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Eat whole plant based foods. At first it's difficult, but taste for it develops and so do one's cooking abilities. Healthy eating is like playing a video game o

Eat whole plant based foods. At first it's difficult, but taste for it develops and so do one's cooking abilities. Healthy eating is like playing a video game on high difficulty settings - arduous and steep learning curve, but rewarding if health is your passion.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wyager 5y ago
I would suggest removing plant-based foods to whatever degree possible. Eliminate wheat, soy, nightshades, and other likely irritants/allergens. My social group tends more towards heterodox dietary choices than most groups, so I have a lot of friends on “extremist” diets. It is quite apparent that the expected outcome of people who only eat meat is significantly better than the people who never eat meat. Both are likely better off than most people consuming the standard American diet, but this might just be due to increased focus on health in general rather than any specific benefit of the diet.
- leereeves 5y ago
  At least for allergens, the latest advice is that babies should be exposed to them because early exposure helps prevent food allergies. Your experience might simply reflect that anyone on a careful diet is likely to be healthier than average simply by avoiding all the junk people typically eat.
- mlac 5y ago
  Both you and op make such convincing arguments, I have no idea what to do.
  - soldehierro 5y ago
    Neither poster makes convincing arguments; you can find anecdotal reports of nearly any diet producing seemingly miraculous results, but any consideration of one's eating patterns should be based off peer-reviewed research.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Even the peer-reviewed research is mostly junk observational studies that are distorted by the healthy subject effect and other uncontrolled variables. That is not a sound basis for making personal dietary decisions. A better approach for most people is to conduct personal n=1 experiments and just see empirically what works best for you in terms of subjective feelings and objective performance metrics.
      - soldehierro 5y ago
        This is unfortunately the status quo of nutrition research; A long-term RCT is the "gold standard", but it is exceedingly difficult to recruit subjects and ensure their compliance over meaningful periods of time. Which is part of why constant flip-flopping about whether something is healthy or not is almost a trope in journalism. Nonetheless, a few principles have been well established: vegetables are good, fruit is (mostly) good, refined grains and free sugars are bad. The issue with personal experiments is often that they are just as biased and cannot be conducted over meaningful time-scales. As an anecdote to illustrate this, I am significantly more productive and energetic when consuming a single sugary, chocolately coffee, but it would be foolish to conclude over such a short period of time that my personally ideal diet should include sugary coffee. I'm not deluded that this is a healthy practice, however; free sugars, fructose in particular, are demonstrably a major factor in the pathogenesis of lifestyle-related diseases.
        toyg 5y ago
        > vegetables are good, fruit is (mostly) good, refined grains and free sugars are bad Even those are not really absolutes, because a diet with only those "good" elements will still be worse than a mix including animal proteins. Also, some vegetables are simply bad in excessive quantities (mushrooms, potatoes, etc). The problem we typically have is just over-abundance of everything in our diets. Too much meat is bad, too much vegetables are bad, too much fruit is bad, too much fish is bad, too much dairy is bad. And that's because our bodies evolved to make the most of anything they could digest, since the normal state was scarcity and every little bit helped with survival. Now these finely-tuned "recycling systems" are routinely oversupplied in ways they were not meant to be, and they can't help themselves but overproduce nutrients of all sorts, with all sorts of unpredictable results. We are like ports where ships continue to unload containers at excessive rates. Some of those containers will end up polluting the area, some will just accumulate into horrible mountains, the motorways will be clogged by a continuous stream of lorries, etc etc etc. Some of those boxes will contain life-saving medicines and some will contain pointless junk, but that's not the actual problem - if you reduce the rate of shipping, then all containers will happily go where they have to go and be dealt with as they "deserve". We were probably not built to have three meals every day.
  - bigyellow 5y ago
    Sincerely try it and see how it makes you feel, then decide. Make an effort for 3-4 weeks, making sure to get enough calories (https://cronometer.com/ https://cronometer.com/ is a good resource) and have support from your friends and family. I think only first-hand experience could really convince anyone.
