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Except you're going about it the wrong way. We've eaten simple unrefined foods for as long as society has existed. For example, what only existed recently has b

Except you're going about it the wrong way. We've eaten simple unrefined foods for as long as society has existed. For example, what only existed recently has been highly refined seed oils like corn, rapeseed, and canola. It is up to them to prove that they are safe for human consumption, something that they have been unable to do. However, to continue the example, those types of oils are high in PUFAs (and specifically, high in Omega 6), and this has been linked to basically every modern first world disease, including diabetes and cancer. The same applies to grains: cereals such as wheat hybridize in ways that are unusual. There is probably a level of certain chemicals (such as, but not limited to, prolamins, agglutinin, and amylase trypsin inhibitors) that are safe for human consumption, but the hybridization of these grasses for modern commercial production have greatly increased the amount of these chemicals in a given food product. Just like the oils, these hybrids are a recent invention and no science was done before they were pushed into commercial production to prove if they are safe. Unfortunately, more and more scientific papers are coming out that they are not safe and cannot be made safe. I've taken the logical and scientific choice to stop consuming these foods. During this time, although my caloric intake has not varied enough to explain the results, I lost around 130 pounds in a year: the only change I made was removing foods that are on the list.

dagss 9y ago
Look: Feeding the world on Paleo diet is impossible (right now ... with increased use of insects and sustainable ocean farming not based on rainforest soy that may change). When one choice is to recommend a diet that will significantly increase green house gas emissions and yet still be totally unavailable to poor people; and another diet which might be marginally worse, then yes the burden of proof should be on the former. Everyone switching to Paleo diet would be disastrous; and people HAVE attained 100+ years on grain diets, i.e. it is a matter of microoptimization not outright toxicity. (Also you say "only change you made", but did you really measure calorie intake exactly before the change of diet? A lot of diets lead to weight reduction simply due to people starting to think about what they eat and calculate calories...the act of thinking about what you eat and counting calories itself will reduce calorie intake and increase healthiness of food consumed, leaving most people with no comparison point, hence a lot of hyped diets. Did you try using as much mental energy on a healthy diet containing grains as a comparisonr point? Otherwise you do not even have an anecdote).
- DiabloD3 9y ago
  Except none of that's true. We already grow sufficient amounts of common vegetables like carrots, and the members of the cabbage family, and potatoes, and onions, and garlic, and whatever else. Corn and rice and cereal grains are extremely poor uses of the farm land we have. They are nutrient poor, and the last thing we need to be feeding to poor/starving people is nutrient poor foods. Most of the reason we have starving people in the world is mismanagement of what we already grow, not that we don't grow enough. I also don't care what the statistical outliers do. The average American lives far shorter lives than our medical and technological prowess would otherwise indicate.
  - dagss 9y ago
    Sorry, I thought I was reading about the kind of diet where a potato would be the worst thing ever. I.e. avoid carbohydrates. Apologies. I agree that we grow more than enough food today but we also do not live sustainably, we must reduce resource consumption or hit the wall at some point. At some point there is no more rainforest to burn.
  - hycaria 9y ago
    There are way too many things that changed recently to have conclusions on diets. Environment and chemical residues, sedentary lifestyles, lack of exercise, use of drugs (antibiotics and guts flora are now suspected to have interactions) and even more insidious stuff like our social structure changes. And yet many people still manage to live a pretty long and healthy life nowadays with "regular" diets (ie with cereal, yet home prepared and with the right quantity), but not so much while being morbidly obese, drinking water full of lead or smoking... I mean I'm not all against special diets, and to each his own, but this focus on diet as some kind of miracle remedy that let us live better without having to put other efforts into it makes no sense to me.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  > When one choice is to recommend a diet that will significantly increase green house gas emissions and yet still be totally unavailable to poor people; and another diet which might be marginally worse, then yes the burden of proof should be on the former. We have choice Ac with drawbacks Ad and choice Bc with drawbacks Bd. How is it remotely reasonable that the burden of proof is exclusively on Ac/Ad?
