I’m not sure how correct that is. Particularly in certain countries and especially in winter. I get out for more than 30mins every day and my levels are deficient when I tested.
In order to produce vitamin D, your skin needs continuous time in the sun to fully react with sunlight.
30 minutes of continuous chemical reaction will have vastly different effect than a reaction that stops & starts repeatedly, for a sum total of 30 minutes.
You actually are going to synthesize _more_ vitamin D if you do fractionated exposure.
That's because vitamin D synthesis is an equilibrium reaction, UV drives backward and forward reactions. So you'll get more vitamin D if you expose your skin to the sun for a few minutes, then let the synthesized vitamin to diffuse out of the skin layer, and then expose yourself again.
I was locked in a windowless room for 10 year straight. What I don't know is if the long-term deprivation of vitamin D produces any long-term nonreversible damage. Does anyone know?
This is one thing I think is not appreciated enough about WFH. It can, in some cases mean work from outdoors for some period of time. I don’t mean relaxing in the sunshine and pretending to work. I mean working your ass off outside and moving the needle for your organization.
I’m sorry, Elon is waaay smarter and more capable than I am but he is empirically wrong about his anti WFH bias.
Out of curiosity, and if you don't mind sharing, what was your staring position?
I ask, because even if they never invest a cent in your personal ventures, it is a very significant boost to to have wealthy parents who provide both broad access to formal and informal education, valuable networking, and a dependable safety net. Saying someone with those advantages is "more capable" when comparing them to the average First Worlder (let alone the average human being) is a sort of perceptual bias that seems unfortunately common.
or it could mean not leaving your house for weeks at a time. At least when you go to the office you have to leave your home and go to the office and that in theory means time outside.
Jail, sadly. No windows, no fresh air. Took me almost 10 years to get the bond money together to get out. I was only in there because I couldn't get access to my money from inside the jail.
Jail, sadly. No windows, no fresh air. Took me almost 10 years to get the bond money together to get out. I was only in there because I couldn't get access to my money from inside the jail.
I may have a clue: you are most likely to suffer no harm at all. Certainly not as far as sunlight/Vit D goes. ( though windows can be good for things like diluting foul air). Read the works of Prof Trevor Marshall for a lengthy explanation.
Curiosity: How did you land up in the windowless situation?
Jail, sadly. No windows, no fresh air. Took me almost 10 years to get the bond money together to get out. I was only in there because I couldn't get access to my money from inside the jail.
Gosh. I had a look at your other posts. It's terrible what's happened to you.
Since you appear to have seen the underbelly of society you make want to look at my profile and read the link I've put on my profile. It may sound a little predatory when I suggest that you look at my profile, but so be it.
If my laptop screen were legible in direct sun, I'd be out there. Wifi and headphones.
Sadly the laptop's too small and Chrome's too power-hungry for solar power to be an option: ⅓m width * ¼m length * 158W/m2 solar = 13W out of 67W to run it, or 19%.
Stone age people used sunscreen. It wasn't anywhere near as effective as modern sunscreen. Presumably they were less concerned about skin cancer and more concerned about the immediate effects of a sunburn
Point being that ancients did not use sunscreen or anything remotely close to the formulae we have today - what we have today was roughly defined 100 years ago and has some serious consequential effects on the endocrine system and more.
The statement being made by others is that "ancients" applied a topical substance to protect their skin from harmful effects of the sun, most would call that sunscreen[0] but use whatever word you prefer.
> anything remotely close to the formulae we have today
Skin cancer is one of the more relatively common cancers in young people, but first diagnosis still increases sharply with age. Life expectancy at age 15 (so, without the 60% infant/child mortality) in the Paleolithic was apparently 54 years.
Don’t know about Stone Age, but look at the clothing worn by desert tribes. Loose fitting clothes covering arms and legs, so e kind of covering on the head.
I think the dangers of over exposure to the sun have long been known and only recent generations think shorts and T shirts in direct sun for long amounts of time is a good idea.
I'm actually rather annoyed by the recent trend of basic things like "go touch grass" or "go exercise every day" or "eat more fiber" being scientifically validated, because it's stripping away any and all excuses for me not going outside/exercising/eating well/etc.
Like damn, I knew I was supposed to do such things already, but it's the difference between mom saying to eat your veggies vs. mom slamming down a stack of scientific paper about why not eating veggies will literally kill you or whatever.
If it helps, you can just take a vitamin D supplement and stay inside, avoiding some major health risks like skin cancer and death by vehicular accidents.
Or, install some full-spectrum daylight-mimicing LED lights. These are not that easy to find, you want to use the CCT and CRI ratings to match sunlight as closely as possible.
They're kind of hard to find, the optimal values are 6500K for CCT and as close to 100 as possible for CRI, which matches the peak value and the overall spectrum of natural sunlight. One option appears to be the NorthLux™ 95 CRI T8 LED Tube (kind of pricy though, and will need a specialized ballast fixture, also a bit pricy).
You _can_ install UV diodes, but then you have a whole another can of worms. A point source of UV can damage eyes much more easily, and if you forget to turn it off, you can expect a nasty sunburn.
Being outdoors is almost always better than being indoors and people do need to get out more but that’s not the solution to a problem brought about by bodies being adapted to sub-Saharan latitudes but living north or south of the 37th parallel.
An hour a day buck-ass naked, isn’t enough if you don’t live along the equator.
For many northern and southern latitudes where many people live if you affixed yourself to a rotating pole and rotisserie’d yourself from sunrise to sunset while naked every day, then for 4-9 months out of the year you would be D deficient.
I’m outdoors more than most and if I don’t supplement my levels fall into the mid-20s ng/mL, below the standard range of 30-100.
And no matter how many millions of studies repeat verbatim the importance of vitamin d people still neglect it.
No but you should go out a couple of times a week for a walk and get some sun. the body is amazingly good at manufacturing vitamin d in a short amount of time especially with full sunlight. You don't have to get skin cancer though.
I know several women that go outside and take walks for their vitamin d, but slather on sunscreen which blocks the process. No matter how many times I tell them it's a worthy trade-off, they won't go outside without.
I'm 38, and have never worn sunscreen outside of going to the beach for a whole day. I often get compliments from women about my face, and they're shocked to hear I never wear sunscreen or moisturize. It's almost like not putting chemicals on your face is good for you.
I started drinking milk a year or two ago. Most milks have vitamin D added. It has made a stark difference in my life and it wasn't until I was looking back saying "I'm a lot happier than I was this time last year" that I figured out what changed.
Highly recommend supplementing with D. If you can tolerate lactose, milk is a nice pathway for it.
You don’t need much fat to absorb vitamin D and amount of fat you eat with the supplement doesn’t really affect the level in your bloodstream: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23427007/
“ We conclude that absorption was increased when a 50,000 IU dose of vitamin D was taken with a low-fat meal, compared with a high-fat meal and no meal, but that the greater absorption did not result in higher plasma 25(OH)D levels in the low-fat meal group.”
of course it does. pasteurization involves rapidly heating and cooling the milk to kill off bacteria and viruses. Thats going to denature a lot of enzymes as well as change the structure of a lot of proteins. To say that no vitamins or nutrition is affected is an incredulously false to make here
A study back in 1974 reported that vit. D in milk was unaffected by pasteurization, boiling, or sterilization.
Hartman, A. M., and L. P. Dryden. 1974. Vitamins in milk and milk
products. Pages 325–401 in Fundamentals of Dairy Chemistry.
2nd ed. B. H. Webb, A. H. Johnson, and J. A. Alford, ed. AVI/
Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, NY.
The effect of cooking on nutrients varies widely, depending on the specific cooking process and the nutrient in question.
"Nutrients" are typically defined as proteins, carbohydrates, lipids (fats), vitamins, and minerals.
Vitamin C is not very heat-stable, so you generally need to get that from raw fruits and vegetables (unless the food has been supplemented with it after cooking).
Vitamin D, by contrast, is pretty heat-stable.
Some proteins are rendered much more digestible by heat, so cooking actually improves the nutritional value of the food, in some cases by a great deal.
Lipids aren't generally affected much, though again some are more heat-stable than others. This is why some fats and oils are a better choice for deep-frying.
Carbohydrates are generally rendered more digestible by cooking, if anything (as long as they don't get so hot they start burning).
Minerals are mostly unaffected by heat. They can leach into the cooking water, so you'll lose some minerals if the cooking water is discarded. If it's something like soup, where the liquid is consumed, there's little or no impact.
