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> You sound like an industry-insider explaining why a new startup will fail. I certainly don't want to rain on some new visionary's parade, but I spend a lot o

> You sound like an industry-insider explaining why a new startup will fail. I certainly don't want to rain on some new visionary's parade, but I spend a lot of time tracking folks who I consider to be the real visionaries in this field. As in we are currently in the midst of the greatest revolution in human health of our lives, and this guy is running in the wrong direction. We're seeing astonishing results with dietary remediation of a vast array of conditions that were previously considered unrelated. And this isn't just "remedial eating", it's discovering that our current ways of eating are killing us but that diet can likewise help heal us. It's a Khunian revolution out of "the pill and the scalpel" mindset and into a deeper understanding of root causes of wide classes of disease and general unhealthiness in 21st century society. I must certainly be writing in an aggressive posture, for which I'll apologize. I'll have to account my overenthusiasm to the long-term health and well-being of literally everyone I've ever met being at stake. Current research is showing that we are only just beginning to gain understanding of the complexity and health of the GI. An analogy is that our GI and GI microbiota are essentially a recently discovered vital organ. One which the industrialized western diet (now well exported globally) has been systematically destroying. Diet has direct and immense impact on GI health, which in turn impacts such matters as: chronic systemic inflammation, autoimmunity, hyperinsulinism, neurotransmitter production (a vast amount of which happens .. in the gut!), hunger signalling, and more. I don't have time to put the references in here that this deserves, but I'll leave you all with this to whet appetites, as it were. Dr. Terry Wahls, "Minding Your Mitochondria": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc Watch that, so my bluntness to follow makes sense. I see this guy's protocol as nothing but poisonous in the long run. He's off and created yet another processed food product that must be assumed to fail to meet the needs of the human body. Current research hammers home the idea that we don't yet have a complete and constructive model of nutrition, so why in the heck should I believe a nonspecialist that claims otherwise? Extraordinary claims, extraordinary proof, or GTFO.

