One of the roles of science is to actually document and publish results of a study verifying something that has been said for a long time. It takes such studies to make the common knowledge an item for other scientists to accept, being as how it is presented in the standard way of official documentation and is now "referenced material".

It is better that things are done this way than, for example, to cite the "well known" principle that you need eight glasses of water every day, and eight ounce ones at that". Which was shown nearly 60 years later to be a misinterpretation of something written long ago. (Aluminum causes Alzheimers .. is another example.)

My favorite part is at the end... "Our findings give some insight into an aspect of modern-day food overconsumption, namely the fact that many people, pressed by demanding working and living conditions, eat faster and in greater amounts than in the past," said Kokkinos. "The warning we were given as children that 'wolfing down your food will make you fat,' may in fact have a physiological explanation."

Mom would be proud.

All this is fine if we believe that overeating makes us grow fatter. But the truth is that growing fatter makes us overeat. Indeed, we could then posit that growing fatter makes us eat faster as well. So what makes us grow fatter then?

Excessive simplification just might do it. We can go on endlessly supposing. But that doesn't help understand what makes us fatter.

I'm prolly the fastest (nonhurried average normal speed) eater in my workplace (hospital, erm, 200+ staff I guess), I mean I'm truly the kind of "shortest guys in army where people get into the messhall in formation order which is made up, yep, in height order"-fast eater. The kind that sometimes got to sit down, and the order came down to prepare to leave at the same time.

I know I only eat more when I, umm, eat more, as I kinda put food on my plate and eat it and that's it. Oh I eat it clean even if it starts to get to the "ungh umm man should not have taken that 3rd fishsteak" point.

That's n=1, yep, but really, how many leave "the good stuff" on their plate even they feel full? Some, definitely. I posit that those are the same people who never have weight troubles anyways.

And as for the round-a-bout of which comes first, well, first we look at a fat cell. Then we see it has gotten bigger. Then we ask it, why are you bigger? It tells us "Man, there's all this stuff coming in, and orders are to take it in, so I gotta get bigger to make it all fit! And I rarely if ever get to unload more of this crap than comes in! Man oh man!"

Then we go the head-honcho in the cell to ask "Who is telling you to store all this crap?" Well, he goes "Hey I can't help it, the orders are to store it, I get these insulinmessages ALL DAY LONG to STORE STORE STORE, and I do what I can but man is this a tough gig or what?!"

Then we go to the blood, and stop a passing insulindude. "Yo, wassup, what ya doing here?" And he replies "Just following orders, sir!" "What orders might that be?" "To tell everyone to get rid of this god awful sugar here, and to stop using anything else cause we gotta get rid of it, or we are busted!"

So, we go ask the pancreatic brass, what's with all this store & do not release orders? Well, they just say "We can't help it, someone keeps dumping huge loads of this garbage into the bloodstream, so we gotta do the only thing we can about it: use it, store it, and make sure everyone understands this is TOP PRIORITY and to stop using any other substances if possible!"

And so forth, until we finally get to the hand which feeds the mouth that goes into the stomach that empties into the intestines which filter stuff into the blood through the liver and back to the blood, and the hand, well it tells us "What do you mean there is troubles downstream, I'm just doing what everyone tells me is the right thing: shoveling this starch and sugar into the mouth. I mean everyone knows fat is bad for you!"

I suggest that the power of an insulin hit can in fact increase hunger very suddenly -- like when you take a bite normally and insulin hits and suddenly you're FAMISHED and then realize 2 minutes later that your hand and mouth conspired to eat IT ALL at such speed you barely remember it. You would likely store more food as fat the higher the initial insulin hit to begin with, as well as being prone to eat more rapidly and possibly more as well. However, this suggests to me that meal content (and of course eating over the previous 24 hours) can affect the body's response to incoming food, both in behavior (speed) and processing (storage).

My point being that speed of eating, much like quantity of fat storage, is likely a secondary effect of what we stuff into us, not the causative factor.

From the department of DUH.

It takes a while for the fullness to hit, regardless of what you eat. If you eat faster you ingest more before your body tells you that you are full. Had an egg cream today and after i drank it I could have had another one.....but 20 minutes after drinking it I felt like I'd eaten a whole cow.

Am I the only one getting really tired of all these "associations"?

Things associated with weight gain (according to them )

Eating fast. Too little water. Antidepressants. Weight cycling. Aspartame. MSG. Sugar. Fat. Nutrient deficiency. "Bad childhood". TV. Comfort eating. Computers. Sedentary jobs. Kitchen appliances. Allergies. A "fat" virus. Genes. Not pushing away from the table. Fast food chains......

Ok, get the idea? The idea is that the authorities that love to tell us what to think are clueless. When you have a hundred ideas why something is true does it not prove that you really don't know?

A few of the aforementioned may make a bad situation worse, but,

At the root it's the carbs.

------

yes, I know that post was serious ranting tangent ..

This is a different press release about eating fast. It has more detail, (and more big words from Latin). It appears to substantiate physical reasons with measurable parameters for the common asserting that fast eating packs on the pounds. They compared 5 minute "gulped" meals with 30 minute "relaxed" meals.

