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US government to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol (2015)

257 points by winteriscoming 10y ago

conistonwater 10y ago
The full dietary guidelines being discussed appear to be here: https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/ https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/
empath75 10y ago
There is so much that 'everybody knows' about nutrition that is pure bullshit peddled by farmers, agribusiness and processed food companies. Just one example-- that fat causes heart disease. Pure nonsense pushed by the soda and sugar industry. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-co... Just eat a balanced diet, don't overeat, and don't eat too much processed food and red meat, and you'll probably be fine.
- zerofan 10y ago
  'everybody knows' red meat is bad?
  - quakeguy 10y ago
    Rastafari surely do.
- tree_of_item 10y ago
  "Just do it right" isn't very good advice. And what exactly counts as "processed" food?
  - dade_ 10y ago
    A simple answer is anything with the fibre removed, such as white flour & rice, and with artificial flavours and colours. No risk in eliminating these from your diet...
    - creepydata 10y ago
      There is nothing wrong with artificial flavors,they are chemically identical to natural flavors.
      - kbart 10y ago
        There are when they are combined with worthless food. You wouldn't eat hot dogs or other junk food without artificial flavors.
        Dylan16807 10y ago
        Yes I would. There are junk foods that work fine without any added flavors. Let alone junk foods with natural flavors.
        creepydata 10y ago
        Um... What? I eat plenty of junk food without artificial flavor, especially all the junk food that comes out of my own kitchen. The suggestion was "avoid artificial flavor" (which implies natural flavor is OK) not "avoid added flavor." You're also implying everything with added flavor is junk food. Flavored Seltzer is the only thing that got my husband off of soda. Sure it's acidic due to the carbonation, but other than that it's pretty harmless especially compared to soda. Artificial flavors and natural flavors are exactly the same thing, the only difference is how they are synthesised.
      - dade_ 10y ago
        I didn't say there is anything wrong with artificial flavours. The question was about what is processed food which almost always has artificial flavour and colour. Just a correlation, nothing for you to get upset about.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      I can understand the reasons not to remove fiber. But I'm pretty sure my body doesn't care what color something is.
- SilasX 10y ago
  Great points, they've misled us for so long about-- >Just eat a balanced diet, don't overeat, and don't eat too much processed food and red meat, and you'll probably be fine. Wait, what? Why is the evidence against red meat so much stronger than that against cholesterol or fat? Edit: or processed food for that matter, although I grant that a higher prior as being bad because of how far it is from what we would have eaten in our ancestral environment (depending, of course, on what you count as processing).
- delinka 10y ago
  "Balanced diet" is the terminology that's honestly hard to define. Until we have that definition, "a variety of types of food" seems better to me. Here, let me offer a correction: "Eat a variety of foods, avoiding large amounts of any one thing, and don't overeat; you'll probably be fine."
  - andy_ppp 10y ago
    "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." - Michael Pollan
    - credit_guy 10y ago
      Right. And what do you do if you are hungry after you eat "not too much" ?
      - lkbm 10y ago
        Use different food. If your diet is complex carbs with lots of fiber, you probably won't be hungry after ingesting a decent amount of calories. Most people don't do that (myself included), so instead I add in a lot of protein, which also fills me up reasonably quickly on a per-calorie basis. It's not simply calories that fill you up, so choose the right calories. I can eat a thousand Calories of chocolate chip cookies and still be hungry, but a thousand calories of protein bars or broccoli will usually fill me up reasonably well. (Actually, I've never managed a couple thousand Calories of just broccoli. I usually do 200-300 Calories of broccoli, but that alone does as much as all those cookies for satiety, so I can then eat a filling-but-sane second dinner and be full+healthy.)
      - epmaybe 10y ago
        You do something to satiate yourself. Foods high in fiber help with that, to some extent. It's really a matter of how long we've been overeating. Over time, our body adjusts to accept that as the new norm, or set point for food intake. It just takes more time to sensitize yourself again to less food making you feel "full".
      - naasking 10y ago
- dkbrk 10y ago
  > don't eat too much ... red meat I believe everything else you've said is correct. But the health effects of red meat and dietary saturated fats have not been unequivocally established. There are studies saying it is harmful, there are studies saying it is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef#Health_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef#Health_concerns > The Harvard School of Public Health recommends consumers eat red meat sparingly as it has high levels of undesirable saturated fat.[34] This recommendation is not without controversy, though. Another study from The Harvard School of Public Health appearing in Circulation (journal) found "Consumption of processed meats, but not red meats, is associated with higher incidence of coronary heart disease and diabetes mellitus."[35] > This finding tended to confirm an earlier meta-analysis of the nutritional effects of saturated fat in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which found "[P]rospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease or cardiovascular disease. More data are needed to elucidate whether cardiovascular disease risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat."[36]
- daxorid 10y ago
  And the injustice here is that no nutritionists or agribusiness executives will go to prison for murdering tens of millions of people prematurely. Meanwhile, well, you know, Aaron Swartz.
- 234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
  Fat from animal products greatly increases your cholesterol levels, and high cholesterol levels is the only risk factor for atherosclerosis besides smoking. It's not just red meat either, chicken and fish also increase the risk of chronic disease and all-cause mortality and there is plenty of mechanistic data from numerous studies to back this up. Diet is only bullshit if you're really uninformed and honestly it's a shame that the government is now promoting diets which increase chronic disease risk for some of the biggest killers in the US, heart-disease, cancer, and diabetes.
- sjg007 10y ago
  Sugar does and you can see this in the basic biochemistry of the TCA cycle. Too much sugar gets converted to fat!!
- erikb 10y ago
  Yes, all that info may be b.s. but at the same time the same could be true about the articles who say it's b.s. Why believe one more than the other?
mistermann 10y ago
Interesting, why now I wonder?
pdq 10y ago