criley 14y ago
>"Extraordinary claims, extraordinary proof, or GTFO." >"I see this guy's protocol as nothing but poisonous in the long run." You place a burden of evidence on him that you yourself in this very post violated on a number of occasions. You CANNOT call his diet poisonous simply because you disagree with it. You admitted it yourself: >"Current research is showing that we are only just beginning to gain understanding of the complexity and health of the GI." So no offense, but you have literally no ground to say that this is poisonous in the short OR long term, no evidence to back that up, and you cannot rely on a field that cannot support your view. You have a view on this, congratulations, but it is nothing more than a well-informed opinion. It is not fact, it is not supported by fact and as you've admitted -- it CANNOT at this point be supported by fact that does not yet exist. Even your link to a TEDX (aka, unvetted content) states upfront: "This talk is a personal narrative and is not yet backed by larger experimentation." I'm sorry, but you've been consistently and narrow-mindedly against what the OP has put forth. You dismiss his views for their lack of credibility but turn around and post sources that themselves have no credibility (admit to being anecdotal). You seem to have picked what is correct and are now looking for evidence to support your preconceived notion. You also seem to be falling for the naturalism fallacy by pretending that since his food is "pill and scalpel" it is therefore wrong/bad. Just my conclusions: obviously he hasn't posted data or even analyzed it, but you present many issues in your posts that I disagree with more strongly than what he puts forth (and I'm not a layman).
- acgourley 14y ago
  The burden of evidence should be on the person claiming to have a miracle drink. The burdon of evidence should be even greater when it's a non-natural source, as Nassim Taleb argues in Antifragile, "The "non-natural" has to prove its harmlessness." If you don't take this viewpoint, you end up with cigarettes, transfat and radium jewelry.
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    But he doesn't have a 'miracle drink'. He has a generic food mash and his only claim is 'contains basic nutrients and calories'.
    - droopyEyelids 14y ago
      It's a curious statement about our society where the idea that the fuel for the human body could be simple. "Basic nutrients and calories" It's all produced by self replicating lifeforms we've only begun to comprehend, right?
      - Kim_Bruning 14y ago
        Right, but those sophisticated replicators are so sophisticated that they tend to be rather tolerant of their input. There's no reason to think we can't science out what that input needs to be, or at least to be able to find one or more valid subsets of input. This is a rather large improvement over what most people do; one typically applies little to no science whatsoever. :-P
        pyre 14y ago
        The liver is pretty tolerate of alcohol, but a lifetime of alcohol use can cause liver issues.
        Kim_Bruning 14y ago
        Right; the downside of a tolerant system is that it does not fail hard. This does not, however, preclude finding the system limits by use of the scientific method. It just makes it a tad trickier at times. I'm getting the idea that people profess a "belief in science" in the general case, but then absolutely deny its applicability in the specific case here. ;-)
pbreit 14y ago
Jeez, man, chill out. History is littered with amateurs making breakthroughs. You're take down is uncompelling. Processing for health is a bit different from processing for cost.
- zorpner 14y ago
  > Processing for health is a bit different from processing for cost. In the sense that history is littered with people attempting to apply cross-domain knowledge to processing for health and failing utterly, that's absolutely true.
  - pbreit 14y ago
    A citation would be nice.
  - jfoster 14y ago
    Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, you'll be right about this. Then that one time out of 100, someone will advance the field in a way that the doubters never could.
DanBC 14y ago
> Dr. Terry Wahls, "Minding Your Mitochondria": She needs some reputation management, because at the moment there's a bunch of flags that make her sound less than reputable. 1) "Mitochondra" - unless this is a peer reviewed respected journal most people using htis word are cranks. 2) TEDx - Sadly, now tainted as home of cranks. 3) Cured MS through diet - ridiculous claim etc etc.
- hirenj 14y ago
  I would appreciate it you'd elaborate on your first point about mitochondria here. I'm intrigued to find out why this term is highly suspicious. Are there other organelles that are less crank-like to you?
  - cma 14y ago
    Maybe he was thinking of midi-chlorians? Those are totally legit when they show up in a peer-reviewed journal.
  - XorNot 14y ago
    Cellular organs are a pretty untouchable class of things for anything humans are going to do on a macro-scale. If you're proposing to achieve a big effect from say, a diet, then focusing on more then 1 bodily component is suspicious because there's a huge range of barriers you need to get through to get to it (without damaging, generally). There are lots of drugs, for example, which are useless because although they target the right protein and have the desired effect they can't actually get to it via normal metabolism and the like.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    The word mitochondria is just a personal flag, a smell, that I use as part of a warning. Mitochondria raise flags because of people like the UK Dr Ruth Myhill. She claims to be a researcher on chronic fatigue syndrome. CFS is real, but sadly is an area rife with cranks. Myhill appears to have a lot of crank-like beliefs. Her "research" is hopeless, and amounts to unlicensed unethical experimentation on desperate people. I guess, although I have no supporting evidence, that the word mitochondria is used more often by cranks than other organelles.
joering2 14y ago
> I certainly don't want to rain on some new visionary's parade, so stop.
benatkin 14y ago
Hmm, you do have a point. What this world needs most is billions of people eating a pound each of fresh leafy green vegetables every day.
- hyperbovine 14y ago
  That is not such a bad idea.

criley 14y ago

>"Extraordinary claims, extraordinary proof, or GTFO." >"I see this guy's protocol as nothing but poisonous in the long run." You place a burden of evidence on him that you yourself in this very post violated on a number of occasions. You CANNOT call his diet poisonous simply because you disagree with it. You admitted it yourself: >"Current research is showing that we are only just beginning to gain understanding of the complexity and health of the GI." So no offense, but you have literally no ground to say that this is poisonous in the short OR long term, no evidence to back that up, and you cannot rely on a field that cannot support your view. You have a view on this, congratulations, but it is nothing more than a well-informed opinion. It is not fact, it is not supported by fact and as you've admitted -- it CANNOT at this point be supported by fact that does not yet exist. Even your link to a TEDX (aka, unvetted content) states upfront: "This talk is a personal narrative and is not yet backed by larger experimentation." I'm sorry, but you've been consistently and narrow-mindedly against what the OP has put forth. You dismiss his views for their lack of credibility but turn around and post sources that themselves have no credibility (admit to being anecdotal). You seem to have picked what is correct and are now looking for evidence to support your preconceived notion. You also seem to be falling for the naturalism fallacy by pretending that since his food is "pill and scalpel" it is therefore wrong/bad. Just my conclusions: obviously he hasn't posted data or even analyzed it, but you present many issues in your posts that I disagree with more strongly than what he puts forth (and I'm not a layman).

