[Closed] Horizon: Sugar vs Fat (BBC2 9pm)

fat good sugar bad, saved watching it, im off for cream cake

I heard the guys in Radio 5 this afternoon and one said there's no food in nature that has fat and sugar.

Coconut? Milk? (Lactose is a sugar) Those were 2 I thought within about half a second, so I decided it wasn't worth watching.

iDiet FTW.

What's the betting a balanced diet will prove to be best?

Watched it for about 5 mins and yup, that's about it.

Oscar was right all along 🙄

Recording as wife has got 24Hrs Back at Work on.

heard the guys in Radio 5 this afternoon and one said there's no food in nature that has fat and sugar.

Honey and errr Sugar.

Eat Less Move More.

/Thread*

* 😀

I heard the guys in Radio 5 this afternoon and one said there's no food in nature that has fat and sugar.

Coconut? Milk? (Lactose is a sugar) Those were 2 I thought within about half a second

.... or any animal made of meat (so only the edible animals) will have fat and glycogen in them

If you watch the programme, they are referring to processed foods where the sugar:fat ratio is around 50:50 which, I bet, is hard to find in nature.

No surprises in the conclusion of the programme, though.

You beat me to it mikey74!

It's a specific 50/50 combination of fat and sugar they are on about.

Upshot is to avoid processed foods, doughnuts, cheesecake, etc.

Who'd have thought?!

interesting enough i though, basically eat what you like bar the 50:50 mix and exercise and you should do alright. Hardly revolutionary, but interesting all the same.

I would've liked more info about saturated fat and whether it's still considered the enemy with regards blocking your pipes.

There have been noises that sugar causes inflammation of the arteries and it's this that's the issue not the fat. Didn't go there though.

Horizon's mean well but never seem to deliver on the excitement of the topic. So in that respect no surprises.

The program is too short to go into everything, and it is a pretty complex topic. There is a lot of really interesting research being done into dietary composition, and the role of sugars/fats at the moment.

The Eat Less, Move More brigade are oversimplifying too I think - my partner is eating around 1400kcal/day and goes to various classes/training sessions 5 days a week, plus running and is stalled with the weight loss. I eat a "traditional" healthy diet and do a pretty active outdoors job and am also stalled.

So we are willing to try something else - not as extreme as this - but probably a slightly higher fat/lower carb centered on low GI stuff, and see how we go!

I thought the program was quite poor. The conclusion seemed to be that if we make really nice food, it's really hard not to eat more of it.

I thought the program was quite poor. The conclusion seemed to be that if we make really nice food, it's really hard not to eat more of it.

For many, that is probably a deeper message than you give it credit for.

Some scary implications for the 4 hour / iDave diet though re high fat diet and insulin maintenance.

trans fats and highly refined sugars ftmfw.

Some scary implications for the 4 hour / iDave diet though re high fat diet and insulin maintenance.

Very true. Hopefully it helps put to bed those diets that focus on eating one type of food over all others. A balanced diet really does appear to be the way to go.

Isn't a balanced diet exactly 50% fat & 50% carbs. 🙂

Some scary implications for the 4 hour / iDave diet though re high fat diet and insulin maintenance.

watching it now but balanced diet will be the answer. Any idiot could tell you this (and I'm that idiot). People telling us calories matter have been ripping us off for years. I was saying this years ago on here. Did anyone listen? Nope.

Eating one type of thing all the time will cause problems. No shit.

I watched it, not surprised in the slightest that they chose two of the most annoying people on the planet to present it.

What was the content?

Oh yeah, the 50:50 ratio. 🙄

I've not seen the programme yet, but I've read the thread. I have one question.

Vegetables?

one of them was allowed veg, the sugar guy.

The guy on the fat only diet couldn't eat any whereas the guy on the carbs diet could eat as much as he wanted.

Eating one type of thing all the time will cause problems. No shit.

[quote=samuri ]Eating one type of thing all the time will cause problems. No shit.
Especially chocolate.

They're on exercise bikes now.Oh look, the sugar guy is out of steam, fat guy is going along quite happily. WHAT A SURPRISE!!!!!

I recognise that hill! I've only been up it once too.

So no transfat (not found naturally I think) but both saturated and unsaturated are ok.
Sugar ok.

But don't eat sugar and fat 50:50 at the same time cause you'll over eat.