Let me know when the government wakes up and inverts the food pyramid, so that breads and grains and carbs are scarce, rather than fats.
- mkautzm 10y ago
  Carbohydrates are not a bad thing and are indeed an important part of health. The current suggested diet doesn't say, 'bread'. It specifically calls out Whole Grains, which a great deal of evidence suggests are a Good Thing. Suggesting that grains, or even carbs, are somehow worse than literal fat is misleading at best, and delusional at it's worst.
  - pdq 10y ago
    I'm referring to the original 1992 food pyramid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#/media/File:USDA_Food_Pyramid.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#/medi... > Fats, oils, sweets: sparingly > Bread, cereal, rice & pasta: 6-11 servings Yes I am in the camp that believe fats and proteins are both much healthier than carbs, and especially refined sugars. The latest nutrition supports low carb diets, as can be seen with Atkins and Keto diets.
    - teach 10y ago
      > The latest nutrition supports low carb diets The "latest nutrition" supports nothing of the sort. Dietitians still recommend you get roughly 50% of your calories from healthy carbs. Source: my wife is a registered dietitian and has a PhD in nutrition.
      - speeder 10y ago
        Not wanting to blast an entire profession, and I am not even the guy you are talking with... But to me, PhD in nutrition doesn't mean much, it is like PhD in underwater basket weaving, I am yet to met a single nutrition professional that could help me, and believe me, I looked really, really hard. In the end the only people that could help me, were endocrionologists, biologists, and other scientists in fields that are not directly relation to nutrition. And the reason for that, is precisely because of that high-carb recommendation, that is just insane, many cultures on earth lived just fine with low, or even zero carbs (extreme example: north-pole inhabitants, that in some places have diets that are 100% meat, organs included, since "regular" meat lacks some nutrients, like Vitamin C). In more tribal places (all over the world too, Africa, Asia, Americas...) hunter tribes also tend to be healthier than farmer tribes (but also tend to have much lower population numbers). And in many places, before FDA push for the vegetable agenda (I am not talking about veganism or vegatarianism, but about FDA constantly defending vegetable based food, including by accepting research that was fraudulent), people would happily eat lots of animal fats and meat, and live just fine. (example: in my country before the 60s, everyone used pork fat to fry stuff, and even make soap, but after vegetable oils became popular, and the government started to give strong subsidies to wheat, obesity, diabetes, etc... exploded, many common people still believe egg and cheese is absolutely evil, and prefer to stuff their faces with artificial sweeteners, soy milk, and salad with enough oily dressing to lubricate a car, than eat some eggs).
blatherard 10y ago
This needs a (2015) added to it.
- Perceptes 10y ago
  February 2015, nonetheless. It's almost two years later. I'd like to hear what developments there have been on the topic since this was published.
- dang 10y ago
  Thanks! Added.
rcavezza 10y ago
<<< The new view on cholesterol in food does not reverse warnings about high levels of “bad” cholesterol in the blood, which have been linked to heart disease. Moreover, some experts warned that people with particular health problems, such as diabetes, should continue to avoid cholesterol-rich diets. <<<The greater danger in this regard, these experts believe, lies not in products such as eggs, shrimp or lobster, which are high in cholesterol, but in too many servings of foods heavy with saturated fats, such as fatty meats, whole milk, and butter. Here is my paraphrased takeaway: Cholesterol you see in your blood results is still bad. Whole milk, butter, and fatty meats is still bad. Foods like eggs, shrimp, and lobster might be good. I don't think this changes any of my mental models. The foods that I always thought of as "probably not great" are still classified as such, according to this article.
- nether 10y ago
  > Whole milk, butter, and fatty meats is still bad You're sure of that? http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/02/12/275376259/the-full-fat-paradox-whole-milk-may-keep-us-lean http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/02/12/275376259/the... My main takeaway: > "Almost every single nutrient imaginable has peer reviewed publications associating it with almost any outcome," John P.A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and statistics at Stanford and one of the harshest critics of nutritional science, has written.
  - ubercore 10y ago
    Even in that article, they say it's just associated with reduced obesity, and saturated fats in dairy are still associated with heart disease.
    - sandGorgon 10y ago
      This is inaccurate. Pubmed studies show that butter is not related to heart disease https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/behindtheheadlines/news/2016-06-30-stop-demonising-butter-say-researchers/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/behindtheheadlines...
mescalito 10y ago
Interesting, for those who enjoy reading (which I guess are probably quite a lot) I'd recommend the big fat surprise[1], a very interesting book about this, which goes way beyond this article. [1]: http://thebigfatsurprise.com/ http://thebigfatsurprise.com/
pcurve 10y ago
Just eat in moderation and try to maintain healthy weight. The last time I checked, average woman in the U.S. is 5'4" but weighs 165lbs; average man clocks in at nearly 200lbs. We can do better.
- sjg007 10y ago
  Sweet I'm above average!! ;)
clarkmoody 10y ago
Wouldn't it be nice if there were more government warnings and less restrictions / regulations? Imagine if the FDA, instead of blocking new drugs for 10 years and $1B, it simply withheld its endorsement until satisfied by the clinical trials. Consumers could then take the government's recommendations into consideration when making a decision and drugs could get to market much faster. The history of medical reversals -- and in this case, nutrition reversal -- shows that the government isn't magic. A whole raft of restrictions could be converted to warnings and recommendations, freeing up industry to innovate and consumers to take a little more responsibility for themselves. Imagine the history of the past few decades if the state had outlawed any foods with more than X% cholesterol. Or trans-fats. Or any of the other food fads over that time. It would have been terrible, especially now that the recommendation is reversed. The whole time, consumers were allowed to factor government warnings into their decisions, but food producers weren't breaking the law by selling foods with (X+1)% cholesterol.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  Drug approvals are currently much better than nutrition studies. Your suggestion of allowing not-known-to-work "medicine" to be sold would return us to the era of patent medicines, which killed a lot of people. You can look at the supplements market to see people dying from a similar policy right now.
  - BurningFrog 10y ago