acgourley 14y ago
The burden of evidence should be on the person claiming to have a miracle drink. The burdon of evidence should be even greater when it's a non-natural source, as Nassim Taleb argues in Antifragile, "The "non-natural" has to prove its harmlessness." If you don't take this viewpoint, you end up with cigarettes, transfat and radium jewelry.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  But he doesn't have a 'miracle drink'. He has a generic food mash and his only claim is 'contains basic nutrients and calories'.
  - droopyEyelids 14y ago
    It's a curious statement about our society where the idea that the fuel for the human body could be simple. "Basic nutrients and calories" It's all produced by self replicating lifeforms we've only begun to comprehend, right?
    - Kim_Bruning 14y ago
      Right, but those sophisticated replicators are so sophisticated that they tend to be rather tolerant of their input. There's no reason to think we can't science out what that input needs to be, or at least to be able to find one or more valid subsets of input. This is a rather large improvement over what most people do; one typically applies little to no science whatsoever. :-P
      - pyre 14y ago
        The liver is pretty tolerate of alcohol, but a lifetime of alcohol use can cause liver issues.
        Kim_Bruning 14y ago
        Right; the downside of a tolerant system is that it does not fail hard. This does not, however, preclude finding the system limits by use of the scientific method. It just makes it a tad trickier at times. I'm getting the idea that people profess a "belief in science" in the general case, but then absolutely deny its applicability in the specific case here. ;-)

pbreit 14y ago

Jeez, man, chill out. History is littered with amateurs making breakthroughs. You're take down is uncompelling. Processing for health is a bit different from processing for cost.

zorpner 14y ago
> Processing for health is a bit different from processing for cost. In the sense that history is littered with people attempting to apply cross-domain knowledge to processing for health and failing utterly, that's absolutely true.
- pbreit 14y ago
  A citation would be nice.
- jfoster 14y ago
  Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, you'll be right about this. Then that one time out of 100, someone will advance the field in a way that the doubters never could.

DanBC 14y ago

> Dr. Terry Wahls, "Minding Your Mitochondria": She needs some reputation management, because at the moment there's a bunch of flags that make her sound less than reputable. 1) "Mitochondra" - unless this is a peer reviewed respected journal most people using htis word are cranks. 2) TEDx - Sadly, now tainted as home of cranks. 3) Cured MS through diet - ridiculous claim etc etc.

hirenj 14y ago
I would appreciate it you'd elaborate on your first point about mitochondria here. I'm intrigued to find out why this term is highly suspicious. Are there other organelles that are less crank-like to you?
- cma 14y ago
  Maybe he was thinking of midi-chlorians? Those are totally legit when they show up in a peer-reviewed journal.
- XorNot 14y ago
  Cellular organs are a pretty untouchable class of things for anything humans are going to do on a macro-scale. If you're proposing to achieve a big effect from say, a diet, then focusing on more then 1 bodily component is suspicious because there's a huge range of barriers you need to get through to get to it (without damaging, generally). There are lots of drugs, for example, which are useless because although they target the right protein and have the desired effect they can't actually get to it via normal metabolism and the like.
- DanBC 14y ago
  The word mitochondria is just a personal flag, a smell, that I use as part of a warning. Mitochondria raise flags because of people like the UK Dr Ruth Myhill. She claims to be a researcher on chronic fatigue syndrome. CFS is real, but sadly is an area rife with cranks. Myhill appears to have a lot of crank-like beliefs. Her "research" is hopeless, and amounts to unlicensed unethical experimentation on desperate people. I guess, although I have no supporting evidence, that the word mitochondria is used more often by cranks than other organelles.

joering2 14y ago

> I certainly don't want to rain on some new visionary's parade, so stop.

benatkin 14y ago

Hmm, you do have a point. What this world needs most is billions of people eating a pound each of fresh leafy green vegetables every day.

hyperbovine 14y ago
That is not such a bad idea.