"Yes, Pearson conceded, "there is not enough evidence to be firm about [healthy eating] guidelines", but no, the findings "did not change the advice that eating too much fat is harmful for the heart". Saturated fat reduction, he said, was just one factor we should consider as part of a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle."
So, pretty much get a balanced diet and do not overeat.
Aside from, you know, those that do. Like the Inuit. According sourced material via Wikipedia, due to the complete and utter lack of any formal agriculture, "[t]raditional Inuit diets derive approximately 50% of their calories from fat, 30-35% from protein and 15-20% of their calories from carbohydrates, largely in the form of glycogen from the raw meat they consumed." Tubers, berries, seaweed and the like make up very little of their diet.
From the intro on Wikipedia:
According to Edmund Searles in his article "Food and the Making of Modern Inuit Identities," they consume this type of diet because a mostly meat diet is "effective in keeping the body warm, making the body strong, keeping the body fit, and even making that body healthy".
No, while the length of the human lifespan consuming a certain product might be reduced the environmental impact that the person's diet had remains. Meat production has very real environmental impacts.[1]
Switching to a vegetarian diet, or even to a meat that consumes less resources to produce[3], drastically reduces one's environmental impact.[2]
Meat consumption also has direct fiscal impacts by way of the increased cost of treatment for those that consume meat.
If the price of grain increases because of an increased demand for meat then the world's poor will be the ones most negatively impacted.[4]
Disclaimer: I currently consume all forms of meat, including beef.
My post was addressed at your claim that "Once health is aside, so is sustainability."
I believe that I it made clear that this is not the case. Your view is myopic and selfish, as it ignores the very real effects that a meat-eater diet has on other humans and the environment.
I did not imply that health and lifespan are the same, and I even addressed them separately.
My beliefs are based in well-documented evidence. Eating meat has a strong positive correlation with increased healthcare costs.[1] Whether or not meat has a negative impact on health only has a bearing on the costs of healthcare for meat-eaters, which is a minor point that I mentioned as an aside. It does not have a bearing on the environmental impacts of a meat-eater diet.
You are nitpicking minor details of my post. Perhaps instead of vaguely implying that I'm mistaken you should produce evidence that contradicts me.
Does not look like it. Humanity and Meat production have scaled pretty well in the 20th century. And we have way less food shortages that we have ever had before.
I've read that Inuit have a larger liver. I wonder if this is a case of genetics or if increasing the percent of meat in your diet leads to a larger liver.
Agriculture is a recent invention, only about 10kya old, and many cultures never adopted it for various reasons. It makes sense that evolution has had a bit of time to work its random magic on plant eaters.
Who said anything about ancestry? The developed western world bias on HN is disturbing.
What you eat depends on what you can get from the land you live in. You can't grow much above 4,000 meters or near the arctic, obviously. Indians are mostly vegetarian because you can grow alot in India, the much of the rest of the world isn't so lucky (I always crave veggies whenever I tour in high country because they are so unavailable).
> Indians are mostly vegetarian because you can grow alot in India
"mostly"? I would love to know where this statistic was pulled from? Personal experience living in India for 5 years suggests that only Brahmin Hindus and a few other castes are purely vegetarian. Every one else eats meat albeit not as frequently as Americans. Wikipedia stats suggests 20-40% (a huge variance).
As in, Indian food is mostly vegetarian, not that most Indian people are strict vegetarians.
When I was working in Delhi, the office canteen offer only veg food 4 days a week, with an optional meat item for a small surcharge on Fridays only. Down south, 100% veg food in restaurants is pretty much the rule, not the exception, although it's not hard to find fish/meat if you look.
Also, a good Indian friend of mine is nearly 100% vegetarian, except that every now and then he gets a craving for a cheeseburger. That's "mostly vegetarian" in my book.
...and getting back to the health thing, it's kind of striking how many obese Indians are Brahmins, who may keep veg but like to slather everything in ghee (clarified butter).
> ...and getting back to the health thing, it's kind of striking how many obese Indians are Brahmins, who may keep veg but like to slather everything in ghee (clarified butter).
Vegetarianism != Healthy. A diet high in protein/fat doesn't necessarily have a causal link with weight increase. The problem is eating beyond what your BMR/TDEE is. A large portion of Indian food is calorifically rich, e.g. bowls of rice and flat breads.
"What you eat depends on what you can get from the land you live in."
yes... and so different groups of people were under different pressures. So when oneeyedpigeon said "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.", and you responded mentioning the Inuits, I decided to remind you that that's not relevant. You haven't made a counterargument to the claim that you should be eating mostly plants. A given person's ancestors were probably not under the same sort of pressure to consume meats.
Like most diet advice that's still way to simplistic.
Eat a wide range of minimally processed foods avoiding anything your allergic to. Eat animals not just fat and meat. Things like brains, bone marrow, intestines, cartilage, and liver are all part of a nutritious diet. Again, eat most of the plant not just the most high energy parts. But also a wide range of plants and plant types potato's, rice, soy, and grains are just the tip of the iceberg.
Remember if your not starving you don't need to focus on maximizing energy consumption.