    Like anything else, you have to look at both costs and benefits of the alternatives. The current extremely tough FDA approval process has the benefit you mention: Fewer people are injured by unsafe drugs. But it also has a big (but harder to observe) cost: If disease X kills 1000 people/year, then each year a cure is delayed kills 1000 people. The main argument against the current system is that it weighs the deaths of people in the first category vastly more than those in the second. How many people the FDA process kills this way is hard to calculate, and you can find wildly different estimates. But most discussion assumes it doesn't even exist...
    - 10y ago
jljljl 10y ago
"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." - Michael Pollan
- jdminhbg 10y ago
  The oft-cited and never-defined Tautology Diet.
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    There is a whole book defining the quote above. It's a very enjoyable read, and reasonably well-cited.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    Saying to eat a "balanced" diet is a tautology. Saying "do whatever, but mostly plants" is not.
kelukelugames 10y ago
My surgeon friend told me medical studies are like the bible. You can find a paper that says something is bad for you and another that says it is good for you. So just believe the one that makes you happier.
- lkbm 10y ago
  You can definitely find contradictory studies. The solution is not to abandon research, but to recognize that A study means very little, unless it's a systematic review or meta-analysis (in which case it's a study of many studies). Don't pick the one study that shows what you want. Pick all the studies and go with whatever the preponderance of evidence suggests. That's science, and it's by far our most effective and reliable way of learning useful and non-obvious truths about the world.
  - singularity2001 10y ago
    that good insight needs to be put in a quotable format
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
known 10y ago
Sounds like US is endorsing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Paradox
234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
This is terrible advice, it is well known that cholesterol and saturated fats found in animal products raise serum cholesterol levels and increase the risk of heart disease and other chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Here's the president of the American College of Cardiology's research, Dr Williams: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/advice-from-a-vegan-cardiologist/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/advice-from-a-vegan...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
d0mdo0ss 10y ago
The sugar industry has a history of lobbying public attention away from sugar and towards cholesterol. It has even enlisted places like Harvard School of Public Health on this task: http://time.com/4485710/sugar-industry-heart-disease-research/ http://time.com/4485710/sugar-industry-heart-disease-researc... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-co...
thomasvarney723 10y ago
I recommend Peter Attia's (currently unfinished) series, "The straight dope on cholesterol". He's a surgeon interested in health and fitness. http://eatingacademy.com/?s=cholesterol http://eatingacademy.com/?s=cholesterol
jordache 10y ago
oh so now butter is bad again? WTF. Can't believe anything the nutritionists put out.
petilon 10y ago
This doesn't go far enough. That there is a link between high cholesterol and heart disease is only a hypotheses, not a scientifically proven fact. Lowering cholesterol does not necessarily lower heart disease. Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27taubes.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27taubes.html Because the link between excessive LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular disease has been so widely accepted, the Food and Drug Administration generally has not required drug companies to prove that cholesterol medicines actually reduce heart attacks before approval. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/business/17drug.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/business/17drug.html Meanwhile drug companies are making billions selling cholesterol lowering medicines called statins. But lowering cholesterol using drugs is not useful. Read more about that here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-04-15/heart-disease-not-about-cholesterol-businessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-04-15/heart-dis... Not only that, these statins are dangerous drugs. Its side effects include loss of short term memory, for example. Read more about that here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-not-dementia-its-your-heart-medication/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-not-dementia-...
- djsumdog 10y ago
  I agree with you. This article also mentions they're focusing on fats/saturated fats; which is also a terrible focus. The real danger is not fat, even saturated/trans-fats, but starches and sugar. The increase in these types of carbohydrates in products like baby formula is actually leading to obesity in infants! Excess sugar can stress arteries and damage them. Cholesterol is carried to these artier by lipids (LDLs and HDLs, which are not actually cholesterol, but proteins that carry it through your bloodstream). If you eat a lot of sugar, cholesterol can build up between the walls of arteries as they fix the damage. They can eventually break down the wall, releasing plaque into the bloodstream and potentially causing heart complications. I highly recommend Dr. Lustig's video (UCTV) to learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM A few years back I switched to a keto normal fat/very low carb (excluding fiber) diet. I've lost weight, gained energy and have felt a lot better. Of course this isn't for everyone. Some people have a body type that lends itself to higher carb intake (I knew a runner who'd eat 30 bananas a week) and as always do your research, consult with your doctor, dietitian, etc. before drastic changes in your diet. It's a common myth that Adkins died of his own diet. He didn't, and Reuters rededicated their column implying that he did. I honestly wonder if the obesity epidemic would have gone down today if the world didn't dismiss his ideas, or the ideas of many nutritionist for decades before him that made similar claims about the dangers of sugar.
kazinator 10y ago
> The greater danger in this regard, these experts believe, lies not in products such as eggs, shrimp or lobster, which are high in cholesterol, but in too many servings of foods heavy with saturated fats, such as fatty meats, whole milk, and butter. Translation: the lobbyists for various polyunsaturated "edible plastics" are currently in the lead.
overgard 10y ago
The USG is frankly incompetent when it comes to this matter. I guess it's happy news that they're not creating more chaos but yay? Hollow victory
known 10y ago
Current reference intake is 300 mg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Reference_Intake#Macronutrients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Reference_Intake#Macro...
hogrammer 10y ago
Most problems that can be preventable with diet are caused by one simple thing: obesity. Simply put down your fork and maintain a proper weight and body-fat percentage and you can eat what you want. We need to start taxing the overweight and obese.