    - djbusby 5y ago
      We want to measure something - not feelings. What can be measured?
      - nradov 5y ago
        You can measure athletic performance. Check your 1RM for the standard lifts, or VO2 Max for running, or whatever performance metric aligns best to your favorite sport.
      - bumby 5y ago
        A normal blood panel is a good place to start. For me, lipids and liver function tests are what I track. But insulin sensitivity is a good one too. All depends on your personal risk factors
    - threatripper 5y ago
      It really takes weeks and months for the body to fully adjust to a diet. Also the body can suddenly change and one needs another kind of diet.
    - bumby 5y ago
      Just be aware that nutritional deficiencies can take months or in some cases years to manifest. Just because you feel better in the short term does not mean it’s a long term solution. There’s a couple of personal experiences where I switched to a vegan diet and felt great for the first two months or so but other health/performance factors in the longer-term caused me to deviate away from it.
    - therealdrag0 5y ago
      +1 for Cronometer. I evaluated a bunch of nutrition tracking apps mostly on simple/focused UX and this was the winner.
  - djbusby 5y ago
    Everything in moderation (except for moderation)
    - erikerikson 5y ago
      s/except/including/
    - markstos 5y ago
      Would you hammer your toe in moderation? There really some things where the less you have, you the better.
      - djbusby 5y ago
        Thanks for pointing that out, else I'd have been completely lost.
  - toyg 5y ago
    One should not come to an IT forum for advice on health, so this is probably a good outcome
  - markstos 5y ago
    Science is overwhelming on the side of whole-food, plant-based diets as the better choice for long-term health. This is covered in books like "How Not to Die" and "Own Your Health". The study linked here agrees-- more fruits and vegetables is correlated with lower dementia.
  - dennis_jeeves 5y ago
    Except that some arguments are wrong. It's is a difficult task to discern the 'truth'
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >the expected outcome of people who only eat meat is significantly better than the people who never eat meat Hannibal Lecter definitely outperforms expectations.
- bigyellow 5y ago
  > I would suggest removing plant-based foods to whatever degree possible. Eliminate wheat, soy, nightshades, and other likely irritants/allergens. What is the basis for this assertion? I mean besides self-congratulating anecdotes and other second-hand knowledge.
  - fouc 5y ago
    What's the basis for your earlier assertion?
    - bigyellow 5y ago
      For one, the very article we're discussing.
  - stayfrosty420 5y ago
    What's the basis for your assertion that plant based is somehow healthier? It's absolutely not and you'll be lacking in a variety of vital nutrients. A balanced, varied diet is best.
    - datameta 5y ago
      Any lack of vitamin intake can be supplimented with otc vitamins. It is better to acquire them through food, but the often recited B-vitamin deficiency in vegans is easily quashed with a B-complex a few times a week max.
      - wyager 5y ago
        If your “healthy” diet requires vitamin pills it’s not a healthy diet. Animal diets don’t require you to take pills or do anything weird - the absolute most extreme advice some animal diet people will tell you is that it’s a good idea to eat liver.
        datameta 5y ago
        I don't personally adhere to a strictly vegan diet. But if one does, and their avoidance of stress hormone metabolites in industrially raised livestock makes them feel better, then taking a vitamin supplement (which is orders of magnitude under the maximum safe dose and therefore without side effects) is the rational choice.
- fouc 5y ago
  That's a good point, even something like the carnivore diet is apparently quite low in inflammation.
- bumby 5y ago
  >Eliminate wheat, soy, nightshades, and other likely irritants/allergens. I’m curious how you arrived at this conclusion. Granting that allergic or inflammatory responses may be on a spectrum, a cursory look online seemed to indicate many animal products have higher rates of allergic responses than plant products. E.g., soy is listed at 0.4% of the population while (cow) milk is 2-3%. Maybe a better way to phrase it is to remove any food that causes an inflammatory response. Edit: clarifying the type of animal milk
  - wyager 5y ago
    No one except people who have been affected by weird pathogens like lone star tick disease is allergic to ruminant meat. Milk is probably the single worst case example of an animal product, by a huge margin, because while almost everyone ate a ton of ruminant meat, not everyone ate a ton of milk.
