9 ms·

Why almost everything you've been told about unhealthy foods is wrong

91 points by chestnut-tree 13y ago

TrainedMonkey 13y ago
"Yes, Pearson conceded, "there is not enough evidence to be firm about [healthy eating] guidelines", but no, the findings "did not change the advice that eating too much fat is harmful for the heart". Saturated fat reduction, he said, was just one factor we should consider as part of a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle." So, pretty much get a balanced diet and do not overeat.
- oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
  Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
  - Retric 13y ago
    Like most diet advice that's still way to simplistic. Eat a wide range of minimally processed foods avoiding anything your allergic to. Eat animals not just fat and meat. Things like brains, bone marrow, intestines, cartilage, and liver are all part of a nutritious diet. Again, eat most of the plant not just the most high energy parts. But also a wide range of plants and plant types potato's, rice, soy, and grains are just the tip of the iceberg. Remember if your not starving you don't need to focus on maximizing energy consumption.
    - loup-vaillant 13y ago
      > Like most diet advice that's still way too simplistic. It's not. It's minimalistic, it's insufficient, but it is in no way misleading: following this advice is invariably better than not following it. Your criticism doesn't disagree in any way. Are you sure you replied to the right comment? Ninja edit, maybe?
  - EC1 13y ago
    You mean mostly meat and some plants.
    - rsl7 13y ago
      No. Nobody means mostly meat.
      - sethammons 13y ago
        Aside from, you know, those that do. Like the Inuit. According sourced material via Wikipedia, due to the complete and utter lack of any formal agriculture, "[t]raditional Inuit diets derive approximately 50% of their calories from fat, 30-35% from protein and 15-20% of their calories from carbohydrates, largely in the form of glycogen from the raw meat they consumed." Tubers, berries, seaweed and the like make up very little of their diet. From the intro on Wikipedia: According to Edmund Searles in his article "Food and the Making of Modern Inuit Identities," they consume this type of diet because a mostly meat diet is "effective in keeping the body warm, making the body strong, keeping the body fit, and even making that body healthy".
        rsl7 13y ago
        So a diet of mostly wild caught raw meat. Sounds totally doable.
    - oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
      Health aside, for reasons of sustainability, I think that's a bad idea.
      - gress 13y ago
        Once health is aside, so is sustainability.
        garrettgrimsley 13y ago
        No, while the length of the human lifespan consuming a certain product might be reduced the environmental impact that the person's diet had remains. Meat production has very real environmental impacts.[1] Switching to a vegetarian diet, or even to a meat that consumes less resources to produce[3], drastically reduces one's environmental impact.[2] Meat consumption also has direct fiscal impacts by way of the increased cost of treatment for those that consume meat. If the price of grain increases because of an increased demand for meat then the world's poor will be the ones most negatively impacted.[4] Disclaimer: I currently consume all forms of meat, including beef. [1] https://woods.stanford.edu/environmental-venture-projects/consequences-increased-global-meat-consumption-global-environment https://woods.stanford.edu/environmental-venture-projects/co... [2] http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS09-05.pdf http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS09-05.pdf [3] http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-80... [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.htm...
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Try telling that to a Tibetan or an Inuit, they would starve to death.
    - yaketysax 13y ago
      What's "ok" to eat can depend on your ancestry. It makes no sense to point at different populations and say "it must be ok since they're doing it".
      - sethammons 13y ago
        I've read that Inuit have a larger liver. I wonder if this is a case of genetics or if increasing the percent of meat in your diet leads to a larger liver.
        seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        Agriculture is a recent invention, only about 10kya old, and many cultures never adopted it for various reasons. It makes sense that evolution has had a bit of time to work its random magic on plant eaters.
      - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        Who said anything about ancestry? The developed western world bias on HN is disturbing. What you eat depends on what you can get from the land you live in. You can't grow much above 4,000 meters or near the arctic, obviously. Indians are mostly vegetarian because you can grow alot in India, the much of the rest of the world isn't so lucky (I always crave veggies whenever I tour in high country because they are so unavailable).
        eshvk 13y ago
        > Indians are mostly vegetarian because you can grow alot in India "mostly"? I would love to know where this statistic was pulled from? Personal experience living in India for 5 years suggests that only Brahmin Hindus and a few other castes are purely vegetarian. Every one else eats meat albeit not as frequently as Americans. Wikipedia stats suggests 20-40% (a huge variance).
  - sheri 13y ago
    To add context to this comment, it comes from Michael Pollan, who coined it in the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma". http://michaelpollan.com/books/the-omnivores-dilemma/ http://michaelpollan.com/books/the-omnivores-dilemma/
    - grinich 13y ago
      Also recommend his other book, In Defense of Food.
  - jdminhbg 13y ago
    > Eat food. Question begging. > Not too much. Question begging. > Mostly plants. Actual recommendation, although vague and unsupported.
    - pbreit 13y ago
      It's a quote. That makes perfect sense. Give it a rest.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      If you read Pollan's actual formulation, he deconstructs it further: • Eat food: real, minimally processed produce, grains, or meats. As opposed to highly-processed, vaguely food-like substances. • Not too much: addresses the point that, at least as concerns obesity, quantity is crucial. So get that quantity right. • Mostly plants: here arguments vary, but Pollan's big on vegetables (less so grains and such), and the complex compounds, many apparently helpful, they provide. His books are quite a delight to read. I recommend them strongly.
- crazygringo 13y ago
