4 ms·

Via negativa: Avoid what is most likely bad (food processed by industry, sodas, excess sugar, excess salt, trans fat and food blogs). Beyond that there isn't to

by qwtel 11y ago

Via negativa: Avoid what is most likely bad (food processed by industry, sodas, excess sugar, excess salt, trans fat and food blogs). Beyond that there isn't too much you can do.

noondip 11y ago
So avoid all animal products, then? Trans fat are found in all of them.
- lnufnu 11y ago
  Naturally occurring trans fats (vaccenic acid and conjugated linoleic acid) occur in trace amounts in animal products. They also have been shown to possibly be beneficial for LDL and triglycerides, while hydrogenated oil is harmful.
  - noondip 11y ago
    Source for that? The top result for me was the following review. > Published data suggest that all fatty acids with a double bond in the trans configuration [produced either by industrial hydrogenation or by biohydrogenation in the rumens of cows and sheep] raise the ratio of plasma LDL to HDL cholesterol. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20209147 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20209147
    - DrScump 11y ago
      Source for that? Um, here's one that you already knew about from the referenced prior thread: Effects of Ruminant trans Fatty Acids on Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer: A Comprehensive Review of Epidemiological, Clinical, and Mechanistic Studies (Adv Nutr July 2011 Adv Nutr vol. 2: 332-354, 2011
      - noondip 11y ago
        Have you got any studies not funded by the dairy industry to share?
- DrScump 11y ago
  This is the third time in a month (that I've noticed) that noondip has repeated this falsehood knowing that it is false. TL;DR: dairy products have small amounts of naturally-occurring transfat that have no established adverse effects, while meats have essentially none. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10858482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10858482 for the previous example of refutation (and it has a link to the one before that, as well as references). The one reference he posts there refers to dairy, not meat.
  - noondip 11y ago
    Have a look at what the National Academy of Sciences - the prestigious and nonpartisan non-profit scientific community in the country - has to say about Trans Fat: > Trans fatty acids are not essential and provide no known benefit to human health. Therefore, no AI or RDA is set. As with saturated fatty acids, there is a positive linear trend between trans fatty acid intake and LDL cholesterol concentration, and therefore increased risk of CHD. A UL is not set for trans fatty acids because any incremental increase in trans fatty acid intake increases CHD risk. I know you disagree, but so far you've only cited one dairy industry-funded paper to support the conclusion TFAs are safe - even beneficial - for human consumption. I honestly want to know whether you have more compelling evidence, or are just defending unhealthy fat for some ideological reason.
- Shorel 11y ago
  Trans fats are way more prevalent in hydrogenated vegetable oils that try to look like animal fat replacements. They are simply much cheaper to manufacture. Example: margarine 15g v.s. real butter 3.3g for each 100g of product.
  - noondip 11y ago
    Agreed, hydrogenated oils - whether from vegetables or ruminants - all seem to have adverse health effects. But to keep things in perspective, margarine is #3 in the list of top sources, after (presumably non-vegan) baked goods and animal products - http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/html/chapter6.htm http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/html/ch...
oilywater 11y ago
If one wants to embark on a moral argument present in the theory of evolution, where no organism is more special than the other, then you'd probably avoid consumption of food coming from animals, or you'd be setting yourself up to some contradiction in the brain. :D Or, if one wants to embark on a moral argument that humans are special and that life is worth conserving. Then, you'd probably also want to not include animal products, due to high pollution implicitly killing off humans, and animal agriculture being one of the causes of global warming. Or, if one feels he's compassionate, good, then murder is not the way, or maybe humane murder is? Is there such a thing as humane murder? Or, one wants to embark on a moral argument that in this universe that is so vast, it's entirely meaningless to ponder over ethics, and morality, and that you just want to maximize your utility function, which includes enjoying the flavor of baked flesh, cooked embryos and sweet vomit. Then, it doesn't matter at all what you eat, if you feel great.
- DrScump 11y ago
  The viewpoint of dairy-as-unnatural gets tricky, as there are parallels in the animal kingdom. For example, ants keep aphids for honeydew just as humans keep animals for dairy products.
  - oilywater 11y ago
    Honeydew isn't tit secretion, it's vomit/shit. And how can a symbiosis of ants and aphids be a parallel for humans and cows. We do not protect cows from their predators, we slit their throats and they know that that's coming. We also do not eat cow's shit. Hilarious parallel. When did we ever in history of our evolution have a need for another mammal's milk? From an evolutionary perspective, from a perspective of natural parallels, it makes no sense. The milk you need is the milk your mother gives you. If you seek calcium there's more of it in parsley, basil, origano per mass than is in milk. If you want iron it's also there, more than there is in some of the available animal flesh. There are also many parallels in the diets of other mammals, 75% of species are herbivore on this planet. If we are seeking parallels in nature to mirror, why are we cherrypicking? 75% herbivores means that genes for plant-based diets are all over the place.
whitie 11y ago
We should be able to do better than that. If there are indications that some foods are burdensome to health, then there should be indications that some foods are beneficial. It is just taking us forever to separate the facts from the persuasions. Anecdotally, the spices Tumeric and Cumin seem to be great tonics for my particular metabolism/diet/lifestyle.
- DrScump 11y ago
  Tumeric and Cumin turmeric and curcumin
  - whitie 11y ago
    No its coincidental. Cuminum cyminum, Brown Cumin - Asian grocery grade, 1g a day.
usrusr 11y ago
I prefer the inverse view: it's not the "bad" food that is unhealthy, it's the lack of "good" food when too much of it is displaced by the "bad". Once the demand for all the required non-energy food components is satisfied it should be perfectly fine to fill the remaining energy balance with whatever junk food available. As I see it, the basic problem is that our "animal brain" food autopilot, which serves us incredibly well with natural food, is easily fooled by state of the art food preparation tricks. If we lack some random nutrient, let's call it foomium, then the autopilot will make foomium-rich food taste good. And food that is engineered to be very tasty to people who are in "acquire foomium" mode (amongst many others), despite not containing any of it. If we have a candy bar completely devoid of foomium, but that successfully tricks the foomium-deprived body to trigger the "this gives me foomium" heuristic, then we will eat quite a lot of it before giving in to overeating. Repeat this a few times and you will see that industrially processed food is unhealthy. Not because of what it contains, but because of what is missing (but what is cleverly pretended to be there, as a side effect of successful engineering for tastyness)