There are even some commonly-consumed foods that are actually toxic unless they are cooked or otherwise processed. Cassava and some types of beans fall into this category.
I don't want to make a blanket statement, but I'd reckon that overall cooking helps more than it harms. Note that cooking is nearly universal across human cultures. Some cultures eat a lot more raw foods than others, true, but even the most raw-loving groups generally have some foods they cook (or otherwise process to break down, for instance, by fermentation).
More like a pile of clickbait and quackery. The video from a holistic dentist is enough to invalidate the entire list in my eyes. Holistic dentistry suggests that oil pulling can repair cavities, that cavities disrupt "meridians" in the body and can then cause cancer and other wild ideas. Not to mention the fact that having mercury amalgam fillings removed (a big topic in holistic dentistry) is far more dangerous than having them in your mouth.
Nice troll account you've got there. Pity if someone were to have saved the results from the recent alias-account finder and unmask you...
Anyway as i said above i have been wanting to go through all of the dozens of references but i have other projects, a long drive to work, and little desire to please others. i have taken the step of standing on others' shoulders and collecting their work. Spoon-feeding it to people who have made up their minds to not consider science has lately sagged on my list of desires.
You can find papers on anything if you put in the keywords. They'll also study bogus new age things, just to try to settle the actual science (and in some cases the papers will be from subpar journals that still get indexed. Pubmed has a big warning label that a paper being there doesn't mean the contents are endorsed by NIH.
In this case, the list is low tier papers and journals, or some systemical survey type papers (or low quality first order papers) that still don't reach any conclusions.
That's a terrible analogy but sure - if I were evaluating whether "SQLite is good" based on a playlist of programmers and one of them was by one person of an occupation based entirely around pseudoscientific beliefs, some of which are actively harmful, I would probably discount the rest of the videos in the playlist. Especially when many of the other videos are from creators who mainly post clickbait and more pseudoscience.
Sure ive been meaning to review them and make a super compilation... tho I have a small backlog of projects... But the above reasons are the shortlist of health ones: sat fat, sugar, hormones, T1D, and Parkinsons. There are addl args along the lines of economics (subsidies that don't benefit large pops of minorities), animal welfare, osteoporosis, casein addictiom in cheese and similar. I've been wanting to collect, validate, and index all the references... but for now one has to get them from the videos. And some of them are actually in favor of milk, btw... but generally the ones in favor are single sources and /or by the dairy industry. But if you want strong bones and muscles, eat what strong animals like gorillas and bulls eat.
Some humans still have the ability, but most have lost it. It depends on you microbiome. But we still don't have to consume meat, not in this day and age, and with our supermarkets and online recipes.
> I'll take the diet and strength of a wolf
"Wolves are known to scavenge and consume dead or rotten meat when they come across it. Wolves have a remarkable ability to tolerate and digest decaying flesh. Scavenging on carcasses can be an important source of food for wolves, especially during times when hunting is challenging or prey is scarce."
I'd like to see it ... please find some friends, and without weapons hunt and with your teeth and nails take down an elk or something. Then eat it raw.
And if you're not successfull, find some carcass and enjoy ! Remember to start from the anus, where it's easier to tear.
> if you want strong bones and muscles, eat what strong animals like gorillas and bulls eat.
This is a really silly comparison, to compare humans to animals with different genetics, digestion traits and hormones. Male gorillas have MASSIVE amounts of testosterone and minimal myostatin. Their body doesn’t break down muscle. Humans are not like this at all, and if you disagree then please show me a vegetarian body builder, or even vegetarian elite strength athletes.
Bill Pearl, 4x Mr. Olympia, is a very famous one. There are other successful bodybuilders who are vegan. Pretty trivial to google, so I'm not sure why you issued such a challenge but there ya go.
"Meat is definitely not the secret to bodybuilding,” Bill Pearl later said.
Bill Pearl became a vegetarian at age 39, at the end of his bodybuilding career. And he ate eggs and dairy products. And he was a body builder in the 50’s and 60’s. But other than that…great example!
Didn’t watch that playlist but in general the arguments against cows milk are:
- hormones from the cows and their supplements is in the milk and impacts our hormone system in negative ways
- antibiotics used excessively in cows are in the milk and have negative affects on an individual level and might also contribute to the bacteria antibiotic arms race
- saturated fats are generally bad and should be minimized in the human diet. Milk is full of them and they are direct causes of heart disease and other top killer health issues for people
- sugar argument similar to saturated fats but for diabetes
- milk production is generally inhumane in its treatment of animals and it’s on a pretty big scale
The thing that always bothers me about 'x is bad for you' arguments about food is: what is the alternative food that provides similar positive things without the supposed harms?
I'm assuming the case here is against dairy in general, which can provide easily digestible protein, a mix of fats, and B vitamins with a minimal amount of carbohydrates. Besides lean meats and eggs, you aren't going to find other sources of those things in similar ratios in easy to consume quantities.
The other thing with "[specific food/drink] is [good/bad] for you" is that it's nearly impossible to study at baseline with a million confounders so it's all hypothetical pseudoscience at best.
Living a life of generally avoiding processed foods and sugar as well as emphasizing lean meats/protein and vegetables is probably the best thing any of us can do for ourselves whatever that combination may look like for an individual.
Anyone who makes a claim that anything specific is beneficial is almost certainly talking out of their ass or selling a product.
Recall the food pyramid, the greatest corporate pseudoscience scam ever pulled. There was also a generation that was told "butter is bad for your health".
"- hormones from the cows and their supplements is in the milk and impacts our hormone system in negative ways
- antibiotics used excessively in cows are in the milk and have negative affects on an individual level and might also contribute to the bacteria antibiotic arms race
- saturated fats are generally bad and should be minimized in the human diet. Milk is full of them and they are direct causes of heart disease and other top killer health issues for people"
None of this is supported by evidence, picking the last argument as an example:
> Multiple reviews of the evidence have demonstrated that a recommendation to limit consumption of saturated fats to no more than 10% of total calories is not supported by rigorous scientific studies. Importantly, neither this guideline, nor that for replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats, considers the central issue of the health effects of differing food sources of these fats. The 2020 DGAC review that recommends continuing these recommendations has, in our view, not met the standard of “the preponderance of the evidence” for this decision."
I would add that energy balance (i.e. don't get fat) is probably the most important thing, assuming a reasonably healthy diet. Conversely, there's no diet that will save you if you're carrying excess pounds and/or are gaining weight beyond what is the ideal body composition.
Many of the diet studies, as poor as they are, that show beneficial changes due to diet almost always involve fat loss from baseline. Whatever diet can satisfy you and keep the weight down appears to be the local optimum.
What about "organic" milk? By that I mean milk that is grown by my small local farm, humane conditions for the cows, no antibiotics or supplements for them.
That alleviates hormones and animal welfare at least. Issues with allergies, sugar and sat fat remain. But hopefully also there is less consumed im this manner. Part of the problem is the pushing of people to consume quantities via celebrity advertising, USDA guidlines, etc.
You'd still get pus, blood, endotoxins, hormones (like estrogen), pesticides/herbicides (organic farms still usually use them), etc.
Only 40% of consumers in UK [0] know that a cow has to give a birth to a calf to be able to give milk. Male calves are usually immediately killed these days, or sold for meat in a few months (together with 25?% of female calves). In dairy industry calves are removed from their mothers the day they're born (only 27% of consumers know this), in beef industry they're usually kept together.
The saddest story I've seen is a mother cow who gave birth to two calves. Because she was not first-time mother, she prepared. One calf was immediately taken away, the other she managed to hide somewhere in the fields. Of course when the farmer found about it (insufficient milk output), he located the calf and took it away. I can't find it, but here is a similar story. [1]
All dairy cows are forcibly impregnated every year, are spent after 5-6 years to the point where they often can no more walk [2], and instead of a normal life which would be 20-48? years (upper number is the record) they're taken to the slaughterhouse [3].
> humane conditions for the cows
That doesn't exist, not even on small local farms. Humane? It's an oxymoron.
There are farms like this [0] which are certainly humane. And the farms suggested by Dr Temple Grandin also qualify as such, although I'm not aware of any farm actually implementing her methods.
90+% (IIRC) of slaughtered animals in US are from CAFOs.
Any kind of slaughter is inhumane when there's no NEED to eat meat. The clean process you may have seen in TV is different from reality (see recent CO2 chambers relevations [0]).
Taking away mother's young and taking milk mother produces for her (him is killed usually immediatelly) is inhumane. [1]
Etc.
