6 ms·

I've recently watched a ton of Ted talks on the subject (thank you, autoplay), so you can call me a proper internet know-it-all. The consensus seems to be: nobo

by lrem 9y ago

I've recently watched a ton of Ted talks on the subject (thank you, autoplay), so you can call me a proper internet know-it-all. The consensus seems to be: nobody knows, but the SAD certainly is not the right answer. As diverse as you can get and as little processed as you stand seem to be popular ideas too. Dropping sugar and milk seem commonly recommended, but they can pry my ice-cream from my cold, dead fingers.

colordrops 9y ago
Small amounts of animal protein and lots of raw greens and vegetables, tubers and roots. Everything else is extra. Be careful though about making any specific recommendations here or else someone with a different idea will attack you for not backing it up with scientific data. Because you shouldn't try to figure out what to eat until you get a PhD.
- shanev 9y ago
  What’s the value in raw vs cooked vegetables? I thought cooking makes their nutrients more bio-available. Do you really eat tubers raw? I can't imagine eating a potato raw. Our ancestors even always cooked them.
  - BurningFrog 9y ago
    Yeah, this books makes the case against raw diets very well: https://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465013627 https://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0... That's the thing with diets. There is a real well reasoned argument for and against most anything...
    - shanev 9y ago
      You're the 4th or 5th person to recommend this book to me. Guess I have to read it now :)
      - BurningFrog 9y ago
        Actually, I'm one of your previous in person recommenders (didn't notice the user name), so only 3rd or 4th :) Still a really fascinating and well written book.
    - fpoling 9y ago
      Does the book really present evidence that a raw diet is worse for human health than cooked food? From the table of content and introduction it seems to present a strong case that cooking affected human evolution. But that does not mean that it made humans healthier. For example, cooking could have made long-term health worse, but other benefits coming from increased food availability and shortening time to get it outweighed that.
      - BurningFrog 9y ago
        It's not the main point of the book, but it does describe how it's very hard to live a healthy life on only raw food. I remember it pointing out that about half of women on such diets stop menstruating. This is something our bodies do out of pretty desperate lack of nutrients, and it's of course devastating from an evolutionary standpoint. The thesis of the book is that we've cooked food for so long that our digestive system is adapted to it. It even speculates that the shrunken digestive system made our bigger brains possible. All that is far from uncontroversial, but it's a well written and argued text.
  - Mz 9y ago
    My opinion: A little cooking is good for making things more digestible. Overcooking depletes nutrients. I tend to like things like stir fry or similar high heat, short cook time approaches. (No, I will not try to back this up with citations.)
  - colordrops 9y ago
    Sorry, I threw in tubers after the fact, and didn't mean to imply that they should be eaten raw.
  - petre 9y ago
    Cooking was probably man's greatest discovery, well before the wheel. Why negate all of that and join a culinary religion? Remember the E. Coli epidemic in Hamburg a few years ago? It started from raw bean sprouts. https://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/types/fruits/sprouts.html https://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/types/fruits/sprouts.html
    - micheljones 9y ago
      Yup, cooking and increased animal protein/fat intake (aka eating more meat) are responsible for 2 most important evolutionary jumps in our history by increasing both availability of calories+protein and (in case of fire) reducing parasite load.
    - kwhitefoot 9y ago
      >Remember the E. Coli epidemic in Hamburg a few years ago? It started from raw bean sprouts. That's a hygiene problem not a culinary one. I doubt that stir frying bean sprouts would be enough to sterilise them and surely no one cooks them any longer than that. Used to eat a lot, mostly sprouted at home and we never took any special precautions, just normal domestic hygiene. Ate a lot of them raw too. Of course I haven't tested either the internal temperature of a bean sprout during stir frying nor have I tried infecting one with E. Coli to see if the E. Coli is neutralised by stir frying. Perhaps someone with the necessary gear and expertise could try it.
  - Tharkun 9y ago
    I used to date a girl who would snack on raw potatoes the way regular folks snack on apples.
  - mhkool 9y ago
    juicing makes nutrients in vegetables more bio-available. Cooking destroys vitamins.
  - blacksmith_tb 9y ago
    Raw-diet adherents might not think in these terms, but I would suggest that many of the health benefits stem from the much poorer absorption of macronutrients from raw food. Which allows you to eat quite a lot (leaving you sated), but doesn't actually provide a lot of calories (though potentially lots of other nutrients, like folate, vitamins, minerals etc., though some are easier to extract from cooked food also) Or you could eat less cooked food...
- maxerickson 9y ago
  There's a difference between trying to figure out what to eat and advertising that you have figured out what to eat.
  - colordrops 9y ago