by qwtel 11y ago

Via negativa: Avoid what is most likely bad (food processed by industry, sodas, excess sugar, excess salt, trans fat and food blogs). Beyond that there isn't too much you can do.

noondip 11y ago

So avoid all animal products, then? Trans fat are found in all of them.

lnufnu 11y ago
Naturally occurring trans fats (vaccenic acid and conjugated linoleic acid) occur in trace amounts in animal products. They also have been shown to possibly be beneficial for LDL and triglycerides, while hydrogenated oil is harmful.
- noondip 11y ago
  Source for that? The top result for me was the following review. > Published data suggest that all fatty acids with a double bond in the trans configuration [produced either by industrial hydrogenation or by biohydrogenation in the rumens of cows and sheep] raise the ratio of plasma LDL to HDL cholesterol. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20209147 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20209147
  - DrScump 11y ago
    Source for that? Um, here's one that you already knew about from the referenced prior thread: Effects of Ruminant trans Fatty Acids on Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer: A Comprehensive Review of Epidemiological, Clinical, and Mechanistic Studies (Adv Nutr July 2011 Adv Nutr vol. 2: 332-354, 2011
    - noondip 11y ago
      Have you got any studies not funded by the dairy industry to share?
DrScump 11y ago
This is the third time in a month (that I've noticed) that noondip has repeated this falsehood knowing that it is false. TL;DR: dairy products have small amounts of naturally-occurring transfat that have no established adverse effects, while meats have essentially none. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10858482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10858482 for the previous example of refutation (and it has a link to the one before that, as well as references). The one reference he posts there refers to dairy, not meat.
- noondip 11y ago
  Have a look at what the National Academy of Sciences - the prestigious and nonpartisan non-profit scientific community in the country - has to say about Trans Fat: > Trans fatty acids are not essential and provide no known benefit to human health. Therefore, no AI or RDA is set. As with saturated fatty acids, there is a positive linear trend between trans fatty acid intake and LDL cholesterol concentration, and therefore increased risk of CHD. A UL is not set for trans fatty acids because any incremental increase in trans fatty acid intake increases CHD risk. I know you disagree, but so far you've only cited one dairy industry-funded paper to support the conclusion TFAs are safe - even beneficial - for human consumption. I honestly want to know whether you have more compelling evidence, or are just defending unhealthy fat for some ideological reason.
Shorel 11y ago
Trans fats are way more prevalent in hydrogenated vegetable oils that try to look like animal fat replacements. They are simply much cheaper to manufacture. Example: margarine 15g v.s. real butter 3.3g for each 100g of product.
- noondip 11y ago
  Agreed, hydrogenated oils - whether from vegetables or ruminants - all seem to have adverse health effects. But to keep things in perspective, margarine is #3 in the list of top sources, after (presumably non-vegan) baked goods and animal products - http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/html/chapter6.htm http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/html/ch...