> Like most diet advice that's still way too simplistic.
It's not. It's minimalistic, it's insufficient, but it is in no way misleading: following this advice is invariably better than not following it. Your criticism doesn't disagree in any way.
Are you sure you replied to the right comment? Ninja edit, maybe?
If you read Pollan's actual formulation, he deconstructs it further:
• Eat food: real, minimally processed produce, grains, or meats. As opposed to highly-processed, vaguely food-like substances.
• Not too much: addresses the point that, at least as concerns obesity, quantity is crucial. So get that quantity right.
• Mostly plants: here arguments vary, but Pollan's big on vegetables (less so grains and such), and the complex compounds, many apparently helpful, they provide.
His books are quite a delight to read. I recommend them strongly.
Except that "balanced diet" means absolutely nothing. It's just begging the question, because the balance is the whole thing we're trying to figure out.
Should saturated fat make up 1% or 30% of your calories? Should processed carbs and/or high-starch vegetables make up 5% or 50% of your calories? Should meat make up 0%, 10%, 40%, or 80% of your calories?
(Because remember, vegetables like broccoli, kale, tomatoes, carrots, and so on, while they provide essential nutrients, don't contribute meaningfully to your calorie intake.)
You might want to say, well, just put everything between 20-40%, isn't that balanced? But we used to think that trans fats were part of a balanced diet, a healthy replacement for saturated fats. Now we realize they're basically poison. Some people are coming to the same realization about processed carbs, high-starch vegetables like modern varieties of potato, and sugar.
I know that saying "well, just eat a balanced diet" is the most common response to new nutritional research. But it's actually a harmful attitude, because it trivializes what is arguably the most important public health issue today in America.
> Except that "balanced diet" means absolutely nothing.
I feel like it means to simply eat food in moderation. People who are severely obese aren't obese because they eat slightly too much saturated fat or eat a few extra potato chips beyond the recommended serving. Who otherwise have great diets except for a mixup here and there with their ratios.
We're talking about many people who have seriously unhealthy eating habits that are extremely high in things like saturated fat, sugar and sodium. We're not talking about people who are eating 30% of their calories from fat when it should be 20%, we're talking about people who are absolutely blowing the recommended daily limits for fat and sugar out of the water by crushing soft drinks and making junk food a huge portion of their diet.
But what foods and in what ratios. That is the central question. Severely obese people already know the answer (put less everything into the hole in the middle of their face). For the rest of us, we have to decide (as above), what to eat and in what ratios, and if we should worry about our LDL and HDL cholesterol scores on our annual bloodwork. Also, I wonder if the science relating those to heart disease is any more sound than the science saying salt is bad (only true for chf / high blood pressure / a few other cases), etc.
My point is that the "health crisis" people are talking about has nothing to do with the rest of us. If you take those with extreme diets out of the equation, there is no health crisis. There's just people who are generally healthy wringing their hands over whether to have 2 slices or 3 slices of bacon, wondering if they are getting that perfect ratio in their diet. At which point I'm not sure it's worth the mental stress to be worrying about such things.
Some things aren't within our control. There are people who will surely get their ratios "perfect" (whatever perfect is) and still die an early death of heart disease because of their genetics.
well, if cholesterol is linked to heart disease, and if that can be effectively reduced via diet, it's probably worth our while to care, especially in your 30s on while you can still affect change
I skimmed and landed on this:
>The first generation margarine-type spreads turned out to be heart-stoppers, which makes it hard to trust anything the marge industry says.
Well, that's good science. I'm sure there were some more worthwhile ideas in there, but that one made me wonder.
It's not news that official recommendations lag behind scientific discovery, mostly, I suspect, because changing the recommendations too often would be confusing.
This article's advice that we should disregard official recommendations and eat as low-tech as possible without any kind of scientific inquiry is complete horseshit. Classic Luddite homeopathy conspiracy theory horseshit.
On the other hand, there's absolutely no excuse for the amount of sugar and salt in products that absolutely don't need them. Why can't we have healthy frozen and microwave ready food? Because the marketing execs say there's no overlap between the demographics that want healthy and the ones that want fast food. Well, at least we'll soon have Soylent.
It's not news that official recommendations lag behind scientific discovery
Calling nutrition research "scientific" is kind of generous. But not as generous as calling the onerous government guidelines that reshaped the food production industry and drove obesity to epidemic proportions in the USA "recommendations".
Is it because the field is rife with pseudoscience anyway, and that by the time this has been filtered through a layer of ignorant* journalists, the advice we get left with is mostly nonsense?
*I don't mean that in an insulting way, I'm ignorant about a lot of stuff outside my field
This is everything that is wrong with science journalism.
The meta analysis made no control for dietary alternatives, and it is hard to argue that, given the sociological factors involved (ie - middle americans), that the participants in the studies didn't simply replace their saturated fats with carbs. In other words, they just replaced an excess of one bad thing with an excess of another.
There was an in depth article about this, that I can't seem to find now. If you know what I'm talking about, please post it.
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Because you eat solely meat?
I'm on keto, but I use DIY Soylent and vegan protein sources for it. Not because I don't like meat (I LOVE bacon), but because I'm lazy.
