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While it's really interesting to debate whether you should eat potatoes or beef, the real battle for the western world is that we stop eating processed foods. W

• unreal37 14y ago
  You should read the book "Wheat Belly". That will bust that myth about grains and fruits for you.
  • markerdmann 14y ago
    This blog post presents some interesting criticisms of the book "Wheat Belly": http://noglutennoproblem.blogspot.com/2012/03/wheat-belly-busted.html http://noglutennoproblem.blogspot.com/2012/03/wheat-belly-bu... It sounds like the book often misrepresents the research that it cites.
    • bitsoda 14y ago
      It seems that the only real error made by Wheat Belly's author was bending the study by claiming its subjects were all obese with celiac disease. Apart from this, the comments contains many anecdotal responses from people who have dropped not only gluten, but all grain from their diet and had positive results. Moreover, take into account the blog's author who has published three books circulating around gluten-free foods -- something that Wheat Belly advises the reader to jettison altogether.
  • latch 14y ago
    You missed my point..for every 1 scientist that says "fruits are bad", I'll find you 1 or more that says "eat more fruits!" That this scientist's views comes in book form doesn't change anything, and whatever graphs and studies he uses will only confuse me because someone saying the exact opposite will use equally impressive graphs and studies. Watching nutrition experts is like watching economist...they can each prove that they are right, even though they are making mutually exclusive claims. No doubt they mostly all have good intentions...I don't begrudge them their enthusiasm. While I won't claim that wheat is some magical food, no book will change my view (based on what I've seen), that I'm better off eating wheat and fruits than KFC.
    • progrock 14y ago
      Agree it's a minefield. And it's pretty surprising that the human digestive system isn't better charted. To me it seems that the modern human diet is the most peculiarly unatural thing. It might also be the recipe for human intelligence and longer living. I'm worried about the adverse effects of some foods. Bowel cancer is somewhat preventative and food related: http://cancerhelp.cancerresearchuk.org/type/bowel-cancer/about/risks/diet-tips-for-preventing-bowel-cancer http://cancerhelp.cancerresearchuk.org/type/bowel-cancer/abo...
    • Xodarap 14y ago
      US News & World report does an annual survey of dieticians: http://health.usnews.com/best-diet http://health.usnews.com/best-diet Unsurprisingly, those dieticians overwhelmingly say that meat-heavy diets like paleo (ranked 25th out of 25) are horrific. The idea that there is some controversy about this is mostly due to people on HN without much formal education.
• rubashov 14y ago
  > people who favor fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes over beef, pork and fatty foods are healthier I have two eyes and that doesn't square at all. The fat people eat packaged food and restaurant food, which are very skimpy on meat and real animal fat. The main thing I notice about fat people is they eat very often. Thin people eat moderate meals and don't snack. Fat people continuously have handfuls of crap like nuts and fruit and soy and soda.
  • nodata 14y ago
    > The main thing I notice about fat people is they eat very often and I notice that many thin people eat very very often (like six times a day), but in small amounts. We need the empirical evidence.
  • latch 14y ago
    If nothing else, we agree that processed foods are the real problem. Maybe people who eat fruits, vegetables and legumes are simply more likely to avoid eating processed foods. I will challenge you on your last point. You seriously see a lot of fat people eating fruits and soy?!
    • rubashov 14y ago
      Absolutely. Fat white people in desk jobs eat handfuls of soy loaded trail mix in the afternoon, and an apple an hour before lunch. It's SWPL emotional eating.
      • progrock 14y ago
        There's a lot of talk of soy here on this thread. Is this a US thing? What soy are you eating? It's not that big in the UK. You can get soy milk and it's mixed in with some meat products and found in veggie burgers - but it's not that mainstream. I buy frozen 'fresh' soybeans, which are quite hard to find. They're nice.
        • nzjames 14y ago
• MBlume 14y ago
  I'll bet you that the people you've observed live in the US, and we have really crappy beef here.
