6 ms·

As someone aproaching middle age and suddenly concious of health, I find claims like below... > It works miracles on everyone who tries it. There are piles of

As someone aproaching middle age and suddenly concious of health, I find claims like below... > It works miracles on everyone who tries it. There are piles of people who cured themselves of very serious health problems with it. ... very enticing. Then I wonder, if this were true, why isn't this backed by hard science? Even bad motives and bad statistics cannot hide miracles! I also wonder, if meat and fat based diet was the best for us, and yet humans AS A society (not as a person) evolved to eat card based diet obviously there has to be some advantage. What it is, I do not know, and I wish this would not change the subject, but the only thing that comes to mind is that eating carbs is the only sustainable way for our species. While these questions are unresolved, I eat meat once a week, and am otherwise vegatarian. Feeling healthy btw.

nightski 5y ago
Nutritional science is far from a solved case and doesn't have a lot to lean on yet. Not only is there a lot of misinformation, money, and lying involved but the science itself is pretty poor as well. Most nutritional studies are based on p values in uncontrolled environments with self reporting. While the few more rigorous studies do control for confounding variables and attempt to control the environment more - they tend to be smaller. It's not like you can lock thousands of humans (let alone one) in a controlled environment for 50 years and study long term effects of diets which even then wouldn't be perfect. I'm not saying it's impossible, and science is the only way forward. I'm just that it is a mess and we know less than we think. FWIW I have been on a keto-genic diet for coming up on a decade now and feel fantastic as well. But like I said before, that's not worth much. I do it for the "brain" high I get on the diet and also it totally gets rid of my acid reflux issues.
Swizec 5y ago
The problem is that any time we study populational positive effects of diet on health outcomes it always turns out that the secret ingredient was universal health care. Or at least the diet filters by “rich enough to have good insurance and access” We seem to have a hard time finding populations following any specific good diet with measurably good or better health outcomes than average that don’t have the compounding variable of access to health care:
- manmal 5y ago
  We have universal health care in Austria, and many people are still obese (less than in the US, ok), get cancer etc.
  - Swizec 5y ago
    Yes but they survive and don’t go bankrupt. USA is the only developed country with a falling life expectancy.
    - manmal 5y ago
      Cancer treatment often doesn’t work. Treatment is often in reality just management.
manmal 5y ago
A mainly meat-based keto diet is only made possible by privilege and resource exhaustion. There is no way such a diet were sustainable for all humans on earth. Now, if we switched to insect flour, maybe that would work. Still, AFAIK, switching to a mostly plant based diet is the biggest contribution one can make towards a smaller environmental impact. When it comes to evidence, water fasting for multiple days improves insulin resistance and lipid profile, and lowering blood pressure. There are probably even more benefits (through autophagy, though that can be a mixed bag because some viruses seem to hijack that). Some of this also applies to intermittent fasting.
- seaorg 5y ago
  We are lucky enough that the scientific community has bothered to elevate fasting from quackery to mainstream — despite the fact that it’s benefits have been obvious for literally thousands of years and a simple interventional study could have been carried out literally as early as science existed as a concept, but they couldn’t be fucked to do until 2016 or whatever. I think if you look deeply into any area of science you will somehow always end up being upset… The chemicals in meat, fat and organs can be synthesized chemically or made in labs where relevant tissues are grown directly instead of the traditional way. And only a fraction of the population has health problems that would necessitate the diet anyway.
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    Further, mono-cropping isn't that great for the earth either. It's easiest to scale, but destroying our soil health. It's only so prevalent as the US subsidizes low quality corn, soy, and wheat. Regenerative grazing can be done in a way that brings health back to the soil. https://untappedgrowth.com/decentralizedgrazing/ https://untappedgrowth.com/decentralizedgrazing/ Further, eggs are probably one of the healthiest foods one can consume, and people even in urban settings (obviously not all) can have a couple chickens. Plus, the bugs are much more delicious if turned into eggs. I personally don't want to eat the bugs or live in ze pod.
  - manmal 5y ago
    Totally agree. Need B12? Take it directly, as animal meat has to be enriched to contain it, anyway. Need more glycine because you‘re pregnant? Vegan glycine has got you covered. Need sulfur? Guess what, brokkoli is the best source and sulforaphane even fights cancer (while red meat causes it).
seaorg 5y ago
I am overwhelmed with negative responses. The truth is that these things can hide in plain sight. Take for example scurvy. The cure for scurvy was known for a very long time before it was proven to be citrus fruits in the famous experiment, the very first clinical trial. This isn’t well known, but it’s true. Native tribes knew about scurvy and demonstrated the cure to many Europeans long before Europeans rediscovered the cure. European doctors simply ignored it, and didn’t bother looking into the matter. It’s pretty unbelievable. But you haven’t seen anything yet… after the famous clinical trial of citrus fruits, scurvy was finally defeated, right? Wrong! The results of this clinical trial, which was held onboard a ship and witnessed by many people, written about and so on, were ignored by doctors! For an incredible amount of time, the cure was not only known about but scientifically proven and yet the medical establishment ignored it and people went right on dying of scurvy just as they always had. An artifact of the times, right? That could simply never happen today. We are too virtuous. Now take for example the lipid hypothesis of heart disease. It’s absolutely riddled with holes. And there is more than enough evidence to topple it over. But the story repeats itself. And there are many things that are ignored. Many, many people are lucky enough to never be concerned with it. There are an unlucky few, though, who’s stories intersect with this unfortunate little oversight. Anyway, our bodies need carbs. If you don’t eat them your body just makes them. They are required for explosive effort and other things. But we were never intended to eat mostly carbs, despite what people say. For millions of years people mostly ate animals. The modern human eats almost nothing but carbs and it results in a lot of problems that aren’t classified as diseases now but will be later. Cheers.
1_player 5y ago
No, we haven't evolved to eat carb based diet, which happened somewhere in the past 10,000 years, which is a nothing in the evolution scale. We added carbs into out diet, by our own choice. We are at all effect genetically identical to our pre-agriculture ancestors.

