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Comment by SCHiM | Hacker News Reader

Research is not yet clear, but not every calorie is the same!

The combination of nutrients in food can have a large effect on the efficiency of nutrient extraction in your stomach and gut. For example, when you consume alchol and a meal afterwards your body will store more fat than if you'd just taken a (slightly larger) meal. This is because your body will prioritize burning the acetate and alchol over anything else (including carbs, fat and protein). Other foods or chemicals might have effects on the resource burning allocation of your body.

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Even if you had definitive proof of this, I think OP's assertion still stands.

Concerning yourself with highly complex reactions that could happen between foods, when we aren't even sure how/if those reactions happen is effort spent unwisely, whereas calorie counting has a definitive effect and even if those combinations can hamper or help you, even by ignoring them, you still have the overall desired result.

I find that, as a model, calorie in - calorie out works well, even if at some future time we would discover it's not fully accurate.

>Concerning yourself with highly complex reactions that could happen between foods

This isn't necessitated at all. There's no mystery as to what overlaps between what the most successful food regimens prescribe today: cut sugar, cut refined foods, eat more vegetables and eat real food.

Counting calories is important when it comes to weight management, but optimal health does not stop and start just at BMI. You might be thinner on a calorie-restricted junk-food diet, but you won't be healthier. Your insulin would spike all the time, you'd be nutrient-deficient, etc.

I agree that a certain well thought diet could have further health benefits but the context of the post is obesity prevention.

Monumental benefits, which also extend to obesity prevention by virtue of the elimination of problem-stuffs in the face of obesity (canned soda, fried foods and snacking chips). They're at once high-calorie, facilitate eating a near endless amount (anyone can go through an entire bag of chips), and addictive.

All of which to say, you'll be making the task of losing weight easier just by switching to healthy foods, which you should be doing anyway. It's not "complicated", it doesn't need to be politicized.

What is real food? Plants, Fruits and Water? Everything else has to be processed somehow.

Yes.

> Plants, Fruits and Water

Also fungi. And fruits are plants so do not need a special mention.

Some would say meat can be "unprocessed", but its not part of the WFPB diet that I mentioned earlier and it known for it's health (obesity reversing) benefits. To the contrary.

and meat, and unrefined grains and legumes (or partially so). There's processing, and there's processing. I don't even have to tell you I'm suggesting the avoidance of refined grains and added sugar.

Of course every calorie isn't the same. Otherwise two-three pints of beer could count as a breakfast.

They don't? Shit, there goes my master plan.

Citation/source?

https://youtu.be/T8G8tLsl_A4

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