3 ms·

My least favorite genre is the 100 papers saying X is bad to eat and 100 saying X is good to eat. Just have common sense and eat everything in moderation. Food

My least favorite genre is the 100 papers saying X is bad to eat and 100 saying X is good to eat. Just have common sense and eat everything in moderation. Food absolutists are weird/annoying. Especially the trad-fascist "seed oils and soy bad, red meat good" crowd. Just a bunch of dorks.

amanaplanacanal 3y ago
This might sound like the naturalistic fallacy, but if people have been eating things in quantity for hundreds of thousands of years, the worst outcomes have probably been weeded out of the gene pool. If it’s new in the last 10,000 years (the beginning of agriculture) we have at least some hope that the worst problems have been dealt with, although we do have lactose and gluten intolerance as counter examples. If it’s new to the human diet in the last hundred years, maybe it’s fine, and maybe it isn’t. It has to pretty obviously kill you for people to notice. Animals, fruit, and root vegetables have been in the human diet since before humans left Africa. That’s my rule of thumb.
- im3w1l 3y ago
  Agriculture may have existed for 10k years or something, but it's not like everyone switched over to that lifestyle immediately. There have also been peoples that lived as nomadic herders and even hunter gatherers into even modern to almost-modern times.
  - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
    Yes. My ancestry is mostly British isles, and it looks like agriculture took hold there only about 6000 years ago. Possibly arrived with the Indo-Europeans?
- Vegenoid 3y ago
  Yes, but people are often interested in nutrition not to avoid 'worst outcomes', but to reduce risk factors as they age. Evolution isn't so good at selecting for diets that push the median life expectancy from 75 to 85.
jdminhbg 3y ago
> eat everything in moderation The entire point of diet advice and nutritional science is trying to find out what "in moderation" means for different foods. The amount of donuts that is moderate and the amount of broccoli that is moderate are not equal.

amanaplanacanal 3y ago

This might sound like the naturalistic fallacy, but if people have been eating things in quantity for hundreds of thousands of years, the worst outcomes have probably been weeded out of the gene pool. If it’s new in the last 10,000 years (the beginning of agriculture) we have at least some hope that the worst problems have been dealt with, although we do have lactose and gluten intolerance as counter examples. If it’s new to the human diet in the last hundred years, maybe it’s fine, and maybe it isn’t. It has to pretty obviously kill you for people to notice. Animals, fruit, and root vegetables have been in the human diet since before humans left Africa. That’s my rule of thumb.

im3w1l 3y ago
Agriculture may have existed for 10k years or something, but it's not like everyone switched over to that lifestyle immediately. There have also been peoples that lived as nomadic herders and even hunter gatherers into even modern to almost-modern times.
- amanaplanacanal 3y ago
  Yes. My ancestry is mostly British isles, and it looks like agriculture took hold there only about 6000 years ago. Possibly arrived with the Indo-Europeans?
Vegenoid 3y ago
Yes, but people are often interested in nutrition not to avoid 'worst outcomes', but to reduce risk factors as they age. Evolution isn't so good at selecting for diets that push the median life expectancy from 75 to 85.

jdminhbg 3y ago

> eat everything in moderation The entire point of diet advice and nutritional science is trying to find out what "in moderation" means for different foods. The amount of donuts that is moderate and the amount of broccoli that is moderate are not equal.