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A friend of mine is a cardiac nurse and get massively frustrated by the overly complex regimens that people follow while ignoring the obvious stuff. e.g. going
by frereubu 3y ago
A friend of mine is a cardiac nurse and get massively frustrated by the overly complex regimens that people follow while ignoring the obvious stuff. e.g. going for low-gluten diets while drinking too much alcohol and not exercising enough. In terms of food I've always loved Michael Pollen's description of healthy eating as opposed to fad diets: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
- pauln99 3y agoI think Pollen should have said "Eat real food", and stopped there. Then our appetite will take care of itself, and won't require conscious - and ultimately - futile endeavour. And eating meat's fine (from a health perspective, if not ethical necessarily). We've been eating it for a couple of millions of years.
- n4r9 3y ago> eating meat's fine... We've been eating it for a couple of millions of years. The behaviour of ancient humans doesn't necessarily indicate what will keep us modern humans healthy into old age, though. Do we even know whether they ate meat everyday? Personally speaking, I will generally put on too much weight if I follow my appetite and don't count calories or follow some kind of plan. That's true even if I eat "real", home-cooked food.
- darkstar_16 3y agoThis is true. The early humans likely just ate one meal a day, and were moving a lot. They also ate when they got hungry and not necessarily when it's time for "lunch".
- vidanay 3y agoI'm almost certain that scheduled meals rose to prominence with the industrial revolution (aka, "clocking in and out".)
- eggdaft 3y agoI’d roll back a bit on meat. It can be very fatty, particularly red meat. And it does significantly raise risks of various diseases, including cancer. If you’re going to eat it, I’d be very selective about the types and sources you consume. Humans didn’t exist millions of years ago…
- Etheryte 3y agoI'd say this is intentionally missing the point. Where you draw the line between homo sapiens and the previous predecessor is subjective and largely arbitrary. The point is that we and our evolutionary ancestors have been eating most edible things we could get our hands on for as long as we go back.
- rafaelero 3y agoEDIT
- eggdaft 3y ago
- mglz 3y ago> And eating meat's fine (from a health perspective, if not ethical necessarily). We've been eating it for a couple of millions of years. The current theory is that we developed sweating and bipedal walking to be endurance hunters, i.e. running after a prey animal until it is too exhausted to run any further. Tool use and development were also driven in part by hunting (spears, atlatl, bow and arrow, skinning knives etc.). Overall humans are omnivores, as evidenced by tooth layout. Some populations still manage to live on primarily meat-based diets (Inuit), albeit with some difficulties. The main issue is the amount of meat: Hunting was difficult and dangerous, limiting how much meat we got. Being able to eat meat every day for almost every meal is a recent development and is a major difference to prehistorical diets. Plus, factory-farmed meat is significantly different from free-range animals w.r.t fat, hormone and antibiotics content.
- Clubber 3y agoI would assume the early diets would be feast and starve. You kill an animal and the entire tribe gets to feast for a few days, then you don't eat a whole lot until you kill another animal. Salt eventually flattened this out by being a preservative. I'm sure there were gathering of berries and plants to fill in between the feast. I mean they were called hunter / gatherers.
- ak_111 3y agoI always find it baffling appealing to the fact that "eating meat is lindy" - i.e. something stone age humans and us did for hundreds of thousands of years, hence healthy, at least it won't kill you. Because it ignores the fact that average life expectancy was significantly less than it is today - why would you want to take stone age humans as health role models? In fact average life expectancy almost doubled globally from high 40s to high 70s only very recently - well after we stopped eating meat all the time.
- karolist 3y agoAverage life expentancy is influenced by far more factors than just diet, especially in lawless times with minimal creature conforts.
- ben_w 3y ago> And eating meat's fine (from a health perspective, if not ethical necessarily). We've been eating it for a couple of millions of years. Our mouths are too small for the number of teeth we have. A few million years is a lot of time in evolution, but it's still catching up with the invention of cooking.
- dspillett 3y ago> Our mouths are too small for the number of teeth we have. Is that a general thing? I was under the impression those of us from the British isles had a problem because of mixed heritage due to repeated invasion: we've managed to inherit a tendency for smaller jaws from southern influences and bigger teeth from north/west Europe.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- koonsolo 3y ago> We've been eating it for a couple of millions of years. My grandparents were farmers before farming became industrialized. If you look at how much meat they ate, it's very little compared to current generations. Plus, what the cows and pigs ate in those days was very different than what they feed them today. I know of a farmer that raises a cow for his own consumption, and that one gets different food than all the rest. That should tell you enough already. So the 'eat mostly plants' is very relevant for todays generation, even more so than before.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoExcept that everyone's body is different, and sometimes you really should be on a particular diet of some kind. Ask your doctor what to eat, eat that. When they say "stop drinking", "cut back the salt", "eat more fiber", etc, do it.
- oldpersonintx 3y agoThe idea that you need a highly personalized custom diet is a lie peddled by everyone who profits from this You do not need to see a doctor prior to eating kale Your doctor is a person who uses WebMD to determine what prescription to write you as quickly as possible. Your doctor is probably unhealthy also.
- saiya-jin 3y agoMy wife is a doctor, most of of our friends have at least one, often both as doctors. Most of them are living healthily, but that may be also due to location - Geneva, Switzerland which has strong French influence. Meaning good high quality food is default, portions smaller than US, tons of physical exercise is a default here, we have beautiful nature and mountains at our doorsteps so that helps. My banking IT colleagues fall into exactly same category. But then there are the rest, which have various issues like eating crap, overweight, no sports etc. Yet they know fully darn well where it leads to. Either they make some mental bypass like smokers 'it won't happen to me', or they are at peace and enjoy themselves. Proper knowledge of consequences is not enough to persuade everybody, regardless of their IQ. Also, even healthily folks that are say anxious go sometimes on regretful binging spree when things get tougher.
- MrVandemar 3y ago> Ask your doctor what to eat, eat that. Ummmm ... maybe. I work in a medical practice, and I don't think the doctor's really have that great an understanding of nutrition. I'm not sure it's even something they study at med-school.
- Celmfire 3y ago
- MattGaiser 3y agoI don't think there is much disagreement on how to be healthier. The problem is how to be healthier without it costing too much in terms of effort, pain, sacrifice, etc.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ulfw 3y agoWhat does gluten have to do with heart health?
- brodouevencode 3y agoMinimal, but that was not what OP said.
- ak_111 3y agoThe extreme all meat diet have only started gaining wide mainstream traction (as far as I can tell) only over the last 6-8 years (and for some reason seems to overlap strongly with certain segment of crypto and MAGA population). So it will be interesting to track progress in the population who committed to it in the next few years since I think it takes a decade or so for a diet to start exhibiting long-term health effects in a significant sample. Anecdotally from my small group of 10 friends that I know who committed to it, 3 quit it after a few months because they couldn't give up carbs, 4 still swear by it after a few years, and 3 said that it was causing them health problems around the year mark so they gave it up.
- blitzar 3y ago> The extreme all meat diet have only started gaining wide mainstream traction (as far as I can tell) only over the last 6-8 years The extreme all meat diet was called "The Atkins Diet" 20 years ago, you might have seen it mentioned on a retro rerun of a tv show. As with most things, and certainly everything to do with diet, excercise and fashion - there is nothing actually new.
- infecto 3y agoHow is low gluten obvious?
- cuchoi 3y agoThe author was giving that as an example of a complicated diet that might not help as much as "the obvious".