And eating too much makes you fat. So cut out donuts and say thank you to your wife when she eats your chocolate- it's her way of saying she likes you trim 8)

P.S. exercise is good for you

Fair summary?

The guy on the fat only diet couldn't eat any whereas the guy on the carbs diet could eat as much as he wanted.

I missed this.. Although I know everyone in the office is going to be banging on about it to me tomorrow

I noticed idave ranting about it on twitter calling some team sky guy an idiot for not realising you can turn fat into sugar

You still at the top then Samuri?

You still at the top then Samuri?

Wahey!

Did you see me stood there as they passed?
I've been hunting hedgehogs for 2 years. Spikey bastards. Good diet though.

Didn't I hear the Swedish government is the first western government to recommend a high fat/ low carb diet

As was pointed out the study was too limited to draw any real conclusions.

60mins dedicated to say... too much ice cream is bad for you, and many "diets" / "fads" probably are too.

To be fair I don't think the programme was aimed at people like us, people that already get the thing about exercise and a healthy balanced diet - even if we don't stick to it all the time. But there would have been plenty of Dorito scoffing blobs sat on their sofas with plates of cheesecake and donuts lined up for pudding to whom (who?) this programme just might have been a revelation!

wobbliscott - Member
To be fair I don't think the programme was aimed at people like us, people that already get the thing about exercise and a healthy balanced diet - even if we don't stick to it all the time. But there would have been plenty of Dorito scoffing blobs sat on their sofas with plates of cheesecake and donuts lined up for pudding to whom (who?) this programme just might have been a revelation!

Wobbli, I think you're being a little generous to some of the folk on here. There are plenty on fad diets.

few points, the American doctor seemed to target fast & frequent insulin response as a big issue caused by high sugar diets,
yet at the end of the program, they simply measured a single insulin response, to drinking a sugar'd drink that the 'fat diet' guy had not had in over 4 weeks. should they have not done insulin response during the day with eating what they were on for 4 weeks?????

also, the 50:50 ratio - people will now think they should avoid a single food group that contains 50:50 ratio, when in fact if in one hand you have a full sugar coke and the other a burger, you got a 50:50 problem right there.....
and .....
is it 50:50 per eating meal, or 50:50 in general for a few hours, a day? month? year?

one thing that comes out from ANYTHING to do with "being fat" - exercise is good.

so WHY ARE WE BUILDING MORE ROADS THAN CYCLE LANES

one thing that comes out from ANYTHING to do with "being fat" - exercise is good.

so WHY ARE WE BUILDING MORE ROADS THAN CYCLE LANES

Nail, head.

We live in a society where people are more sedentary than they've ever been. When you see black and white photos of a collection of, say, miners, how many of them are overweight?

My local ASDA now has a drive-through collection point for online orders, so you don't even have to walk the twenty yards from a parking spot any more.

In the US, obesity capital of the world, the car is king. I once visited an area with two shopping malls on opposite sides of the road, and it wasn't possible to walk from one to the other. The expectation was that you'd drive between them. Pavements and walkways were in place but they were decorative; if you went down them, they just ended in the middle of nowhere.

How many people are there whose sole daily exercise is to walk from their front door to their car (which has to be in 'their' space outside their house or they get shirty), and from the car park to their desk at work, and back?

Never mind whether a bag of chips is worse than a bag of Haribo or not. You want to lose weight, park your car 15 minutes' walk from your house you bone idle bastard.

Is it just me, or is Horizon generally not the series it once was?

There was a lot more distracting camera work and general appearance of a pretentious DP at work than there was decent science in that prog.

They said, pretty much at the start (in a 'throwaway' remark) that the study with a sample size of two was "not very scientific" and then at the end acknowledged that, to draw any meaningful conclusions, you'd need a much larger study, so why proceed with the whole, meaningless thing at all? It was just an unentertaining, unengaging rip off of Supersize Me.

And the identical twins thing didn't help - I kept losing track of which one was which.

so WHY ARE WE BUILDING MORE ROADS THAN CYCLE LANES

To make it easier to drive to trail centres - duh!

[i]To be fair I don't think the programme was aimed at people like us, people that already get the thing about exercise and a healthy balanced diet [/i]

You realise you posted this on STW don't you?

this 50:50 ratio thing ? throws up some interesting questions

plain toast
toast with butter.
toast with butter and jam.
thick toast with very thinly spread butter.
thin toast dripping in butter.
just butter.

Horizon is deffo not the programme it once was, no where near.

