I weigh 72kg at 178cm height. At peak, when I got tested I weighed around 86kg. I was barely overweight and definitely not obese and yet...
E.g. I'm 178cm as well but when I was 71kg I was visibly "fat", or at least skinny fat to be charitable. I'm currently 67kg but very lean and somewhat muscular.
But it isnt pushed hard because it is difficult to steer the ship of humanity. Like how doctors will say "lose some weight" but they arent really expecting miracles on it as they know the battle that is.
I eat around a pound of beef a day, a gallon of yogurt a week, and almost everything (eg oatmeal) is made with copious amounts of butter.
I think unless you know something specific about your genetics, just eat plain natural foods people have been eating for millennia and you will be perfectly fine. Basically, buy plain meat, vegetables, grains, and dairy and prepare them yourself. Don’t eat preservatives, corn syrups, or novel vegetable oils like canola. Maybe they’re fine but there’s no reason to risk it. Also do your best to make sure what you eat followed the same rule; eg my beef was grass fed and finished and was not fed skittles in a feedlot. Diet affects animal meat as well, just as it does us.
If someone wants to try limiting meat consumption as an "n=1" experiment to see how it affects their body composition and other biomarkers then go ahead. Just don't expect a major impact from that one factor.
I feel the hfcs is the bigger issue here because it is put in everything in the US, but moderating both of these will help.
Look at labels and put back anything with hfcs.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-hig...
And actually one of humanity's major evolutionary advances.
It makes sense to try to eliminate it even though it's "only" a small difference. Might as well remove the difference at all and look out for things with no HFCS shoved in it for no reason.
Similarly, it's not suprising when pasta sauce has some sweetness added -- grandma also likely added a bit of sugar if she found tomatoes too acidic, which many do.
The only thing that matters is that it's sugar. HFCS isn't somehow worse. If you're trying to eliminate sugar overall then sure, of course avoid HFCS. But if you're fine with a certain moderate amount of sugar per day, then the relatively small amounts of HFCS in things like pasta sauce and peanut butter are fine. The same way the sugar or honey in teriyaki sauces is. They count towards your daily allotment of sugar. For people trying to eat relatively healthily, avoid the soda but there's no reason to worry about the HFCS in ketchup or normal amounts of tomato sauce, for goodness' sake. The only reason to avoid HFCS entirely is if you're truly cutting sugar out of your diet entirely. Otherwise they're just substitutes for practical nutritional purposes.
These choices add up, which is the point I was trying to make originally (though I agree I did not do a good job of it); I understand I was being pedantic so I understand the nature of the responses to me. The point is that small differences, isolated, don't matter, but in aggregate they absolutely do. We make arguments like this all the time in software when trying to write correct, performative code -- the milliseconds add up, and so do the grams of sugar.
The anti-HFCS movement, despite having its targets aimed for wrong reasons, is still aiming at the right thing: being more mindful of what's in the things we put in our bodies.
Because they make people think Mexican Coke is fine because it's made with real sugar, or that putting honey all over your toast doesn't count. Like, I know people who think these things, but avoid HFCS like it's the plague.
Unless you're trying to avoid sugar to an extreme degree, the sweetness in tomato sauce is not worth concerning yourself about. The small differences, when added up, don't matter that much. The sugar in your bread and peanut butter is nothing compared to a Coke. Again -- if you're concerned about sugar, then don't drink soda and don't eat dessert. No candies, no sweet drinks, no sweet juices. That gets you 95% of the way. Worrying about HFCS in bread is missing the forest for the trees.
> This means:
> Adults should have no more than 30g of free sugars a day, (roughly equivalent to 7 sugar cubes).
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/how-does-su...
Like I said, it adds up. And as I pointed out above, the added sugar varies wildly in the "same" things you buy off the shelf, so it does pay to pay attention.
I don't see the same argument for adding more beneficial things to your diet like protein or fiber so it's curious to say the negative things don't also have some cumulative effect.
You can easily find peanut butter without added sugar, and applesauce without added sugar, and many more of the garden variety things without added sugar. Sure, there is naturally occurring sugar, but that's the point -- why add more, and why add that to your diet?
>HFCS 42 is mainly used for processed foods and breakfast cereals, whereas HFCS 55 is used mostly for production of soft drinks.
In other words, the type of HFCS that's "shoved into countless foods" has less fructose than table sugar, not more. If fructose is the villain here, that actually constitutes an improvement over table sugar.
As for honey (and fruit, for that matter) - they are full of beneficial compounds that help your body regulate blood sugar.
To illustrate this, someone I know of with type I diabetes who ate natural honey didn't need to inject as much insulin as when eating commercially processed/heated honey - those beneficial compounds are destroyed during the process. Same for fruit vs fruit juice...
The glucose and fructose than act the same as glucose and fructose from HFCS.
Corn syrup might or not be different, Im no expert in that field, but simply having highly refined sugars without the filler is monocropping your diet in weird ways. In the same way soil is being killed by mono cropped agricuture, we are doing the same with our gut biome. The flow on impacts are still being discovered.