Keto is wonderful because it keeps your blood sugar level low, which helps burn fat and prevents your body from storing excess energy as fat. Don't overdue the red meat though; there is a body of evidence that shows that red meat can cause cancer through the digestive track.
Also, much love for /r/keto. It's a wonderful community. Keto on!
I've lost 50 pounds since October by following a ketogenic diet.
For every fad diet, there are people who lost significant weight using that diet. It's how they get to be fads (and how you can know that the biological rationales are bunk).
This [ http://imgur.com/NJlqag1 ], was thru increased self-awareness which I jump-started by counting calories for the first couple months. (194 is the top of what the BMI chart calls "normal")
If you're mindful of what you're doing, then you'll only eat when hungry (and enough to not be hungry) rather than mindlessly snacking all day or mindlessly continuing to eat at meals until the food and/or conversation runs out. If you learn to pay attention (just enough to keep your senses calibrated), your body is fairly good at telling you what you need.
So anything that helps you stay mindful will help you lose weight.
Keto is a proven diet based on science. Another one is intermittent fasting (IF). These diets only work if you stick to them, otherwise they become fads. Keto is a hard one to stick to because it's easy to mess up and get out of ketosis which makes the whole week a waste.
Both of them are basically clever ways to reduce your calorie intake. There is nothing magical happening here. You do Keto, you get satiated sooner, you eat less. You do intermittent fasting, you eat less because you are skipping some meals.
Yes, in the end you still need a caloric deficit, and you can lose weight simply by doing that. However, unlike the caloric deficit, these diets maximize fat loss and minimize muscle loss.
Keto is more complex than just calorie reduction. The theory is that it flips your metabolism into a different state. You are burning different fuel, ketones directly from fat stores.
I don't know if keto is solid science, but the theory cannot be represented as merely calorie reduction.
When you reduce your carbohydrate (direct source for Glucose) to something less than what can be supported by your body, it is going to rely on other sources of nutrients. I don't think my point disagreed with that. You are still going to lose weight.
The only way to verify this is to do large scale controlled experiments. So until that time, we are going back and forth on anecdotes.
Note: In the interests of disclosure, I would like to point that I have tried all three diets and successfully (kept that weight off for more than 3 years) lost weight.
In my case I have not lost weight doing keto, simply because I have never been overweight.
But I have reduced my triglycerides count from 390 to 140, I can program for 6 hours straight instead of just 2, I feel less tired through the day, and I am much healthier than ever.
I'll say this up front - I know very little about nutrition and diet science. But, your comment makes me think:
-You start with caffeine, a known hunger suppressant
-Meat is high protein, which is (I think) fairly confidently known to be what stops your brain thinking that it is hungry.
These two factors, along with internal knowledge that you're attempting to lose weight and may therefore conciously attempt to eat less, should result in you eating less than you otherwise would.
Yet you purposely eat high fat and low nutrition foods such as butter - if you replaced those with other options - vegetables and starchy carbs - and attempted to eat protein-dense but low fat meats such as chicken breast - would you be still losing as much weight and also overall having a healthier body (which is less likely to lead to problems later in life?).
Obviously this article throws some of those assumptions into question, but I think few people would argue that replacing some fat in a (relatively) high fat diet with vegetables would be a negative for your weight loss or future health.
Seconded. From what I have seen in terms of research and experienced, eating vegetables is pretty much the only thing we know for sure is a safe bet. There are tons of controversial things that can be debated, but I have never seen any credible source say "eat less veggies".
This reasoning may feel satisfying, but it is very far from sound scientific reasoning.
> You start with caffeine, a known hunger suppressant
And yet, most of the western world, including most obese people, drinks coffee. So apparently, the "hunger suppression effects" are not relevant, or they would be relevant to everyone.
> internal knowledge that you're attempting to lose weight and may therefore conciously attempt to eat less, should result in you eating less than you otherwise would.
That would also be true for ... just about every person who is trying to lose weight. And the vast majority of them fail spectacularly. So this can't be a reason either.
> Yet you purposely eat high fat and low nutrition foods such as butter
What does "low nutrition" mean, and why would you think butter is not nutritious? "Butter" is not one thing, much like "Meat" is not one thing. European style and US style butters have different nutrient contents. Butter from well treated, grass fed cows contains a lot more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid than grain fed cows that are not treated well (The taste is also different - after I got used to the former, which I can eat by the stick, the latter is disgusting in any form or amount). Butyric acid is seriously good for you (see e.g. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/12/butyric-acid-a... )
> would you be still losing as much weight and also overall having a healthier body (which is less likely to lead to problems later in life?)
Why would you believe that? That it causes problem, or that you would lose as much weight? Calorie in - calorie out is a theory that was never scientifically proved, and was scientifically disproved numerous times.
> Yet you purposely eat high fat and low nutrition foods such as butter
You make it sound like a bad choice, but that's exactly the keto food that gives them results, and the one that makes the difference. High fat food like butter.
Most people subscribed to /r/keto already tried all you advocate, and failed.