I've seen Dr Temple Grandin's "Glass Walls" ... she is not the right person for the job of representing "humane animal treatment." Yes, she says what you want to hear. But not the right person for the animals.
> 90+% (IIRC) of slaughtered animals in US are from CAFOs.
Sure. That's an argument for reformation though.
> Any kind of slaughter is inhumane when there's no NEED to eat meat.
That simply isn't true. Humane simply means inflicting as little suffering as possible. That's it.
> The clean process you may have seen in TV is different from reality
I'm well versed. I've been arguing against veganism for the last few years.
> I've seen Dr Temple Grandin's "Glass Walls" ... she is not the right person for the job of representing "humane animal treatment." Yes, she says what you want to hear. But not the right person for the animals.
She is very well respected in her field and her work is solid. If it makes things better for animals, why resist it?
"While some plant foods may be contaminated, animal food intake is the biggest source of certain pesticide exposure for both adults and children. Pesticides, as well as antibiotics, manure, pus cells, cholesterol, and saturated fat have all been found in milk. Factory farmed fish have higher levels of DDT and other banned pesticides than wild-caught fish, and even fish oil supplements may be contaminated with PCBs and insecticides. Many pesticides take a long time to degrade – the U.S. made arsenic-based pesticides illegal years ago, but they still persist in the soil. Similarly, though DDT was banned in the U.S. for agricultural use in 1972, people may still be exposed to the pesticide through contaminated dairy products and meat."
"Overall, those eating plant-based diets have been found to have a lower levels of pesticides than omnivores. Rinsing produce in a salt water solution may be an effective way to reduce pesticide residues on produce."
> - saturated fats are generally bad and should be minimized in the human diet. Milk is full of them and they are direct causes of heart disease and other top killer health issues for people
Of course, that's why a human mother's milk is 50-60% saturated fat, right? Saturated fat consumption grams per capita has basically remained steady for the last 120 years or risen slightly, even 20 years before heart disease started to surge right around the time Crisco in the 1920s was introduced into the food supply.
Let's look at the data since 1900. We were told to replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated. Look let's see how that turned out:
> saturated fats are generally bad and should be minimized in the human diet.
About 30 years out of date, based on corrupt fraudulent industry "research", completely ignoring recent studies over the past 20 years which have debunked all of that. We need saturated fat. It is essential. Animal fats are loaded with fat soluble vitamins you won't get from industrial seed oil. Vegetable oils are toxic rancid garbage loaded with Omega-6 and 100% deficient in fat soluble nutrients.
How about kefir? It has much lower lactose and the benefit is all the probiotics. I drink a little every day and my gut is liking it. I don’t drink any milk at all
I didn't read the first link but looking at the second one this is typical nutritional pseudoscience misrepresentation of evidence, the nutritionstudies.org author states:
"A large observational cohort study[1] in Sweden found that women consuming more than 3 glasses of milk a day had almost twice the mortality over 20 years compared to those women consuming less than one glass a day. In addition, the high milk-drinkers did not have improved bone health. In fact, they had more fractures, particularly hip fractures."
Which is a misleadingly confident interpretation of the cited paper which concludes with:
"High milk intake was associated with higher mortality in one cohort of women and in another cohort of men, and with higher fracture incidence in women. Given the observational study designs with the inherent possibility of residual confounding and reverse causation phenomena, a cautious interpretation of the results is recommended."
Beyond correlation =/= causation, note the trepidation in the referenced authors conclusion. Furthermore some of this has been subsequently contradicted by other studies[0] (probably why the Swedish authors had hesitation). [1] provides a more detailed explanation of why the originally referenced study has limited interpretability.
Avoid milk all you want but suggesting "milk is bad for you" is supported by evidence is very misleading, there is conflicting poorly controlled observational evidence on both sides of the discussion. If you like milk, drink it within reason and don't feel bad (for your health).
> The China–Cornell–Oxford Project, short for the "China-Oxford-Cornell Study on Dietary, Lifestyle and Disease Mortality Characteristics in 65 Rural Chinese Counties," was a large observational study conducted throughout the 1980s in rural China, a partnership between Cornell University, the University of Oxford, and the government of China.[1] The study compared the health consequences of diets rich in animal-based foods to diets rich in plant-based foods among people who were genetically similar. In May 1990, The New York Times termed the study "the Grand Prix of epidemiology".
yeah take some random powder made by a lab that put some random "US SAFETY" trademark on it. much better than getting some organic milk from a farmer. thanks.
> This is my 19 video [YouTube] playlist against drinking cow's milk from numerous perspectives
I’ve pretty much stopped trusting YouTube as a source for scientific evidence.
The motivation for YouTube content creators is views — much like news media, which I trust about as much.
Sure, there are individual creators that are probably fine, but I’d have to already recognize them to trust them. Otherwise it will be hard for me to not have some skepticism for random videos shared by others.
Otherwise, I view YouTube consumption as mostly entertainment, or DIY.
> Sure, there are individual creators that are probably fine, but I’d have to already recognize them to trust them.
There is also an unfortunatly inverse correlation with subscribers/views/production quality and trustworthiness.
A channel can't succeed unless it optimizes for entertainment value and click bait after all.
So the videos with very high informational value generally have no discernable differences to completely insane conspiracy theory rants... Well, aside from the words they're saying.
Okay, that's an exaggeration. The conspiracy theorists will likely have lots of videos, while the person with the good educational content will likely have uploaded <10 videos over several years
I started taking vitamin D supplements (D3 pills) after getting a blood test with below norm vitamin D level. Saw an immediate improvement in concentration, mood and energy throughout the day. (this is merely anecdotal, of course)
Can't agree more once I started prioritizing Vitamin D in my diet and getting hours of sun if possible it's like a 180 with mental health. Eggs are a great source as well.
You can charge up mushrooms with vitamin D (D2) by placing them in direct sunlight for 30 minutes. Any ordinary mushrooms. So salmon (D3) and charged mushrooms would do just as well.
Milk consumption is pretty horrible for the environment (and I'm not even mentioning what happens to animals on milk farms). I say that as a (full-of-shame) milk drinker, but recommending milk because of vitamin D is pretty ridiculous to me.
There are so many vitamin D pills that are much cheaper than milk, and much better for the environment while having the same function.
Medicine, computers, and building materials for EVs and well insulated homes are also "horrible" for the environment. We gladly make that sacrifice because we're happy with the trade. I understand you aren't, and that's fine.
The point being, advocating for abstention is rarely a winning strategy. Instead we should use technology and policy to improve our production methods. Then we can save the environment and continue to enjoy products we consider to be important to our lifestyles. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
"many peer-reviewed studies, ... put livestock emissions at between 14.5 percent and 19.6 percent of the world’s total"
"... it doesn’t factor in the significant climate benefits we’d get if we freed up some of the land now dedicated to livestock farming and allowed forests to return, unlocking their potential as “carbon sinks” that absorb and sequester greenhouse gases from the air.
Scientists call this the opportunity cost of animal agriculture’s land use. Because animal farming takes up so much land — nearly 40 percent of the planet’s habitable land area — that opportunity cost is massive ...
"One study found that ending meat and dairy production could cancel out emissions from all other industries combined over the next 30 to 50 years."
> we can save the environment and continue to enjoy products we consider to be important to our lifestyles
No, we can't.
Without Changing Diets, Agriculture Alone Could Produce Enough Emissions to Surpass 1.5°C of Global Warming (2018)
Human civilization is pretty horrible for the environment in it's current form. Trying to break it down vertically and pinpointing personal choices on it is an exercise in diversion. We need deep structural changes to how we source energy, how we solve logistics and how we manage labor. Arguing about diet choices or duration of showers is just a way to keep us from tackling what really matters.
If most people were willing to change their diets overnight, maybe. Mathematically or statistically, irrelevant when you take into account real human beings. It's as disingenuous as saying "if everyone were nice, Earth would be paradise".
That doesn't sound much like a dietary 'choice' to me. I hope pricing can force the necessary changes in time. Honestly, I fully expect disaster levels sea level rise within my lifetime...
Depends heavily on diary farming practice. Open-pasture diary (which is a minority practice) is not bad for the environment: low energy use for high calorie production, methane emission vastly reduced, excellent soil management., humane treatment of the cows. And the milk tastes amazing.
Industrial agriculture is pretty horrible for the environment and also unsustainable for long term soil management. But it is what we need at the moment to feed the world's population.
>But it is what we need at the moment to feed the world's population.