    Your implication is that nothing should ever be suggested without scientific references and footnotes. That is just absurd in the extreme. Do you do search the journals before teaching your kid to wipe his ass? Do you really think that diet is any different from any other thing that we do several times a day for our entire lives?
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      The number of people making fantastical claims about toilet paper is a lot smaller than the number of people making fantastical claims about the important of specific diet components or habits. Like take your comment that I replied to. It is incredibly specific advice. As if there is 1 brand of toilet paper that is absolutely the right one.
      - colordrops 9y ago
        I think it would be more like, use soft toilet paper and wet it to avoid overwiping. It's a good guideline but not a physical law etched in stone.
        qarioz 9y ago
        Or follow the more enlightened civilization and use bidet.
        Tharkun 9y ago
        Or -- to get this back on topic -- add more fibre to your diet and your days of messy wiping will be over [1]. [1] This is not medical advice. Terms and conditions may apply. Consult a physician and toilet paper specialist before stopping to wipe.
- micheljones 9y ago
  Or alternatively, go on keto diet - 60-70% fat (mostly animal and milk fat), 20-30% protein, 5-10% carbs. Make sure to increase your electrolyte and fiber intake to account for lower intake of those through the diet.
  - philipps 9y ago
    A few colleagues at work recently started their keto diets (primarily in order to lose weight). I am interested in gut health and looked at some of the background materials I could find. It seems reasonable that the body can switch its energy source to fat, but the (long term) effects on overall health seem to be poorly studied/ understood.
    - micheljones 9y ago
      I vouch for it based on my personal experience - I suffered from a serious and untreatable autoimmune disorder (of thyroid, not directly of gut), and the only 'treatment' proposed by doctors was to cut out my thyroid and make me dependant on taking thyroid hormones orally for the rest of my life. I refused, did some research on my own, and went on keto. My thyroid bloodwork is back to normal and I have no symptoms. And I feel much 'healthier' and more 'energetic' than before all this as well. I am not proposing keto diet as a magical cure-for-all, but as a possible venue that should be tried before being forced to undergo irreversible surgical procedures for example. P.S. body does not 'switch' the energy source to fat, it increases the production of ketones as result of interrupted Krebs cycle ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle ) because oxaloacetate gets rerouted for use in gluconeogenesis (creating glucose for brain's needs), because there's not enough glucose in diet. This interruption causes the buildup of the main source for Kreb's cycle, acetyl-COA, which is then converted to acetoacetate (a ketone), which is then also partially converted to acetone and beta-hydroxybutyrate (also ketones). Of these, body uses acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybutyrate as fuel. Body is always able to use them, it's just that there's not enough of them to use if you're not on carb-restricted diet, so body defaults to using glucose as fuel. Like you say, long-term effects of keto are poorly studied, mostly because of two reasons: early keto hype as an effective seizure treatment died out once we got good enough chemical seizure treatments, and there was a lot of money poured into blaming fat intake for negative health effects of increased carb intake from the 50ies (starting with Ancel Keys), and picking up significantly in 70ies. There are animal studies that demonstrate increased longevity of animals on keto diet, similar to calorie restriction and strict veganism. While the calorie restriction and strict veganism most likely work through lowered intake of methionine (an essential aminoacid which functions as START coding block for protein synthesis, meaning that with lowered methionine intake your body creates protein at lowered rate and renews itself more slowly), keto achieves that through effectively tricking the body to go into 'starvation mode' i.e. the mode of using own fat reserves while the actual fat source is the diet.
- lrem 9y ago
  Oh yes, that's exactly the kind of advice I had in mind, but didn't feel comfortable giving. Maybe because I have a PhD?
ams6110 9y ago
SAD? Standard American Diet?
- kristallizer1 9y ago
  Yes.
astura 9y ago
What exactly does "processed" mean though? Cooking is a form of processing so do I have to go raw? Pressing oils out of nuts is processing so do I give up oils and only eat nuts? I thought fermented foods showed some potential health benefits but I'd argue that fermentation falls under "highly processed." "Processed" is a vague word that means very little.
- undersuit 9y ago
  Does it come in plastic wrapping and has a self life greater than 6 months? Probably processed. Sure that includes cheese, preserved meats, honey, grains, and many liquids, but you can also find those held in paper, wax, wood, and glass containers. Hamburger Helper is processed and it always comes in a plastic bag.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pitcharoad 9y ago
  read "processed" to mean "all values extracted beforehand"

by lrem 9y ago

colordrops 9y ago

Small amounts of animal protein and lots of raw greens and vegetables, tubers and roots. Everything else is extra. Be careful though about making any specific recommendations here or else someone with a different idea will attack you for not backing it up with scientific data. Because you shouldn't try to figure out what to eat until you get a PhD.