Weight is obviously important (obesity is not healthy) but there's far too much focus on weight in my opinion. There are lots of people who are not overweight who are incredibly unhealthy. Many of them don't think they're unhealthy because they're not "fat."
> I feel better than I have for years.
This, and how you look, is far more important.
Are you chronically tired? Do you get winded with modest exertion? Can you lift a modestly heavy object? Do you have bags under your eyes? Do you see definition in certain muscle groups?
The science of diet is unsettled. Medical science is always changing. There are few one-size-fits-all answers. But you can start to get a pretty good sense of your overall health and well-being by paying attention to how you feel and looking at your body in a mirror on a regular basis.
While I'm skeptical of the ketogenic diet stuff, what I have noticed is that the people on ketogenic diets suddenly eats lots less carbs. For many people, dropping carbs drops something like 40-70% of their dietary calories, so it is hard to work out what is due to ketogenic and what is due to dramatically fewer calories.
The irony of the headline is that even the article itself is wrong.
"A 2004 review of the evidence said that while CLA seemed to benefit animals, there was a lack of good evidence of human health benefits, despite the many claims made for it."
Damned by faint praise - when a review says 'more studies are needed', they mean 'you haven't proved a damn thing yet'.
That's essentially the default conclusion of a review study, lack of good evidence means any claim at all is bogus. CLA could be a stone cold killer, or it could be Lazarus juice, but there's no way to tell from the current state of affairs.
As such, the article is incorrect when it says CLA does X, where X is anything.
Fair enough. I can understand the article's bend, though. Basically, that beats a lot of what has passed as official health advice; where not only were the claims unproven, the evidence was usually contrary.
From what I've seen, I think diet science is affected by lobbying by environmentalists and ideological vegetarians. Anything that proves meat is bad for you seems to get the benefit of the doubt.
I'm skeptical of general and unscientific labels like "processed". What does that even mean? We as humans can understand it, yes, but it's too high-level a descriptor to be something our bodies differentiate on.
The factors we analyze in nutrition is calories, macro nutrient content, and micro nutrient content. In terms of obesity, what we really care about is satiation and satiety. These are words that no one talks about, and but get to the core of the issue. If I eat this food, how many calories will I consume before feeling full?(satiation). After eating this food, how long until I feel the need to eat again? (sateity).
Unfortunately the research and measurements of these values is thin. We need to fix that. We already know things like whole milk better provides satiation and sateity than skim milk, and children that drink whole milk actually have less obesity than skim milk drinkers.
If we just measured and labeled foods with a sateity/satiation index (what we really care about), then people would actually have a chance to pick better foods. Right now it is damn near impossible to determine if eating eggs and bacon for breakfast is more likely to drive over eating vs cereal. It can be measured, but we just don't do it.
If you want a good measure then look at the carbs. More carbs approximates to less satiety.
It's all based on where the food sits in terms of its Glycemic Index. High GI foods trigger an insulin release and insulin effectively tells your cells to lower your blood sure levels. Lower blood sugar reduces the feeling of satiety, aka makes you hungry.
By avoiding insulin releases in the first place (sweet/grainy/starchy shit) you'll come out a far healthier person.
From personal experience, I believe that it's not always so simple. When I eat a steak for dinner (rare), I notice that even right after the meal I feel incomplete, and I'm hungry within an hour or two. When I eat a muffin for lunch, I feel content for several hours. (And the muffin has about 2/3 the calories of the steak.)
It's a very interesting contrast of experiences. When I eat a steak I'm not hungry for a long time afterward (whereas a muffin doesn't sate nearly as well). It makes me wonder what causes such a variance between people with regards to how they experience food.
Personally, I don't think about satiation and satiety because hunger hasn't been a big deciding factor in my eating choices for the past 10 years. (I've practically forgotten what it feels like to feel full, and I don't miss it. Thanksgiving is rough some years)
Your veins / arteries produce it as a signaling molecule. When it is produced, your veins (I will use vein to reference both veins and arteries) expand. If you've ever exercised and seen your veins become larger, that is nitric oxide at work.
It also clears out the plaque "pockets" or "cysts" that form in your veins.
If those pockets break open (the very thin inner lining of the vein breaks) and the plaque content gets into your bloodstream, it causes a heart attack because that plaque liquid causes your blood to clot, essentially make a big scab ball in your vein that blood can't get through, effectively depleting all the cells that rely on the blood from getting any oxygen or nutrients, killing the effected cells in minutes / hours if blood flow is not restored.
The problem with fat is that is really slows down nitric oxide production.
If those can randomly form to their produce ABC, or ABD, looking at the quantities above, which are you more likely to have, ABC or ABD?
ABD... Which is not nitric oxide... Which is not what we want!
This is why eating too much fat is not good. It really harms your arteries because you can't produce the stuff that's needed to clean them out and help them expand properly.
Unfortunately, "too much" is a relative term. Considering in this age that 1 table spoon of olive oil is all the oil found in 50 olives... The fat quantities we evolved for are waaaaay too low for what is so readily available now. This is why the MAJORITY of people have atherosclerosis. That is the condition of plaque built up in your veins, which leads to heart attacks, strokes, and your dick not working.
