetes or heart disease--yet two thirds of Americans do precisely that. Even though we know better, we often eat too much. Why does our behavior betray our own intentions to be lean and healthy? The problem, argues obesity and neuroscience researcher Stephan J. Guyenet, is not necessarily a lack of willpower or an incorrect understanding of what to eat. Rather, our appetites and food choices are led astray by ancient, instinctive brain circuits that play by the rules of a survival game that no longer exists. And these circuits don't care about how you look in a bathing suit next summer. To make the case, The Hungry Brain takes readers on an eye-opening journey through cutting-edge neuroscience that has never before been available to a general audience. The Hungry Brain delivers profound insights into why the brain undermines our weight goals and transforms these insights into practical guidelines for eating well and staying slim. Along the way, it explores how the human brain works, revealing how this mysterious organ makes us who we are"
Stats for nerds
14recommend
27mentions
19people
2017–2024years
81% recommend15% neutral4% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Nobody knows = there is wide disagreement
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33309818/
My personal feeling is that I can eat like a king every day of the week. If I only had access to one kind of dessert, I'd be fine. I'd get tired of it. Oh, vanilla ice cream again.
But we have access to a wide variety of highly palatable foods, each with distinct flavor profiles; and advertisements reminds us how much better we'll feel after a snack!
Big recommend for Guyenet's "The Hungry Brain"
(randomly chosen podcast interview)
- It sounds like you aren't familiar with the basics of what is known in the field, because the theory you're promoting has been known to be wrong for decades. It's kind of the Flat Earth Theory of obesity.
The cause might be sugars, but they'd have to be sugars that were little used 50 years ago when the obesity pandemic began. One promising candidate was high-fructose corn syrup, with a promising hypothesis about how a fructose/glucose ratio of 1:1 was harmless. That hypothesis was always somewhat unlikely and basically didn't pan out. Glucose syrup was also an interesting hypothesis‚ but fructose/glucose hypotheses all run up against the sucrase-isomaltase problem: people in some places, such as the US, ate plenty of sucrose before 01974, and it gets split into fructose and glucose in the small intestine. So you need an explanation of why the modern sugar-heavy diet has such dramatically different health effects from historical sugar-heavy diets. Maybe it's fucose? Chlorinated sugars like sucralose? Massive galactose doses? You could be right, but you've chosen to take on a heavy burden of proof there.
As for your "shame people who don't want responsibility" ideas, I suggest reading https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/12/the-physics-diet/, which begins:
> There are at least four possible positions on the thermodynamics of weight gain:
> 1. Weight gain does not depend on calories in versus calories out, even in the loosest sense.
> 2. Weight gain is entirely a function of calories in versus calories out, but calories may move in unexpected ways not linked to the classic “eat” and “exercise” dichotomy. For example, some people may have “fast metabolisms” which burn calories even when they are not exercising. These people may stay very thin even if they eat and exercise as much as much more obese people.
> 3. Weight gain is entirely a function of calories in versus calories out, and therefore of how much you eat and exercise. However, these are in turn mostly dependent on the set points of a biologically-based drive. For example, some people may have overactive appetites, and feel starving unless they eat an amount of food that will make them fat. Other people will have very strong exercise drives and feel fidgety unless they get enough exercise to keep them very thin. These things can be altered in various ways which cause weight gain or loss, without the subject exerting willpower. For example, sleep may cause weight loss because people who get a good night sleep have decreased appetite and lower levels of appetite-related hormones.
> 4. Weight gain is entirely a function of calories in versus calories out, and therefore of how much you eat and exercise. That means diet is entirely a function of willpower and any claim that factors other than amount of food eaten and amount of exercise performed can affect weight gain is ipso facto ridiculous. For example, we can dismiss claims that getting a good night’s sleep helps weight loss, because that would violate the laws of thermodynamics.
> 1 and 4 are kind of dumb. (...)
4 is your position. Read the article to see why it's dumb. It's a short, easy read.
Also I suggest reading https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry..., a review of The Hungry Brain by neuroscientist Stephen Guyenet, who specializes in nutrition. Also, and I know this may be a big ask, maybe read an actual book on the topic too. Also, you would probably find it illuminating to read https://www.bpni.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2020-UPFs-ob..., "Ultra-processed food and the risk of overweight and obesity: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies," and although observational studies aren't the strongest form of evidence (you could hypothetically have some kind of widespread undiscovered brain infection that both causes obesity and also makes you eat Cheetos and Cheez Whiz, without the latter causing the former, or fat people might settle for ordering Domino's Pizza because it's too hard for them to travel all the way to Whole Foods), there are also randomized clinical trials showing the same thing.