shanev 9y ago
What’s the value in raw vs cooked vegetables? I thought cooking makes their nutrients more bio-available. Do you really eat tubers raw? I can't imagine eating a potato raw. Our ancestors even always cooked them.
- BurningFrog 9y ago
  Yeah, this books makes the case against raw diets very well: https://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465013627 https://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0... That's the thing with diets. There is a real well reasoned argument for and against most anything...
  - shanev 9y ago
    You're the 4th or 5th person to recommend this book to me. Guess I have to read it now :)
    - BurningFrog 9y ago
      Actually, I'm one of your previous in person recommenders (didn't notice the user name), so only 3rd or 4th :) Still a really fascinating and well written book.
  - fpoling 9y ago
    Does the book really present evidence that a raw diet is worse for human health than cooked food? From the table of content and introduction it seems to present a strong case that cooking affected human evolution. But that does not mean that it made humans healthier. For example, cooking could have made long-term health worse, but other benefits coming from increased food availability and shortening time to get it outweighed that.
    - BurningFrog 9y ago
      It's not the main point of the book, but it does describe how it's very hard to live a healthy life on only raw food. I remember it pointing out that about half of women on such diets stop menstruating. This is something our bodies do out of pretty desperate lack of nutrients, and it's of course devastating from an evolutionary standpoint. The thesis of the book is that we've cooked food for so long that our digestive system is adapted to it. It even speculates that the shrunken digestive system made our bigger brains possible. All that is far from uncontroversial, but it's a well written and argued text.
- Mz 9y ago
  My opinion: A little cooking is good for making things more digestible. Overcooking depletes nutrients. I tend to like things like stir fry or similar high heat, short cook time approaches. (No, I will not try to back this up with citations.)
- colordrops 9y ago
  Sorry, I threw in tubers after the fact, and didn't mean to imply that they should be eaten raw.
- petre 9y ago
  Cooking was probably man's greatest discovery, well before the wheel. Why negate all of that and join a culinary religion? Remember the E. Coli epidemic in Hamburg a few years ago? It started from raw bean sprouts. https://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/types/fruits/sprouts.html https://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/types/fruits/sprouts.html
  - micheljones 9y ago
    Yup, cooking and increased animal protein/fat intake (aka eating more meat) are responsible for 2 most important evolutionary jumps in our history by increasing both availability of calories+protein and (in case of fire) reducing parasite load.
  - kwhitefoot 9y ago
    >Remember the E. Coli epidemic in Hamburg a few years ago? It started from raw bean sprouts. That's a hygiene problem not a culinary one. I doubt that stir frying bean sprouts would be enough to sterilise them and surely no one cooks them any longer than that. Used to eat a lot, mostly sprouted at home and we never took any special precautions, just normal domestic hygiene. Ate a lot of them raw too. Of course I haven't tested either the internal temperature of a bean sprout during stir frying nor have I tried infecting one with E. Coli to see if the E. Coli is neutralised by stir frying. Perhaps someone with the necessary gear and expertise could try it.
- Tharkun 9y ago
  I used to date a girl who would snack on raw potatoes the way regular folks snack on apples.
- mhkool 9y ago
  juicing makes nutrients in vegetables more bio-available. Cooking destroys vitamins.
- blacksmith_tb 9y ago
  Raw-diet adherents might not think in these terms, but I would suggest that many of the health benefits stem from the much poorer absorption of macronutrients from raw food. Which allows you to eat quite a lot (leaving you sated), but doesn't actually provide a lot of calories (though potentially lots of other nutrients, like folate, vitamins, minerals etc., though some are easier to extract from cooked food also) Or you could eat less cooked food...
maxerickson 9y ago
There's a difference between trying to figure out what to eat and advertising that you have figured out what to eat.
- colordrops 9y ago
  Your implication is that nothing should ever be suggested without scientific references and footnotes. That is just absurd in the extreme. Do you do search the journals before teaching your kid to wipe his ass? Do you really think that diet is any different from any other thing that we do several times a day for our entire lives?