P.S. vegetables increase nitric oxide production (because they contain the "C" molecule)
Up until just over a year ago I was eating well and exercising regularly.
In response to acquaintances continually preaching about how bad carbs were, and because I thought differently (and looked forward to being a bit lazy), I spent last year doing minimal exercise (pretty much none), and eating whatever I liked (excluding fast food chains).
This was a primarily carbohydrate focused diet. I ate pasta several times a week, cereal or its equivalent for breakfast. The only thing I kept my eye on was my fat intake, especially saturated fat.
For that whole year, I went from about 80kg to a whopping 80kg, fluctuating up and down a only few kg throughout the year.
The only time I noticed that I was putting on weight was after a trip overseas where I was eating significant amounts every two to three hours. Even then I only put on 3kg.
Correct portion size is pretty much what I swear by for my unchanging weight.
I haven't exercised in a year for various reasons. I've lost 15 lbs. Since I don't exercise I'm not as hungry and I probably lost some muscle mass as well.
The conclusion I came to years ago was that I should care about how much I eat more than what, so long as I'm filling my core nutritional requirements - doing so I lost 120 lbs.
Even though I know large portion is bad for me, I still get annoyed when I go to a restaurant and get unexpectedly small portion.
So I think the trick is to eat out less, because portion control is much harder, restaurant food is much more caloric. And when you eat dinner at home, eat early, and light.
The article criticizes the standard of evidence provided for mainstream diet advice, and yet they provide absolutely no evidence for their claim that the really important factor is eating natural, unprocessed food.
In case you don't read to the bottom, this is pretty good advice: "avoid processed food".
I don't really understand why in the year 2014 there is still so much conflicting thought around diet. You'd think we'd have a better handle on it by now.
I don't find statement like this very compelling: "there is no convincing evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease". Does that leave open the door for "there is evidence that saturated fats contribute to heart disease"?
This is an interesting question. If you look at the literature the word 'evidence' really means 'observations purported to lead one to the conclusion that ....'. Definitely confusing for the casual reader - and it seems also for the health professionals (as they like to call themselves) specifically those who have egg on their faces over this volte face. Fact is there is nothing new about all this.
As an example it's been noted that countries with a high saturated fat consumption have higher cholesterol levels and high death rates from heart disease. Is this evidence that saturated fats contribute to heart disease? The 2005 Malmo study of 28,000 men and women showed no relationship with cardiovascular disease in men and a statistically insignificant <downward> trend for women.
If you use WHO public data and compare the seven countries with the lowest consumption of saturated fat with the seven countries with the highest consumption you get an interesting result. Every country with the lowest saturated fat consumption has higher rates of heart disease than every country in the group with the highest saturated fat consumption.
Wherever you go from there it's not leading to the conclusion that saturated fat is a major culprit (any biochemical can be linked to a dysfunction if you try hard enough) in heart disease.
I don't honestly think this is all that surprising. All the information on food seems to be on caloric content and the makeup of the food. These studies never seem to account for the fact that genetics, lifestyle, mental health, and emotional well being all play a role in a person's condition. Given the complex nature of the human body, I seriously think we need to take a more holistic approach to these studies; meaning, we need to look at the complete picture in order to understand all the factors that contribute to a person's well being.
101 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadSo, pretty much get a balanced diet and do not overeat.
From the intro on Wikipedia: According to Edmund Searles in his article "Food and the Making of Modern Inuit Identities," they consume this type of diet because a mostly meat diet is "effective in keeping the body warm, making the body strong, keeping the body fit, and even making that body healthy".
Switching to a vegetarian diet, or even to a meat that consumes less resources to produce[3], drastically reduces one's environmental impact.[2]
Meat consumption also has direct fiscal impacts by way of the increased cost of treatment for those that consume meat.
If the price of grain increases because of an increased demand for meat then the world's poor will be the ones most negatively impacted.[4]
Disclaimer: I currently consume all forms of meat, including beef.
[1] https://woods.stanford.edu/environmental-venture-projects/co...
[2] http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS09-05.pdf
[3] http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-80...
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.htm...
Also health and lifespan are not the same thing.
I believe that I it made clear that this is not the case. Your view is myopic and selfish, as it ignores the very real effects that a meat-eater diet has on other humans and the environment.
I did not imply that health and lifespan are the same, and I even addressed them separately.
My beliefs are based in well-documented evidence. Eating meat has a strong positive correlation with increased healthcare costs.[1] Whether or not meat has a negative impact on health only has a bearing on the costs of healthcare for meat-eaters, which is a minor point that I mentioned as an aside. It does not have a bearing on the environmental impacts of a meat-eater diet.
You are nitpicking minor details of my post. Perhaps instead of vaguely implying that I'm mistaken you should produce evidence that contradicts me.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2012/03/12/bad-news-...
Is it above or below overpopulation?
Does not look like it. Humanity and Meat production have scaled pretty well in the 20th century. And we have way less food shortages that we have ever had before.
What you eat depends on what you can get from the land you live in. You can't grow much above 4,000 meters or near the arctic, obviously. Indians are mostly vegetarian because you can grow alot in India, the much of the rest of the world isn't so lucky (I always crave veggies whenever I tour in high country because they are so unavailable).