Maybe also https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13668-024-005..., "Ultra‑processed Food and Obesity: What Is the Evidence?", whose summary says:
> Greater UPF [ultra-processed food] consumption has been a key driver of obesity. There is a need to change the obesogenic environment to support individuals to reduce their UPF intake. The UPF concept is a novel approach that is not explained with existing nutrient- and food-based frameworks.
It's shorter than the SSC posts I linked, but it demands a higher level of literacy.
- Hungry Brain by Guyenet is huge recommend from me, and I second the recommendation for Burn
- As an alternative, there is no one single cause of the obesity epidemic. People are made of confounding factors, and the world is very complicated. The world does not owe you simple explanations.
Two books have helped me understand the obesity epidemic:
Burn by Pontzer - https://www.amazon.com/Burn/dp/0241388422
Podcast about above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CSNS45RJL0
Hungry Brain by Guyenet - https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Brain-Outsmarting-Instincts-Ov...
Podcast about above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlWriMdYuKk
- While I believe this to be technically correct, this approach to diet and weight is like saying “poor people just need to make more money, or spend less”. It misses a lot of important nuance.
I would recommend you check out a book called” The Hungry Brain“ by Stephan Guyenet. It changed my perspective on this topic and made me much more empathetic to people who struggle with weight issues.
- > Obesity Epidemic: Why do humans, pets, and even lab animals of many species kept in controlled lab conditions on standardized diets appear to be increasingly obese over the 20th century? What could explain all of them simultaneously becoming obese? (Is it literally something in the water?)
I think it would help us if we understood why this problem is so hard to understand and what our blind spots are.
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It is easy to see the problems that an obese person has. It is easy to feel like they should know better and make changes for their health. It looks like a big problem that should be taken seriously.
But that's not how that person got there. 1-5 pounds of excess fat does not feel like a big problem. Fat gain is usually quite slow and steady, and the body has time to get used to it. In other words, it's not a problem that suddenly shows up in a person's life, and it doesn't physically feel like a problem (until it's too late).
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Hunger doesn't have a number. Scientists have an aversion to studying things that don't have numbers. It doesn't feel like serious science.
Hunger isn't weakness or failure, it's a whole body response to lack of nutrients.
Hunger isn't one thing, it's a bunch of body sensations and psychological triggers and conditioning.
Hunger acts like a one-way valve - there is a strong negative feeling for a moderate lack of nutrients, there is no equivalent feeling for a moderate excess of nutrients. People can often lose fat while dieting, but then gain it back. That has been described as the hunger set-point. Winter is coming and losing your energy supply may kill you (says evolution).
Hunger is not comparable between people. I don't know how bad you feel when you miss a meal, and you don't know how bad I feel.
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I can eat like a king at every meal, every day. I can eat like a king of a different country every single day. I'm never limited to boring food.
Corporations make money from "adding value" to food, advertising it and selling it. The value add is to make food very tasty - sugar, salt, fat, flavor. There's no pressure at the corporate level to market food in accordance with health goals. The "sugar tax" has been thoroughly demonized.
The problem with gravy and sauces is not just the caloric content. It is the inducement to eat more. An experiment: buy unsalted and salted nuts of your choice (or unflavored and flavored rice cakes, etc). Eat as many of the unflavored item as you care to. Now think about eating the flavored version. Did you suddenly feel like you could eat more? Your gut and your mind talk to each other. If you taste something good or even imagine tasting something good, and it is different enough from something you just ate, your body will tell you that you are still hungry.
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On the calories out side, studies show that exercise has little effect on fat by itself. Exercise is good for health, but remember that your body will tell you to eat more to make up for it.
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Advice time: Learn to control hunger. This may take quite a lot of effort and learning. I recommend the books "The Hungry Brain" and "Burn".
Eat boring food high in protein and fiber.
Find exercise that you enjoy.
Control your food environment. If you have snacks around, your brain will remember them. If you have snacks within reach, your body may start eating them without conscious command.