maxerickson 9y ago
Aren't the PUFA concerns worse with Olive Oil, which barely has Omega 3 and thus a high ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3? Or does the additional 15% to 20% of PUFAs in Canola just cross some tragic threshold?
kyberias 9y ago
> During this time, although my caloric intake has not varied enough to explain the results, I lost around 130 pounds in a year: the only change I made was removing foods that are on the list. That is impossible. You're deluding yourself.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  Not necessarily. Physics and biology agree that calories absorbed < calories expended = weight loss, but complicated biological mechanisms are involved in both how many calories are absorbed from food and how many are expended. If the diets in question prevent the body from absorbing a good deal of their calories from food and/or act on the metabolism to increase caloric expenditure, then what he is saying could be true.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
The plural of anecdote is not data. I myself have lost about that amount of weight and I didn't do it on a ketogenic or paleo diet. I certainly tried those diets, because a fat guy desperate to lose weight would try just about anything, and they didn't work for me at all. My personal opinion is that most men who embrace those diets do so because it allows them to eat high-fat "manly" foods like steak and bacon all the time and still virtue-signal that they're being "healthy", something more traditional diets involving a lot of salad don't do. Which isn't to say that those diets lack merit, mind you, I'm not a nutritional scientist. Which brings up my next point: most people who promote these diets are not nutritional scientists. That's why it is hard to look at them as anything but a fad, and there is so much money to be made in selling people "easy" solutions to weight loss that we really aught to be very weary of anything being hyped.
GrinningFool 9y ago
> s, I lost around 130 pounds in a year: the only change I made was removing foods that are on the list. That's pretty drastic. Have you been checked for medical causes for the weight loss? When I lost 40 in a year my doctor was alarmed (I was just eating less and walking more ).
dominotw 9y ago
>The same applies to grains: cereals such as wheat hybridize in ways that are unusual. There is probably a level of certain chemicals (such as, but not limited to, prolamins, agglutinin, and amylase trypsin inhibitors) that are safe for human consumption, but the hybridization of these grasses for modern commercial production have greatly increased the amount of these chemicals in a given food product. Is it not possible to buy brown rice thats not polluted with chemicals? I eat brownrice from costco, am I consuming chemicals everyday?
- todd8 9y ago
  I’be cut back on rice, brown and white, organic or not because of the high arsenic levels. Arsenic causes cancer. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-much-arsenic-is-in-your-rice/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-muc...
  - dominotw 9y ago
    wow! I had no idea. Thank you. > While most crops don’t readily take up much arsenic from the ground, rice is different because it takes up arsenic from soil and water more readily than other grains. > Long-term exposure to high levels of arsenic is associated with higher rates of skin, bladder, and lung cancers, as well as heart disease. The FDA is currently examining these and other long-term effects. https://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/Metals/ucm280202.htm https://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/Metals...
Angostura 9y ago
> Except you're going about it the wrong way. We've eaten simple unrefined foods for as long as society has existed. Yes, and the average life expectancy was much much lower. > I've taken the logical and scientific choice to stop consuming these foods. There's nothing demonstrably scientific about the choices you;ve made other than a distrust of anything that's been innovated in the last ~8,000 years if you're talking about hexaploid wheat.