test_pilot 10y ago
Youtube is where most people get their dietary advice now. The most influential diet advice is coming from young attractive healthy looking people. Whatever they're eating seems to be working. Obviously most of these people won the genetic lottery, but they've also nurtured their body correctly with food and exercise. This seems like a much better approach in convincing people what to eat anyway. Look at the results and imitate healthy people if you want to look and stay healthy.
ihaveahadron 10y ago
It's nice that the entire food advice for like 50 was a made up falsehood. Morans
galfarragem 10y ago
I use to look around in a naive way and take my conclusions: - Grandfather, 89, ate everything moderately during his life, mostly organic. He evites fat and bread and walks every day. Low energy person. - Grandmother, passed at 82, cancer. Same diet as my grandfather. Much less exercise though. - Grandmother, 92, ate a lot until 50's, mostly organic, obese. Since then barely eats, mostly vegetables and yogurt. Right weight and good health. No exercise. - Grandfather, passed at 71. Ate more fat than anyone I know. Death by heart attack or stroke. Very energetic person with a lot of exercise. Can you see a pattern? I can't.
- singularity2001 10y ago
  The minimum sample size for any meaningful statistic is 7
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
mtw 10y ago
For those who are curious, the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines is available here https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/resources/2015-2020_Dietary_Guidelines.pdf https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/resources/2015-202... (PDF) Unfortunately it does not highlight the danger of sugar & processed food. Someone can follows these dietary guidelines and still be able to have a high intake of sugar, HCFS, processed food and all sorts of food chemicals (emulsifiers etc.), all prevalent in the american food industry, and get cardiovascular disease. We are not going to reverse the obesity epidemic anytime soon!
- dwc 10y ago
  Dietary guidelines typically self-moderate to something that they think the populace has a chance of adopting. I.e., they don't want people to completely shrug it off as too drastic of a change. I would like to see a different approach: show the actual best diet guidelines, and then explain which partial steps will do the most good. Or something like that. It's better to be up front with what's known and then proceed to harm reduction rather than telling people that these partial steps are where they should end up.
- yellowgatorade 10y ago
  Are there any studies showing that "processed food" is, on its own, dangerous? Or is the inherent danger largely due to the HFCS, sugar, and other items that are usually added in the process?
  - mtw 10y ago
    A few studies https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26514947 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26514947 http://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2016/11/25/thoraxjnl-2016-208375.short?g=w_thorax_ahead_tab http://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2016/11/25/thoraxjnl-201... http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2016/11/05/0008-5472.CAN-16-1359 http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2016/11/05/0... http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/4/8/895.short http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/4/8/895.short https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20479151 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20479151 I am sure there is a meta-analysis somewhere but this would take a bit of time to find
fulldecent 10y ago
This is a link to a non-authoritative source. Could someone please provide a link to the authoritative source so that I may investigate by myself?
pombrand 10y ago
For those of you who still believe it's OK or even good to eat a lot of saturated fats, if you look at the studies it's not much of a controversy:" Whether saturated fat is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a question with numerous controversial views.[1] Although most in the mainstream heart-health, government, and medical communities hold that saturated fat is a risk factor for CVD, some hold contrary beliefs." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascular_disease_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascul... Anecdotally, I've read 50% of people who go on Keto see a huge 2-3x increase in triglycerides and LDL-P (Particle count as measured by NMR) - the #1 risk factor for cardiovascular disease. More LDL particles bouncing around in your arteries = bad. People with a condition that makes them break down more LDL have much less artheroscleriosis: http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa054013 http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa054013 People with a condition that makes them have more LDL particles get more artheroscleriosis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familial_hypercholesterolemia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familial_hypercholesterolemia Read Peter Attila's exposition that goes in detail (eating cholesterol is fine though): http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-part-i http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/the-straight-dope-on-chol... Keto could work, but it's a hyper-pro level high-risk diet requiring frequent blood work and still avoiding saturated fats keeping them primarily monounsaturated which makes it very hard to follow. Plus it sucks for weightlifting.. Surprisingly, very low fat diets might be great for you, it might not be the absolute macronutrient composition that matters, but rather the specifics of the nutrients (GI, fiber, other nutrients etc) and your genetic makeup: https://deniseminger.com/2015/10/06/in-defense-of-low-fat-a-call-for-some-evolution-of-thought-part-1/ https://deniseminger.com/2015/10/06/in-defense-of-low-fat-a-... Scary correlations about saturated fats and neurodegenerative disease therein too. Personally I'm sticking with a "balanced" ~10/45/45 carbs from protein, low GI carb/monounsaturated fat vegan diet - not wanting to risk side effects of any extreme (although I'm having to ensure adequate calcium, K2, D, B12 and DHA and EPA intake - If I didn't find it unethical to eat fish a pescetarian variety would likely be easier/healthier/less gassy). Tip for you vegetarians/vegans: look up low FODMAP foods; foodstuffs low in carbs indigestible in the small intestine which tend to produce more gas.
LargeCompanies 10y ago
Hmmm this was just on the homepage then quickly removed.. top of the page then boom gone? Any reason why this is? Also I've been on statins since 37 after feeling my heart race and not being able to catch my breathe after being with girlfriend at the time. That was some scary stuff and after the statin and change of diet I no longer have those type of bouts anymore. So maybe it's my change in diet (cut out 75% fried food and sugar intake is 50% less) and the statin combined and or maybe the statin is just a placebo and my change is diet helped eliminate those heart racing attacks? I had a lot of those attacks from 37 to about 39...im now 41 and haven't dealt with any such attacks unless I eat a say Five Guys or In and Out.