    - bumby 5y ago
      Fair point. But by that same logic we need rob throw out your examples as well since they are the most prevalent plant allergens. Even then, they are generally affecting less than 1% of the population. Switching a population to a ruminant-based diet is currently a privilege that is not generalizable under the current food system. (Which is why I specifically chose cow milk as the comparison as a calorie/protein source).
- boppo1 5y ago
  I think your observations about expected outcome are true. Unfortunately, it's inconvenient in light of climate change because it presents a seemingly intractable problem: - humans should eat (minimally processed) animal products - production of animal products must be minimized to fight catastrophic climate change From where I sit, it seems like more and more educated, well-meaning people are starting to lean into a plant-based craze on poorly founded information that seems well founded because the educated classes generally agree it is correct.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- adrr 5y ago
  Is there any study that shows that nightshades increase inflammation. There are tons of studies showing that tomatoes lowers inflammation. Here is an example. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5766234/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5766234/
  - fouc 5y ago
    I think he's referring to the fact that some people react to nightshades. It can cause weird inflammation-like responses for those that are susceptible.
    - bumby 5y ago
      I think this is the error in the OP’s claim. A relatively rare case (allergic reaction in <1% of the population) is generalized as being applicable to the population at large.
      - fouc 5y ago
        Not really, they were giving multiple examples to point out that plant-based food can and do cause inflammation.
        bumby 5y ago
        I think you’re misunderstanding. While true, their point is only applicable to a vanishingly small amount of the population. For example, soy allergies are only listed as a 0.4% rate of prevalence. I don’t think that’s enough for an absolutist claim that applies to the other 99.6% of humans. It comes across as cherry picking, bad faith, or just not understanding the data. If I cherry pick the first Google scholar link that is showing a 2.3% seafood allergy, would you conclude that all people should abstain from fish? It’s not a question of whether a particular food (let alone an entire group like plants) can cause inflammation, but whether it’s prevalent enough problem to claim people should completely cut it from their diet. You alluded too this with the caveat “in those who are susceptible”. We shouldn’t generalize a rule for those who are susceptible to be applicable to those who are not.
markstos 5y ago
Last year during COVID I ended up doing a 26.2 mile run as something do in the spring. I was surprised at how quickly I recovered so I ended up doing another the next weekend... the pattern continued for 5 weeks. I eat a primarily whole-food, plant-based diet and credit the low inflammation of the diet with ability to recover quickly and do that at age 45. I thought it might be a one-off, but in the fall I ended up doing 6 26.2+ mile runs in 6 weeks, including a 50k race and setting my marathon PR on the last run. But now I'm seeing my 10 year old get into running who has been plant-based from birth. He beat almost 80% of the field in a half marathon about three weeks ago, then two week later completed a 19 mile (30k) run. He's also clearly recovering rapidly and has relatively low soreness.
- nradov 5y ago
  Research indicates that time to recover from endurance sports activities has a lot more to do with genetics than diet. Congratulations on the marathon PR.
  - voisin 5y ago
    Source?
jimmaswell 5y ago
I thought I was finally doing good settled on eating mostly chicken breast and whole milk with a multivitamin and omega 3, now I'm apparently at risk for dementia unless I cram plants in. It just never ends.
- nradov 5y ago
  Are you serious? What would ever lead you to think that such a limited diet could be healthy? Humans evolved to eat everything.
  - jimmaswell 5y ago
    It's very hard to get enough protein for muscle building eating anything else without going over my calorie goals, so I settled into a routine of chicken breasts and coffee with milk for the most part. Chicken breast is allegedly very healthy overall, and whole milk has necessary fat and vitamins. I do still eat other things a few times a week.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Yikes. That's just so far off base I don't even know where to begin correcting the misconceptions.
