Haha. I unfortunately did take it a bit more seriously. There was a point where if someone offered me a biscuit with my decaf tea my inner monologue would say “if you eat that biscuit you might never have children”. It was at least in that way the easiest diet I ever went on. 100% motivation!

Sounds like the biggest life change you made was dieting then?

What's so wrong with a biscuit?

Like I said, I was going for the nuclear option and biscuits have sugar in. Sugar makes you fat. Fat belly means less testosterone. This is part of the anti-western diet thing.

Also.. it's probably made of whichever processed grain/seed is worst and dosed with additives: preservatives, flavour, colour, texture. If something in food is bad for whatever reason, it's probably in the biscuit.

I find it quite poetic that modern man needs to go live by a lake, foraging naked for a few months to regain our reproductive viability.

What were the things you did? Did it improve testosterone levels too? If that is the mechanism, could you raise sperm count with artificial testosterone? Or would that be counterproductive?

If you take testosterone, your pituitary will tell your testicles that there is enough testosterone, and that they can chill out, so the testicles will produce less testosterone and less sperm.

This is why anabolic steroid users can develop shrunken (atrophied) testicles.

In addition, through enzymatic equilibrium, you will also produce more estrogen (excess testosterone is converted to estrogen and vice versa), which will further decrease male reproductive ability, and in sufficient quantities will stimulate breast gland growth.

In short, administering exogenous testosterone will have counterproductive reproductive consequences.

Interesting! Thanks for the explanation.

You'd probably hit diminishing returns when testicle shrinkage starts.

> less testosterone

That's it, no more donuts for me.

> Sugar makes you fat.

Nonsense. Overeating makes you fat, not a specific carb. Having a biscuit with a few grams of sugar is not going to impact your health in a meaningful way if you're not overeating.

> Overeating makes you fat, not a specific carb.

Eating sugar creates a cascade of hormonal knock-on effects that can make you fat.

I beg of you (especially if you're struggling with your weight!) to consider the alternatives to Calories-In/Calories-Out eating.

My dad is a doctor, he's _convinced_ it's all CICO (which is what was taught to physicians in the 70s, and today), he struggles with his weight, constantly, and is super unhealthy. He eats low-fat everything, and is in miserable physical shape.

He's blind to alternatives. It is unbecoming of a man of science to be so tied to a possibly-incorrect view of such an important topic.

Consider: https://josh.works/notes-gary-taubes-case-against-sugar

I'm a bit annoyed by the terminology here. CICO is as true as ever from a physics/physiology standpoint and I think it's good to acknowledge that.

_However_ some calories keep you hungry so it's probably _much_ easier to limit your calories on low-sugar than a high-sugar diet.

That's absolutely true for some people. My personal anecdote is that often when I eat something that's high in sugar I crave it more. I've done extensive nutrition planning and found lowering carbs reduces my appetite.

I'm well aware of Gary Taube. His over emphasis of the effects of simple carbs is not entirely supported by science. There is an effect but it's not as strong as he presents it.

If you find avoiding sugar helps you maintain a healthy diet than great, go for it. Do whatever works for you. But if your overall diet is a healthy balance then having a biscuit with tea is not going to negatively impact your health.

You are technically correct, but also missing the point.

It's like saying an alcoholic can still responsibly drink by stopping at one.

Re-read what I said. If abstinence is what you need then go for it. That's not the point I was making.

Re-think the comparison I gave. The point I was making is the fact some people can keep things under control and suffer no ill effects does not change the fact it's an addictive substance whose consumption leads to ill effect.

While you do caveat things in your second comment, both your original and second comment basically minimize the OPs "not even one" stance, even calling it "nonsense". Replacing everything you say with alcohol shows the disconnect; you wouldn't say similar things to an alcoholic who said "alcohol makes you intoxicated", saying that's nonsense (since there are plenty of substances that can make you intoxicated) and then proceed to tell them that one drink is fine.

One biscuit no, but perhaps it was easier for him to always say no instead of occasionally saying yes, which could easily turn into saying yes too often.

That was exactly it.

The difficulty of dieting (and life in general!) is decisions. By being so absolutist it made it easier to just do it automatically rather than constantly weight up whether I should eat well.

That’s in hindsight.

At the time in my mind I was really convinced that that one biscuit might make the difference.