Not true. The American food system is incredibly wasteful, and people are getting sick from diseases associated with western diets and overeating, like diabetes and heart disease. People eating traditional eastern diets use less resources and have less diet related illnesses.
Industrial farming is not helpful or needed. The only thing it's good for is putting money in some people's pockets.
We ought to worry about meat agriculture before cow milk consumption. Meat ag presents multiple existential threats greater than diabetes, cancer, or obesity:
- Cramming thousands of animals together with their excrement and humans who work with it creates a convenient pandemic pathogen bioreactor
- Antibiotic resistance by abusing the same substance (just a different supply chain) to make animals grow faster at the expense of antibiotics ceasing to work in people
- Climate change, roughly 10%
- Pollution of air, water, and soil (Ever see what pig farmers do with shit? They liquify it and spray it in the air in shit lakes.)
- Inefficient use of agricultural land and resources that could feed more people and more cheaply
Did you take before/after blood tests to confirm you had low blood levels and that drinking milk helped? A cup of milk is roughly 150iu, while recommended supplements range from 600 to 2000iu. Also, lactose-free milk is common nowadays.
This is why, even though as a programmer I’m congenitally unfit for it, I go outside sometimes. Sunlight also gives you vitamin D, and has all sorts of other benefits. As I don’t go outside often I’m not particularly concerned about skin cancer and am generally skeptical of the idea that terrestrial life is maladapted to the Sun. I buy over exposure has bad long term effects, but the current view seems to be you need to wear sunblock for any level of exposure. That just seems wildly unlikely and the fact the body needs sunlight to produce essential stuff like vitamin D further reinforces my belief that we are over correcting into unhealthy zones.
As a person not from america, the fact that this is the main view is worrying to me. Over here in the UK it's 100% normal to just use the rule of thumb that as long as you try not to get burnt, it's healthy to get some sun. No sunblock needed unless you know you'll be out in it for many hours without shade like if you go to the beach or a long walk.
> Sunscreen also blocks our skin from making vitamin D, but that’s OK, says the American Academy of Dermatology, which takes a zero-tolerance stance[1] on sun exposure: “You need to protect your skin from the sun every day, even when it’s cloudy,” it advises on its website. Better to slather on sunblock, we’ve all been told, and compensate with vitamin D pills.
I just criticized someone for not doing their own simple google search and now you're asking me to google for you as well? I'm really not sure what result you're hoping for here.
You really shouldn't be so sure of anything you're too lazy to validate yourself. If you're too lazy now, chances are you were too lazy to validate it when you formed the opinion to begin with.
“My thing is true, even though the vast majority of medical professionals and societies disagree with me. And I don’t have to prove it to you, as that is best left as an exercise to the reader” is lazy, and a terrible argument.
Even if you didn’t validate the established guidelines, that doesn’t actually make you lazy; as humans, we cannot possibly hope to empirically validate every single thing we are told, as that would be madness. We often rely on various sources to validate claims for us by running solid, peer-reviewed studies and then we read those, and the vast majority of those studies do not agree with you, though more studies definitely need to be run, particularly with higher SPF sunblocks and mineral sunblocks.
The vast, vast majority of Google results do not support your claims. I’m glad you found one that did, and I’m all for more studies, but “it’s really not that hard to google” is both condescending and doesn’t move the argument forward. You are the one making an argument against the established widespread medical opinion; the onus is on you to prove your argument, not on me to prove your argument for you.
“ There is little evidence that sunscreen decreases 25(OH)D concentration when used in real-life settings, suggesting that concerns about vitamin D should not negate skin cancer prevention advice. However, there have been no trials of the high-SPF sunscreens that are now widely recommended. What's already known about this topic? Previous experimental studies suggest that sunscreen can block vitamin D production in the skin but use artificially generated ultraviolet radiation with a spectral output unlike that seen in terrestrial sunlight. Nonsystematic reviews of observational studies suggest that use in real life does not cause vitamin D deficiency. What does this study add? This study systematically reviewed all experimental studies, field trials and observational studies for the first time. While the experimental studies support the theoretical risk that sunscreen use may affect vitamin D, the weight of evidence from field trials and observational studies suggests that the risk is low. We highlight the lack of adequate evidence regarding use of the very high sun protection factor sunscreens that are now recommended and widely used.”
What exactly do you think my claims are? I'm not the one who made the original claim, only supported the claim that american dermatologists have a zero tolerance policy for sun exposure.
Either you think there's a more representative opinion for American dermatologists than the AAD or what seems more likely is that you don't understand the argument that I was supporting.
The evidence I actually wanted proof for was the original commenters’ assertion that sunblock somehow raises cholesterol to unhealthy levels.
The quote you chose from the article (which I did read, for what it’s worth, but was also very light on sources) strongly suggested that sunblock blocks Vitamin D production. The science on that is unclear, but prior research suggests it doesn’t; that said, it warrants more research. I took your choice of that quote specifically to mean that was a claim you were making. If that wasn’t the case and you simply meant to show that the AAD suggested not being in the sun without sunblock, then I agree.
The science on melanoma being very bad is pretty cut and dry, on the other hand.
I never disagreed that American dermatologists tend to follow a “zero tolerance” policy for sun exposure without sunblock. They would very much like you to get sun with sunblock, though.
The cholesterol thing sounded like sarcasm in my ears.
Apart from that, zero tolerance makes no sense - do they really recommend to wear sunscreen on a cloudy winter day? - but it is somewhat debatable that some people still underestimate the destructive effects of overexposure.
And the elefant in the room is of course your skin type.
Couple of my friends have skin of the fitzpatrick type with reddish hair, light skin and many dark spots.
For them sunscreen is a must when I wouldn't even think about it.
Another interesting tangent: wasn't there a somewhat potent carcinogenic in most sunscreen products?
I didn’t sense sarcasm. I could’ve misinterpreted.
Cloudy days still have plenty of UV, depending on where you are (especially near the equator).
Skin type matters, of course, and I would probably be less heavy handed with the recommendation, but the “zero tolerance” issue wasn’t the original point as I understood it.
[edit] Quote from the very article you posted:
“It's important to note that these results are from one study (Valisure), which hasn't yet been validated. Strangely, they also detected benzene in blank test tubes (no sunscreen), leaving some to question if the testing methods contributed to the levels detected.
Toxicologists note that even if you applied the worst sunscreen on the Valisure list to your entire body, you'd be exposed to less than half the amount of benzene you breathe in normal city air in a day. Benzene is also very unstable, so it's unclear how much would be absorbed through the skin.
Don’t let this study convince you to skip sunscreen altogether. Although benzene is a potential risk, it pales in comparison to the known, real risk of UV radiation. Instead, take the time to check that your preferred sunscreen isn’t on the list of contaminated products.”
There’s a lot of doctor cartels in the US that emphatically force singular ideologies - babies sleeping on bellies die instantly, mothers who can’t nurse are creating sickly autistic monsters, everyone must take statins, etc. See parallel comment for source, or visit a dermatologist.
There is no cartel that says babies sleeping on their bellies die instantly, or that mothers who don’t breastfeed are creating sickly autistic monsters. Literally not a single doctor who should be allowed to practice has said any of that, as it is far too extreme and one sided.
Investigating those issues? Sure. Possibly even believing it’s safer to sleep a baby not on their belly, or that mothers should breastfeed if they can because it is likely to be healthier for the baby? Absolutely.
But almost the entirety of your comment is an appeal to extremes, which is a logical fallacy.
This is not an American centric view. Dermatologists in many countries throughout Europe, especially northern countries, strongly advise the use of sunblock.
The high cholesterol level is likely correlated to vitamin d.
A lot of these studies came out of heart disease investigations within the black community. In the US there is just more compared to West Africa, and after controlling for weight, income, diet, etc., they guessed the difference was likely sunlight and outdoor time.
Followup studies found similar findings, albeit less pronounced with white and middle eastern people.
In general, norther countries need more protection from the sun, not less. The rates of skin cancer go up significantly as you move north. My guess is partly cultural, but I don't know for sure the cause. When it is dark all winter, people want to spend as much time in the sun as they can during summer, perhaps. The fact that you also get more natural summer exposure due to longer days is probably part of it.
Ozone: hey, at least we managed to ban CFCs internationally.
If we can do that, it's confusing how we can't incrementally tackle climate change with selective international agreements that would make the most impact for the socio-economic burden.