While I don't disagree that gut hormones affect satiety, I see a couple of potential confounders with this study, at least as it's described in the article:

Did subjects eat at their spontaneous rate or was the rate dictated in the study design?

Was it possible the release of these hormones was delayed in people who ate the ice cream fast because of the cooling effect on the rate of digestion?

Also, seriously, who takes 30 minutes to eat a dish of ice cream (I'm talking about a reasonable dessert serving, not an entire pint).

Rocketboy, I suggest you read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. I think you'd find it very interesting. It does have all sorts of big Latin words in it and everything! Seriously, it is a good read and has all sorts of information all in one place.

AngelGirly,

I have owned and read the Good Calories, Bad Calories ever since the first day it was distributed.

I suggest, AngelGirly, that you stop playing cute game with names, so will I and I'll provide whatever respect then seems appropriate.

I'd edit that a bit to say it's too many carbs. The human body has a use for carbs. What is it? Who knows. I firmly believe "medical science" is closer to "medical alchemy" and has no idea how our body processes "calories", macro-nutrients or basically anything else.

Anyway, back to my original point. Human breast milk. The rate at which the baby feeds affects fat content (about 50% of which is saturated fat...wait? I thought that caused heart disease...I guess breast feeding kills babies...) but there are 2 grams of lactose per ounce. There has to be a reason for it. Perhaps we grow out of it as we age (I doubt it, but it's possible). But considering, on average, a breast fed infant takes in 30 ounces of milk-or 60 grams of sugar-per day, carbs can't be all bad.

On the tangental flip side, that means an infant who breast feeds regularly takes in 18 grams of saturated fat or more, depending upon the speed of feeding. That's 2 grams more than the recommendation for a 30-something woman, who probably weighs 10 times or more as much.

So, I suppose my question would then be, how much do our metabolisms change in the course of infancy, adolescence and adulthood?

I think you're trying to be insulting, but I'm missing it completely.

Oh dear, I reread my message. Got your name wrong. An innocent mistake. But why so sensitive? If I were trying to make fun of your name, I hope I'm smart enough to come up with something better than that! LOL, I may change my name to Angelgirly; I kind of like it!

Your take on Ancel Keys is why I thought you hadn't read it.

Edit to add: I realized I didn't say this so . . . I apologize for messing up your name.

Apology accepted graciously. And I resolve to return your respect, as I promised.

My real name causes lots of problems for others. When my ancestors from Germany came to the US, they reached a compromise on the pressure to Anglosize the name. They decided to pronounce the name with the English translation, but to keep the German spelling.

Not many can pronounce the German, and virtually nobody can translate the German to English. So, everybody has a hard time.

My take on Ancel Keys is because I have read Taubes, both Cholesterol Myth type books from Uffe Ravnskov, several more cholesterol myth books not remembered well right now, and much more. I am a retired Aerospace Scientist who has too much education to be employable should I try to find work. I too, am fascinated by the odd incompetence that runs through the physical sciences. So, in retirement, I read a lot to understand it.

Keyes, even from Taubes book, was a dangerous man who "Knew" the truth and was going to force it out of the data, at any cost. Taubes described his personal attacks on people who disagreed with him.

Taubes, you know, is back doing his love of writing about real physical science, having had enough of this dietary second rate science.

His latest published paper appears in the October 2009 issue of Discovery
Magazine.

Headline "RNA Revolution"
Subheadline: Biology is reeling from the discovery that tiny snippets of RNA -
DNA's overlooked partner, regulate everything from longevity to cancer.

NO DIET STUFF

The editorial introduction to the piece describes Taubes as a three time winner of important prizes for scientific journalism. Along the way, the editor writes the following:

"He enjoyed pursuing a controversial story with big cultural implications, but
after years of questioning the stance of established doctors on their theories
of food and diet, he longs to return to traditional science journalism - 'Where
the good science is' as he puts it."

As a former practicing scientist, I can greatly sympathize with his decision. It really isn't that much fun to play in a technical area dominated by low standards of science and "old expert opinions". You almost have to wait for the old generation to retire or die off.

This diet stuff is just second rate science, except for some of the laboratory work that gets ignored so long as it stays in the area of pure academia and doesn't mess up how people think about the status quo.

Ten years ago, I absolutely did not want to read any of the diet stuff, and finally when nothing was working to cut down my weight, I read Atkins and subsequently the Eades' works,,,, and then a whole lot more. I particularly dislike the disinformation being spread by "the establishment". I read in self defense, not because I like it.

Bull crap. If you consistently overeat, you will grow fat. As your stomach stretches out, you will have to eat more to fill it. While this is happening, you get into the habit of eating past the point of satisfaction, in favor of eating until you are "full". I should know, it is a problem I myself am having. However, in my case, my total calorie consumption for the day rarely exceeds the calories I burn. I don't like to eat dinner, which forces my other meals to be quite large. I am now trying to get in the habit of eating less at my "official meals", and having a small stack late in the afternoon.