• DenisM 14y ago
  Plural of "anecdote" is not "data". "Fruit and veggie eaters" being healthier is just as likely to be a confirmation bias on your part, that you simply not paying attention to contrary examples. But even if it was true and there was a correlation, there is another possible explanation for it: People who are obsessed with health will do "X" and they will eat fruits and veggies, because both are believed to be good. "X" does a lot of good, while F&V does nothing at all. Since you don't pay attention to "X", not even knowing what it is, you come to conclusion that F&V are good, while in fact "X" is what decides who is healthy. The point here is be careful with "I do have two eyes...".
• scythe 14y ago
  I've observed rather different things. The people I know who eat the most meat are the Crossfitters around me. They are, in almost all cases, healthy. I have a roommate who drinks fat-free milk and eats lots of salad and pasta, who avoids meat like the plague. He's been struggling with his weight for as long as I've known him. I drink coconut milk -- which contains nothing but fat -- and a meal usually consists of some randomly selected fatty cut of meat and vegetables fried in the drippings. That, or cheap canned fish. I lost weight eating like this. I fit in skinny jeans. I may with luck convince my almost-girlfriend to peg me. :3 But the important thing -- I don't advertise. I am not a walking bulletin of the health benefits of coconut and sardines. How do you really know about the diets of the people around you? I would say there are maybe four or five people around me whose diets I actually know well enough to analyze in any reasonable way. Case A is a twenty-two year old recent Caltech graduate who is obsessed with freerunning and eats nearly-strict paleo. He can do a backflip. No further comments. We grew up together. Case B is my roommate. He follows all the conventional advice to a T -- chicken, fish, whole grain, salad. Lots of "health food" products. Y'know, healthiest potato chips on the shelf. There is bread, there is soybean oil mayonnaise. It... doesn't seem to be working. Case C is another good friend of mine. Eats a lot of processed cheap stuff; he's the sort that'll buy three pounds of animal crackers. When I first met him he was rather obese and said he was try'na learn to eat vegetables. He lost a lot of weight after we introduced him to ecstasy... and he's been eating healthier too. He's sloowly coming around; one of his recent facebook statuses involved making hard-boiled eggs. He looks better and seems happy. Score 281,443 for MDMA. Case D is me. I'm kind of a dick, judging people like this. People who I like. I don't really know any other way to be honest about how I make decisions, though. When I was eleven my parents tried to force me to switch from whole milk to 2%. I responded by walking two miles to the gas station to buy milk. I'm the only kid in my family who never had weight problems growing up. Eyes optional.
  • dhechols 14y ago
    Freerunner here. Most of my diet consists of peanut butter and blueberry jam on toasted bread, yogurt, chicken, eggs, rice, protein powder, cottage cheese, and hummus. Oh yeah, and sometimes I buy a giant can of mixed fruit and eat the whole thing. It's like dessert.
  • 14y ago
• bad_user 14y ago
  Since we are talking anecdotes and make-beliefs, I'll add what I saw with my own two eyes ... My grandfather was eating between 5 and 10 eggs per day, every day. He also drank at least 1 liter of home-made red whine per day, while being a big consumer of dairy products (also made in-house). Of course, because my grandparents lived on a farm and consumed what they produced or traded with neighbors, half of a normal week would go by without them consuming any meat. However my grandfather was also a big fan of raw and untreated pig bacon, the kind you never find in stores. It was one of his pleasures that he indulged whenever he could. My grandfather died at 99 years old, 3 months before his 100 years anniversary. He died out of old age, never having any problems with his heart. He was able to work his land until 98 years old. And in his village, even though people live a really rough life, it's pretty common to see people past the age of 90 with no serious health problems. So really, your own two eyes are biased by the culture you live in ;-) Nowadays it's a common belief that living a healthy life means preferring fruits and vegetables ... however, be careful when sampling because it's possible that people taking more care of their health are healthy because they care more about their health, not necessarily because they consume less meat.
  • hk_kh 14y ago
    Things like living on a village and having an stress free life can greatly improve your life expectancy. In some rural areas on my country it's usual to live around 100 - 120 years. In some places, even having a pork farm based economy and eating all sorts of different pork derivatives on a daily base. IMHO, what kills us on cities is just contamination and stress.