This is a very common attitude in northern Europe, but it’s dangerous. I recently saw a dermatologist, I live at approximately the same latitude as the UK, east of there. He strongly advised sunblock, especially for children. You so very rarely see children wearing it during the summer. You are really playing with your health if you ignore these dangers.
UV-A, -B, and -C are bad in different ways. Sunburns skew towards UV-A, while cancer and aging tends to be from UV-B and -C. Vitamin D synthesis results from UV-B exposure.
Sure, but as discussed elsewhere in this thread, the studies (at present, which doesn’t mean we won’t learn more in the future) do not support the assertion that sunblock prevents Vitamin D synthesis in any meaningful way, despite what a random blog post might tell you.
Amen. :) You're preaching to the choir. Health and wellness blogs generally service the theater of the placebo and hivemind ignorance bordering on mysticism.
I live in NZ. The rest of the planet doesn't live this close to the ozone hole. We have the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. We need to use sun protection at all times.
My understanding is that the main correlation between sunlight and skin cancer is for sudden exposure to strong sun. If you go outside all year without sunblock (as people used to do back in the day), and thus build up and maintain a natural tan, the cancer risk is very low. But if you sit inside all year and then suddenly go to the beach,l in July, the risk increases.
I do not know a single person who died from skin cancer. And only a few who had skin cancer. The prevalence cannot be sufficiently high to justify a hysteria.
Even better, eat fatty fish! This may sound weird but adding consistent sardines/herring/mackerel/salmon to your diet can be life changing. They are nutrient powerhouses, they’re the best dietary sources of both vitamin D and DHA/EPA fatty acids. Of course, they’re also good sources of protein.
Most people I’ve mentioned this to will say something like “but they’re so fishy” or think that sardines are disgusting cat food. At least for canned sardines, what a lot of people don’t know is that there is a wide range of quality in both the packing and actual fish - fishy odors are from a chemical TMAO that is a byproduct of decomposition and anecdotally is more common in the cheap brands. There are brands like Matiz and Nuri that have much higher quality sardines; they’re also physically much larger than what you might think sardines are supposed to look like, with only 3 or so fish per tin. I also like this new brand Minna for a slightly cheaper option.
Small fish like sardines have very low amounts of heavy metals to the point it’s negligible. I couldn’t confidently tell you anything about microplastics though
> New candidate mechanisms include the release of nitric oxide from the skin and direct effects of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) on peripheral blood cells.
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s not one miracle supplement. :)
With skin so pasty that I can’t tan, but also being the first adult in my family to not have skin cancer (at my age), now I’m not sure if I’m doing it “right” or “wrong” by avoiding the sun.
Agreed. Fitness and proper vitamin levels don't require sunburns, skin cancer, or prematurely aged skin to attain. All of the "macho" men who thumb their noses at skin cancer (or smoking and lung cancer) are usually the ones who have their noses removed when a malignancy is discovered.
The point is we don't know, which is the case with most lifestyle/diet choices that aren't obviously bad in a vast majority of cases, like smoking and overeating.
Not that many is my guess. Most people get enough of vitamin D from supplements or foods that are reinforced with the vitamin. Exercise is pretty much the first thing you're told to try when diagnosed with mild depression.
Some, definitely not most. Often unhealthy lifestyle is the product of the underlying dysfunction rather than the other way around.
People with chronic illness all have broken sleep(sleep disordered breathing), digestion(pathogenic gut microbiome), or other chronic illness(persistent virus presence is recently being associated with neurodegenerative disease, wouldn't surprise me if it caused mental health problems in earlier life)
Same. Diet (e.g., Vitamin D, fish oil, mackerel + salmon, veggie variety) and (lots of) exercise work quite well.
Also, people exhibiting more understanding and compassion towards others who are not exactly like them is quite helpful when moderating executive disfunction. Lower anxiety helps persons with ADHD/ASD successfully develop and maintain routines.
Vitamin D is also good for bone density. My kid's doctor recommended it for scoliosis since people with that tend to have lower bone density later in life and supplementing gets them back to normal levels.
250 comments
[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 268 ms ] threadI think I get 30 minutes from going outside for lunch and walking to my car, driving, taking out the trash, getting my mail, etc.
30 minutes of continuous chemical reaction will have vastly different effect than a reaction that stops & starts repeatedly, for a sum total of 30 minutes.
That's because vitamin D synthesis is an equilibrium reaction, UV drives backward and forward reactions. So you'll get more vitamin D if you expose your skin to the sun for a few minutes, then let the synthesized vitamin to diffuse out of the skin layer, and then expose yourself again.
I regularly sit outside with my shirt off in ~20F weather and don't get cold enough to have to go inside.
Direct sunlight makes all the difference. With the sun, sub freezing air temperatures can actually leave you feeling quite warm.
I live in the Middle East and the uv index in the am (before 9am) in direct sunlight isn’t that crazy.
I’m sorry, Elon is waaay smarter and more capable than I am but he is empirically wrong about his anti WFH bias.
I ask, because even if they never invest a cent in your personal ventures, it is a very significant boost to to have wealthy parents who provide both broad access to formal and informal education, valuable networking, and a dependable safety net. Saying someone with those advantages is "more capable" when comparing them to the average First Worlder (let alone the average human being) is a sort of perceptual bias that seems unfortunately common.
I don't know if you're playing up being a homebody or if something horrible happened to you.
Curiosity: How did you land up in the windowless situation?
Since you appear to have seen the underbelly of society you make want to look at my profile and read the link I've put on my profile. It may sound a little predatory when I suggest that you look at my profile, but so be it.
Sadly the laptop's too small and Chrome's too power-hungry for solar power to be an option: ⅓m width * ¼m length * 158W/m2 solar = 13W out of 67W to run it, or 19%.
While I love being outside, I always wear hats, hoods and jackets to protect my skin.
Also cataracts would also be a problem.
Sitting in tree shade won't give you skin cancer.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/article-abs...
All you are doing is listing modern formulations, some of which are not even generally regarded as safe anymore.
The statement being made by others is that "ancients" applied a topical substance to protect their skin from harmful effects of the sun, most would call that sunscreen[0] but use whatever word you prefer.
> anything remotely close to the formulae we have today
No one is making this claim.
[0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sunscree...
Sunscreen is a 20th century term, and modern sunscreen as we know it came into use in the mid-20th century.
That’s not our sunscreen.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...
Ihttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
I think the dangers of over exposure to the sun have long been known and only recent generations think shorts and T shirts in direct sun for long amounts of time is a good idea.
It works well but it would actually be nice to have polarized glasses that improve the situation instead of making it worse.
Like damn, I knew I was supposed to do such things already, but it's the difference between mom saying to eat your veggies vs. mom slamming down a stack of scientific paper about why not eating veggies will literally kill you or whatever.
Wham, unhealthy lifestyle eradicated at almost no behavioural cost.
https://www.uvm.edu/news/extension/tips-choosing-grow-lights
They're kind of hard to find, the optimal values are 6500K for CCT and as close to 100 as possible for CRI, which matches the peak value and the overall spectrum of natural sunlight. One option appears to be the NorthLux™ 95 CRI T8 LED Tube (kind of pricy though, and will need a specialized ballast fixture, also a bit pricy).
You _can_ install UV diodes, but then you have a whole another can of worms. A point source of UV can damage eyes much more easily, and if you forget to turn it off, you can expect a nasty sunburn.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/time-for-more...
An hour a day buck-ass naked, isn’t enough if you don’t live along the equator.
For many northern and southern latitudes where many people live if you affixed yourself to a rotating pole and rotisserie’d yourself from sunrise to sunset while naked every day, then for 4-9 months out of the year you would be D deficient.
I’m outdoors more than most and if I don’t supplement my levels fall into the mid-20s ng/mL, below the standard range of 30-100.
And no matter how many millions of studies repeat verbatim the importance of vitamin d people still neglect it.
I'm 38, and have never worn sunscreen outside of going to the beach for a whole day. I often get compliments from women about my face, and they're shocked to hear I never wear sunscreen or moisturize. It's almost like not putting chemicals on your face is good for you.
Highly recommend supplementing with D. If you can tolerate lactose, milk is a nice pathway for it.
Might be because of anything to be honest.
“ We conclude that absorption was increased when a 50,000 IU dose of vitamin D was taken with a low-fat meal, compared with a high-fat meal and no meal, but that the greater absorption did not result in higher plasma 25(OH)D levels in the low-fat meal group.”
