8 ms·
Let an algorithm tell you how to eat
- Gunstig2Snath 8y agoDr. Topol is making some reasonable observations and then extrapolating wild and wholly unsupported conclusions from them. The Mediterranean diet data is better than many pharmaceutically funded drug studies that medicine bases wide ranging guidelines on. It’s harmful for scientists to be led into such wild speculation when there are plenty of studies with endpoints like death that are measurable and real vs these bizarre end point measures.
- ChlorophZek 8y agoAre you sure we don’t know what normal blood glucose ranges are after eating? I’m pretty sure they are between 120-140 as an upper limit. I also thought post-meal BG was exactly how we diagnosed diabetes? Clarification on that point would be helpful.
- kirishnareturns 8y agoNo it's not..it depends on how your body uses glucose, absolute values are meaningless just like most of medical science.
- gaustin 8y agoWhat? I can understand that absolute values aren't very meaningful, as they're probably missing a lot of necessary context. BMI is one metric that doesn't paint a clear picture on its own -- but no doctor would ever rely solely on it. I can't understand dismissing most of medical science. Can you expand on that part of your statement?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kirishnareturns 8y agoOnce I made such AI algorithm, it suggested me I drink Kala Kuta, so I had to drop that project.
- taneq 8y agoIf you're interested in weight loss, I can vouch for this algorithm which has been around a fair while: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/online/hdo.html https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/online/hdo.html (I used a way more informal version but the spirit of the exercise was the same.)
- drivers99 8y agoGood old Hacker's Diet. Calorie counting with a target adjusted by a moving weighted average of daily weight measurements. You've had success with it? What did you do to make it informal? I used his Palm Pilot app which tells you how long ago I first tried it.
- taneq 8y agoI made it informal basically by being lazy. :P If I was more than 2-3kg over my target weight then I'd just eat the minimum calories I can get away with without getting cranky (~1500ish). Once I reached my target weight I totted up crude calorie counts in my head each day (sandwich = 400, biscuit = 100, plate of nachos = 800, that sort of level of detail), keeping the total under my current target. Then I weighed myself every morning, and if I was over my target weight for the whole week, I'd reduce my target calories by 100 or so. If I was under for the whole week, I'd increase my target calories. It's kept at my target weight (barring a couple of brief lapses of willpower... I'm a bit tubby at the moment!) for most of the last decade. :)
- rmwaite 8y agoThis weighted average graph did more to keep me on track than anything else. Sometimes you just need the encouragement to persist through the ups and downs.
- moomin 8y agosigh Knowing how to eat healthily isn't a hard problem. The problem is sticking to the diet. But that one's hard, so instead we're constantly solving the first, solved, problem.
- ausbah 8y agoI find the easiest way to force myself to eat healthy is to just not have any “undesirable” foods around, planning my grocery trips in great detail before hand, and to cut back on how much I eat out. Cutting off any sources of unwanted foods and focusing on only desirable foods cuts away any of the self control or discipline problems.
- theNJR 8y agoPeople think that will power is not eating the ice cream in the fridge. Very few people can do that. Will power is not buying the ice cream in the first place. It turns out, that is infinitely easier. The result is you open the freeze a few times, wishing there was ice cream. When there's only frozen chicken, you close the freezer, drink some water, pace around, then get back to whatever you were previously doing.
- amenod 8y agoWow, thank you for reminding me, I have ice-cream in the fridge. :) Joke aside, you can only do that if you are alone. I agree in principle, but in a family setting you need to find other changes to routine that result in less food being eaten by you.
- drivers99 8y agoDefine "eat healthily". Everyone seems to have a different opinion, and whatever you say will be contradicted by someone else.
- cheesymuffin 8y agoThe most vital overlooked nutrient in the Western diet is controversy. Start from there.
- ramoz 8y agoOh man, now you can pay to have AI tell you not to eat high-glycemic, insulin spiking foods. Wait until people figure out the algo wants them to eat less carbs ... "Terminator ... Skynet ... The Matrix" God forbid it ever mention "keto"
- lars512 8y agoThe magic here is that some foods which we would expect to spike blood glucose don't for some people, whereas others that we would expect to keep blood glucose stable in fact spike it. It's making the case that people's blood glucose response is in fact highly individual, due to our highly individual mix of gut flora.
- ramoz 8y agomicrobiome is ephemeral & adaptive.
- juskrey 8y agono thank you
- ycombonator 8y agoNo thanks I don’t want to give away my last piece of freedom.
- glial 8y agoI don't think people use these to deny themselves. Rather, they use these to achieve goals they've otherwise had a difficult time achieving. In some way they gain freedom - freedom to achieve important long-term health goals, and freedom from short-term appetites.
- beamatronic 8y agoHow does the algo measure success? It it running analysis on my human, uh, “outputs”? If so then, sure, maybe.
