I started to read this with some interest, as someone who's spent many hours thinking about and trying different metabolic strategies, diets, etc..
Then about 30 seconds in my reading got disrupted by a fucking light-box asking me to sign up or log in or god knows what.. my instinct to close tab won out over my curiosity. Please stop this pattern. If you really think your content is worth having to (whatever)wall from the public, do so, but don't make me get into it and then shove something mid word into my face. This is the digital equivalent of giving me a magazine to read, waiting until you're sure I've got my eyes on it, then shoving a business card in my field of vision and telling me what you do for a living. It's a low rent tactic, annoys rather than grips your users, and it reeks of desperation to monetize.
This company produces great, great content. You agree that it's interesting, from what you've read.
And yet apparently the most popular comment on their effort is that you don't want to spare the all-of-2 seconds it takes to click your mouse to close a pop-up? On a site that isn't plastered with ads, btw, and is generally very accessible?
I don't mean to take out my frustration on you, and I get where you're coming from, but maybe we as consumers should stop feeling so entitled, maybe that's the pattern that has to end here.
Arrgh!!! and yet somehow your complaint about something, which is at best mildly irritating, has generated enough off-topic commentary that I had to scroll for miles to find the useful part of this discussion which is about the article's subject matter. Right now I know what I find more annoying, and it isn't a click-to-dismiss lightbox.
Seriously though, bumping our gums about this sort of thing doesn't get us anywhere, unless it's a particularly egregious UX crime. Have a moan directly at the site owners, not the rest of us, many of whom find these posts tiresome. Or install something like u-blocker or privacy badger.
This is the digital equivalent of giving me a magazine to read, waiting until you're sure I've got my eyes on it, then shoving a business card in my field of vision
This is an ironic analogy to choose, seeing as how magazines do in fact do exactly that.
I know it's been a while since anybody read one, but if you cast your mind back, you'll recall that every dozen pages or so they will have stuck in a subscription card that you'll have to shake out or even tear apart just to continue reading.
It funny in a way to see that digital media has so exactly copied that.
Funny, I was thinking the exact opposite after I had been on the site for 10 minutes or so.
It's sad that you get sites making 'slideshows' getting 20 page views per visit for stupid slideshows like 'Celebrities who have had DUIs'. Meanwhile, something educational and informational makes 5% as much as those other guys? Just because I have only loaded the page once?
You can't pay wall it, because then you don't get the 50,000 visits from HN. It sounds like a really tough position to be in.
It would be nice if HN as a community could agree to take bike-shed issues like this "as read", and not quite so often re-argue them in the top comment spot.
Sure, annoying things are annoying, but maybe the site has their reasons, but maybe those reasons are misguided, but then again maybe not, etc. That's all a great discussion to have, but let's have it in the comments on an article that's actually about such issues.
Completely agree with this. I think there is an analytics blindspot underpinning it. We don't measure the amount of people inclined to just close the tab when they see this, or the negative sentiment it incurs. We might see a nominal rise in email addresses from bots and other braindead folks who fill in these forms, but the negative effect isn't measured.
I turn off javascript for sites that have light-boxes or large top-bars. It's worked well for sites like priceonomics, which appear on HN intermittently. In case it's helpful, the one I use is "quick javascript switcher":
Dropping breakfast from my diet as a regular thing, something as simple as just getting started later in the day on eating, has been incredibly helpful in losing (and maintaining lower) weight. It's not the only thing of course; generally eating smaller portions, and moving my butt more are the other two keys. Obsessing over exactly what I'm eating and how much has never helped, but just eating less... it sounds simple, but it's what works.
Even as a kid, I had to drop breakfast. For literally decades, the several hours after I woke up, I'd be nauseated. I cut out certain categories of foods, and now I can eat whatever I want from the remaining categories, but I've also picked up intermittent fasting in the meantime. So now I typically don't eat until sometime after 4pm, with the majority of my intake at dinner. It's working well for me, but my wife just can't handle it.