  • spitx 14y ago
    Please refrain from making these anecdotal observations. Your observation is the equivalent of this from the movie "Get Him To The Greek": "British mother fu##ers don’t die. You ever heard of a British rock and roll star dying? No. They don’t die. Mick Jagger. Keith Richard. Those Led Zeppelin. Themmotherfu##ers old as fuck! Fu##ing Ozzy Osbourne is gonna outlive Miley Cyrus"
    • bad_user 14y ago
• pauljburke 14y ago
  I firmly believe diets are like software development methodologies. Doesn't matter which one you subscribe to as long as it isn't universally recognised as junk, you'll still see results because it is better than what you'd be doing by default. Once everyone gets to a certain baseline we can quibble about what's more effective.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• ldehaan 14y ago
  Observations aside, there is actually scientific evidence to the contrary. The fact is that our bodies require certain types of fats (omega3, omega6, etc..) in order to function properly. Your body is built to break down fats, this is why you have a gall bladder. Diets low in animal fats (not ala omega3's and 6's, which your body has to break down and consequently only gets a very small percentage of usable omegas) cause the body to more easily synthesize fat from other sources, most notably carbohydrates. Diets high in carbs trigger leptin signaling surges which can cause averse reactions like your brain no longer receiving leptin signals. "In Framingham, Massachusetts, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate,the lower people’s serum cholesterol. We found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories weighed the least and were the most physically active." [1]. If you want to have the best brain function (your brain is made up of mostly fats) and body function you should strongly consider cutting out gluten based foods (which interfere with so many things in a bad way [2]) and start eating grass fed and finished beef, and wild game with a side of veggies. Cut out as many tubers as you can get away with as well. Foods that you cannot eat unless they are cooked are probably not the best for your diet, in my mind this makes perfectly logical sense. We are people of the ice age, our diets for many thousands of years consisted of what could be eaten raw, including meats. While we do not yet have a full understanding of the rate at which humanity evolves; it is understood that the core functioning of our bodies energy system can not completely change in the span of a few thousand years. [1] Dr. William Castilli, "concerning the possibility of a nut...," archives of internal medicine [2] Journal: Neurology - Hadjivassiliou 2001
  • Shorel 14y ago
    Evidence for the controlled use of fire by Homo erectus beginning some 400,000 years ago has wide scholarly support.
• Xodarap 14y ago
  You should see US News' annual survey of dieticians.[1] They agree with you, it's just an odd publication bias that gives these "alternative" diets traction. 1. http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/ http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/
• dr_ 14y ago
  I agree with you entirely. The problem with some of the responses you've received, as well as an issue which Taubes seems to ignore, is that when you look outside the USA, it's a different story. In many Asian countries, rice is a staple and eaten with almost every meal. Noodles are heavily consumed as well. Yet they don't have the obesity issues we do. The major difference being they don't eat heavily processed foods (at least not until recently). They do consume all types of meats but their portions are not astronomical. Pasta, rice and potatoes are not the culprit, depending on where they come from. But soda is. And its not just the chemicals involved in processing food, it's also the abundance that the technology creates - lots of food for relatively cheap prices.
• danielwarna 14y ago
  I've always found the whole diet debate a bit silly and overly complicated. Most people are probably going to be fine as long they eat a varied diet,don't overeat and get enough physical exercise, with emphasis on the physical exercise. The human body is simply not design to sit on a chair 24/7 no matter how incredibly healthy the food you're eating is.
• ralfn 14y ago
  Dont trust your eyes. You dont see people eating fatty foods at McDonalds. You see them eating a shitload of sugar, salt, and a little bit of fat and proteine. If fat would make people fat, why are americans the mos obesive nation? Your diets, relatively speaking, consist of less fat than most european diets. But way way more sugar. In the states, sugar is in everything, including most hamburgers, bread slices and soft drinks.
• ethermal 14y ago
  not true in the least, the healthiest of my friends from outward appearances eat no fruit or veggies what so ever. Observations on small samples sizes are useless.