      - jimmaswell 5y ago
        Nothing I said is wrong. White chicken meat is considered a good food and you need some dietary fat, and it really is hard to get 170g of protein under 1800 calories without a lot of it being chicken. I've tried protein shakes but they got old.
        nradov 5y ago
        What does "good food" even mean? Considered by who? Are you even familiar with protein quality metrics? Your comments are not even wrong. They're just completely off base and reflect a fundamental misunderstanding.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

wyager 5y ago

I would suggest removing plant-based foods to whatever degree possible. Eliminate wheat, soy, nightshades, and other likely irritants/allergens. My social group tends more towards heterodox dietary choices than most groups, so I have a lot of friends on “extremist” diets. It is quite apparent that the expected outcome of people who only eat meat is significantly better than the people who never eat meat. Both are likely better off than most people consuming the standard American diet, but this might just be due to increased focus on health in general rather than any specific benefit of the diet.

leereeves 5y ago
At least for allergens, the latest advice is that babies should be exposed to them because early exposure helps prevent food allergies. Your experience might simply reflect that anyone on a careful diet is likely to be healthier than average simply by avoiding all the junk people typically eat.
mlac 5y ago
Both you and op make such convincing arguments, I have no idea what to do.
- soldehierro 5y ago
  Neither poster makes convincing arguments; you can find anecdotal reports of nearly any diet producing seemingly miraculous results, but any consideration of one's eating patterns should be based off peer-reviewed research.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Even the peer-reviewed research is mostly junk observational studies that are distorted by the healthy subject effect and other uncontrolled variables. That is not a sound basis for making personal dietary decisions. A better approach for most people is to conduct personal n=1 experiments and just see empirically what works best for you in terms of subjective feelings and objective performance metrics.
    - soldehierro 5y ago
      This is unfortunately the status quo of nutrition research; A long-term RCT is the "gold standard", but it is exceedingly difficult to recruit subjects and ensure their compliance over meaningful periods of time. Which is part of why constant flip-flopping about whether something is healthy or not is almost a trope in journalism. Nonetheless, a few principles have been well established: vegetables are good, fruit is (mostly) good, refined grains and free sugars are bad. The issue with personal experiments is often that they are just as biased and cannot be conducted over meaningful time-scales. As an anecdote to illustrate this, I am significantly more productive and energetic when consuming a single sugary, chocolately coffee, but it would be foolish to conclude over such a short period of time that my personally ideal diet should include sugary coffee. I'm not deluded that this is a healthy practice, however; free sugars, fructose in particular, are demonstrably a major factor in the pathogenesis of lifestyle-related diseases.
      - toyg 5y ago
        > vegetables are good, fruit is (mostly) good, refined grains and free sugars are bad Even those are not really absolutes, because a diet with only those "good" elements will still be worse than a mix including animal proteins. Also, some vegetables are simply bad in excessive quantities (mushrooms, potatoes, etc). The problem we typically have is just over-abundance of everything in our diets. Too much meat is bad, too much vegetables are bad, too much fruit is bad, too much fish is bad, too much dairy is bad. And that's because our bodies evolved to make the most of anything they could digest, since the normal state was scarcity and every little bit helped with survival. Now these finely-tuned "recycling systems" are routinely oversupplied in ways they were not meant to be, and they can't help themselves but overproduce nutrients of all sorts, with all sorts of unpredictable results. We are like ports where ships continue to unload containers at excessive rates. Some of those containers will end up polluting the area, some will just accumulate into horrible mountains, the motorways will be clogged by a continuous stream of lorries, etc etc etc. Some of those boxes will contain life-saving medicines and some will contain pointless junk, but that's not the actual problem - if you reduce the rate of shipping, then all containers will happily go where they have to go and be dealt with as they "deserve". We were probably not built to have three meals every day.
- bigyellow 5y ago
  Sincerely try it and see how it makes you feel, then decide. Make an effort for 3-4 weeks, making sure to get enough calories (https://cronometer.com/ https://cronometer.com/ is a good resource) and have support from your friends and family. I think only first-hand experience could really convince anyone.
  - djbusby 5y ago
    We want to measure something - not feelings. What can be measured?