Or this meta-regression of 43 studies: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24993750/
"`for any choice of (∀) nutrient, pasteurization kills nutrient` evaluates to false"
Rather than
"`any nutrient (∃), pasteurization kills nutrient` evaluates to false" - which is what you seem to be responding to.
Hartman, A. M., and L. P. Dryden. 1974. Vitamins in milk and milk products. Pages 325–401 in Fundamentals of Dairy Chemistry. 2nd ed. B. H. Webb, A. H. Johnson, and J. A. Alford, ed. AVI/ Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, NY.
Different cooking methods for other foods can alter the D content but not drastically it seems. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29548435/)
"Nutrients" are typically defined as proteins, carbohydrates, lipids (fats), vitamins, and minerals.
Vitamin C is not very heat-stable, so you generally need to get that from raw fruits and vegetables (unless the food has been supplemented with it after cooking).
Vitamin D, by contrast, is pretty heat-stable.
Some proteins are rendered much more digestible by heat, so cooking actually improves the nutritional value of the food, in some cases by a great deal.
Lipids aren't generally affected much, though again some are more heat-stable than others. This is why some fats and oils are a better choice for deep-frying.
Carbohydrates are generally rendered more digestible by cooking, if anything (as long as they don't get so hot they start burning).
Minerals are mostly unaffected by heat. They can leach into the cooking water, so you'll lose some minerals if the cooking water is discarded. If it's something like soup, where the liquid is consumed, there's little or no impact.
There are even some commonly-consumed foods that are actually toxic unless they are cooked or otherwise processed. Cassava and some types of beans fall into this category.
I don't want to make a blanket statement, but I'd reckon that overall cooking helps more than it harms. Note that cooking is nearly universal across human cultures. Some cultures eat a lot more raw foods than others, true, but even the most raw-loving groups generally have some foods they cook (or otherwise process to break down, for instance, by fermentation).
Anyway as i said above i have been wanting to go through all of the dozens of references but i have other projects, a long drive to work, and little desire to please others. i have taken the step of standing on others' shoulders and collecting their work. Spoon-feeding it to people who have made up their minds to not consider science has lately sagged on my list of desires.
Here are results for homeopathy https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%22homeopathy%22 and fad diets https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=atkins+diet
In this case, the list is low tier papers and journals, or some systemical survey type papers (or low quality first order papers) that still don't reach any conclusions.
Both of those animals have a fermentation based digestive system so they can digest fiber that humans can't.
I'll take the diet and strength of a wolf or bear, thanks.
Some humans still have the ability, but most have lost it. It depends on you microbiome. But we still don't have to consume meat, not in this day and age, and with our supermarkets and online recipes.
> I'll take the diet and strength of a wolf
"Wolves are known to scavenge and consume dead or rotten meat when they come across it. Wolves have a remarkable ability to tolerate and digest decaying flesh. Scavenging on carcasses can be an important source of food for wolves, especially during times when hunting is challenging or prey is scarce."
I'd like to see it ... please find some friends, and without weapons hunt and with your teeth and nails take down an elk or something. Then eat it raw.
And if you're not successfull, find some carcass and enjoy ! Remember to start from the anus, where it's easier to tear.
Cannot edit. I was thinking of insoluble fiber, but cannot find the source.
We can digest soluble fiber. Insoluble fiber we cannot digest, but we need it anyway.
This is a really silly comparison, to compare humans to animals with different genetics, digestion traits and hormones. Male gorillas have MASSIVE amounts of testosterone and minimal myostatin. Their body doesn’t break down muscle. Humans are not like this at all, and if you disagree then please show me a vegetarian body builder, or even vegetarian elite strength athletes.
"Meat is definitely not the secret to bodybuilding,” Bill Pearl later said.
https://www.thebarbell.com/vegan-bodybuilder/#:~:text=Jehina....
https://www.adaptnetwork.com/veganadventurist/8-most-success...
https://ultra-x.co/which-ultra-runners-are-plant-based-or-ve...
And ultra-running is much more cool than body building ;p
But if you insist.
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=vegan%20bodybuilders
https://images.google.com/search?q=vegan+bodybuilder&tbm=isc...
https://www.peta.org/living/food/vegan-bodybuilders/
https://www.setforset.com/blogs/news/vegan-bodybuilders
Or what a shark eats?
This argument is absurd.
- hormones from the cows and their supplements is in the milk and impacts our hormone system in negative ways
- antibiotics used excessively in cows are in the milk and have negative affects on an individual level and might also contribute to the bacteria antibiotic arms race
- saturated fats are generally bad and should be minimized in the human diet. Milk is full of them and they are direct causes of heart disease and other top killer health issues for people
- sugar argument similar to saturated fats but for diabetes
- milk production is generally inhumane in its treatment of animals and it’s on a pretty big scale
Living a life of generally avoiding processed foods and sugar as well as emphasizing lean meats/protein and vegetables is probably the best thing any of us can do for ourselves whatever that combination may look like for an individual.
Anyone who makes a claim that anything specific is beneficial is almost certainly talking out of their ass or selling a product.
Recall the food pyramid, the greatest corporate pseudoscience scam ever pulled. There was also a generation that was told "butter is bad for your health".
"- hormones from the cows and their supplements is in the milk and impacts our hormone system in negative ways
- antibiotics used excessively in cows are in the milk and have negative affects on an individual level and might also contribute to the bacteria antibiotic arms race
- saturated fats are generally bad and should be minimized in the human diet. Milk is full of them and they are direct causes of heart disease and other top killer health issues for people"
None of this is supported by evidence, picking the last argument as an example:
> Multiple reviews of the evidence have demonstrated that a recommendation to limit consumption of saturated fats to no more than 10% of total calories is not supported by rigorous scientific studies. Importantly, neither this guideline, nor that for replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats, considers the central issue of the health effects of differing food sources of these fats. The 2020 DGAC review that recommends continuing these recommendations has, in our view, not met the standard of “the preponderance of the evidence” for this decision."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8541481/
Many of the diet studies, as poor as they are, that show beneficial changes due to diet almost always involve fat loss from baseline. Whatever diet can satisfy you and keep the weight down appears to be the local optimum.
Only 40% of consumers in UK [0] know that a cow has to give a birth to a calf to be able to give milk. Male calves are usually immediately killed these days, or sold for meat in a few months (together with 25?% of female calves). In dairy industry calves are removed from their mothers the day they're born (only 27% of consumers know this), in beef industry they're usually kept together.
The saddest story I've seen is a mother cow who gave birth to two calves. Because she was not first-time mother, she prepared. One calf was immediately taken away, the other she managed to hide somewhere in the fields. Of course when the farmer found about it (insufficient milk output), he located the calf and took it away. I can't find it, but here is a similar story. [1]
All dairy cows are forcibly impregnated every year, are spent after 5-6 years to the point where they often can no more walk [2], and instead of a normal life which would be 20-48? years (upper number is the record) they're taken to the slaughterhouse [3].
> humane conditions for the cows
That doesn't exist, not even on small local farms. Humane? It's an oxymoron.
[0] https://plantbasednews.org/culture/ethics/brits-willing-go-v...
[1] https://www.trendcentral.com/mother-cow-hides-calf/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI - Dairy is scary!
[3] https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch
There are farms like this [0] which are certainly humane. And the farms suggested by Dr Temple Grandin also qualify as such, although I'm not aware of any farm actually implementing her methods.
[0] https://gnecofarm.org/
Any kind of slaughter is inhumane when there's no NEED to eat meat. The clean process you may have seen in TV is different from reality (see recent CO2 chambers relevations [0]).
Taking away mother's young and taking milk mother produces for her (him is killed usually immediatelly) is inhumane. [1]
Etc.
I've seen Dr Temple Grandin's "Glass Walls" ... she is not the right person for the job of representing "humane animal treatment." Yes, she says what you want to hear. But not the right person for the animals.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVebmHMZ4bQ
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI
Sure. That's an argument for reformation though.
> Any kind of slaughter is inhumane when there's no NEED to eat meat.
That simply isn't true. Humane simply means inflicting as little suffering as possible. That's it.
> The clean process you may have seen in TV is different from reality
I'm well versed. I've been arguing against veganism for the last few years.
> I've seen Dr Temple Grandin's "Glass Walls" ... she is not the right person for the job of representing "humane animal treatment." Yes, she says what you want to hear. But not the right person for the animals.