oilywater 11y ago

If one wants to embark on a moral argument present in the theory of evolution, where no organism is more special than the other, then you'd probably avoid consumption of food coming from animals, or you'd be setting yourself up to some contradiction in the brain. :D Or, if one wants to embark on a moral argument that humans are special and that life is worth conserving. Then, you'd probably also want to not include animal products, due to high pollution implicitly killing off humans, and animal agriculture being one of the causes of global warming. Or, if one feels he's compassionate, good, then murder is not the way, or maybe humane murder is? Is there such a thing as humane murder? Or, one wants to embark on a moral argument that in this universe that is so vast, it's entirely meaningless to ponder over ethics, and morality, and that you just want to maximize your utility function, which includes enjoying the flavor of baked flesh, cooked embryos and sweet vomit. Then, it doesn't matter at all what you eat, if you feel great.

DrScump 11y ago
The viewpoint of dairy-as-unnatural gets tricky, as there are parallels in the animal kingdom. For example, ants keep aphids for honeydew just as humans keep animals for dairy products.
- oilywater 11y ago
  Honeydew isn't tit secretion, it's vomit/shit. And how can a symbiosis of ants and aphids be a parallel for humans and cows. We do not protect cows from their predators, we slit their throats and they know that that's coming. We also do not eat cow's shit. Hilarious parallel. When did we ever in history of our evolution have a need for another mammal's milk? From an evolutionary perspective, from a perspective of natural parallels, it makes no sense. The milk you need is the milk your mother gives you. If you seek calcium there's more of it in parsley, basil, origano per mass than is in milk. If you want iron it's also there, more than there is in some of the available animal flesh. There are also many parallels in the diets of other mammals, 75% of species are herbivore on this planet. If we are seeking parallels in nature to mirror, why are we cherrypicking? 75% herbivores means that genes for plant-based diets are all over the place.

whitie 11y ago

We should be able to do better than that. If there are indications that some foods are burdensome to health, then there should be indications that some foods are beneficial. It is just taking us forever to separate the facts from the persuasions. Anecdotally, the spices Tumeric and Cumin seem to be great tonics for my particular metabolism/diet/lifestyle.

DrScump 11y ago
Tumeric and Cumin turmeric and curcumin
- whitie 11y ago
  No its coincidental. Cuminum cyminum, Brown Cumin - Asian grocery grade, 1g a day.

usrusr 11y ago

I prefer the inverse view: it's not the "bad" food that is unhealthy, it's the lack of "good" food when too much of it is displaced by the "bad". Once the demand for all the required non-energy food components is satisfied it should be perfectly fine to fill the remaining energy balance with whatever junk food available. As I see it, the basic problem is that our "animal brain" food autopilot, which serves us incredibly well with natural food, is easily fooled by state of the art food preparation tricks. If we lack some random nutrient, let's call it foomium, then the autopilot will make foomium-rich food taste good. And food that is engineered to be very tasty to people who are in "acquire foomium" mode (amongst many others), despite not containing any of it. If we have a candy bar completely devoid of foomium, but that successfully tricks the foomium-deprived body to trigger the "this gives me foomium" heuristic, then we will eat quite a lot of it before giving in to overeating. Repeat this a few times and you will see that industrially processed food is unhealthy. Not because of what it contains, but because of what is missing (but what is cleverly pretended to be there, as a side effect of successful engineering for tastyness)