Alas - as much as I enjoy dairy (especially goat milk), I can't drink it without causing a psoriasis breakout. How the heck does a trait like that make it down the tree?
I love kefir and ryazhenka, but never had it without also having pasteurized milk mixed in the diet. Will definitely try it now I've been off dairy a few months. Raw milk sales in Texas are tricky, until this summer you could only buy on-site of the farm where it's produced. New regulations make it easier so maybe it will start popping up in farmers' markets.
With the current prevailing wisdom being that dairy, salt, steak, etc are bad for you I worry that survey based (e.g. sampling behavior instead of experiment based studies) exposes a huge bias: anyone with poor genes is likely to go to a doctor and modify their diet (well sort of) - the people who are naturally healthy are the least likely you need to modify their diet.
I've got to say, I'm shocked to see this piece chock-full of fallacious logic in the Guardian.
> Is mother nature a psychopath? Why would she design foods to shorten the lifespan of the human race?
Mother nature isn't an anthropomorphic being and "she" doesn't design anything. There are plenty of poisons found in plants and animals.
> “Base your meals around starchy carbohydrate foods” – another nugget of government “healthy eating” advice that is contradicted by robust science and well overdue for a rethink. In February the Pure study, which followed 148,858 participants in 21 countries over nine years was published. It concluded that: “High intake of refined grains was associated with higher risk of mortality and major cardiovascular disease events.”
Government authorities typically recommend against the consumption of refined grains. So, the author is actually citing evidence against this argument.
> Fruit contains lots of sugar. A small banana has the equivalent of 5.7 teaspoons of sugar, whereas an egg contains none.
A cup of canola oil doesn't contain sugar either. This makes the mistake of conflating all simple mono and disaccharides as "sugars" without consideration of the context. A cola and a piece of fruit both contain sugar, true, but the fiber in fruit slows absorption and moderates spikes in blood sugar (this is why fruit juices are almost as bad as sodas). Dairy also contains sugar, which makes it even more strange that the author would target demonize the sugar in fruit but ignore it when praising dairy.
I could go on.
I'm not going to make the claim that this article is sponsored by some lobby, but it certainly reads that way.
I’ve felt like the guardian has gone downhill in the last few years. I first started paying for it because I believed that they would do the right thing in a post-Snowden world.
Instead, in the last two years major incidents have happened and coverage disappears by the next day. Perhaps this is the result of a poor UI but the tendency towards clickbait rather than holding authority to task - e.g. the UK PPE scandal - has been really disappointing.
Having gone through a process to lose > 120lbs I know that in my case, a lot of food myths are not based on people like me :-). Between "official guidance" that was put together by the food industry, the relatively deep and uncharted effects of your current gut biome on your body, and the debate between the physics based or enzyme based concepts of food metabolism it is clear that we really really don't have a clue at how this "simple"[1] system works.
[1] It was always presented to me as a simple system but the more I look and read and the less simple it seems.
Yea my experience is mostly (broad strokes), it's as easy as 'calories in calories out'*
*after spend weeks eating consistently, verifying your TDEE then take 200-500 calories off of it.
Then, when you prove your TDEE is something stupid outside the range of the calculator's guess, it's about your metabolism. For instance, finding out you can only maintain weight if you eat only x calories a day kinda sucks when you want to intuitively eat twice that. You're forced then to operate as a scientist, figuring out how to change it to your advantage. Where you have to watch everything to figure out what has thrown it in X or Y direction. Reverse dieting and such are also popular areas for fitness nerds, where you retrain your metabolism not to suck for w/e your goals are. (Even harder than your typical dieting.)
Like cutting out artificial sweeteners and only to sugar in moderation to keep in my carb ranges kept me more full and I ended up breaking out of my plateau even though I kept the same amount calories and macro split
As someone who has kept track of all calories in for a while now, there are some discrepancies. For example, I can eat more fat calories than I can each carbohydrate calories and moderate my weight. So somehow my metabolism doesn't create fat when eating fat, as much as it does when eating carbohydrates. That suggests that for me, not all calories are calories.
Was your protein macro the same % of your total calories for each? Because I've found if I'm eating at least 30-40% of my calories just being protein, it doesn't matter if I'm more eating carbs or fat in either direction.
I notice negligible changes otherwise, I think that part is the coming down to genetics micro biome and what you're eating.
>That suggests that for me, not all calories are calories.
That's way too deceiving for newbies to read cause, yes but no. Once you're out of obesity body fat ranges and into just higher than normal that's when you can see benefits from the aggregate of the tiny changes. So looking at that low level helps alot, however if you're cutting by 300-500 calories that's plenty of wiggle room to account for your metabolism handling fat better than carbs and vice versa especially when starting out.