I'm on the same boat, except I had to drop both breakfast and dinner (2-course lunch, with fish and oranges in the evening) to maintain body weight without gaining fat!
I do this despite doing compound lifts (pull ups, dips, squats) while successfully gaining muscle strength.
In Japan, I learned what a truly healthy breakfast is.
Most days I eat a bowl of brown rice with a raw egg stirred in and a dash of high-quality soy sauce and topped with natto. Some days I'll also grill salmon or smelt. On the side, I usually have tsukemono (pickled vegetables) and miso soup.
Protein, probiotics, pickles...once you get used to it, the idea of eating sweet desserts for breakfast (which is what most people eat) seems counterproductive.
(By the way, it's probably true that many people in Japan eat the same crap as Americans do for breakfast——there's no shortage of bread, donuts, etc.)
I think the issue is that most people don't have time in the mornings to cook and eat a full meal. I think in Japan, the regular workday and school day start later to accomodate a longer breakfast.
I personally hate western "breakfast foods". For breakfast I usually make noodles (not the instant kind) and eat it alongside a fried egg and maybe some leftover veggies. Or I'll just microwave some leftovers (including rice) from the day before.
I was curious if raw eggs were actually healthy after reading your comment. I was never allowed to eat raw eggs growing up. A little google-fu says he risk of salmonella is overstated and extremely rare, but the USDA and others still suggest avoiding raw eggs. Not much definitive on cooking vs. raw though.
I eat cereal and milk as a dessert at night in place of something like ice cream, because that is what it is. People who eat cereal for breakfast are no better than people eating donuts or other sweets, it is just an awful way to start your day because of the blood sugar spike and then drop which creates hunger pangs.
You can combat it by having a proper breakfast focusing on protein and low glycemic index carbs, eggs, steel-cut oats, omelettes, etc. A favorite of mine is proatmeal, make some oats and then mix in BSN Syntha-6 vanilla ice cream protein powder, absolutely delicious. The other way to combat it as suggested by people in this thread is to drop breakfast all together besides maybe having coffee and a granola bar.
I was actually eating cereal as dessert for a while and got into as bad a habit with it as I previously had with ice cream. It took a concerted effort to break myself of the habit.
I think I even enjoyed it more than ice cream, even if it was raisin bran or something. (Though I usually add a sweetener, currently Stevia rather than sugar.)
How did priceonomics become a thing.. this seems like a clickbait site for the more intellectual crowd, less trashy than say buzzfeed, but ultimately not really delivering much in the way of genuine insight. It probably doesn't hurt that the name recalls "freakonomics", another brand which, while occasionally interesting, is far past its pull date as well..
I was just bringing this up as a possible thing the other day at work. It was always weird to me how marketed breakfast was. The irrational vitriol I received only further convinced me how much breakfast (specifically grains heavy) is due to marketing.
The study suggests this is true even if you cheat on the weekend.
I'm super-dubious of evidence showing that breakfast improves school outcomes (except where it helps meet kids' calorie needs). You know what else boosts school outcomes? Sedatives, because school is hella boring. That doesn't mean sedating kids or adults is a good idea.
I need to eat around 3000 calories per day to support my powerlifting training, and if I don't eat something first thing in the morning with a shitload of carbs -- usually something like rolled oats, berries, and a few bananas -- then I'm usually gassed and feeling like crap by 10.
A few friends of mine fast intermittently and train in the morning before eating but it's beyond me how that is not just pure torture.
I've dropped breakfast for about a month now and I feel so much better. I'm eating a heavy lunch and then dinner. Lost weight and it wasn't on purpose. As a result I've been questioning a lot of our norms. Not only when we eat, but what we eat and why. Loved the article.
This was my conscious weight loss strategy. Stop eating at 7-8pm in the evening and hold off eating any food until noon or so, which gets a 16+ hour fast. I ate whatever I wanted (not crazy, but not spartan) and lost about 70g per day over a long period (110kg -> 95kg). This was in conjunction with exercising but I was exercising before without losing much weight. Not a very original idea but I was amazed at how easy it was (relative to 5:2, which gave me two workdays a week of 'thinking about food way too much').