She is very well respected in her field and her work is solid. If it makes things better for animals, why resist it?
https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/pesticides/
"While some plant foods may be contaminated, animal food intake is the biggest source of certain pesticide exposure for both adults and children. Pesticides, as well as antibiotics, manure, pus cells, cholesterol, and saturated fat have all been found in milk. Factory farmed fish have higher levels of DDT and other banned pesticides than wild-caught fish, and even fish oil supplements may be contaminated with PCBs and insecticides. Many pesticides take a long time to degrade – the U.S. made arsenic-based pesticides illegal years ago, but they still persist in the soil. Similarly, though DDT was banned in the U.S. for agricultural use in 1972, people may still be exposed to the pesticide through contaminated dairy products and meat."
"Overall, those eating plant-based diets have been found to have a lower levels of pesticides than omnivores. Rinsing produce in a salt water solution may be an effective way to reduce pesticide residues on produce."
Eating red meat has the same problem I suppose.
All those "manly" men behind their BBQs are slowly turning into women.
the level on HN really dropped those last years.
Of course, that's why a human mother's milk is 50-60% saturated fat, right? Saturated fat consumption grams per capita has basically remained steady for the last 120 years or risen slightly, even 20 years before heart disease started to surge right around the time Crisco in the 1920s was introduced into the food supply.
Let's look at the data since 1900. We were told to replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated. Look let's see how that turned out:
https://www.cureamd.org/dr-knobbe-presents-macular-degenerat...
Wow, would you look at that rise in heart disease deaths. Totally running in lock step with saturated fat consumption wasn't it? Whoops, nope!
About 30 years out of date, based on corrupt fraudulent industry "research", completely ignoring recent studies over the past 20 years which have debunked all of that. We need saturated fat. It is essential. Animal fats are loaded with fat soluble vitamins you won't get from industrial seed oil. Vegetable oils are toxic rancid garbage loaded with Omega-6 and 100% deficient in fat soluble nutrients.
"A large observational cohort study[1] in Sweden found that women consuming more than 3 glasses of milk a day had almost twice the mortality over 20 years compared to those women consuming less than one glass a day. In addition, the high milk-drinkers did not have improved bone health. In fact, they had more fractures, particularly hip fractures."
Which is a misleadingly confident interpretation of the cited paper which concludes with:
"High milk intake was associated with higher mortality in one cohort of women and in another cohort of men, and with higher fracture incidence in women. Given the observational study designs with the inherent possibility of residual confounding and reverse causation phenomena, a cautious interpretation of the results is recommended."
Beyond correlation =/= causation, note the trepidation in the referenced authors conclusion. Furthermore some of this has been subsequently contradicted by other studies[0] (probably why the Swedish authors had hesitation). [1] provides a more detailed explanation of why the originally referenced study has limited interpretability.
Avoid milk all you want but suggesting "milk is bad for you" is supported by evidence is very misleading, there is conflicting poorly controlled observational evidence on both sides of the discussion. If you like milk, drink it within reason and don't feel bad (for your health).
[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00198-017-4088-y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Cornell%E2%80%93...
> The China–Cornell–Oxford Project, short for the "China-Oxford-Cornell Study on Dietary, Lifestyle and Disease Mortality Characteristics in 65 Rural Chinese Counties," was a large observational study conducted throughout the 1980s in rural China, a partnership between Cornell University, the University of Oxford, and the government of China.[1] The study compared the health consequences of diets rich in animal-based foods to diets rich in plant-based foods among people who were genetically similar. In May 1990, The New York Times termed the study "the Grand Prix of epidemiology".
I’ve pretty much stopped trusting YouTube as a source for scientific evidence.
The motivation for YouTube content creators is views — much like news media, which I trust about as much.
Sure, there are individual creators that are probably fine, but I’d have to already recognize them to trust them. Otherwise it will be hard for me to not have some skepticism for random videos shared by others.
Otherwise, I view YouTube consumption as mostly entertainment, or DIY.
There is also an unfortunatly inverse correlation with subscribers/views/production quality and trustworthiness.
A channel can't succeed unless it optimizes for entertainment value and click bait after all.
So the videos with very high informational value generally have no discernable differences to completely insane conspiracy theory rants... Well, aside from the words they're saying. Okay, that's an exaggeration. The conspiracy theorists will likely have lots of videos, while the person with the good educational content will likely have uploaded <10 videos over several years
Add blood, antibiotics, pesticides/herbicides and endotoxins.
> Cow's milk is also implicated in type 1 diabetes and Parkinson's disease
Yes, and note that cheeses are concentrated milk, so much much worse.
I have problems with normal sugar and fructose but not lactose for some reason. It provides some much needed calories.
I don't see how milk itself is related though.
I take 1000-3000 IUs with dinner at night a couple times a week and sleep like the dead.
https://www.norwegianpharma.com/our-products/norsk-tran
https://www.mollers.com/product/mollers-tran/
There are so many vitamin D pills that are much cheaper than milk, and much better for the environment while having the same function.
It should also be noted that not all dairy production is equal. New Zealand, for example, produces milk with a much lower carbon footprint (https://www.dairynz.co.nz/media/5794851/carbon-footprint-of-...). The formula isn't a secret. Grass fed cows produce less methane and CO2. There is also amazing research on reducing methane production by up to 98% by supplementing the diet of cows with seaweed (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-30/seaweed-a....).
The point being, advocating for abstention is rarely a winning strategy. Instead we should use technology and policy to improve our production methods. Then we can save the environment and continue to enjoy products we consider to be important to our lifestyles. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
The burps are not everything.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23738600/un-fao-meat-dair...
"many peer-reviewed studies, ... put livestock emissions at between 14.5 percent and 19.6 percent of the world’s total"
"... it doesn’t factor in the significant climate benefits we’d get if we freed up some of the land now dedicated to livestock farming and allowed forests to return, unlocking their potential as “carbon sinks” that absorb and sequester greenhouse gases from the air.
Scientists call this the opportunity cost of animal agriculture’s land use. Because animal farming takes up so much land — nearly 40 percent of the planet’s habitable land area — that opportunity cost is massive ...
"One study found that ending meat and dairy production could cancel out emissions from all other industries combined over the next 30 to 50 years."
> we can save the environment and continue to enjoy products we consider to be important to our lifestyles
No, we can't.
Without Changing Diets, Agriculture Alone Could Produce Enough Emissions to Surpass 1.5°C of Global Warming (2018)
https://www.wri.org/insights/without-changing-diets-agricult...
Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...
IPCC: Slashing Emissions From Meat Crucial to Climate Action
https://sentientmedia.org/ipcc-report-food-system/
Why the food system is the next frontier in climate action
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/04/why-the-food-syst...
Now, whether it's carbon tax that'll force e.g. beef to go to its true cost, or climate change, that I don't know.
Industrial agriculture is pretty horrible for the environment and also unsustainable for long term soil management. But it is what we need at the moment to feed the world's population.
Not true. The American food system is incredibly wasteful, and people are getting sick from diseases associated with western diets and overeating, like diabetes and heart disease. People eating traditional eastern diets use less resources and have less diet related illnesses.
Industrial farming is not helpful or needed. The only thing it's good for is putting money in some people's pockets.
- Cramming thousands of animals together with their excrement and humans who work with it creates a convenient pandemic pathogen bioreactor
- Antibiotic resistance by abusing the same substance (just a different supply chain) to make animals grow faster at the expense of antibiotics ceasing to work in people
- Climate change, roughly 10%
- Pollution of air, water, and soil (Ever see what pig farmers do with shit? They liquify it and spray it in the air in shit lakes.)
- Inefficient use of agricultural land and resources that could feed more people and more cheaply
Supplemented for a bit and it was a stark turn around, but I fell out of the habit of doing it and forgot. I drink a half gallon a day easily.
Please provide sources for the evidence you speak of.
> Sunscreen also blocks our skin from making vitamin D, but that’s OK, says the American Academy of Dermatology, which takes a zero-tolerance stance[1] on sun exposure: “You need to protect your skin from the sun every day, even when it’s cloudy,” it advises on its website. Better to slather on sunblock, we’ve all been told, and compensate with vitamin D pills.
-- https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-...
1: https://www.aad.org/media/stats-vitamin-d
You really shouldn't be so sure of anything you're too lazy to validate yourself. If you're too lazy now, chances are you were too lazy to validate it when you formed the opinion to begin with.
“My thing is true, even though the vast majority of medical professionals and societies disagree with me. And I don’t have to prove it to you, as that is best left as an exercise to the reader” is lazy, and a terrible argument.