If one not weighing everything and measuring it will make it seem much more like a calorie isn't a calorie because it's much easier to accidentally 'over eat' enough to change your hormone response to eating. Like cooking oils, they could be adding 200+ calories to your meal without you realizing it. Carbs wise a bowl of pasta is great for you but one extra scoop and boom there goes 100-200 calories, changing your average cut amount from maybe 300-500 to 100-200.
You need consistency to communicate with your body those fluctuations is what causes gains of fat.
A lot of truth here. When my BMI was high, just the reduction of calories and the daily exercise (walking) was enough to lose weight.
I've also had RMR (resting metabolism rate) tests to get some idea of base metabolism and DXA (differential X-ray) scans to identify lean vs adipose tissues.[1]
The goal for me was to find a 'budget' of how many calories a week I could eat based on my level of exercise and maintain my weight. That involves spending a lot time tracking what you eat (and for me breaking up calories by fat, carbs, and protein). All to just to data analysis and to create a data driven mental model of what I could eat and how it would affect the aggregation of fat.
[1] Not sure how widely available they are but I've used Bodyspec for both (https://www.bodyspec.com/)
I just measured that by testing it personally, cause I just don't trust/don't want to spend money on what I also know is a model that is more fallible than 2 weeks of '''stagnation'''. Honestly though I'm glad it's working for you though cause I kinda thought it was an expensive TDEE calculator, based off people I known do it have gained weight eating some of their recommendations could have easily been the service they got too but still gave me a poor impression.
I am with you on this, they are not the same. I have a similar experience. On another thread one time to dare suggest that it’s not as simple as the CICO folks claim…apparently my 4 years and 170lbs of weight loss while meticulously logging my food and exercise and my experience I must have somehow made a mistake.
I will say this, that when my fat calories are a higher percentage in my diet my satiety with each meal tends to last longer and I eat less calories overall.
This is an opinion piece by an unknown author that references a lot of nutrition papers that are heavily controversial. For example their evidence for the claim that meat "isn't bad for you" is the very anecdotal following passage:
> The International Agency for Research on Cancer’s 2015 claim that red meat is “probably carcinogenic” has never been substantiated. In fact, a subsequent risk assessment concluded that this is not the case. Epidemiological data has been unable to demonstrate a consistent causal link between red meat intake and disease.
The author makes this statement as fact, but in the scientific community these claims are heavily debated. By the way, no where do they cite any references for meat being health promoting, despite the fact that the title reads "...steak may be good for you after all".
I'm not saying their claims may not eventually prove to be true, but based on the totality of the evidence we definitely can not take this advice as scripture based on the state of science of today.
Food studies are tough,especially when many are self-reported.
It's important to avoid the obvious pit falls. For example, sugar, alcohol, low nutritional density, etc.
It's important to sort out what works for you. We're all slightly different and one diet size does not fit all. And monitor that over time. Your gut of 10 or 20 yrs ago might not be your gut of today.
Article is probably generally correct; I believe that a good (if definitely fallible) heuristic is that "stuff people have been consuming for thousands of years" + "my long living relatives ate it," is a significantly more reliable indicator of how healthy a food is than any study or article younger than e.g. 50 years old.
Sure, I mostly think it's also a question of volume, not composition. Also a fan of the idea that if you're eating meat, you really don't need much more than a piece about the size of a deck of cards.
(I don't always stick to that of course, but you know) :)
What? Was this ever controversial? The only thing there is the widespread excess of salt in fast food. And meat, the biggest concern is about the environment. Obviously fast food and processed meat should be avoided
And you can clearly see that people in Asian countries, like Thailand, eat diary, meat, salt, eggs, etc.. daily and they don't have obesity or other similar health issues like the west
28 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 82.8 ms ] threadIf you keep on drinking unpasteurized milk, you might end up with something far worse than psoriasis. Listeria infection is very nasty and dangerous.
So I'd take these results with a grain of salt.
> Is mother nature a psychopath? Why would she design foods to shorten the lifespan of the human race?
Mother nature isn't an anthropomorphic being and "she" doesn't design anything. There are plenty of poisons found in plants and animals.
> “Base your meals around starchy carbohydrate foods” – another nugget of government “healthy eating” advice that is contradicted by robust science and well overdue for a rethink. In February the Pure study, which followed 148,858 participants in 21 countries over nine years was published. It concluded that: “High intake of refined grains was associated with higher risk of mortality and major cardiovascular disease events.”
Government authorities typically recommend against the consumption of refined grains. So, the author is actually citing evidence against this argument.
> Fruit contains lots of sugar. A small banana has the equivalent of 5.7 teaspoons of sugar, whereas an egg contains none.