The type of calorie matters.

For example, the carbohydrates in fiber are not digestable, so those calories have effectively no impact on weight. Starches take longer to digest than simple sugars, so they result in less of an insulin response than the same quantity of simple sugars (meaning, if eating in excess, less starch is converted to fat).

And even when just looking at simple sugars, fructose and glucose are processed by completely different metabolic pathways. The 5% difference in fructose content in HFCS (along with the double-digit difference in the % of "free" fructose) results in a significantly higher insulin response than plain old sugar.

Indeed, if one eats a lot of sugar, as a result of insulin response, it is possible to get fatter even though one is eating at a net deficit and losing weight.

> the carbohydrates in fiber are not digestable, so those calories have effectively no impact on weight

Which is why fiber doesn't get counted towards calories on labels.

> Starches take longer to digest than simple sugars, so they result in less of an insulin response than the same quantity of simple sugars (meaning, if eating in excess, less starch is converted to fat).

That's not what it means. Insulin response cannot create fat out of nothing and doesn't result in more or less fat being stored.

If your glycogen stores are full and you consume more than you burn the excess calories are stored as fat regardless of the source or the pathway that stores it.

Calories in, calories out means you have to factor in how many calories from the food are available for your body to use. It doesn't necessarily mean the calories of the food you put in your mouth.

Yeah that’s just factually inaccurate. Sugar does specifically make you fat because of the way your body processes it. The fructose part (which is half of standard sugar) get stored as fat straight away and it also makes you less insulin sensitive. Over time that means you eat more and more sugar and your brain still doesn’t think you’re getting enough.

Or if you just want a simpler explanation - eating sugar makes you crave more sugar and so you’re a lot more likely to over eat.

the ingredients.

I may be off here, but I'm guessing based on the tea comment, that he may be British, which means a biscuit is actually a cookie in American terms.

Correct!

What the hell is an American biscuit then?

Via Wikipedia [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscuit_(bread)

> What the hell is an American biscuit then?

Basically, a chemically (as opposed to yeast) leavened bread roll.

Typically richer and flakier than a soda bread, though.

What's so wrong with never having children?

Nothing is wrong with not having children, if that is your choice.

If you want to start a family and are struggling to do so, that is very difficult to reconcile.

This is what I keep getting caught up on. I, for one, don't mind that my sperm count may be lower than my ancestors, or that my partners egg quality may be lower. I don't ever want to have children, so this honestly seems like a good thing to me. I know this isn't true for everyone (I'd say the majority of people _do_ want to reproduce), but for me personally, this kind of thing seems positive to indifferent at best.

this situation seems like an unhappy midpoint though. the chance of conception is still uncomfortably high for people who don't want children, while frustratingly low for those who do.

Hmm... I hadn't thought about it that way before. When you put it that way it makes more sense.

Well, they were actively deciding to and attempting to have children, for one.

Nothing, if you don’t want to have children.

But when you do, there’s a lot wrong with it.

Having children and passing on your genes is literally the entire reason you exist as a living breathing organism.

I wouldn't go so far as self-righteously telling someone what their purpose in life is. Besides that, if you want to go down that road, being in a support class and being a productive, supporting member of society in other ways is an evolutionarily valid position. Perhaps someone views their life's purpose to support close family, even if they can't have any kids, or their definition of family may be much more abstract and inclusive to a larger community. Perhaps they do what they do for humanity rather than for themselves alone.

Wouldn't raping and pillaging weaker communities be the most efficient way of succeeding at that?

As it had been for millennia before, I wager.

Won't bottled water be more likely to contain plastic traces?

There are reusable glass bottles, at least where I live.

There are here as well, but I can only think of one brand in an aisle of water that uses glass.

At least you know what's in bottled water, the water supply and its contents can vary wildly. In some places they still use lead pipes iirc.

In many American locales, especially in areas with access to large clean aquifers, tap water will be cleaner than bottled water. Don't go assuming bottled is better. If you can afford to put a filter on your tap (this is expensive), I would on tap water being much cleaner.

I'd generally recommend avoiding tap water altogether in the U.S. and making sure you're not drinking fluoridated water. It's been show to decrease a child's IQ by up to 4 points when used by pregnant moms[1].

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31424532/