WobbleCam and OutoffocusCam and DistanceshotCam and InstragramCam are the norm now for any, repeat ANY, BBC2 programme whether it be fact based or fiction, both genre treated the same.

PoS IMO.

You know what I think, I think we ought to get a group of STW'ers together and a bloke with a iPhone in video mode and do a programme of the benefits of riding bikes outdoors, get Chips to provide the narrative... 😉

We live in a society where people are more sedentary than ever.

@ klunk

scratch the toast, make it a scone
lashings of clotted cream
large dollop of jam

Is it just me, or is Horizon generally not the series it once was?

It's not just you.

I recorded this, but I think I'll skip it after reading this thread.

I'm already down with the natural-stuff-and-exercise-is-good-for-you thing. Barring the odd scone with cream and jam, of course.

To be fair I don't think the programme was aimed at people like us, people that already get the thing about exercise and a healthy balanced diet

You realise you posted this on STW don't you?

😆

On a tangent: It's nice how even TV shows which have nothing to do with cycling squeeze bikes and TdF anecdotes in now.

I recorded this, but I think I'll skip it after reading this thread.

Worth a watch tbh, don't just take the clever dick/armchair expert brigade's word for it. The show didn't make any claims beyond it's scope and the bit with the science lady near the end wis very interesting.

We live in a society where people are more sedentary than they've ever been. When you see black and white photos of a collection of, say, miners, how many of them are overweight?

I'm increasingly astonished by some folks laziness when it comes to short journeys. It's probably become more marked in my observations since moving to Scotland because everyone I know has been met through running or biking. With the exception of GFs friends and work colleagues. But it is astonishing that mere minutes of walking justify a car journey.

There's no doubt that the proliferation of processed crap pretending to be food is a massive influence.

But it's a bit of a flawed comparison with oldun days photos of miners. There's not much chance of their evening meal being Chicago Town microwave pizzas? No doubt, in general they'd still have been thinner simply due to the high work load. Not that they'd have been any healthier, not with coal dust.

To be fair I don't think the programme was aimed at people like us, people that already get the thing about exercise and a healthy balanced diet

You realise you posted this on STW don't you?

😯 😆

Are biscuits 50:50? This would explain why I have to eat the whole packet once opened.

Despite getting through three packets of biscuits and some home-made rocky road since Sunday I've just dipped to 68.3kg, as my wife's been doing a Slimming World/Hairy Bikers thing this month so our teas have been lower carb than usual.

To be fair I don't think the programme was aimed at people like us, people that already get the thing about exercise and a healthy balanced diet

So... cheesecake is out? Even home made? 🙁

cake = bad
ice cream = bad
trans fats = bad
processed food = bad

pretty obvious really.

I'm increasingly astonished by some folks laziness

Yeah My neighbours regularly drive to the local pub, and shop which can be walked in 3 mins tops!

They are just signing up to a gym (that they will drive to) as "they need to start excercising!"

Gym will last 2 weeks just like last time

[i]So... cheesecake is out? Even home made? [/i]

No, just don't live off it

cake = [s]bad[/s] goooood
ice cream = [s]bad[/s] gooooood

ftfy

I had a left over Yorkshire pudding with cookie dough ice cream and honey on Sunday. It was lush.

I found it quite interesting, the muscle loss on the "Atkins" diet was quite worrying but I would like to see them do the same diets with a proper exercise regime for the month and see what the results were then ?
I wonder whether the increased protein of the fat Diet, combined with exercise would have had a bigger effect regarding fat loss without the muscle loss.

The interesting bit for me was the difference the 2 diets made come lunchtime, given the same calorie intake at breakfast.

It was quite shocking how much the sugar guy ate until he felt full as compared to the Fat diet brother.

Ties in with 4HB / Idave 30g of protein for breakfast (Within 1/2hr of waking ideally)

The "switching off" of the part of the brain that says "Im full now" on the 50/50 mix was quite scary too.....
Kind of explains why if I have a Jammy Dodger, I`ll do the packet :o(

I can be slow on the uptake sometimes but my illusions of STWers has been shattered! I thought that most of you were super fit cyclists with sub 10% body fat and that I was one of the few 'fat but reasonably fit' people on here!

Gym will last 2 weeks just like last time

On the plus side, I'll be able to book those one to one Pilates sessions as the instructors diary frees up.

