White flour (in moderation, and always mixed with fat or protein) can be beneficial though as it’s low in lectins (which damage the gut lining and organs like the kidneys and the brain [1]). One (!) slice of white bread is easier on the body than one slice of full corn bread, if you manage to keep your blood sugar level.
I don't live by it because it's delicious, but I would instead say don't eat bread, there's fiber to be had in vegetables.
A. By what metrics are you measuring 'easier on the body'.
B. What corn bread and what white bread?
I'm somewhat skeptical of this as a generic claim, though since it will very much depend on the recipe used (for both kinds of bread), it's certainly probable in many cases.
This is obviously already true. You would get protein poisoning very quickly long before you hit your TDEE.
First off, do you need a study for that? I'd hate to sound insensitive, but perhaps common sense is a new Darwinism? There's a slew of shortcuts that will cut our lives short.
And for the record I eat a huge amount of protein everyday. At least 1 to 1.2 g / kg of bodyweight. I'm not at risk of protein poisoning (per another commenter) since I consume a large amount of water, fiber as well, and the sources are lean meats rather than powders. Although I admit a weakness in the knees for Quest flavored protein chips. All that said, I'll need a lot more than that to kill me.
Going back, what's common sense is to eat natural foods rather than avoid them. Processed stuff is the real danger, including meal replacement with powders. If people don't even have time to eat due to their jobs, I'd argue they've got a potentially worse lifestyle threat to their health.
You don't seem to be disagreeing with anything I wrote, but just a comment on your last paragraph:
> Going back, what's common sense is to eat natural foods rather than avoid them. Processed stuff is the real danger, including meal replacement with powders.
I think avoiding something "processed" is a terribly blunt tool, which will likely end up not serving you. What does processed even mean? I usually buy pre-washed potatoes because I'm lazy, those are processed. As is my cheese, as is my chili sauce, my peeled nuts, and most if not all my spices.
I don't think we're there yet with Soylent and similar meal replacements, but I don't doubt that we in the future will have meal replacements with much better macros, better taste and fun texture, as well as lab grown meats and meat substitutes that taste better.
Processed doesn't mean inherently bad, and there's nothing definitive saying that processed through photosynthesis is better than on a molecular level processed through a series of tubes in the other kind of plant. The only thing making "processed" foods bad are businesses cutting corners on cost with the only goal of delivering something palatable, not something healthy. That isn't a process problem, but a market problem.
Apologies for replying to the wrong parent, though!
The issue with processing in your example is mainly the corn syrup and coloring (if not using natural coloring like carotene etc), as well as to a lesser extent shredding of the corn or wheat which leads to a higher glycemic index.
But as we've made cheese puffs out of corn and varying degrees of terrible chemicals, we now have chips made from quinoa, beans, lentils etc, which I'm not saying are great, but better.
If I could have a snickers with 0 calories and no carcinogens, or pringles made out of broccoli, you can bet your ass I would pop that package without stopping.
So again, even with our agreed definition of processed, it might in 95% of cases right now mean "bad food", but it doesn't have to.
Fine, it doesn't have to. And if we have the technology to send someone's car into space, we can surely create something processed and perfect in terms of glycemic index, macronutrient balance, and so forth. But as a general rule, almost all that stuff has flaws. For example, even the organic quinoa chips (and puffs which I'm very guilty of inhaling a bagfull of) has a lot more sodium than you really need.
That and I'd argue, in the case of certain concentrated items like whey protein chips, it's kind of unclear what side effects we might discover one day (as we did with refined sugars and obesity and diabetes and such). That said, I'm risking it.
Lest I be accused of hypocrisy for occasionally eating the healthy processed stuff you describe, I'd argue that for the general (ignorant, at least in the US) public, 'avoid processed' is a good rule of thumb.
But there are many things involved here, for instance, if you don't eat any fat or protein, you will die, however, if you don't eat any carbohydrates, then you won't die, is this common sense to not stop eating carbohydrates or are we onto something?
Also protein poisoning happens if you don't eat fat, not if you eat too much protein.
Diet/nutrition studies are inherently difficult because they're almost by necessity self-reported, expensive, takes a lot of time to see effects, and for best effect would need continuous supervision over subjects, which is infeasible over those time spans.
It's easy to throw your hands in the air and just say it's bad science because it's not perfect (welcome to science), but it's not constructive and it was the thing I argued against in my original post.
So yes, it is better, therefor it is progress.
That would be good science.
The bad science is to look at bunch of conflicted studies on difficult complicated system and then claim "here is the culprit follow my absolute advice". Bad science is projecting confidence when you have no scientific reason to be confident, because it is good for your career and status. Bad interpretation of science is believing the most confident yapping person around, instead of believing scientists that talk in probabilities and are cautious. Which, is my understanding of what happened here.
2) Is disaccharide a relevant classifier? Water is a hydrogen calcogenide, as is hydrosulfuric acid. That doesn't mean they're comparable as a food item.
It was likely chosen as a substitute for sucrose (table sugar) for being comparatively good (less bad):
> It is particularly suitable as a non-cariogenic sucrose replacement and is favorable in products for diabetics and prediabetic dispositions. [1]
Thus, the fats and proteins are likewise, in the best of circumstances, only "less bad" than sugar.
And there's such a wide variety of fatty acids and aminos that it is quite hard to generalize. Isomaltulose is probably far better than most fatty acids. And excess protein converts to sugar, too.
That's a terrible comparison. Gas is the fuel for your car, which will at some point break down to a point where you will trash it. By no definition is the gas destroying that car in the way that gas mixed with sawdust will.
> Thus, the fats and proteins are likewise, in the best of circumstances, only "less bad" than sugar.
You will die in a week without food. Some food will keep you alive longer than others. Fats and protein will do that better than sugar and protein, on aggregate. We can discuss more narrow categories within those, but it's moving goal posts from what I responded to.
That isn't a fad though, that is progress.
> Soon, people will realize that getting 90% of your caloric intake from protein powders is bad
This is obviously already true. You would get protein poisoning very quickly long before you hit your TDEE.
> the industry will get ahold of the new trend, and they'll start going back to "healthy carbs" or something stupid like that
No they won't. "Healthy carbs" will be a part of moderate diets for a long time, but sugars or white flour won't come back as your main caloric source through any reputable study. Mark my words.
There will always be fads, but let's not pretend that blaming fats decades ago was the same as blaming sugars now. Also notice that it's explicitly sugars, not carbs. Breakthroughs always lead to regular people overcompensating when swinging over, so you get things like your mentioned "meat rush", and people eating bearnaise sauce and pork belly with their bacon wrapped broccoli or whatever.
But let's not portray the underlying studies that led to this swing as merely fads. It's progress, and while it's not solved, it's a lot better than just 10 years ago.
Edit: I was reminded of this article "The Relativity of Wrong" [1] by Isaac Asimov. TL;DR: An analogy is the flat earth. We went from thinking the earth was flat into thinking it was round, which isn't correct either since it's an oblate spheroid. But we can all agree that "round" is a lot "more correct" than flat.
[1] http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm