4 ms·

Any reason to regard this as anything more than yet another crankish diet? The usual signs are there (extravagant claims, "for the details, read my book", "pate

by gjm11 17y ago

Any reason to regard this as anything more than yet another crankish diet? The usual signs are there (extravagant claims, "for the details, read my book", "patent pending", distinct shortage of actual science).

ca98am79 17y ago
The list of nutrient dense foods is interesting. I actually posted this with a different title "A nice list of nutrient dense foods" It's nice to know what are the most nutrient dense foods, because they are the healthiest - they have the highest nutrient/calorie ratio.
- jmillikin 17y ago
  If you want a list of healthy foods, consult a doctor or scientist. Eating according to this guy's list is a quick way to severe health problems.
  - ca98am79 17y ago
    Are you kidding? Eating a lot of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, and nuts are not going to give you severe health problems. It will most likely make you a lot more healthy.
  - zargon 17y ago
    Joel Fuhrman is a doctor.
- gjm11 17y ago
  Are you saying that "healthiest" means "highest nutrient/calorie ratio" (which seems like a very strange definition) or that the healthiest foods in some other sense (e.g., such that eating more of them tends to help you live longer) turn out to be precisely those with highest nutrient/calorie ratio (which even Fuhrman doesn't claim -- he says your diet would have too little fat if you tried to eat only those foods)? It seems to me that trying to measure how "healthy" any given foodstuff is, is fundamentally misguided. A healthy diet is one that delivers the things you need in suitable proportions, and that can never be a matter of just eating more of one set of foods and less of another. Even that is an oversimplification; it may be better to eat some kinds of things together with others, or avoid doing so; or to eat some kinds of things at particular times, or avoid doing so. None of this stuff is anything like perfectly understood. Sure, there are some foodstuffs that we should almost all eat more or less of than we naturally want to because of differences our distant ancestors' environments and ours (e.g., we mostly like eating fat because when energy is scarce it's a good thing to eat, but these days in the affluent west this is hardly ever anyone's problem), but that's not really a matter of those things being "healthy" or "unhealthy", it's a matter of our calibration being imperfect.
jmillikin 17y ago
None at all. I stopped reading when he ranked iceberg lettuce as over four times healthier than chicken and beef. Not to mention the telltale "toxins" which are always mentioned (but never enumerated) in this sort of scam.
- ca98am79 17y ago
  It is a fact that iceberg lettuce has over 4 times more nutrients per calorie than chicken and beef. He does say "Keep in mind that nutrient density scoring is not the only factor that determines good health. For example, if we only ate foods with a high nutrient density score our diet would be too low in fat."
  - lmkg 17y ago
    So iceberg lettuce "wins" by being low in calories, rather than high in nutrients. It's a common problem with any metric involving division. Salt water completely breaks it. Anyways, are nutrients even a more-is-better sort of thing, or is nutrition more or less threshold-based?
- stcredzero 17y ago
  None at all. I stopped reading when he ranked iceberg lettuce as over four times healthier than chicken and beef. That's a straw man inadvertently created from a cursory reading of the website. It's not his position that maximizing nutrient density is equivalent to eating a healthy diet. Not to mention the telltale "toxins" which are always mentioned (but never enumerated) in this sort of scam. I agree that this should be taken as a sign of a scam. (Though it is unfortunately so common, that it's entered the realm of "fluffly marketdroid language.")
zargon 17y ago
If you do read his Eat to Live book, it is cited with hundreds of references in the endnotes. I pulled a few dozen when I was near a university and they were fairly well supportive of his points. There was a study comparing weight loss and heart disease indicators between, if I recall correctly, Fuhrman-style diet to Ornish-style diet to AHA recommendations. I'll try to dig up the citation tonight.

by gjm11 17y ago

ca98am79 17y ago

The list of nutrient dense foods is interesting. I actually posted this with a different title "A nice list of nutrient dense foods" It's nice to know what are the most nutrient dense foods, because they are the healthiest - they have the highest nutrient/calorie ratio.

jmillikin 17y ago
If you want a list of healthy foods, consult a doctor or scientist. Eating according to this guy's list is a quick way to severe health problems.
- ca98am79 17y ago
  Are you kidding? Eating a lot of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, and nuts are not going to give you severe health problems. It will most likely make you a lot more healthy.
- zargon 17y ago
  Joel Fuhrman is a doctor.
gjm11 17y ago
Are you saying that "healthiest" means "highest nutrient/calorie ratio" (which seems like a very strange definition) or that the healthiest foods in some other sense (e.g., such that eating more of them tends to help you live longer) turn out to be precisely those with highest nutrient/calorie ratio (which even Fuhrman doesn't claim -- he says your diet would have too little fat if you tried to eat only those foods)? It seems to me that trying to measure how "healthy" any given foodstuff is, is fundamentally misguided. A healthy diet is one that delivers the things you need in suitable proportions, and that can never be a matter of just eating more of one set of foods and less of another. Even that is an oversimplification; it may be better to eat some kinds of things together with others, or avoid doing so; or to eat some kinds of things at particular times, or avoid doing so. None of this stuff is anything like perfectly understood. Sure, there are some foodstuffs that we should almost all eat more or less of than we naturally want to because of differences our distant ancestors' environments and ours (e.g., we mostly like eating fat because when energy is scarce it's a good thing to eat, but these days in the affluent west this is hardly ever anyone's problem), but that's not really a matter of those things being "healthy" or "unhealthy", it's a matter of our calibration being imperfect.

jmillikin 17y ago

None at all. I stopped reading when he ranked iceberg lettuce as over four times healthier than chicken and beef. Not to mention the telltale "toxins" which are always mentioned (but never enumerated) in this sort of scam.

ca98am79 17y ago
It is a fact that iceberg lettuce has over 4 times more nutrients per calorie than chicken and beef. He does say "Keep in mind that nutrient density scoring is not the only factor that determines good health. For example, if we only ate foods with a high nutrient density score our diet would be too low in fat."
- lmkg 17y ago
  So iceberg lettuce "wins" by being low in calories, rather than high in nutrients. It's a common problem with any metric involving division. Salt water completely breaks it. Anyways, are nutrients even a more-is-better sort of thing, or is nutrition more or less threshold-based?
stcredzero 17y ago
None at all. I stopped reading when he ranked iceberg lettuce as over four times healthier than chicken and beef. That's a straw man inadvertently created from a cursory reading of the website. It's not his position that maximizing nutrient density is equivalent to eating a healthy diet. Not to mention the telltale "toxins" which are always mentioned (but never enumerated) in this sort of scam. I agree that this should be taken as a sign of a scam. (Though it is unfortunately so common, that it's entered the realm of "fluffly marketdroid language.")

zargon 17y ago

If you do read his Eat to Live book, it is cited with hundreds of references in the endnotes. I pulled a few dozen when I was near a university and they were fairly well supportive of his points. There was a study comparing weight loss and heart disease indicators between, if I recall correctly, Fuhrman-style diet to Ornish-style diet to AHA recommendations. I'll try to dig up the citation tonight.