nightski 5y ago

Nutritional science is far from a solved case and doesn't have a lot to lean on yet. Not only is there a lot of misinformation, money, and lying involved but the science itself is pretty poor as well. Most nutritional studies are based on p values in uncontrolled environments with self reporting. While the few more rigorous studies do control for confounding variables and attempt to control the environment more - they tend to be smaller. It's not like you can lock thousands of humans (let alone one) in a controlled environment for 50 years and study long term effects of diets which even then wouldn't be perfect. I'm not saying it's impossible, and science is the only way forward. I'm just that it is a mess and we know less than we think. FWIW I have been on a keto-genic diet for coming up on a decade now and feel fantastic as well. But like I said before, that's not worth much. I do it for the "brain" high I get on the diet and also it totally gets rid of my acid reflux issues.

Swizec 5y ago

The problem is that any time we study populational positive effects of diet on health outcomes it always turns out that the secret ingredient was universal health care. Or at least the diet filters by “rich enough to have good insurance and access” We seem to have a hard time finding populations following any specific good diet with measurably good or better health outcomes than average that don’t have the compounding variable of access to health care:

manmal 5y ago
We have universal health care in Austria, and many people are still obese (less than in the US, ok), get cancer etc.
- Swizec 5y ago
  Yes but they survive and don’t go bankrupt. USA is the only developed country with a falling life expectancy.
  - manmal 5y ago
    Cancer treatment often doesn’t work. Treatment is often in reality just management.

manmal 5y ago

A mainly meat-based keto diet is only made possible by privilege and resource exhaustion. There is no way such a diet were sustainable for all humans on earth. Now, if we switched to insect flour, maybe that would work. Still, AFAIK, switching to a mostly plant based diet is the biggest contribution one can make towards a smaller environmental impact. When it comes to evidence, water fasting for multiple days improves insulin resistance and lipid profile, and lowering blood pressure. There are probably even more benefits (through autophagy, though that can be a mixed bag because some viruses seem to hijack that). Some of this also applies to intermittent fasting.

seaorg 5y ago
We are lucky enough that the scientific community has bothered to elevate fasting from quackery to mainstream — despite the fact that it’s benefits have been obvious for literally thousands of years and a simple interventional study could have been carried out literally as early as science existed as a concept, but they couldn’t be fucked to do until 2016 or whatever. I think if you look deeply into any area of science you will somehow always end up being upset… The chemicals in meat, fat and organs can be synthesized chemically or made in labs where relevant tissues are grown directly instead of the traditional way. And only a fraction of the population has health problems that would necessitate the diet anyway.
- reedjosh 5y ago
  Further, mono-cropping isn't that great for the earth either. It's easiest to scale, but destroying our soil health. It's only so prevalent as the US subsidizes low quality corn, soy, and wheat. Regenerative grazing can be done in a way that brings health back to the soil. https://untappedgrowth.com/decentralizedgrazing/ https://untappedgrowth.com/decentralizedgrazing/ Further, eggs are probably one of the healthiest foods one can consume, and people even in urban settings (obviously not all) can have a couple chickens. Plus, the bugs are much more delicious if turned into eggs. I personally don't want to eat the bugs or live in ze pod.
- manmal 5y ago
  Totally agree. Need B12? Take it directly, as animal meat has to be enriched to contain it, anyway. Need more glycine because you‘re pregnant? Vegan glycine has got you covered. Need sulfur? Guess what, brokkoli is the best source and sulforaphane even fights cancer (while red meat causes it).

seaorg 5y ago

I am overwhelmed with negative responses. The truth is that these things can hide in plain sight. Take for example scurvy. The cure for scurvy was known for a very long time before it was proven to be citrus fruits in the famous experiment, the very first clinical trial. This isn’t well known, but it’s true. Native tribes knew about scurvy and demonstrated the cure to many Europeans long before Europeans rediscovered the cure. European doctors simply ignored it, and didn’t bother looking into the matter. It’s pretty unbelievable. But you haven’t seen anything yet… after the famous clinical trial of citrus fruits, scurvy was finally defeated, right? Wrong! The results of this clinical trial, which was held onboard a ship and witnessed by many people, written about and so on, were ignored by doctors! For an incredible amount of time, the cure was not only known about but scientifically proven and yet the medical establishment ignored it and people went right on dying of scurvy just as they always had. An artifact of the times, right? That could simply never happen today. We are too virtuous. Now take for example the lipid hypothesis of heart disease. It’s absolutely riddled with holes. And there is more than enough evidence to topple it over. But the story repeats itself. And there are many things that are ignored. Many, many people are lucky enough to never be concerned with it. There are an unlucky few, though, who’s stories intersect with this unfortunate little oversight. Anyway, our bodies need carbs. If you don’t eat them your body just makes them. They are required for explosive effort and other things. But we were never intended to eat mostly carbs, despite what people say. For millions of years people mostly ate animals. The modern human eats almost nothing but carbs and it results in a lot of problems that aren’t classified as diseases now but will be later. Cheers.

1_player 5y ago

No, we haven't evolved to eat carb based diet, which happened somewhere in the past 10,000 years, which is a nothing in the evolution scale. We added carbs into out diet, by our own choice. We are at all effect genetically identical to our pre-agriculture ancestors.