    - nradov 5y ago
      You can measure athletic performance. Check your 1RM for the standard lifts, or VO2 Max for running, or whatever performance metric aligns best to your favorite sport.
    - bumby 5y ago
      A normal blood panel is a good place to start. For me, lipids and liver function tests are what I track. But insulin sensitivity is a good one too. All depends on your personal risk factors
  - threatripper 5y ago
    It really takes weeks and months for the body to fully adjust to a diet. Also the body can suddenly change and one needs another kind of diet.
  - bumby 5y ago
    Just be aware that nutritional deficiencies can take months or in some cases years to manifest. Just because you feel better in the short term does not mean it’s a long term solution. There’s a couple of personal experiences where I switched to a vegan diet and felt great for the first two months or so but other health/performance factors in the longer-term caused me to deviate away from it.
  - therealdrag0 5y ago
    +1 for Cronometer. I evaluated a bunch of nutrition tracking apps mostly on simple/focused UX and this was the winner.
- djbusby 5y ago
  Everything in moderation (except for moderation)
  - erikerikson 5y ago
    s/except/including/
  - markstos 5y ago
    Would you hammer your toe in moderation? There really some things where the less you have, you the better.
    - djbusby 5y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out, else I'd have been completely lost.
- toyg 5y ago
  One should not come to an IT forum for advice on health, so this is probably a good outcome
- markstos 5y ago
  Science is overwhelming on the side of whole-food, plant-based diets as the better choice for long-term health. This is covered in books like "How Not to Die" and "Own Your Health". The study linked here agrees-- more fruits and vegetables is correlated with lower dementia.
- dennis_jeeves 5y ago
  Except that some arguments are wrong. It's is a difficult task to discern the 'truth'
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>the expected outcome of people who only eat meat is significantly better than the people who never eat meat Hannibal Lecter definitely outperforms expectations.
bigyellow 5y ago
> I would suggest removing plant-based foods to whatever degree possible. Eliminate wheat, soy, nightshades, and other likely irritants/allergens. What is the basis for this assertion? I mean besides self-congratulating anecdotes and other second-hand knowledge.
- fouc 5y ago
  What's the basis for your earlier assertion?
  - bigyellow 5y ago
    For one, the very article we're discussing.
- stayfrosty420 5y ago
  What's the basis for your assertion that plant based is somehow healthier? It's absolutely not and you'll be lacking in a variety of vital nutrients. A balanced, varied diet is best.
  - datameta 5y ago
    Any lack of vitamin intake can be supplimented with otc vitamins. It is better to acquire them through food, but the often recited B-vitamin deficiency in vegans is easily quashed with a B-complex a few times a week max.
    - wyager 5y ago
      If your “healthy” diet requires vitamin pills it’s not a healthy diet. Animal diets don’t require you to take pills or do anything weird - the absolute most extreme advice some animal diet people will tell you is that it’s a good idea to eat liver.
      - datameta 5y ago
        I don't personally adhere to a strictly vegan diet. But if one does, and their avoidance of stress hormone metabolites in industrially raised livestock makes them feel better, then taking a vitamin supplement (which is orders of magnitude under the maximum safe dose and therefore without side effects) is the rational choice.
fouc 5y ago
That's a good point, even something like the carnivore diet is apparently quite low in inflammation.
bumby 5y ago
>Eliminate wheat, soy, nightshades, and other likely irritants/allergens. I’m curious how you arrived at this conclusion. Granting that allergic or inflammatory responses may be on a spectrum, a cursory look online seemed to indicate many animal products have higher rates of allergic responses than plant products. E.g., soy is listed at 0.4% of the population while (cow) milk is 2-3%. Maybe a better way to phrase it is to remove any food that causes an inflammatory response. Edit: clarifying the type of animal milk
- wyager 5y ago
  No one except people who have been affected by weird pathogens like lone star tick disease is allergic to ruminant meat. Milk is probably the single worst case example of an animal product, by a huge margin, because while almost everyone ate a ton of ruminant meat, not everyone ate a ton of milk.