3x meals a day feels absolutely preposterous for any sedentary profession. There's just no need to eat that much (or that often) unless you have an actually physically demanding job.
When I was multiday camping and bicycle touring over mountainous terrain, I tried skipping breakfast once (it takes extra time), and it left me strikingly weak.
Obesity problem as well. I know some people don't like to hear it, but breakfasts can easily go 800 calories and up. You are starting off the day in surplus.
If it's 33% of your meals then 33% of your kcal isn't an unreasonable place to start ;)
I'd be surprised to hear that this is common, though. I was actually going to suggest that for this supposed most important meal of the day, the options for breakfast are not very substantial. I have a bowl of cereal (2 x weetabix + semi-skimmed milk) - all of 150kcal. Add a cup of tea and it still won't be past 175kcal. Suppose I have to get up early for whatever reason and treat myself to an extra weetabix to make up for it - 250kcal.
This seems to be enough for me (suggesting that perhaps breakfast's importance is indeed overblown - not that I'd like to go without it), but it's not very much. I ate a slice of quiche for lunch today that was more than that.
I'm more interested in how breakfast food became mostly garbage for so many Americans. May as well eat a Snickers, chili dog and a Coke from the gas station when you get up.
I find more insight and less conspiracy in "History of breakfast" from Wikipedia[1]. The Wikipedia article talks about different perspectives before 1800 since it is not clear why the article is talking about the American breakfast instead of focusing on different cultural perspectives (e.g. "Before cereal, in the mid 1800s, the American breakfast was not all that different from other meals").
I don't drink coffee at all. I eat a vegetarian sandwich every morning when I go to work, it gives me a good start for the day, I feel sharp and focused all morning. Sometimes when the sandwich shop is closed I buy something like a chicken sandwich, and that makes me more sleepy and tired.
Lunch is usually a big pile of rice with some vegetables and meat. Wow, this makes it reeeally hard to stay awake at the afternoon, but there aren't many options for lunch near the workplace.
For dinner, my wife cooks something also usually rice with some meat and veggies. But about 1 hour before I plan to go to sleep I eat 1 or 2 bananas. I always had hard time sleeping, and I read that bananas are good for sleeping because it contains potassium. For me it works. Although this might be completely placebo, because bananas don't work for my wife.
This may be an argument against breakfast for the sedentary, but athletes on extended training programs usually need to eat in the morning. You're much more likely to hit the wall on an empty stomach, a few hours into your training.
That's totally true, but I would argue the second half of your statement covers approximately 5% of the U.S. population, while the first half covers the other 95%.
I'd also add that I am an amateur long-distance runner and just completed a medium distance run after fasting all day and performed fine. Had it been a race, probably less so. But the myths of caloric necessities have been greatly exaggerated.
That is very much unsubstantiated, all kinds of athletes enjoy and thrive training fasted. It's probably much more complex in what's best for whom than just "much more likely to hit the wall". Type of metabolism, levels of fat adaption, type of activity, length of activity, etc all matters.
As an personal anecdote, I enjoy climbing in the mornings before having food, that's a few good hours of intermittent sprint type activity.
Not just athletes but also people who exercise better in the morning.
I have to head out running before 06:00 ( ex-farm border collie dog still has early-rising demands ) so need to eat about 05:30. On a couple of occasions I overslept and skipped breakfast. It was terrifying, I barely had enough energy to make it back home and was shaking. All my body wanted when I returned was sugar, now.
So in my case at least a bowl of museli / milk / yoghurt and a banana is the minimum possible breakfast.
[+] [-] bbarn|10 years ago|reply
Then about 30 seconds in my reading got disrupted by a fucking light-box asking me to sign up or log in or god knows what.. my instinct to close tab won out over my curiosity. Please stop this pattern. If you really think your content is worth having to (whatever)wall from the public, do so, but don't make me get into it and then shove something mid word into my face. This is the digital equivalent of giving me a magazine to read, waiting until you're sure I've got my eyes on it, then shoving a business card in my field of vision and telling me what you do for a living. It's a low rent tactic, annoys rather than grips your users, and it reeks of desperation to monetize.
