(This is Part 2 of a 2-part series. Go back to Part 1.)
According to the Surgeon-General, 61% of Americans are now officially classified as overweight, and many other industrialised societies are showing a similar symptom.
There's been so much said and written about weight control, dieting, and weight loss. Let's try to cut through the tangle.
In this Part 2 of losing weight, let's look again at the subject of caloric density in foods. The caloric density of a food is how many calories it has per gram.
Some examples from the animal kingdom are:
T-bone steak, 4.73 calories per gram
hamburger, 2.90
mackerel, 2.36
butter, 7.16
lamb loin chops, 2.52
cheddar cheese, 3.98
ham, 2.62
sea bass, 2.59
turkey, 2.63
and so on.
Some examples from the plant kingdom are:
mangos, 0.66
potatoes, 0.57
lentils, 1.06
broccoli, 0.32
brown rice, 1.19
raspberries, 0.73
asparagas, 0.26
tofu, 0.72
lima beans, 1.11
and so on.
There are exceptions, but do you notice a pattern here? Animal foods tend to have high caloric density and plant foods tend to have low caloric density.
Why is this important in losing weight, and more important, keeping it off?
Because caloric density determines how full you are in relation to the calories you're getting.
What usually happens with people dieting? They're eating things like meat, fish, poultry or cheese with vegetables and sauces and attempting to limit each meal to 500 calories or less.
But when we look at the average caloric density of the meals they're eating, they tend to be 2.0 or higher, often 2.5 or even 3.0 calories per gram.
What this means is that if they stick to the diet, they will invariably feel hungry because their stomach is not very full. Dieters tend to be constantly hungry.
After a while they can't stand the constant hunger anymore, and then, in the classic pattern, they binge—and gain back all the weight they lost with such difficulty, and then some.
Eating foods with high caloric density is the basic reason why diets fail. In order to feel full, you have to eat an excess of calories, or conversely, if you eat a reasonable amount of calories, you don't feel full.
The second type of diet fashionable today is a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet, whether liquid or solid. Such a diet emphasizes foods high in animal protein and fat such as meats, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy, etc.
High-protein diets "work" in losing weight by inducing ketosis in the body. Normally the cells in the body run on glucose from carbohydrates. When carbohydrates are denied to the body, the body metabolizes fat instead and forces the cells of the body to run on ketones.
This process causes the dieter to lose weight, but the diet is unsustainable because its excessively high animal protein and fat eventually induce osteoporosis and kidney breakdown. Thousands of studies have also shown that diets high in animal proteins and fats also are highly correlated with the chronic diseases of industrialised societies such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arthritis and a host of others.
Thus, sooner or later, the dieter must leave such a diet, usually because his or her health is failing, and then attempts once again to restrict calories, which leads to chronic hunger, which leads to binges, and the whole cycle starts all over again.
Thus, it is virtually impossible to lose weight and keep it off permanently on high caloric-density diets. And the typical industrial-nation diet of meat, poultry, fish and dairy with added oils and fats is a naturally high caloric-density diet.
In contrast, a diet composed mostly of plant foods tends naturally to be low in caloric density. When designed healthfully, such diets are basically centered around starches, vegetables and fruits. A typical meal might be brown rice and vegetables, or oatmeal with fruit.
Why "designed healthfully"? Because a plant-based diet can be designed around such things as cheese pizza, corn chips, crusty white bread, sodas, white rice, sugared cereals, french fries, cookies and so on, which are refined and processed foods containing mostly "empty calories" deficient in vitamins, minerals, fiber, phytochemicals, etc. This will not sustain health.
An additional aspect of caloric density: Whole grains tend to be low in caloric density, but when they're milled into flour their caloric density goes way up. Thus wheat berries have a low caloric density of 0.45, but when milled into flour have a caloric density of 3.33 (whole wheat) and 3.64 (white), more than seven times as much.
And thus products made from that flour, such as cracked-wheat bread (2.63), english muffins (2.46), apple muffins (2.65) and so on, tend to have a high caloric density.
It is also possible, and common, to greatly increase the caloric density of foods by adding fat. Thus a potato has a caloric density of 0.57. That same potato as french fries has a caloric density of 3.16, almost six times higher. A salad has a caloric density of about 0.18 to 0.40. That same salad with french dressing and pieces of ham and cheese has a caloric density of 2.44, seven to thirteen times higher.
The healthiest peoples in the world, such as the Hunzas of Pakistan, the Vilcambambans of Equador, the Tarahumaras of Mexico, etc. all eat a diet composed almost exclusively of unrefined, unprocessed starches (such as rice, corn, beans, potatoes, winter squash, etc.) plus green and yellow vegetables and fresh fruits.
Such a diet is naturally low in caloric density, so that you can eat all you want and still easily stay trim and thin. It is a fact that there are no obese or overweight people in these societies. Not only is overweight unknown, but so is "dieting."
Moreover, unlike a diet containing animal proteins and fats (or processed and refined foods), a diet of low-fat, unprocessed plant foods is high in fiber, high in phytochemicals, vitamins, minerals, etc., naturally low in fat, provides more than adequate protein (as proven in thousands of studies), has no cholesterol, and tends to lead to dramatically greater levels of health.
—jim sloman, 12/26/01 for Dec 26
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