257 points by winteriscoming 10y ago

The full dietary guidelines being discussed appear to be here: https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/ https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/

empath75 10y ago

There is so much that 'everybody knows' about nutrition that is pure bullshit peddled by farmers, agribusiness and processed food companies. Just one example-- that fat causes heart disease. Pure nonsense pushed by the soda and sugar industry. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-co... Just eat a balanced diet, don't overeat, and don't eat too much processed food and red meat, and you'll probably be fine.

zerofan 10y ago
'everybody knows' red meat is bad?
- quakeguy 10y ago
  Rastafari surely do.
tree_of_item 10y ago
"Just do it right" isn't very good advice. And what exactly counts as "processed" food?
- dade_ 10y ago
  A simple answer is anything with the fibre removed, such as white flour & rice, and with artificial flavours and colours. No risk in eliminating these from your diet...
  - creepydata 10y ago
    There is nothing wrong with artificial flavors,they are chemically identical to natural flavors.
    - kbart 10y ago
      There are when they are combined with worthless food. You wouldn't eat hot dogs or other junk food without artificial flavors.
      - Dylan16807 10y ago
        Yes I would. There are junk foods that work fine without any added flavors. Let alone junk foods with natural flavors.
      - creepydata 10y ago
        Um... What? I eat plenty of junk food without artificial flavor, especially all the junk food that comes out of my own kitchen. The suggestion was "avoid artificial flavor" (which implies natural flavor is OK) not "avoid added flavor." You're also implying everything with added flavor is junk food. Flavored Seltzer is the only thing that got my husband off of soda. Sure it's acidic due to the carbonation, but other than that it's pretty harmless especially compared to soda. Artificial flavors and natural flavors are exactly the same thing, the only difference is how they are synthesised.
    - dade_ 10y ago
      I didn't say there is anything wrong with artificial flavours. The question was about what is processed food which almost always has artificial flavour and colour. Just a correlation, nothing for you to get upset about.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    I can understand the reasons not to remove fiber. But I'm pretty sure my body doesn't care what color something is.
SilasX 10y ago
Great points, they've misled us for so long about-- >Just eat a balanced diet, don't overeat, and don't eat too much processed food and red meat, and you'll probably be fine. Wait, what? Why is the evidence against red meat so much stronger than that against cholesterol or fat? Edit: or processed food for that matter, although I grant that a higher prior as being bad because of how far it is from what we would have eaten in our ancestral environment (depending, of course, on what you count as processing).
delinka 10y ago
"Balanced diet" is the terminology that's honestly hard to define. Until we have that definition, "a variety of types of food" seems better to me. Here, let me offer a correction: "Eat a variety of foods, avoiding large amounts of any one thing, and don't overeat; you'll probably be fine."
- andy_ppp 10y ago
  "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." - Michael Pollan
  - credit_guy 10y ago
    Right. And what do you do if you are hungry after you eat "not too much" ?
    - lkbm 10y ago
      Use different food. If your diet is complex carbs with lots of fiber, you probably won't be hungry after ingesting a decent amount of calories. Most people don't do that (myself included), so instead I add in a lot of protein, which also fills me up reasonably quickly on a per-calorie basis. It's not simply calories that fill you up, so choose the right calories. I can eat a thousand Calories of chocolate chip cookies and still be hungry, but a thousand calories of protein bars or broccoli will usually fill me up reasonably well. (Actually, I've never managed a couple thousand Calories of just broccoli. I usually do 200-300 Calories of broccoli, but that alone does as much as all those cookies for satiety, so I can then eat a filling-but-sane second dinner and be full+healthy.)
    - epmaybe 10y ago
      You do something to satiate yourself. Foods high in fiber help with that, to some extent. It's really a matter of how long we've been overeating. Over time, our body adjusts to accept that as the new norm, or set point for food intake. It just takes more time to sensitize yourself again to less food making you feel "full".
    - naasking 10y ago
dkbrk 10y ago
> don't eat too much ... red meat I believe everything else you've said is correct. But the health effects of red meat and dietary saturated fats have not been unequivocally established. There are studies saying it is harmful, there are studies saying it is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef#Health_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef#Health_concerns > The Harvard School of Public Health recommends consumers eat red meat sparingly as it has high levels of undesirable saturated fat.[34] This recommendation is not without controversy, though. Another study from The Harvard School of Public Health appearing in Circulation (journal) found "Consumption of processed meats, but not red meats, is associated with higher incidence of coronary heart disease and diabetes mellitus."[35] > This finding tended to confirm an earlier meta-analysis of the nutritional effects of saturated fat in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which found "[P]rospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease or cardiovascular disease. More data are needed to elucidate whether cardiovascular disease risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat."[36]
daxorid 10y ago
And the injustice here is that no nutritionists or agribusiness executives will go to prison for murdering tens of millions of people prematurely. Meanwhile, well, you know, Aaron Swartz.
234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
Fat from animal products greatly increases your cholesterol levels, and high cholesterol levels is the only risk factor for atherosclerosis besides smoking. It's not just red meat either, chicken and fish also increase the risk of chronic disease and all-cause mortality and there is plenty of mechanistic data from numerous studies to back this up. Diet is only bullshit if you're really uninformed and honestly it's a shame that the government is now promoting diets which increase chronic disease risk for some of the biggest killers in the US, heart-disease, cancer, and diabetes.
sjg007 10y ago
Sugar does and you can see this in the basic biochemistry of the TCA cycle. Too much sugar gets converted to fat!!
erikb 10y ago
Yes, all that info may be b.s. but at the same time the same could be true about the articles who say it's b.s. Why believe one more than the other?

mistermann 10y ago

Interesting, why now I wonder?