Even if you didn’t validate the established guidelines, that doesn’t actually make you lazy; as humans, we cannot possibly hope to empirically validate every single thing we are told, as that would be madness. We often rely on various sources to validate claims for us by running solid, peer-reviewed studies and then we read those, and the vast majority of those studies do not agree with you, though more studies definitely need to be run, particularly with higher SPF sunblocks and mineral sunblocks.
https://www.thechildren.com/health-info/conditions-and-illne...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30945275/
“ There is little evidence that sunscreen decreases 25(OH)D concentration when used in real-life settings, suggesting that concerns about vitamin D should not negate skin cancer prevention advice. However, there have been no trials of the high-SPF sunscreens that are now widely recommended. What's already known about this topic? Previous experimental studies suggest that sunscreen can block vitamin D production in the skin but use artificially generated ultraviolet radiation with a spectral output unlike that seen in terrestrial sunlight. Nonsystematic reviews of observational studies suggest that use in real life does not cause vitamin D deficiency. What does this study add? This study systematically reviewed all experimental studies, field trials and observational studies for the first time. While the experimental studies support the theoretical risk that sunscreen use may affect vitamin D, the weight of evidence from field trials and observational studies suggests that the risk is low. We highlight the lack of adequate evidence regarding use of the very high sun protection factor sunscreens that are now recommended and widely used.”
Either you think there's a more representative opinion for American dermatologists than the AAD or what seems more likely is that you don't understand the argument that I was supporting.
The evidence I actually wanted proof for was the original commenters’ assertion that sunblock somehow raises cholesterol to unhealthy levels.
The quote you chose from the article (which I did read, for what it’s worth, but was also very light on sources) strongly suggested that sunblock blocks Vitamin D production. The science on that is unclear, but prior research suggests it doesn’t; that said, it warrants more research. I took your choice of that quote specifically to mean that was a claim you were making. If that wasn’t the case and you simply meant to show that the AAD suggested not being in the sun without sunblock, then I agree.
The science on melanoma being very bad is pretty cut and dry, on the other hand.
I never disagreed that American dermatologists tend to follow a “zero tolerance” policy for sun exposure without sunblock. They would very much like you to get sun with sunblock, though.
Apart from that, zero tolerance makes no sense - do they really recommend to wear sunscreen on a cloudy winter day? - but it is somewhat debatable that some people still underestimate the destructive effects of overexposure.
And the elefant in the room is of course your skin type.
Couple of my friends have skin of the fitzpatrick type with reddish hair, light skin and many dark spots.
For them sunscreen is a must when I wouldn't even think about it.
Another interesting tangent: wasn't there a somewhat potent carcinogenic in most sunscreen products?
Only makes the tradeoff even harder.
Edit: found it, I meant this:
https://health.unl.edu/can-sunscreen-cause-cancer-how-avoid-...
Cloudy days still have plenty of UV, depending on where you are (especially near the equator).
Skin type matters, of course, and I would probably be less heavy handed with the recommendation, but the “zero tolerance” issue wasn’t the original point as I understood it.
[edit] Quote from the very article you posted:
“It's important to note that these results are from one study (Valisure), which hasn't yet been validated. Strangely, they also detected benzene in blank test tubes (no sunscreen), leaving some to question if the testing methods contributed to the levels detected.
Toxicologists note that even if you applied the worst sunscreen on the Valisure list to your entire body, you'd be exposed to less than half the amount of benzene you breathe in normal city air in a day. Benzene is also very unstable, so it's unclear how much would be absorbed through the skin.
Don’t let this study convince you to skip sunscreen altogether. Although benzene is a potential risk, it pales in comparison to the known, real risk of UV radiation. Instead, take the time to check that your preferred sunscreen isn’t on the list of contaminated products.”
Agree
>> even when it’s cloudy
Bullshit.
Investigating those issues? Sure. Possibly even believing it’s safer to sleep a baby not on their belly, or that mothers should breastfeed if they can because it is likely to be healthier for the baby? Absolutely.
But almost the entirety of your comment is an appeal to extremes, which is a logical fallacy.
A lot of these studies came out of heart disease investigations within the black community. In the US there is just more compared to West Africa, and after controlling for weight, income, diet, etc., they guessed the difference was likely sunlight and outdoor time.
Followup studies found similar findings, albeit less pronounced with white and middle eastern people.
https://www.grida.no/resources/7130
Note that it’s the same as Spain in the northern-most of the continental US, same as Morocco in the middle, and same as Dubai in the south.
Americans have far more need for sun-screen than Brits do
I was surprised.
UV light is also bad for the eyes.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/sunshine-on-a-clou...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10872925/
Exposure Time, Skin and Eye Type[6], Coverings (Clothing, Sunscreen, UV Filtering Glasses)[7,8]
[1] Health Effects of Sunlight Exposure : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_sunlight_exp...
[2] Ultraviolet - Human Health-related effects : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Human_health-relat...
[3] Latitude : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latitude
[4] Ozone Depletion - Effects : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion#Effects
[5] NASA - Ozone Watch : https://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/
[6] Health Effects of Sunlight Exposure - Benefits of Optic Exposure & Effects on Eyes
: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_sunlight_exp...
[7] Sunscreen : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunscreen
[8] Ultraviolet - Sunscreen Safety Debate : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Sunscreen_safety_d...
If we can do that, it's confusing how we can't incrementally tackle climate change with selective international agreements that would make the most impact for the socio-economic burden.
Ban doesn't mean they aren't still produced.
https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2843/...
UV Index - The Sun Safety Scale - Forefront Dermatology (2017)
: https://forefrontdermatology.com/uv-index-sun-safety-scale/
A Guide to the UV Index (PDF) : https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/documents/uviguid...
Ultraviolet Index - External links - 'UV Index Forecast' - 'Real-time Global Ultraviolet Index'
: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_index#External_lin...
The Fitzpatrick Scale (aka) Fitzpatrick Skin Typing test; or Fitzpatrick phototyping scale
: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale
Developed in 1975 by American dermatologist Thomas B. Fitzpatrick,
as a way to estimate the response of different types of skin to ultraviolet (UV) light.
Season : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Season
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder
Light Therapy : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_therapy
Vitamin D : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D
Vitamin D Deficiency : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_deficiency
Vitamin D Toxicity (aka) Hypervitaminosis D : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D
Black-and-white thinking is unsciеntific.
Anyone not intent on looking old prematurely uses sunscreen.
Here are some maps of the effect of sun exposure on skin cancer as you move north through Europe: https://ecis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pdf/factsheets/Melanoma_cancer...
https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-...
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/300553551/nz-has-the...
It it very well established in science that light is good for you in some many different ways.
Most people I’ve mentioned this to will say something like “but they’re so fishy” or think that sardines are disgusting cat food. At least for canned sardines, what a lot of people don’t know is that there is a wide range of quality in both the packing and actual fish - fishy odors are from a chemical TMAO that is a byproduct of decomposition and anecdotally is more common in the cheap brands. There are brands like Matiz and Nuri that have much higher quality sardines; they’re also physically much larger than what you might think sardines are supposed to look like, with only 3 or so fish per tin. I also like this new brand Minna for a slightly cheaper option.
https://www.consumerlab.com/answers/are-sardines-healthy-and...
>* European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) determined that lactose intolerance can be alleviated,
by ingesting live yogurt cultures (lactobacilli) that are able to digest the lactose in other dairy products.*
But put sunscreen on hands and face (to fight aging and cancer).
Then take supplements
Breast cancer, colorectal cancer, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, asthma, type 1 diabetes
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7400257/
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s not one miracle supplement. :)
With skin so pasty that I can’t tan, but also being the first adult in my family to not have skin cancer (at my age), now I’m not sure if I’m doing it “right” or “wrong” by avoiding the sun.
That is to say, few.
Those factors are aids to alleviate complex, serious conditions - not standalone cures or vaccines.
People with chronic illness all have broken sleep(sleep disordered breathing), digestion(pathogenic gut microbiome), or other chronic illness(persistent virus presence is recently being associated with neurodegenerative disease, wouldn't surprise me if it caused mental health problems in earlier life)
Also, people exhibiting more understanding and compassion towards others who are not exactly like them is quite helpful when moderating executive disfunction. Lower anxiety helps persons with ADHD/ASD successfully develop and maintain routines.
Imagine what good it would do if we could all sit in the sun soaking up that sweet vitamin d while we work.
Whoever owns that e-ink patent please get on with it!
I'm not at all eager to get skin cancer, and I'm also naturally so pale that I almost sizzle in direct summer sunlight.