- stringgames 8y agoThis algo was measuring after meal glucose levels and optimizing against glucose spikes. Read the article before asking questions about the article.
- lm28469 8y agoThis trend of micro managing and optimizing every single details of our lives is very weird to me, some people seems to spend more time optimizing than living. On one hand you'll get your DNA sampled and an "AI" to tell you what to eat, on the other hand we spend 10+ hours a day sitting, live in heavily polluted cities (light, noise, air), don't do anywhere close to enough physical activity. If you eat what's considered a healthy diet [0] these things will impact your life quality much more. What people need is self control and education, we use food as a source of pleasure instead of seeing it as fuel (this could be a symptoms of an unhealthy lifestyle in general, but that's another topic). People eat 3 times a days + regular snack even if they are not hungry. We lost our ability to listen to our bodies, but luckily it's not very hard to learn it back. No one needs an AI to know that a bottle of coke a day, a bag of m&m's or a 500g cup of non dairy, gluten free, #FeelGood, #BodyPositity cup of ben& jerry's a has a net negative impact on your body. The whole system is fucked from top to bottom, look at supermarkets, half of the aisles are full of colorful, family sized bags of candies, chocolate, ice creams, frozen junk and sodas with cute little mascots to attract kids. Society lost its way so bad that we now celebrate obesity and ill health. The obesity epidemic is an insult to humanity. Sure, a tiny minority of people have very specific needs due to rare diseases that could benefits from these kind of studies. But for the rest of us avoiding processed food and not over eating is more than enough. If you gain a kilo every 3 months and have a sugar rush after every meal your brain is more than capable to know what's happening, it's a matter of taking personal responsibilities and facing your problems. > specific food recommendations in order to avoid glucose spikes Healthy people (aka the vast majority people) don't need any "AI" or "machine learning" for that, just basic nutrition education and a pair of eyes to look at the nutritional facts of the products they're about to buy. There is a step after which the returns are greatly diminished, and for the vast majority of people that step is way closer to "pay attention and educate yourself" than "do what this AI tells you to". > Using machine learning, a subtype of artificial intelligence, ... . In that way, an algorithm was built without the biases of the scientists. I'd like to know how they determine that. "AI" and "machine learning" aren't unbiased by nature: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2166207-discriminating-algorithms-5-times-ai-showed-prejudice/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2166207-discriminating-... "We are endowed by Nature with an interest in our own well-being; but this very interest, when overindulged, becomes a vice. Nature has intermingled pleasure with necessary things – not in order that we should seek pleasure, but in order that the addition of pleasure may make the indispensable means of existence attractive to our eyes." - Seneca [0] we all know what a healthy meal is, let's not pretend it's a secret, eating healthy doesn't mean hitting all your blood test metrics with a nanomole precision.
- grondilu 8y agoI don't quite understand why the microbiome should matter so much. Shouldn't it adapt to your diet if you stick to it long enough?
- Jeff_Brown 8y agoBacterial persistence is weird. There's a Radiolab episode[1] where Robert Krulwich and Neil deGrasse Tyson shake hands and then measure the bacterial cultures on their hands repeatedly. Both shared bacteria, but the half-life of Tyson's bacteria on Krulwich's hands was short, while Krulwich's bacteria never seemed to disappear from Tyson's hands. (I don't remember how long they took measurements for, though, and I don't think it was very long.) [1] https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/handshake-experiment https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/handshake-experiment
- nilskidoo 8y ago"Siri of thousands of years from now, exactly how did the conditions which eventually prompted the Butlerian Jyhad begin?"
- darkerside 8y agoComplaining about the philosophy aside, I'm trying to figure out the tech here. How was blood glucose monitored? A continuous blood monitor, or something over the skin?
- theNJR 8y agoMost likely a Dexcom G6. But if you are interested in testing yourself, get this: https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Glucose-Monitoring-Freestyle-Lancets/dp/B01N9NRDVI https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Glucose-Monitoring-Freestyl... You extract a pin drop of blood and it shows your glucose in a few seconds.
- theNJR 8y ago< I had several glucose spikes as high as 160 milligrams per deciliter of blood (normal fasting glucose levels are less than 100, but we don’t yet know what level is normal after eating). Except anyone with a glucose meter...? The fact the author, a cardiologist, was surprised that oatmeal spiked his glucose is concerning to say the least, and certainly speaks to the eduction doctors get on nutrition. I'd highly recommend self experimenting for a week or two, to establish 1. Fasted glucose 2. Fed glucose on your normal meals. This is big in the keto space, with a lot of data being collected and shared, but apparently beyond the scope of the Times. The meter I, and most people use: https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Glucose-Monitoring-Freestyle-Lancets/dp/B01N9NRDVI https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Glucose-Monitoring-Freestyl...
- nwah1 8y agoThe first attempt at this ended in failure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler_diet
- Proven 8y agoNever