pdq 10y ago

Let me know when the government wakes up and inverts the food pyramid, so that breads and grains and carbs are scarce, rather than fats.

mkautzm 10y ago
Carbohydrates are not a bad thing and are indeed an important part of health. The current suggested diet doesn't say, 'bread'. It specifically calls out Whole Grains, which a great deal of evidence suggests are a Good Thing. Suggesting that grains, or even carbs, are somehow worse than literal fat is misleading at best, and delusional at it's worst.
- pdq 10y ago
  I'm referring to the original 1992 food pyramid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#/media/File:USDA_Food_Pyramid.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#/medi... > Fats, oils, sweets: sparingly > Bread, cereal, rice & pasta: 6-11 servings Yes I am in the camp that believe fats and proteins are both much healthier than carbs, and especially refined sugars. The latest nutrition supports low carb diets, as can be seen with Atkins and Keto diets.
  - teach 10y ago
    > The latest nutrition supports low carb diets The "latest nutrition" supports nothing of the sort. Dietitians still recommend you get roughly 50% of your calories from healthy carbs. Source: my wife is a registered dietitian and has a PhD in nutrition.
    - speeder 10y ago
      Not wanting to blast an entire profession, and I am not even the guy you are talking with... But to me, PhD in nutrition doesn't mean much, it is like PhD in underwater basket weaving, I am yet to met a single nutrition professional that could help me, and believe me, I looked really, really hard. In the end the only people that could help me, were endocrionologists, biologists, and other scientists in fields that are not directly relation to nutrition. And the reason for that, is precisely because of that high-carb recommendation, that is just insane, many cultures on earth lived just fine with low, or even zero carbs (extreme example: north-pole inhabitants, that in some places have diets that are 100% meat, organs included, since "regular" meat lacks some nutrients, like Vitamin C). In more tribal places (all over the world too, Africa, Asia, Americas...) hunter tribes also tend to be healthier than farmer tribes (but also tend to have much lower population numbers). And in many places, before FDA push for the vegetable agenda (I am not talking about veganism or vegatarianism, but about FDA constantly defending vegetable based food, including by accepting research that was fraudulent), people would happily eat lots of animal fats and meat, and live just fine. (example: in my country before the 60s, everyone used pork fat to fry stuff, and even make soap, but after vegetable oils became popular, and the government started to give strong subsidies to wheat, obesity, diabetes, etc... exploded, many common people still believe egg and cheese is absolutely evil, and prefer to stuff their faces with artificial sweeteners, soy milk, and salad with enough oily dressing to lubricate a car, than eat some eggs).

blatherard 10y ago

This needs a (2015) added to it.

Perceptes 10y ago
February 2015, nonetheless. It's almost two years later. I'd like to hear what developments there have been on the topic since this was published.
dang 10y ago
Thanks! Added.

rcavezza 10y ago

<<< The new view on cholesterol in food does not reverse warnings about high levels of “bad” cholesterol in the blood, which have been linked to heart disease. Moreover, some experts warned that people with particular health problems, such as diabetes, should continue to avoid cholesterol-rich diets. <<<The greater danger in this regard, these experts believe, lies not in products such as eggs, shrimp or lobster, which are high in cholesterol, but in too many servings of foods heavy with saturated fats, such as fatty meats, whole milk, and butter. Here is my paraphrased takeaway: Cholesterol you see in your blood results is still bad. Whole milk, butter, and fatty meats is still bad. Foods like eggs, shrimp, and lobster might be good. I don't think this changes any of my mental models. The foods that I always thought of as "probably not great" are still classified as such, according to this article.

nether 10y ago
> Whole milk, butter, and fatty meats is still bad You're sure of that? http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/02/12/275376259/the-full-fat-paradox-whole-milk-may-keep-us-lean http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/02/12/275376259/the... My main takeaway: > "Almost every single nutrient imaginable has peer reviewed publications associating it with almost any outcome," John P.A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and statistics at Stanford and one of the harshest critics of nutritional science, has written.
- ubercore 10y ago
  Even in that article, they say it's just associated with reduced obesity, and saturated fats in dairy are still associated with heart disease.
  - sandGorgon 10y ago
    This is inaccurate. Pubmed studies show that butter is not related to heart disease https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/behindtheheadlines/news/2016-06-30-stop-demonising-butter-say-researchers/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/behindtheheadlines...

mescalito 10y ago

Interesting, for those who enjoy reading (which I guess are probably quite a lot) I'd recommend the big fat surprise[1], a very interesting book about this, which goes way beyond this article. [1]: http://thebigfatsurprise.com/ http://thebigfatsurprise.com/

pcurve 10y ago

Just eat in moderation and try to maintain healthy weight. The last time I checked, average woman in the U.S. is 5'4" but weighs 165lbs; average man clocks in at nearly 200lbs. We can do better.

sjg007 10y ago
Sweet I'm above average!! ;)

clarkmoody 10y ago

Wouldn't it be nice if there were more government warnings and less restrictions / regulations? Imagine if the FDA, instead of blocking new drugs for 10 years and $1B, it simply withheld its endorsement until satisfied by the clinical trials. Consumers could then take the government's recommendations into consideration when making a decision and drugs could get to market much faster. The history of medical reversals -- and in this case, nutrition reversal -- shows that the government isn't magic. A whole raft of restrictions could be converted to warnings and recommendations, freeing up industry to innovate and consumers to take a little more responsibility for themselves. Imagine the history of the past few decades if the state had outlawed any foods with more than X% cholesterol. Or trans-fats. Or any of the other food fads over that time. It would have been terrible, especially now that the recommendation is reversed. The whole time, consumers were allowed to factor government warnings into their decisions, but food producers weren't breaking the law by selling foods with (X+1)% cholesterol.