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[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/90886684@N03/12218882015/ ]image[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/90886684@N03/ ]piemonster[/url], on Flickr

emsz - Member
So... cheesecake is out? Even home made?

No, just don't live off it

Yay! emsz stamp of approval! That's good enough for me 🙂

But should I make a 70s style cold cheesecake, or Nigella's baked NYC variety? Decisions, decisions...

wobbliscott - Member
.....I thought that most of you were super fit cyclists with sub 10% body fat

Nope, is the home of an unusually high proprtion of people who can't lose weight by eating less food but are very good at wiki explaining why it's [i]not their fault[/i]

Nope, is the home of an unusually high proprtion of people who can't lose weight by eating less food but are very good at wiki explaining why it's not their fault

... and BMI is a hopeless faulty measurement, and doesn't apply to them [i]as individuals[/i].

Exercise is good for you in lots of ways but I've never found weight loss to be one of the true benefits.

Rode for 18 years, average around 350-400 miles a month, and it always makes me too hungry to restrict calories.

Upshot is, stay at more or less the same weight.

Body adapts I reckon.

Though I suppose it's quite possible to have a 'fit' heart and muscles and be a bit overweight, as was my mate - 18st, plenty of mad endurance rides, good runs on the Etape, Strathpuffer, TransWales etc. But he's overweight.

It's all one huge contradictive mess.

Generally you put weight on over a lifetime, everything else is a temporary battle against what the hardwiring in your body needs to do.

There is one thing for sure though, heavily processed food is not the way to go.

Don't worry about any of this soon people will not be able to afford food and fuel. But hey we will all be getting healthier........Result!

One of the points they made was that muscle is part of the body's endocrine system. Sacrificing it with a high protein diet where the body relies on ketosis for glucose production is an unhealthy outcome, and inefficient too, as the bike test confirmed.

The conclusion was a good deconstruction of fad diets like paleo, to be fair. They weren't making claims about weight loss necessarily - it was more oriented towards understanding our obeseogenic culture and methods for staying healthy in it than advising on how to reduce body fat.

The 50:50 fat:sugar ratio thing was a bit of a revelation, I thought. It's remarkable that mammals will gorge on that stuff beyond any sense of satiety, the point being that it taps into the psychology of addiction rather than eating 'to live'.

As for exercise and weight loss, most people would be surprised how many empty calories they eat because of their perception of effort. Also, the more you eat, the more you want to eat, so there's a degree of will power to assert in weight loss through exercise.

Wonder what the cheesecake reared Rats taste like though... 😕

the thing that bugged me was I kept forgetting which one of the two was eating what.. as I scoffed my 120g of Dairy Milk.

The bit that bothered me is that, although I like ice cream, I find all doughnuts pretty unpleasant - and easily know when I've had enough cake etc.

It's salty, fatty snacks that are my achilles heel - unfortunately not mentioned.

A lot of salty, fatty snacks have sugar in too, deviously. Mass produced pizza being a good example. Ratios of salt, fat and sugar are manipulated to reach a 'bliss point'. I think people need to wake up to the iniquity of the big food corporations - simple messages like those of the horizon program are to be encouraged.

Well it's had one effect, I passed on my usual 11am chcolate bar.

My only criticism of the program was it didn't seperate high protein and high fat diets. What would they have shown if there'd been tripplets?

Muscle loss on high protein diets?

Someone should tell all the bodybuilders, weightlifters and gymnasts.

They'll be delighted to know they've been doing it wrong for years.

Muscle loss on high protein diets?

Someone should tell all the bodybuilders, weightlifters and gymnasts.

I think it was on low carb diets, where the body turns muscle into sugars?

Body builders aren't doing cardio. And they probably have some carbs in their diet too. It's well known in body building circles the effects of exercising in a fasted state.

The twin eating a pure fat/protein diet also had an alarming change in his insulin resistance over a period of only a month.

Muscle loss on high protein diets?

Did you watch it?

It was more accurately a low-carb diet.

The twin eating a pure fat/protein diet also had an alarming change in his insulin resistance over a period of only a month.

But never mind that, "iDave FTW" eh?

It wasn't iDave !!

It was effectively an Atkins diet with Zero Carbs which relies on Ketosis for weight loss

This is not iDave / 4HB (But is constantly trotted out as such on here) 🙄

From what I remember, the iDave diet allowed as much veg or things like lentils, pulses, chickpeas, beanz (not Heinz baked) as you wanted didn't it?