A cup of canola oil doesn't contain sugar either. This makes the mistake of conflating all simple mono and disaccharides as "sugars" without consideration of the context. A cola and a piece of fruit both contain sugar, true, but the fiber in fruit slows absorption and moderates spikes in blood sugar (this is why fruit juices are almost as bad as sodas). Dairy also contains sugar, which makes it even more strange that the author would target demonize the sugar in fruit but ignore it when praising dairy.
I could go on.
I'm not going to make the claim that this article is sponsored by some lobby, but it certainly reads that way.
Instead, in the last two years major incidents have happened and coverage disappears by the next day. Perhaps this is the result of a poor UI but the tendency towards clickbait rather than holding authority to task - e.g. the UK PPE scandal - has been really disappointing.
For a long time in the U.S., this was emphatically not true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#/medi...
[1] It was always presented to me as a simple system but the more I look and read and the less simple it seems.
*after spend weeks eating consistently, verifying your TDEE then take 200-500 calories off of it.
Then, when you prove your TDEE is something stupid outside the range of the calculator's guess, it's about your metabolism. For instance, finding out you can only maintain weight if you eat only x calories a day kinda sucks when you want to intuitively eat twice that. You're forced then to operate as a scientist, figuring out how to change it to your advantage. Where you have to watch everything to figure out what has thrown it in X or Y direction. Reverse dieting and such are also popular areas for fitness nerds, where you retrain your metabolism not to suck for w/e your goals are. (Even harder than your typical dieting.)
Like cutting out artificial sweeteners and only to sugar in moderation to keep in my carb ranges kept me more full and I ended up breaking out of my plateau even though I kept the same amount calories and macro split
I notice negligible changes otherwise, I think that part is the coming down to genetics micro biome and what you're eating.
>That suggests that for me, not all calories are calories.
That's way too deceiving for newbies to read cause, yes but no. Once you're out of obesity body fat ranges and into just higher than normal that's when you can see benefits from the aggregate of the tiny changes. So looking at that low level helps alot, however if you're cutting by 300-500 calories that's plenty of wiggle room to account for your metabolism handling fat better than carbs and vice versa especially when starting out.
If one not weighing everything and measuring it will make it seem much more like a calorie isn't a calorie because it's much easier to accidentally 'over eat' enough to change your hormone response to eating. Like cooking oils, they could be adding 200+ calories to your meal without you realizing it. Carbs wise a bowl of pasta is great for you but one extra scoop and boom there goes 100-200 calories, changing your average cut amount from maybe 300-500 to 100-200.
You need consistency to communicate with your body those fluctuations is what causes gains of fat.
I've also had RMR (resting metabolism rate) tests to get some idea of base metabolism and DXA (differential X-ray) scans to identify lean vs adipose tissues.[1]
The goal for me was to find a 'budget' of how many calories a week I could eat based on my level of exercise and maintain my weight. That involves spending a lot time tracking what you eat (and for me breaking up calories by fat, carbs, and protein). All to just to data analysis and to create a data driven mental model of what I could eat and how it would affect the aggregation of fat.
[1] Not sure how widely available they are but I've used Bodyspec for both (https://www.bodyspec.com/)
Fat is processed slower, so slow that the body actually starts using stored reserves at the same time if you're doing anything intensive.
Protein is used as needed and most of the excess is excreted. Some gets converted to fat or carbs by some slow process.
At least that's how I understand it. Keto diet is exactly that, eating fat and protein and little to no carbs.
I will say this, that when my fat calories are a higher percentage in my diet my satiety with each meal tends to last longer and I eat less calories overall.
> The International Agency for Research on Cancer’s 2015 claim that red meat is “probably carcinogenic” has never been substantiated. In fact, a subsequent risk assessment concluded that this is not the case. Epidemiological data has been unable to demonstrate a consistent causal link between red meat intake and disease.
The author makes this statement as fact, but in the scientific community these claims are heavily debated. By the way, no where do they cite any references for meat being health promoting, despite the fact that the title reads "...steak may be good for you after all".
I'm not saying their claims may not eventually prove to be true, but based on the totality of the evidence we definitely can not take this advice as scripture based on the state of science of today.
It's important to avoid the obvious pit falls. For example, sugar, alcohol, low nutritional density, etc.
It's important to sort out what works for you. We're all slightly different and one diet size does not fit all. And monitor that over time. Your gut of 10 or 20 yrs ago might not be your gut of today.
(I don't always stick to that of course, but you know) :)
And you can clearly see that people in Asian countries, like Thailand, eat diary, meat, salt, eggs, etc.. daily and they don't have obesity or other similar health issues like the west