"mostly"? I would love to know where this statistic was pulled from? Personal experience living in India for 5 years suggests that only Brahmin Hindus and a few other castes are purely vegetarian. Every one else eats meat albeit not as frequently as Americans. Wikipedia stats suggests 20-40% (a huge variance).
The semantics police are out in full force today :) BTW, The Microsoft cafeteria in Bangalore is pure veg.
When I was working in Delhi, the office canteen offer only veg food 4 days a week, with an optional meat item for a small surcharge on Fridays only. Down south, 100% veg food in restaurants is pretty much the rule, not the exception, although it's not hard to find fish/meat if you look.
Also, a good Indian friend of mine is nearly 100% vegetarian, except that every now and then he gets a craving for a cheeseburger. That's "mostly vegetarian" in my book.
...and getting back to the health thing, it's kind of striking how many obese Indians are Brahmins, who may keep veg but like to slather everything in ghee (clarified butter).
Vegetarianism != Healthy. A diet high in protein/fat doesn't necessarily have a causal link with weight increase. The problem is eating beyond what your BMR/TDEE is. A large portion of Indian food is calorifically rich, e.g. bowls of rice and flat breads.
yes... and so different groups of people were under different pressures. So when oneeyedpigeon said "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.", and you responded mentioning the Inuits, I decided to remind you that that's not relevant. You haven't made a counterargument to the claim that you should be eating mostly plants. A given person's ancestors were probably not under the same sort of pressure to consume meats.
Eat a wide range of minimally processed foods avoiding anything your allergic to. Eat animals not just fat and meat. Things like brains, bone marrow, intestines, cartilage, and liver are all part of a nutritious diet. Again, eat most of the plant not just the most high energy parts. But also a wide range of plants and plant types potato's, rice, soy, and grains are just the tip of the iceberg.
Remember if your not starving you don't need to focus on maximizing energy consumption.
It's not. It's minimalistic, it's insufficient, but it is in no way misleading: following this advice is invariably better than not following it. Your criticism doesn't disagree in any way.
Are you sure you replied to the right comment? Ninja edit, maybe?
http://michaelpollan.com/books/the-omnivores-dilemma/
Question begging.
> Not too much.
Question begging.
> Mostly plants.
Actual recommendation, although vague and unsupported.
• Eat food: real, minimally processed produce, grains, or meats. As opposed to highly-processed, vaguely food-like substances.
• Not too much: addresses the point that, at least as concerns obesity, quantity is crucial. So get that quantity right.
• Mostly plants: here arguments vary, but Pollan's big on vegetables (less so grains and such), and the complex compounds, many apparently helpful, they provide.
His books are quite a delight to read. I recommend them strongly.
Should saturated fat make up 1% or 30% of your calories? Should processed carbs and/or high-starch vegetables make up 5% or 50% of your calories? Should meat make up 0%, 10%, 40%, or 80% of your calories?
(Because remember, vegetables like broccoli, kale, tomatoes, carrots, and so on, while they provide essential nutrients, don't contribute meaningfully to your calorie intake.)
You might want to say, well, just put everything between 20-40%, isn't that balanced? But we used to think that trans fats were part of a balanced diet, a healthy replacement for saturated fats. Now we realize they're basically poison. Some people are coming to the same realization about processed carbs, high-starch vegetables like modern varieties of potato, and sugar.
I know that saying "well, just eat a balanced diet" is the most common response to new nutritional research. But it's actually a harmful attitude, because it trivializes what is arguably the most important public health issue today in America.
I feel like it means to simply eat food in moderation. People who are severely obese aren't obese because they eat slightly too much saturated fat or eat a few extra potato chips beyond the recommended serving. Who otherwise have great diets except for a mixup here and there with their ratios.
We're talking about many people who have seriously unhealthy eating habits that are extremely high in things like saturated fat, sugar and sodium. We're not talking about people who are eating 30% of their calories from fat when it should be 20%, we're talking about people who are absolutely blowing the recommended daily limits for fat and sugar out of the water by crushing soft drinks and making junk food a huge portion of their diet.
Some things aren't within our control. There are people who will surely get their ratios "perfect" (whatever perfect is) and still die an early death of heart disease because of their genetics.
Well, that's good science. I'm sure there were some more worthwhile ideas in there, but that one made me wonder.
This article's advice that we should disregard official recommendations and eat as low-tech as possible without any kind of scientific inquiry is complete horseshit. Classic Luddite homeopathy conspiracy theory horseshit.
On the other hand, there's absolutely no excuse for the amount of sugar and salt in products that absolutely don't need them. Why can't we have healthy frozen and microwave ready food? Because the marketing execs say there's no overlap between the demographics that want healthy and the ones that want fast food. Well, at least we'll soon have Soylent.
Calling nutrition research "scientific" is kind of generous. But not as generous as calling the onerous government guidelines that reshaped the food production industry and drove obesity to epidemic proportions in the USA "recommendations".
Is it because the field is rife with pseudoscience anyway, and that by the time this has been filtered through a layer of ignorant* journalists, the advice we get left with is mostly nonsense?