greglindahl 10y ago
Drug approvals are currently much better than nutrition studies. Your suggestion of allowing not-known-to-work "medicine" to be sold would return us to the era of patent medicines, which killed a lot of people. You can look at the supplements market to see people dying from a similar policy right now.
- BurningFrog 10y ago
  Like anything else, you have to look at both costs and benefits of the alternatives. The current extremely tough FDA approval process has the benefit you mention: Fewer people are injured by unsafe drugs. But it also has a big (but harder to observe) cost: If disease X kills 1000 people/year, then each year a cure is delayed kills 1000 people. The main argument against the current system is that it weighs the deaths of people in the first category vastly more than those in the second. How many people the FDA process kills this way is hard to calculate, and you can find wildly different estimates. But most discussion assumes it doesn't even exist...
  - 10y ago

jljljl 10y ago

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." - Michael Pollan

jdminhbg 10y ago
The oft-cited and never-defined Tautology Diet.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  There is a whole book defining the quote above. It's a very enjoyable read, and reasonably well-cited.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  Saying to eat a "balanced" diet is a tautology. Saying "do whatever, but mostly plants" is not.

kelukelugames 10y ago

My surgeon friend told me medical studies are like the bible. You can find a paper that says something is bad for you and another that says it is good for you. So just believe the one that makes you happier.

lkbm 10y ago
You can definitely find contradictory studies. The solution is not to abandon research, but to recognize that A study means very little, unless it's a systematic review or meta-analysis (in which case it's a study of many studies). Don't pick the one study that shows what you want. Pick all the studies and go with whatever the preponderance of evidence suggests. That's science, and it's by far our most effective and reliable way of learning useful and non-obvious truths about the world.
- singularity2001 10y ago
  that good insight needs to be put in a quotable format
deleted 10y ago
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known 10y ago

Sounds like US is endorsing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Paradox

234dd57d2c8db 10y ago

This is terrible advice, it is well known that cholesterol and saturated fats found in animal products raise serum cholesterol levels and increase the risk of heart disease and other chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Here's the president of the American College of Cardiology's research, Dr Williams: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/advice-from-a-vegan-cardiologist/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/advice-from-a-vegan...

deleted 10y ago

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d0mdo0ss 10y ago

The sugar industry has a history of lobbying public attention away from sugar and towards cholesterol. It has even enlisted places like Harvard School of Public Health on this task: http://time.com/4485710/sugar-industry-heart-disease-research/ http://time.com/4485710/sugar-industry-heart-disease-researc... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-co...

thomasvarney723 10y ago

I recommend Peter Attia's (currently unfinished) series, "The straight dope on cholesterol". He's a surgeon interested in health and fitness. http://eatingacademy.com/?s=cholesterol http://eatingacademy.com/?s=cholesterol

jordache 10y ago

oh so now butter is bad again? WTF. Can't believe anything the nutritionists put out.

petilon 10y ago

This doesn't go far enough. That there is a link between high cholesterol and heart disease is only a hypotheses, not a scientifically proven fact. Lowering cholesterol does not necessarily lower heart disease. Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27taubes.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opinion/27taubes.html Because the link between excessive LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular disease has been so widely accepted, the Food and Drug Administration generally has not required drug companies to prove that cholesterol medicines actually reduce heart attacks before approval. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/business/17drug.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/business/17drug.html Meanwhile drug companies are making billions selling cholesterol lowering medicines called statins. But lowering cholesterol using drugs is not useful. Read more about that here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-04-15/heart-disease-not-about-cholesterol-businessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-04-15/heart-dis... Not only that, these statins are dangerous drugs. Its side effects include loss of short term memory, for example. Read more about that here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-not-dementia-its-your-heart-medication/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-not-dementia-...

djsumdog 10y ago
I agree with you. This article also mentions they're focusing on fats/saturated fats; which is also a terrible focus. The real danger is not fat, even saturated/trans-fats, but starches and sugar. The increase in these types of carbohydrates in products like baby formula is actually leading to obesity in infants! Excess sugar can stress arteries and damage them. Cholesterol is carried to these artier by lipids (LDLs and HDLs, which are not actually cholesterol, but proteins that carry it through your bloodstream). If you eat a lot of sugar, cholesterol can build up between the walls of arteries as they fix the damage. They can eventually break down the wall, releasing plaque into the bloodstream and potentially causing heart complications. I highly recommend Dr. Lustig's video (UCTV) to learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM A few years back I switched to a keto normal fat/very low carb (excluding fiber) diet. I've lost weight, gained energy and have felt a lot better. Of course this isn't for everyone. Some people have a body type that lends itself to higher carb intake (I knew a runner who'd eat 30 bananas a week) and as always do your research, consult with your doctor, dietitian, etc. before drastic changes in your diet. It's a common myth that Adkins died of his own diet. He didn't, and Reuters rededicated their column implying that he did. I honestly wonder if the obesity epidemic would have gone down today if the world didn't dismiss his ideas, or the ideas of many nutritionist for decades before him that made similar claims about the dangers of sugar.

kazinator 10y ago

> The greater danger in this regard, these experts believe, lies not in products such as eggs, shrimp or lobster, which are high in cholesterol, but in too many servings of foods heavy with saturated fats, such as fatty meats, whole milk, and butter. Translation: the lobbyists for various polyunsaturated "edible plastics" are currently in the lead.

overgard 10y ago

The USG is frankly incompetent when it comes to this matter. I guess it's happy news that they're not creating more chaos but yay? Hollow victory

known 10y ago

Current reference intake is 300 mg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Reference_Intake#Macronutrients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Reference_Intake#Macro...

