3 ms·

I don't think there's any real debate that eating whole, unprocessed foods, mostly plants, is the best thing you can do for your diet.

junon 5y ago
What are your qualifications? Of course there is. There are people that think eating only red meat is the best diet. I also don't believe that eating "mostly plants" is the best way of eating healthy.
hansvm 5y ago
That's a good enough default stance, but reality is more complicated. I'll list a couple of points, and in general there are many scenarios where more heavily processed foods are advantageous, and to a lesser degree I think some people would benefit from a high percentage of calories coming from meat and fish. - Most plants are a little dangerous to consume raw in significant quantities, especially over any extended period of time, especially if you're one of the 15% of the US with kidney issues, especially if you're one of the 1% of the US with IBD, etc. If your diet is mostly plants, the processing you do should at a minimum include cooking most of them for a few minutes. Some vitamins will be destroyed, but that's a preferable outcome. - If you have any kind of nutrient deficiency (e.g., calcium is a common issue) and want to solve the issue with your diet, you'll typically want to choose foods that have been processed to be easier to digest and/or to be fortified with such a nutrient. For calcium in particular a diet consisting mostly of unprocessed plants is insufficient. - Some foods (tomatoes are a classic example) have higher nutritional value when bought cooked and canned than when bought "fresh" because the canned product was produced with much fresher ingredients. - The majority of the US lives paycheck to paycheck. There's an economic argument to be made that heavily processed foods can be preferable to the alternatives if they allow you to get your vegetables and other nutrition more cheaply (both in direct cost savings and also in the ability to buy in bulk without spoilage). - Not everyone has the same health goals or personal chemistry, and a linearizable ordering doesn't exist for many diet choices that would apply to every individual across time. For a few choice examples, (1) roughly 1% of the population are underweight and benefit from diet choices enabling weight gain (i.e., on average probably not the proposed diet), and (2) a mostly different 1% subset with IBD benefits from the immunosuppressive effects of low to moderate alcohol consumption even despite its other negative effects (that point is still being studied/debated -- alcohol affects some individuals in that group more negatively than others, talk to your doctor).

junon 5y ago

What are your qualifications? Of course there is. There are people that think eating only red meat is the best diet. I also don't believe that eating "mostly plants" is the best way of eating healthy.

hansvm 5y ago

That's a good enough default stance, but reality is more complicated. I'll list a couple of points, and in general there are many scenarios where more heavily processed foods are advantageous, and to a lesser degree I think some people would benefit from a high percentage of calories coming from meat and fish. - Most plants are a little dangerous to consume raw in significant quantities, especially over any extended period of time, especially if you're one of the 15% of the US with kidney issues, especially if you're one of the 1% of the US with IBD, etc. If your diet is mostly plants, the processing you do should at a minimum include cooking most of them for a few minutes. Some vitamins will be destroyed, but that's a preferable outcome. - If you have any kind of nutrient deficiency (e.g., calcium is a common issue) and want to solve the issue with your diet, you'll typically want to choose foods that have been processed to be easier to digest and/or to be fortified with such a nutrient. For calcium in particular a diet consisting mostly of unprocessed plants is insufficient. - Some foods (tomatoes are a classic example) have higher nutritional value when bought cooked and canned than when bought "fresh" because the canned product was produced with much fresher ingredients. - The majority of the US lives paycheck to paycheck. There's an economic argument to be made that heavily processed foods can be preferable to the alternatives if they allow you to get your vegetables and other nutrition more cheaply (both in direct cost savings and also in the ability to buy in bulk without spoilage). - Not everyone has the same health goals or personal chemistry, and a linearizable ordering doesn't exist for many diet choices that would apply to every individual across time. For a few choice examples, (1) roughly 1% of the population are underweight and benefit from diet choices enabling weight gain (i.e., on average probably not the proposed diet), and (2) a mostly different 1% subset with IBD benefits from the immunosuppressive effects of low to moderate alcohol consumption even despite its other negative effects (that point is still being studied/debated -- alcohol affects some individuals in that group more negatively than others, talk to your doctor).