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Kcal vs Nutrients

I was wondering what’s worse, eating unhealthy / bad but within daily intake limits (lack of nutrients but no weight gain) or eating healthy but too much kcal (getting all necessary nutrients but also weight gain)?

I think eating healthy but too much is better than eating unhealthy and within limits, but I’m curious about other people’s thoughts on this.

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Answer

I assume that by “healthy” you mean better quality food, as in more nutrient dense/whole ingredients

If you’re a grown adult? Too many calories is more detrimental. Regardless of food quality - if you’re overweight or obese, it doesn’t matter what you ate to get there, you’re still at a higher risk of health issues just from over consuming calories. You could be killing it with the micronutrients, you could be eating high protein - doesn’t matter.

This is more of an anecdotal thing, but there is a professor who did the Twinkie Diet. He was so adamant about proving that calories matter, that he went into a calorie deficit eating twinkies, and basically, packaged sweets. Not only did he lose weight, but his blood tests improved.

If you’re a small child, as an example - eating fewer nutrients is far more detrimental than eating more calories. If you’re grown, in your 20’s/30’s, you can get away with eating poorly, to a degree - it’s not good to be deficient in anything, but you can come back from it. but if you’re a child? Doesn’t work that way - you can’t come back from certain deficiencies, and the consequences can be a lot more permanent

We have actually found human remains, with physical evidence of a poor childhood diet in the bones. The fact that they can look at adult human remains and know that they had nutrient deficient diets in childhood, says a lot

Answer

Why compare it? Junk Food comes with a lot of stuff that’s unhealthy but so does being overweight. Sumo wrestlers eat extremely healthy non-processed food, but they still get the typical problems from being overweight, like diabetes, heart problems etc.

Answer

Eating healthy but too much is way better. It is not even comparable.

I will give you an example:

100 kcal meat, 100 kcal sugar

100 kcal meat: build and protect your muscles, important nutrients for your brain and hormonal system, energy for your body

100 kcal sugar: not even energy for your body, it’s just stored as fat and makes your body unhealthy

The source of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceFyF9px20Y&ab_channel=UniversityofCaliforniaTelevision%28UCTV%29

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