[+] [-] edanm|10 years ago|reply
And yet apparently the most popular comment on their effort is that you don't want to spare the all-of-2 seconds it takes to click your mouse to close a pop-up? On a site that isn't plastered with ads, btw, and is generally very accessible?
I don't mean to take out my frustration on you, and I get where you're coming from, but maybe we as consumers should stop feeling so entitled, maybe that's the pattern that has to end here.
[+] [-] teh_klev|10 years ago|reply
Seriously though, bumping our gums about this sort of thing doesn't get us anywhere, unless it's a particularly egregious UX crime. Have a moan directly at the site owners, not the rest of us, many of whom find these posts tiresome. Or install something like u-blocker or privacy badger.
[+] [-] jasonkester|10 years ago|reply
This is an ironic analogy to choose, seeing as how magazines do in fact do exactly that.
I know it's been a while since anybody read one, but if you cast your mind back, you'll recall that every dozen pages or so they will have stuck in a subscription card that you'll have to shake out or even tear apart just to continue reading.
It funny in a way to see that digital media has so exactly copied that.
[+] [-] chuinard|10 years ago|reply
It's sad that you get sites making 'slideshows' getting 20 page views per visit for stupid slideshows like 'Celebrities who have had DUIs'. Meanwhile, something educational and informational makes 5% as much as those other guys? Just because I have only loaded the page once?
You can't pay wall it, because then you don't get the 50,000 visits from HN. It sounds like a really tough position to be in.
[+] [-] fenomas|10 years ago|reply
Sure, annoying things are annoying, but maybe the site has their reasons, but maybe those reasons are misguided, but then again maybe not, etc. That's all a great discussion to have, but let's have it in the comments on an article that's actually about such issues.
[+] [-] agumonkey|10 years ago|reply
(Chrome even support url query generation from the url bar http://www.printfriendly.com/print/?source=homepage&url=http...)
[+] [-] ldpg|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delish|10 years ago|reply
I completely agree.
I turn off javascript for sites that have light-boxes or large top-bars. It's worked well for sites like priceonomics, which appear on HN intermittently. In case it's helpful, the one I use is "quick javascript switcher":
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quick-javascript-s...
[+] [-] anonyfox|10 years ago|reply
This eliminates every Source of frustration very effectively and removes distractions alltogether.
[+] [-] sleepychu|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyldfire|10 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.moneylab.co/email/
[+] [-] coldpie|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cronjobber|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg_is_a_butt|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jcoffland|10 years ago|reply
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/10/the-s...
[1]: http://www.eufic.org/page/en/show/latest-science-news/fftid/...
[2]: http://www.nature.com/nutd/journal/v6/n2/full/nutd20162a.htm...
[3]: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-85...
[+] [-] Aelinsaar|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emag|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sridca|10 years ago|reply
I do this despite doing compound lifts (pull ups, dips, squats) while successfully gaining muscle strength.
Also, "Caloric Restriction: A Fountain of Youth for Aging Muscles?" http://www.the-aps.org/mm/hp/Audiences/Public-Press/2015-15....
[+] [-] kilroy123|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxxxxx|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nihonde|10 years ago|reply
Most days I eat a bowl of brown rice with a raw egg stirred in and a dash of high-quality soy sauce and topped with natto. Some days I'll also grill salmon or smelt. On the side, I usually have tsukemono (pickled vegetables) and miso soup.
Protein, probiotics, pickles...once you get used to it, the idea of eating sweet desserts for breakfast (which is what most people eat) seems counterproductive.
(By the way, it's probably true that many people in Japan eat the same crap as Americans do for breakfast——there's no shortage of bread, donuts, etc.)
[+] [-] zhemao|10 years ago|reply
I personally hate western "breakfast foods". For breakfast I usually make noodles (not the instant kind) and eat it alongside a fried egg and maybe some leftover veggies. Or I'll just microwave some leftovers (including rice) from the day before.