*I don't mean that in an insulting way, I'm ignorant about a lot of stuff outside my field
The meta analysis made no control for dietary alternatives, and it is hard to argue that, given the sociological factors involved (ie - middle americans), that the participants in the studies didn't simply replace their saturated fats with carbs. In other words, they just replaced an excess of one bad thing with an excess of another.
There was an in depth article about this, that I can't seem to find now. If you know what I'm talking about, please post it.
I start each day with coffee mixed with butter and MCT oil. I eat meat for lunch. I eat meat for dinner.
I feel better than I have for years.
http://reddit.com/r/keto is a reasonable place to get started.
I'm on keto, but I use DIY Soylent and vegan protein sources for it. Not because I don't like meat (I LOVE bacon), but because I'm lazy.
Keto is wonderful because it keeps your blood sugar level low, which helps burn fat and prevents your body from storing excess energy as fat. Don't overdue the red meat though; there is a body of evidence that shows that red meat can cause cancer through the digestive track.
Also, much love for /r/keto. It's a wonderful community. Keto on!
http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/quidnycs-ketofood-for-ongoing-...
For every fad diet, there are people who lost significant weight using that diet. It's how they get to be fads (and how you can know that the biological rationales are bunk).
This [ http://imgur.com/NJlqag1 ], was thru increased self-awareness which I jump-started by counting calories for the first couple months. (194 is the top of what the BMI chart calls "normal")
If you're mindful of what you're doing, then you'll only eat when hungry (and enough to not be hungry) rather than mindlessly snacking all day or mindlessly continuing to eat at meals until the food and/or conversation runs out. If you learn to pay attention (just enough to keep your senses calibrated), your body is fairly good at telling you what you need.
So anything that helps you stay mindful will help you lose weight.
I don't know if keto is solid science, but the theory cannot be represented as merely calorie reduction.
The only way to verify this is to do large scale controlled experiments. So until that time, we are going back and forth on anecdotes.
Note: In the interests of disclosure, I would like to point that I have tried all three diets and successfully (kept that weight off for more than 3 years) lost weight.
But I have reduced my triglycerides count from 390 to 140, I can program for 6 hours straight instead of just 2, I feel less tired through the day, and I am much healthier than ever.
Keto is not a fad diet to me, it is a lifestyle.
-You start with caffeine, a known hunger suppressant
-Meat is high protein, which is (I think) fairly confidently known to be what stops your brain thinking that it is hungry.
These two factors, along with internal knowledge that you're attempting to lose weight and may therefore conciously attempt to eat less, should result in you eating less than you otherwise would.
Yet you purposely eat high fat and low nutrition foods such as butter - if you replaced those with other options - vegetables and starchy carbs - and attempted to eat protein-dense but low fat meats such as chicken breast - would you be still losing as much weight and also overall having a healthier body (which is less likely to lead to problems later in life?).
Obviously this article throws some of those assumptions into question, but I think few people would argue that replacing some fat in a (relatively) high fat diet with vegetables would be a negative for your weight loss or future health.
> You start with caffeine, a known hunger suppressant
And yet, most of the western world, including most obese people, drinks coffee. So apparently, the "hunger suppression effects" are not relevant, or they would be relevant to everyone.
> internal knowledge that you're attempting to lose weight and may therefore conciously attempt to eat less, should result in you eating less than you otherwise would.
That would also be true for ... just about every person who is trying to lose weight. And the vast majority of them fail spectacularly. So this can't be a reason either.
> Yet you purposely eat high fat and low nutrition foods such as butter
What does "low nutrition" mean, and why would you think butter is not nutritious? "Butter" is not one thing, much like "Meat" is not one thing. European style and US style butters have different nutrient contents. Butter from well treated, grass fed cows contains a lot more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid than grain fed cows that are not treated well (The taste is also different - after I got used to the former, which I can eat by the stick, the latter is disgusting in any form or amount). Butyric acid is seriously good for you (see e.g. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/12/butyric-acid-a... )
> would you be still losing as much weight and also overall having a healthier body (which is less likely to lead to problems later in life?)
Why would you believe that? That it causes problem, or that you would lose as much weight? Calorie in - calorie out is a theory that was never scientifically proved, and was scientifically disproved numerous times.
You make it sound like a bad choice, but that's exactly the keto food that gives them results, and the one that makes the difference. High fat food like butter.
Most people subscribed to /r/keto already tried all you advocate, and failed.
Keto works for them, don't try to disregard that.
Weight is obviously important (obesity is not healthy) but there's far too much focus on weight in my opinion. There are lots of people who are not overweight who are incredibly unhealthy. Many of them don't think they're unhealthy because they're not "fat."
> I feel better than I have for years.
This, and how you look, is far more important.
Are you chronically tired? Do you get winded with modest exertion? Can you lift a modestly heavy object? Do you have bags under your eyes? Do you see definition in certain muscle groups?
The science of diet is unsettled. Medical science is always changing. There are few one-size-fits-all answers. But you can start to get a pretty good sense of your overall health and well-being by paying attention to how you feel and looking at your body in a mirror on a regular basis.