hogrammer 10y ago

Most problems that can be preventable with diet are caused by one simple thing: obesity. Simply put down your fork and maintain a proper weight and body-fat percentage and you can eat what you want. We need to start taxing the overweight and obese.

test_pilot 10y ago

Youtube is where most people get their dietary advice now. The most influential diet advice is coming from young attractive healthy looking people. Whatever they're eating seems to be working. Obviously most of these people won the genetic lottery, but they've also nurtured their body correctly with food and exercise. This seems like a much better approach in convincing people what to eat anyway. Look at the results and imitate healthy people if you want to look and stay healthy.

ihaveahadron 10y ago

It's nice that the entire food advice for like 50 was a made up falsehood. Morans

galfarragem 10y ago

I use to look around in a naive way and take my conclusions: - Grandfather, 89, ate everything moderately during his life, mostly organic. He evites fat and bread and walks every day. Low energy person. - Grandmother, passed at 82, cancer. Same diet as my grandfather. Much less exercise though. - Grandmother, 92, ate a lot until 50's, mostly organic, obese. Since then barely eats, mostly vegetables and yogurt. Right weight and good health. No exercise. - Grandfather, passed at 71. Ate more fat than anyone I know. Death by heart attack or stroke. Very energetic person with a lot of exercise. Can you see a pattern? I can't.

singularity2001 10y ago
The minimum sample size for any meaningful statistic is 7
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

mtw 10y ago

For those who are curious, the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines is available here https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/resources/2015-2020_Dietary_Guidelines.pdf https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/resources/2015-202... (PDF) Unfortunately it does not highlight the danger of sugar & processed food. Someone can follows these dietary guidelines and still be able to have a high intake of sugar, HCFS, processed food and all sorts of food chemicals (emulsifiers etc.), all prevalent in the american food industry, and get cardiovascular disease. We are not going to reverse the obesity epidemic anytime soon!

dwc 10y ago
Dietary guidelines typically self-moderate to something that they think the populace has a chance of adopting. I.e., they don't want people to completely shrug it off as too drastic of a change. I would like to see a different approach: show the actual best diet guidelines, and then explain which partial steps will do the most good. Or something like that. It's better to be up front with what's known and then proceed to harm reduction rather than telling people that these partial steps are where they should end up.
yellowgatorade 10y ago
Are there any studies showing that "processed food" is, on its own, dangerous? Or is the inherent danger largely due to the HFCS, sugar, and other items that are usually added in the process?
- mtw 10y ago
  A few studies https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26514947 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26514947 http://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2016/11/25/thoraxjnl-2016-208375.short?g=w_thorax_ahead_tab http://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2016/11/25/thoraxjnl-201... http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2016/11/05/0008-5472.CAN-16-1359 http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2016/11/05/0... http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/4/8/895.short http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/4/8/895.short https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20479151 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20479151 I am sure there is a meta-analysis somewhere but this would take a bit of time to find

fulldecent 10y ago

This is a link to a non-authoritative source. Could someone please provide a link to the authoritative source so that I may investigate by myself?

pombrand 10y ago

For those of you who still believe it's OK or even good to eat a lot of saturated fats, if you look at the studies it's not much of a controversy:" Whether saturated fat is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a question with numerous controversial views.[1] Although most in the mainstream heart-health, government, and medical communities hold that saturated fat is a risk factor for CVD, some hold contrary beliefs." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascular_disease_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascul... Anecdotally, I've read 50% of people who go on Keto see a huge 2-3x increase in triglycerides and LDL-P (Particle count as measured by NMR) - the #1 risk factor for cardiovascular disease. More LDL particles bouncing around in your arteries = bad. People with a condition that makes them break down more LDL have much less artheroscleriosis: http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa054013 http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa054013 People with a condition that makes them have more LDL particles get more artheroscleriosis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familial_hypercholesterolemia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familial_hypercholesterolemia Read Peter Attila's exposition that goes in detail (eating cholesterol is fine though): http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-part-i http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/the-straight-dope-on-chol... Keto could work, but it's a hyper-pro level high-risk diet requiring frequent blood work and still avoiding saturated fats keeping them primarily monounsaturated which makes it very hard to follow. Plus it sucks for weightlifting.. Surprisingly, very low fat diets might be great for you, it might not be the absolute macronutrient composition that matters, but rather the specifics of the nutrients (GI, fiber, other nutrients etc) and your genetic makeup: https://deniseminger.com/2015/10/06/in-defense-of-low-fat-a-call-for-some-evolution-of-thought-part-1/ https://deniseminger.com/2015/10/06/in-defense-of-low-fat-a-... Scary correlations about saturated fats and neurodegenerative disease therein too. Personally I'm sticking with a "balanced" ~10/45/45 carbs from protein, low GI carb/monounsaturated fat vegan diet - not wanting to risk side effects of any extreme (although I'm having to ensure adequate calcium, K2, D, B12 and DHA and EPA intake - If I didn't find it unethical to eat fish a pescetarian variety would likely be easier/healthier/less gassy). Tip for you vegetarians/vegans: look up low FODMAP foods; foodstuffs low in carbs indigestible in the small intestine which tend to produce more gas.

LargeCompanies 10y ago

Hmmm this was just on the homepage then quickly removed.. top of the page then boom gone? Any reason why this is? Also I've been on statins since 37 after feeling my heart race and not being able to catch my breathe after being with girlfriend at the time. That was some scary stuff and after the statin and change of diet I no longer have those type of bouts anymore. So maybe it's my change in diet (cut out 75% fried food and sugar intake is 50% less) and the statin combined and or maybe the statin is just a placebo and my change is diet helped eliminate those heart racing attacks? I had a lot of those attacks from 37 to about 39...im now 41 and haven't dealt with any such attacks unless I eat a say Five Guys or In and Out.