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    The number of people making fantastical claims about toilet paper is a lot smaller than the number of people making fantastical claims about the important of specific diet components or habits. Like take your comment that I replied to. It is incredibly specific advice. As if there is 1 brand of toilet paper that is absolutely the right one.
    - colordrops 9y ago
      I think it would be more like, use soft toilet paper and wet it to avoid overwiping. It's a good guideline but not a physical law etched in stone.
      - qarioz 9y ago
        Or follow the more enlightened civilization and use bidet.
        Tharkun 9y ago
        Or -- to get this back on topic -- add more fibre to your diet and your days of messy wiping will be over [1]. [1] This is not medical advice. Terms and conditions may apply. Consult a physician and toilet paper specialist before stopping to wipe.
micheljones 9y ago
Or alternatively, go on keto diet - 60-70% fat (mostly animal and milk fat), 20-30% protein, 5-10% carbs. Make sure to increase your electrolyte and fiber intake to account for lower intake of those through the diet.
- philipps 9y ago
  A few colleagues at work recently started their keto diets (primarily in order to lose weight). I am interested in gut health and looked at some of the background materials I could find. It seems reasonable that the body can switch its energy source to fat, but the (long term) effects on overall health seem to be poorly studied/ understood.
  - micheljones 9y ago
    I vouch for it based on my personal experience - I suffered from a serious and untreatable autoimmune disorder (of thyroid, not directly of gut), and the only 'treatment' proposed by doctors was to cut out my thyroid and make me dependant on taking thyroid hormones orally for the rest of my life. I refused, did some research on my own, and went on keto. My thyroid bloodwork is back to normal and I have no symptoms. And I feel much 'healthier' and more 'energetic' than before all this as well. I am not proposing keto diet as a magical cure-for-all, but as a possible venue that should be tried before being forced to undergo irreversible surgical procedures for example. P.S. body does not 'switch' the energy source to fat, it increases the production of ketones as result of interrupted Krebs cycle ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle ) because oxaloacetate gets rerouted for use in gluconeogenesis (creating glucose for brain's needs), because there's not enough glucose in diet. This interruption causes the buildup of the main source for Kreb's cycle, acetyl-COA, which is then converted to acetoacetate (a ketone), which is then also partially converted to acetone and beta-hydroxybutyrate (also ketones). Of these, body uses acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybutyrate as fuel. Body is always able to use them, it's just that there's not enough of them to use if you're not on carb-restricted diet, so body defaults to using glucose as fuel. Like you say, long-term effects of keto are poorly studied, mostly because of two reasons: early keto hype as an effective seizure treatment died out once we got good enough chemical seizure treatments, and there was a lot of money poured into blaming fat intake for negative health effects of increased carb intake from the 50ies (starting with Ancel Keys), and picking up significantly in 70ies. There are animal studies that demonstrate increased longevity of animals on keto diet, similar to calorie restriction and strict veganism. While the calorie restriction and strict veganism most likely work through lowered intake of methionine (an essential aminoacid which functions as START coding block for protein synthesis, meaning that with lowered methionine intake your body creates protein at lowered rate and renews itself more slowly), keto achieves that through effectively tricking the body to go into 'starvation mode' i.e. the mode of using own fat reserves while the actual fat source is the diet.
lrem 9y ago
Oh yes, that's exactly the kind of advice I had in mind, but didn't feel comfortable giving. Maybe because I have a PhD?

ams6110 9y ago

SAD? Standard American Diet?

kristallizer1 9y ago
Yes.

astura 9y ago

What exactly does "processed" mean though? Cooking is a form of processing so do I have to go raw? Pressing oils out of nuts is processing so do I give up oils and only eat nuts? I thought fermented foods showed some potential health benefits but I'd argue that fermentation falls under "highly processed." "Processed" is a vague word that means very little.

undersuit 9y ago
Does it come in plastic wrapping and has a self life greater than 6 months? Probably processed. Sure that includes cheese, preserved meats, honey, grains, and many liquids, but you can also find those held in paper, wax, wood, and glass containers. Hamburger Helper is processed and it always comes in a plastic bag.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pitcharoad 9y ago
read "processed" to mean "all values extracted beforehand"