[+] [-] soared|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Guildpact|10 years ago|reply
You can combat it by having a proper breakfast focusing on protein and low glycemic index carbs, eggs, steel-cut oats, omelettes, etc. A favorite of mine is proatmeal, make some oats and then mix in BSN Syntha-6 vanilla ice cream protein powder, absolutely delicious. The other way to combat it as suggested by people in this thread is to drop breakfast all together besides maybe having coffee and a granola bar.
[+] [-] nierman|10 years ago|reply
I wouldn't consider it the same as "eating a donut" (the cereal has 4g sugar and 5g fiber per 3/4 cup serving).
[+] [-] wccrawford|10 years ago|reply
I think I even enjoyed it more than ice cream, even if it was raisin bran or something. (Though I usually add a sweetener, currently Stevia rather than sugar.)
[+] [-] thomasjudge|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aznpwnzor|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awinter-py|10 years ago|reply
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/a-12-hour-window-fo...
The study suggests this is true even if you cheat on the weekend.
I'm super-dubious of evidence showing that breakfast improves school outcomes (except where it helps meet kids' calorie needs). You know what else boosts school outcomes? Sedatives, because school is hella boring. That doesn't mean sedating kids or adults is a good idea.
[+] [-] hyperchase|10 years ago|reply
A few friends of mine fast intermittently and train in the morning before eating but it's beyond me how that is not just pure torture.
[+] [-] jmarinez|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glangdale|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noahbradley|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperpallium|10 years ago|reply
Very different energy demands from office work.
[+] [-] hasenj|10 years ago|reply
Title should be: How cereal became a thing in America.
Where I grew up, breakfast was just eggs, bread, and tea (or milk-tea).
[+] [-] dpweb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] to3m|10 years ago|reply
I'd be surprised to hear that this is common, though. I was actually going to suggest that for this supposed most important meal of the day, the options for breakfast are not very substantial. I have a bowl of cereal (2 x weetabix + semi-skimmed milk) - all of 150kcal. Add a cup of tea and it still won't be past 175kcal. Suppose I have to get up early for whatever reason and treat myself to an extra weetabix to make up for it - 250kcal.
This seems to be enough for me (suggesting that perhaps breakfast's importance is indeed overblown - not that I'd like to go without it), but it's not very much. I ate a slice of quiche for lunch today that was more than that.
[+] [-] alatkins|10 years ago|reply
Generally breakfast comes after a 10-12 hour fast for most people, so I don't think this is the way to think of it.
[+] [-] joelrunyon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] musgrove|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wslh|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_breakfast
[+] [-] OneTwoFree|10 years ago|reply
Lunch is usually a big pile of rice with some vegetables and meat. Wow, this makes it reeeally hard to stay awake at the afternoon, but there aren't many options for lunch near the workplace.
For dinner, my wife cooks something also usually rice with some meat and veggies. But about 1 hour before I plan to go to sleep I eat 1 or 2 bananas. I always had hard time sleeping, and I read that bananas are good for sleeping because it contains potassium. For me it works. Although this might be completely placebo, because bananas don't work for my wife.
[+] [-] biswaroop|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] secstate|10 years ago|reply
I'd also add that I am an amateur long-distance runner and just completed a medium distance run after fasting all day and performed fine. Had it been a race, probably less so. But the myths of caloric necessities have been greatly exaggerated.
[+] [-] erkkie|10 years ago|reply
As an personal anecdote, I enjoy climbing in the mornings before having food, that's a few good hours of intermittent sprint type activity.
[+] [-] dingaling|10 years ago|reply
I have to head out running before 06:00 ( ex-farm border collie dog still has early-rising demands ) so need to eat about 05:30. On a couple of occasions I overslept and skipped breakfast. It was terrifying, I barely had enough energy to make it back home and was shaking. All my body wanted when I returned was sugar, now.
So in my case at least a bowl of museli / milk / yoghurt and a banana is the minimum possible breakfast.
[+] [-] raz32dust|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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