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From: bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.cooks
Subject: Re: Gaining Weight
Message-ID: <791@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Dec-85 20:02:06 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.791
Posted: Wed Dec  4 20:02:06 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Dec-85 04:17:07 EST
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 95

I tend to pay more attention to the opposite problem, but some basic
facts should help. We all assume your friend has seen a doctor and the
cause of his underweight was diagnosed as eating habits.

Facts (if I remember correctly):

	Fat		9 Calories/gram
	Carbohydrates	4 Calories/gram
	Protein		4 Calories/gram
	Alcohol		7 Calories/gram (not so sure about this)

Thus, the most concentrated form of calories are those foods with the
highest fat content, period. Assuming the primary goal is to increase
caloric intake (while maintaining an otherwise healthy diet), and
assuming your friend has some limits as to how much volume he is
willing to eat, the best bet is to take a healthy diet and try to add
fat to it. Problem: Saturated fats are suspected to be highly
correlated with heart disease. Most animal (and a few non-animal, such
as Cocoanut) fats are highly saturated and thus not something you
would like to vastly increase your intake of. This leaves most
vegetable and fish oils. I would be careful to look up fish oils also
before heavily indulging (esp, if I remember, shellfish, shrimp etc.)

This also indicates that the suggestion to add non-fat dry milk may
not be very good (I assume, at best, it is equivalent in calories to
adding sugar, tho healthier, another misconception, sugar is *not* all
that fattening, again it's the preponderance of fats like butter in
sweet foods that make them fattening.)

The suggestion to add Pasta was based on a misconception, Pasta is not
that high in calories, it's those fatty sauces we pour on top of them
that make them fattening but given that, the suggestion can be useful,
Pasta with a Bolognese sauce certainly can pump in the calories (I
just gained 1 lb writing that.)

Frying foods in vegetable oil is something (tempura, sauteed mushrooms
as a side dish, fried chicken...there goes another 1lb.) The lie here
is that the fat we all crave is BUTTER, and it isn't very healthy
(that is, ice cream, shakes, cheeses, fettucine alfredo..nother lb.)
Also, of course, salad dressings with lots of oil (tho the filling
properties of the salad may be counter-productive.)

Avocadoes are remarkably fattening, tell your friend to live on
Guacamole and tortilla chips! (if any of you doubt that look it up
before replying.) Bananas are a bit higher than other fruits.

Also, mayonaisse (I think these days the amount of egg [hence, cholesterol]
in commercial mayo is so low that it's considered low cholesterol. Hey,
sardines on rye bread with a slice of tomatoe, onion and a big glob of
mayo (nother lb.)

NUTS..no, I mean like walnuts etc. Peanut Butter, nuts are quite
fattening and not that bad for you at all (unless you are worried
about the, what was it, aflatoxins, a while ago peanuts were accused
of carrying some heavy carcinogens, not sure how that panned out.)
Make a very nutty granola with lots of dried fruit and keep it around
for snacking on.

Red meat is certainly high (you mentioned ground beef), a good size
steak can approach 1,000 calories (assuming his goal is around 4,000/day
that's pretty hefty) BUT I don't recommend it at all (avoid red meat
myself for all the well-known reasons...italian sausages are *not*
red meat, contrary to popular belief, they are a vegetable :-))
As a person who lost and managed to (mostly) keep off over 50lbs two
years ago, I have come to the conclusion that most overweight people
would lose weight without trying if they would just stop eating meats,
especially red meats. The opposite is probably true (but again, there
are alternatives.)

The point is, get a calorie book and start reading it. I highly
recommend some of those with the vast listings of foods by brand name,
some go as far as to list caloric content of fast food items by brand
name (like MacDonald's, Stouffers, Wendy's.) Look in your corner
drug-store book rack.  Also, find one that includes cholesterol and
saturated fat contents in the listings. These usually do justice to
'raw' food also, but how many of us don't use manufactured foods? At
all!?

Just a guess, if you have some idea of your friend's eating habits and it
is anything like friends of mine who have had the same problem, I bet
he has no taste for rich, fatty foods (eats *his* pasta with just salt
and pepper, wonders why he never gains weight even tho he eats as much
as his tubby friends.) Wish I had less taste for those foods!

	-Barry Shein, Boston University

P.S. If you find various problems with adding fat to the diet fine, I
can make some arguments against it also, but it is factual and
discussion rather than flame would be useful.  About the only other
choices are: Increase volume of food, Increase absorption (hard to
do), Decrease metabolism (not a great idea either.) I suppose adding
MUSCLE mass is what we are really after, so heavy exercise would be a
definite plus (thus aiming for high-protein/high-fat in the diet as
only proteins can build muscles, note how carbohydrates like sugar and
pasta are almost excluded from these observations, interesting.)