Favorite Junk Food

I eat a fair amount of peanut butter. Most brands contain a fair it of processed sugar, but not so much it worries me ... and all are high in fat because peanuts are seeds .... like peanut eggs, sort of.... fat and protein.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with dietary fat, either. lot of people seem to think "lo-fat" means healthy, but unless you are a bodybuilder a week before competition, 20-30 percent of your calories should be fat. Your body needs it and it is great fuel too.

Fat got a bad rap because the people who make money on sugar wanted a different food type to blame.

Fact is, what is unhealthy is more lifestyle than diet. You could live on pretty much pure fat ---look at Eskimos all winter, for example---and be really healthy so long as you burn off what you take in.... it is just fuel, after all. But foods high in fat tend to be high in calories (fat is dense---equivalent to muscle, while carbs are about half as calorie-dense (I am sure most of you know all this... just trying to sound smart while showing how stupid I can be.) So Sedentary people eating high-fat food can take in a lot more calories before their stomachs get full.

Active people can eat just about anything because it is broken down and burned up and is gone in 12 hours.

I joke about "junk food" but relaly, only low-nutrient food is "junk," and that depends on one's lifestyle and situation.

I used to eat a clean, fairly high-fat diet and have about 10-percent body fat because I burned 5K calories a day. After really extreme weekends I would eat two or three Ben and Jerries ---before my regular meal---because I had burned an extra 1500 calories and could afford to. But most days I couldn't afford anything which didn't offer the proper blend of protein, fat, and carbs because I was generally eating on the run (or in short windows) and didn't have time or stomach space for anything but nutrient-rich food.

Was Ben and Jerries "junk food"? It never hurt my health any .... until i got sedentary, and then I proved that a person can get hugely fat eating rice and beans. So ... rice and beans are "Junk food"?

lectrichead said:

Hmmm, I totally disagree and this seems to go against most medical science. Good lifestyle, exercise, AND good eating will get you much further than eating crap and expecting that doing exercise is going to carry you through no matter what you eat.

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Yeah, there are differing points of view which are valid in different extremes ....

A person who eats less-than-awesome food but exercises a lot will burn calories (so as to not get fat) and will get exercise (so as to not decay.)

A person who eats nothing but brown rice and beans and does not exercise can get fat and unhealthy.

People like to say "You can't outrun a crappy diet" by which they mean, "No amount of exercise can make up for bad eating habits," but every time I have heard that used, it was in reference to weight loss while exercising .... not in reference to a healthy person exercising and eating cookies and ice cream every night, but matching caloric intake to caloric output.

At the far extreme, one cannot be Exceedingly healthy-like "Ride a Grand Tour" healthy---eating junk food because of what are called "empty calories"---but that is an unbalanced diet generally, where there is not enough protein or carbs and too much fat---but there is really no "empty" calorie. A calorie--energy recovered by digesting food, not the other kind---is neutral. Fat and protein have the same caloric density, for instance. Your body doesn't care, ti burns whatever.

The idea is that if you are trying to take your performance to the absolute limit, you need a very precise balance, because it is hard to get enough calories, and enough protein and carbs (which are needed for glycogen and for easy digesting while riding) by eating high-fat foods. (Tour riders (I have heard, but I heard it from race commentators who had been riders) actually get sick of eating because they need to take in so many calories (I'd bet 8K per day or more) and since the stomach is only so big (I think but I forget that the body can absorb 200 cal/hour?) (Yes. https://forum.slowtwitch.com/Slowtw...s it can,but body can absorb anout 150 to 200.)

Of course, most people on this site are not competing in Grands Tours. And most of us don't have to watch the composition of every meal with absolute precision. Unless you are trying to stay right at that limit, you can play around with "perfect" nutrition ... you have enough fat to get through to the next meal and you are probably burning 2k-3k per day instead of three-four times that much.

So yes ... in terms of losing weight I know from grim personal experience, one cannot outrun a bad diet. In terms of being just normally healthy and active, one can carry a "bad" diet a long way .... but again, the devil is in the definitions. What is "bad" in this context? Nothing but packaged cookies? Nothing but McDonalds chemical shakes? Nothing but ice cream?

As long as a person gets the nutrients one needs---which is what, 60 grams of protein for a 200-lb active male? (This calculator (https://globalrph.com/medcalcs/protein-requirements-daily/) says 66, and these two sites (https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/much-protein-day-active-male-4248.html and https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-much-protein-per-day) say "The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics reports that men need 1.4 to 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight each day to build muscle mass. This means active men trying to build muscle should consume 0.64 to 0.82 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day" and "
The DRI (Dietary Reference Intake) is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, or 0.36 grams per pound. This amounts to: 56 grams per day for the average sedentary man."

So if you are getting 56-66 grams opf protein, assuming you are not exercising more than a couple hours a day, and replacing calories as you burn them ... you can eat all kinds of stuff and stay healthy.