dagss 9y ago

Look: Feeding the world on Paleo diet is impossible (right now ... with increased use of insects and sustainable ocean farming not based on rainforest soy that may change). When one choice is to recommend a diet that will significantly increase green house gas emissions and yet still be totally unavailable to poor people; and another diet which might be marginally worse, then yes the burden of proof should be on the former. Everyone switching to Paleo diet would be disastrous; and people HAVE attained 100+ years on grain diets, i.e. it is a matter of microoptimization not outright toxicity. (Also you say "only change you made", but did you really measure calorie intake exactly before the change of diet? A lot of diets lead to weight reduction simply due to people starting to think about what they eat and calculate calories...the act of thinking about what you eat and counting calories itself will reduce calorie intake and increase healthiness of food consumed, leaving most people with no comparison point, hence a lot of hyped diets. Did you try using as much mental energy on a healthy diet containing grains as a comparisonr point? Otherwise you do not even have an anecdote).

DiabloD3 9y ago
Except none of that's true. We already grow sufficient amounts of common vegetables like carrots, and the members of the cabbage family, and potatoes, and onions, and garlic, and whatever else. Corn and rice and cereal grains are extremely poor uses of the farm land we have. They are nutrient poor, and the last thing we need to be feeding to poor/starving people is nutrient poor foods. Most of the reason we have starving people in the world is mismanagement of what we already grow, not that we don't grow enough. I also don't care what the statistical outliers do. The average American lives far shorter lives than our medical and technological prowess would otherwise indicate.
- dagss 9y ago
  Sorry, I thought I was reading about the kind of diet where a potato would be the worst thing ever. I.e. avoid carbohydrates. Apologies. I agree that we grow more than enough food today but we also do not live sustainably, we must reduce resource consumption or hit the wall at some point. At some point there is no more rainforest to burn.
- hycaria 9y ago
  There are way too many things that changed recently to have conclusions on diets. Environment and chemical residues, sedentary lifestyles, lack of exercise, use of drugs (antibiotics and guts flora are now suspected to have interactions) and even more insidious stuff like our social structure changes. And yet many people still manage to live a pretty long and healthy life nowadays with "regular" diets (ie with cereal, yet home prepared and with the right quantity), but not so much while being morbidly obese, drinking water full of lead or smoking... I mean I'm not all against special diets, and to each his own, but this focus on diet as some kind of miracle remedy that let us live better without having to put other efforts into it makes no sense to me.
sokoloff 9y ago
> When one choice is to recommend a diet that will significantly increase green house gas emissions and yet still be totally unavailable to poor people; and another diet which might be marginally worse, then yes the burden of proof should be on the former. We have choice Ac with drawbacks Ad and choice Bc with drawbacks Bd. How is it remotely reasonable that the burden of proof is exclusively on Ac/Ad?

maxerickson 9y ago

Aren't the PUFA concerns worse with Olive Oil, which barely has Omega 3 and thus a high ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3? Or does the additional 15% to 20% of PUFAs in Canola just cross some tragic threshold?

kyberias 9y ago

> During this time, although my caloric intake has not varied enough to explain the results, I lost around 130 pounds in a year: the only change I made was removing foods that are on the list. That is impossible. You're deluding yourself.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
Not necessarily. Physics and biology agree that calories absorbed < calories expended = weight loss, but complicated biological mechanisms are involved in both how many calories are absorbed from food and how many are expended. If the diets in question prevent the body from absorbing a good deal of their calories from food and/or act on the metabolism to increase caloric expenditure, then what he is saying could be true.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago

The plural of anecdote is not data. I myself have lost about that amount of weight and I didn't do it on a ketogenic or paleo diet. I certainly tried those diets, because a fat guy desperate to lose weight would try just about anything, and they didn't work for me at all. My personal opinion is that most men who embrace those diets do so because it allows them to eat high-fat "manly" foods like steak and bacon all the time and still virtue-signal that they're being "healthy", something more traditional diets involving a lot of salad don't do. Which isn't to say that those diets lack merit, mind you, I'm not a nutritional scientist. Which brings up my next point: most people who promote these diets are not nutritional scientists. That's why it is hard to look at them as anything but a fad, and there is so much money to be made in selling people "easy" solutions to weight loss that we really aught to be very weary of anything being hyped.

GrinningFool 9y ago

> s, I lost around 130 pounds in a year: the only change I made was removing foods that are on the list. That's pretty drastic. Have you been checked for medical causes for the weight loss? When I lost 40 in a year my doctor was alarmed (I was just eating less and walking more ).

dominotw 9y ago

>The same applies to grains: cereals such as wheat hybridize in ways that are unusual. There is probably a level of certain chemicals (such as, but not limited to, prolamins, agglutinin, and amylase trypsin inhibitors) that are safe for human consumption, but the hybridization of these grasses for modern commercial production have greatly increased the amount of these chemicals in a given food product. Is it not possible to buy brown rice thats not polluted with chemicals? I eat brownrice from costco, am I consuming chemicals everyday?

todd8 9y ago
I’be cut back on rice, brown and white, organic or not because of the high arsenic levels. Arsenic causes cancer. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-much-arsenic-is-in-your-rice/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2015/01/how-muc...
- dominotw 9y ago
  wow! I had no idea. Thank you. > While most crops don’t readily take up much arsenic from the ground, rice is different because it takes up arsenic from soil and water more readily than other grains. > Long-term exposure to high levels of arsenic is associated with higher rates of skin, bladder, and lung cancers, as well as heart disease. The FDA is currently examining these and other long-term effects. https://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/Metals/ucm280202.htm https://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/Metals...

Angostura 9y ago

> Except you're going about it the wrong way. We've eaten simple unrefined foods for as long as society has existed. Yes, and the average life expectancy was much much lower. > I've taken the logical and scientific choice to stop consuming these foods. There's nothing demonstrably scientific about the choices you;ve made other than a distrust of anything that's been innovated in the last ~8,000 years if you're talking about hexaploid wheat.