200 to 150 would be much more impressive than 300 to 250.
"A 2004 review of the evidence said that while CLA seemed to benefit animals, there was a lack of good evidence of human health benefits, despite the many claims made for it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid
That's essentially the default conclusion of a review study, lack of good evidence means any claim at all is bogus. CLA could be a stone cold killer, or it could be Lazarus juice, but there's no way to tell from the current state of affairs.
As such, the article is incorrect when it says CLA does X, where X is anything.
"Nucleotide excision repair gene polymorphisms, meat intake and colon cancer risk." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24607854
~6600 results; I checked the first three pages of papers. All came to the conclusion that red meat causes a higher incidence of cancer.
Unfortunately the research and measurements of these values is thin. We need to fix that. We already know things like whole milk better provides satiation and sateity than skim milk, and children that drink whole milk actually have less obesity than skim milk drinkers.
If we just measured and labeled foods with a sateity/satiation index (what we really care about), then people would actually have a chance to pick better foods. Right now it is damn near impossible to determine if eating eggs and bacon for breakfast is more likely to drive over eating vs cereal. It can be measured, but we just don't do it.
It's all based on where the food sits in terms of its Glycemic Index. High GI foods trigger an insulin release and insulin effectively tells your cells to lower your blood sure levels. Lower blood sugar reduces the feeling of satiety, aka makes you hungry.
By avoiding insulin releases in the first place (sweet/grainy/starchy shit) you'll come out a far healthier person.
Any source you can refer to ?
doesn't matter what i eat.
i'm never hungry.
and i'm an athlete who eats a caloric deficit.
Look into Nitric Oxide.
Your veins / arteries produce it as a signaling molecule. When it is produced, your veins (I will use vein to reference both veins and arteries) expand. If you've ever exercised and seen your veins become larger, that is nitric oxide at work.
It also clears out the plaque "pockets" or "cysts" that form in your veins.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2050816/
If those pockets break open (the very thin inner lining of the vein breaks) and the plaque content gets into your bloodstream, it causes a heart attack because that plaque liquid causes your blood to clot, essentially make a big scab ball in your vein that blood can't get through, effectively depleting all the cells that rely on the blood from getting any oxygen or nutrients, killing the effected cells in minutes / hours if blood flow is not restored.
The problem with fat is that is really slows down nitric oxide production.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21903940
Because to produce nitric oxide, your veins need a couple ingredients. Lets call them A, B, and C.
A + B + C = Nitric Oxide
A B and C fit together like a puzzle. Well, fat has a molecule, lets call it D. That can ALSO combine with A and B to produce something else.
So picture this:
AAAAAA BBBBBBB CCCCCCCCCC DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
If those can randomly form to their produce ABC, or ABD, looking at the quantities above, which are you more likely to have, ABC or ABD?
ABD... Which is not nitric oxide... Which is not what we want!
This is why eating too much fat is not good. It really harms your arteries because you can't produce the stuff that's needed to clean them out and help them expand properly.
Unfortunately, "too much" is a relative term. Considering in this age that 1 table spoon of olive oil is all the oil found in 50 olives... The fat quantities we evolved for are waaaaay too low for what is so readily available now. This is why the MAJORITY of people have atherosclerosis. That is the condition of plaque built up in your veins, which leads to heart attacks, strokes, and your dick not working.
P.S. vegetables increase nitric oxide production (because they contain the "C" molecule)
P.P.S. you should buy L-Arginine (the "C" molecule) from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013OVX3U/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... (affiliate link, I am thinking of selling it and this post is my MVP sales pitch).
This was a primarily carbohydrate focused diet. I ate pasta several times a week, cereal or its equivalent for breakfast. The only thing I kept my eye on was my fat intake, especially saturated fat. For that whole year, I went from about 80kg to a whopping 80kg, fluctuating up and down a only few kg throughout the year. The only time I noticed that I was putting on weight was after a trip overseas where I was eating significant amounts every two to three hours. Even then I only put on 3kg.
Correct portion size is pretty much what I swear by for my unchanging weight.
So I think the trick is to eat out less, because portion control is much harder, restaurant food is much more caloric. And when you eat dinner at home, eat early, and light.
I don't really understand why in the year 2014 there is still so much conflicting thought around diet. You'd think we'd have a better handle on it by now.
I don't find statement like this very compelling: "there is no convincing evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease". Does that leave open the door for "there is evidence that saturated fats contribute to heart disease"?
As an example it's been noted that countries with a high saturated fat consumption have higher cholesterol levels and high death rates from heart disease. Is this evidence that saturated fats contribute to heart disease? The 2005 Malmo study of 28,000 men and women showed no relationship with cardiovascular disease in men and a statistically insignificant <downward> trend for women.
If you use WHO public data and compare the seven countries with the lowest consumption of saturated fat with the seven countries with the highest consumption you get an interesting result. Every country with the lowest saturated fat consumption has higher rates of heart disease than every country in the group with the highest saturated fat consumption.
Wherever you go from there it's not leading to the conclusion that saturated fat is a major culprit (any biochemical can be linked to a dysfunction if you try hard enough) in heart disease.