  - bumby 5y ago
    Fair point. But by that same logic we need rob throw out your examples as well since they are the most prevalent plant allergens. Even then, they are generally affecting less than 1% of the population. Switching a population to a ruminant-based diet is currently a privilege that is not generalizable under the current food system. (Which is why I specifically chose cow milk as the comparison as a calorie/protein source).
boppo1 5y ago
I think your observations about expected outcome are true. Unfortunately, it's inconvenient in light of climate change because it presents a seemingly intractable problem: - humans should eat (minimally processed) animal products - production of animal products must be minimized to fight catastrophic climate change From where I sit, it seems like more and more educated, well-meaning people are starting to lean into a plant-based craze on poorly founded information that seems well founded because the educated classes generally agree it is correct.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
adrr 5y ago
Is there any study that shows that nightshades increase inflammation. There are tons of studies showing that tomatoes lowers inflammation. Here is an example. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5766234/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5766234/
- fouc 5y ago
  I think he's referring to the fact that some people react to nightshades. It can cause weird inflammation-like responses for those that are susceptible.
  - bumby 5y ago
    I think this is the error in the OP’s claim. A relatively rare case (allergic reaction in <1% of the population) is generalized as being applicable to the population at large.
    - fouc 5y ago
      Not really, they were giving multiple examples to point out that plant-based food can and do cause inflammation.
      - bumby 5y ago
        I think you’re misunderstanding. While true, their point is only applicable to a vanishingly small amount of the population. For example, soy allergies are only listed as a 0.4% rate of prevalence. I don’t think that’s enough for an absolutist claim that applies to the other 99.6% of humans. It comes across as cherry picking, bad faith, or just not understanding the data. If I cherry pick the first Google scholar link that is showing a 2.3% seafood allergy, would you conclude that all people should abstain from fish? It’s not a question of whether a particular food (let alone an entire group like plants) can cause inflammation, but whether it’s prevalent enough problem to claim people should completely cut it from their diet. You alluded too this with the caveat “in those who are susceptible”. We shouldn’t generalize a rule for those who are susceptible to be applicable to those who are not.

markstos 5y ago

Last year during COVID I ended up doing a 26.2 mile run as something do in the spring. I was surprised at how quickly I recovered so I ended up doing another the next weekend... the pattern continued for 5 weeks. I eat a primarily whole-food, plant-based diet and credit the low inflammation of the diet with ability to recover quickly and do that at age 45. I thought it might be a one-off, but in the fall I ended up doing 6 26.2+ mile runs in 6 weeks, including a 50k race and setting my marathon PR on the last run. But now I'm seeing my 10 year old get into running who has been plant-based from birth. He beat almost 80% of the field in a half marathon about three weeks ago, then two week later completed a 19 mile (30k) run. He's also clearly recovering rapidly and has relatively low soreness.

nradov 5y ago
Research indicates that time to recover from endurance sports activities has a lot more to do with genetics than diet. Congratulations on the marathon PR.
- voisin 5y ago
  Source?

jimmaswell 5y ago

I thought I was finally doing good settled on eating mostly chicken breast and whole milk with a multivitamin and omega 3, now I'm apparently at risk for dementia unless I cram plants in. It just never ends.

nradov 5y ago
Are you serious? What would ever lead you to think that such a limited diet could be healthy? Humans evolved to eat everything.
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  It's very hard to get enough protein for muscle building eating anything else without going over my calorie goals, so I settled into a routine of chicken breasts and coffee with milk for the most part. Chicken breast is allegedly very healthy overall, and whole milk has necessary fat and vitamins. I do still eat other things a few times a week.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Yikes. That's just so far off base I don't even know where to begin correcting the misconceptions.
    - jimmaswell 5y ago
      Nothing I said is wrong. White chicken meat is considered a good food and you need some dietary fat, and it really is hard to get 170g of protein under 1800 calories without a lot of it being chicken. I've tried protein shakes but they got old.
      - nradov 5y ago
        What does "good food" even mean? Considered by who? Are you even familiar with protein quality metrics? Your comments are not even wrong. They're just completely off base and reflect a fundamental misunderstanding.