  Except that "balanced diet" means absolutely nothing. It's just begging the question, because the balance is the whole thing we're trying to figure out. Should saturated fat make up 1% or 30% of your calories? Should processed carbs and/or high-starch vegetables make up 5% or 50% of your calories? Should meat make up 0%, 10%, 40%, or 80% of your calories? (Because remember, vegetables like broccoli, kale, tomatoes, carrots, and so on, while they provide essential nutrients, don't contribute meaningfully to your calorie intake.) You might want to say, well, just put everything between 20-40%, isn't that balanced? But we used to think that trans fats were part of a balanced diet, a healthy replacement for saturated fats. Now we realize they're basically poison. Some people are coming to the same realization about processed carbs, high-starch vegetables like modern varieties of potato, and sugar. I know that saying "well, just eat a balanced diet" is the most common response to new nutritional research. But it's actually a harmful attitude, because it trivializes what is arguably the most important public health issue today in America.
  - brandon272 13y ago
    > Except that "balanced diet" means absolutely nothing. I feel like it means to simply eat food in moderation. People who are severely obese aren't obese because they eat slightly too much saturated fat or eat a few extra potato chips beyond the recommended serving. Who otherwise have great diets except for a mixup here and there with their ratios. We're talking about many people who have seriously unhealthy eating habits that are extremely high in things like saturated fat, sugar and sodium. We're not talking about people who are eating 30% of their calories from fat when it should be 20%, we're talking about people who are absolutely blowing the recommended daily limits for fat and sugar out of the water by crushing soft drinks and making junk food a huge portion of their diet.
    - x0x0 13y ago
      But what foods and in what ratios. That is the central question. Severely obese people already know the answer (put less everything into the hole in the middle of their face). For the rest of us, we have to decide (as above), what to eat and in what ratios, and if we should worry about our LDL and HDL cholesterol scores on our annual bloodwork. Also, I wonder if the science relating those to heart disease is any more sound than the science saying salt is bad (only true for chf / high blood pressure / a few other cases), etc.
icameron 13y ago
The annoyed tone of the article makes it sound like the author is hungry. HAngry even...
- asciimo 13y ago
  Yes, and irritated by an ineffective fad diet.
Falling3 13y ago
I skimmed and landed on this: >The first generation margarine-type spreads turned out to be heart-stoppers, which makes it hard to trust anything the marge industry says. Well, that's good science. I'm sure there were some more worthwhile ideas in there, but that one made me wonder.
tormeh 13y ago
It's not news that official recommendations lag behind scientific discovery, mostly, I suspect, because changing the recommendations too often would be confusing. This article's advice that we should disregard official recommendations and eat as low-tech as possible without any kind of scientific inquiry is complete horseshit. Classic Luddite homeopathy conspiracy theory horseshit. On the other hand, there's absolutely no excuse for the amount of sugar and salt in products that absolutely don't need them. Why can't we have healthy frozen and microwave ready food? Because the marketing execs say there's no overlap between the demographics that want healthy and the ones that want fast food. Well, at least we'll soon have Soylent.
- crusso 13y ago
  It's not news that official recommendations lag behind scientific discovery Calling nutrition research "scientific" is kind of generous. But not as generous as calling the onerous government guidelines that reshaped the food production industry and drove obesity to epidemic proportions in the USA "recommendations".
Nursie 13y ago
Oooh, oooh, I know! Is it because the field is rife with pseudoscience anyway, and that by the time this has been filtered through a layer of ignorant* journalists, the advice we get left with is mostly nonsense? *I don't mean that in an insulting way, I'm ignorant about a lot of stuff outside my field
WalterSear 13y ago
This is everything that is wrong with science journalism. The meta analysis made no control for dietary alternatives, and it is hard to argue that, given the sociological factors involved (ie - middle americans), that the participants in the studies didn't simply replace their saturated fats with carbs. In other words, they just replaced an excess of one bad thing with an excess of another. There was an in depth article about this, that I can't seem to find now. If you know what I'm talking about, please post it.
alrs 13y ago
I've lost 50 pounds since October by following a ketogenic diet. I start each day with coffee mixed with butter and MCT oil. I eat meat for lunch. I eat meat for dinner. I feel better than I have for years. http://reddit.com/r/keto http://reddit.com/r/keto is a reasonable place to get started.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Because you eat solely meat? I'm on keto, but I use DIY Soylent and vegan protein sources for it. Not because I don't like meat (I LOVE bacon), but because I'm lazy. Keto is wonderful because it keeps your blood sugar level low, which helps burn fat and prevents your body from storing excess energy as fat. Don't overdue the red meat though; there is a body of evidence that shows that red meat can cause cancer through the digestive track. Also, much love for /r/keto. It's a wonderful community. Keto on!
  - mrfusion 13y ago
    What's your DIY soyulent recipe?
    - greyskull 13y ago
      I'd like to know this too.
      - toomuchtodo 13y ago
        http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/quidnycs-ketofood-for-induction-phase-ketosis http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/quidnycs-ketofood-for-inductio... http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/quidnycs-ketofood-for-ongoing-ketosis http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/quidnycs-ketofood-for-ongoing-...
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485059
sjtrny 13y ago
The irony of the headline is that even the article itself is wrong. "A 2004 review of the evidence said that while CLA seemed to benefit animals, there was a lack of good evidence of human health benefits, despite the many claims made for it." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid
- taeric 13y ago
  That seems to say more that we need more studies. That is, lack of good evidence is not necessarily bad evidence. Right?
  - jaggederest 13y ago
    Damned by faint praise - when a review says 'more studies are needed', they mean 'you haven't proved a damn thing yet'. That's essentially the default conclusion of a review study, lack of good evidence means any claim at all is bogus. CLA could be a stone cold killer, or it could be Lazarus juice, but there's no way to tell from the current state of affairs. As such, the article is incorrect when it says CLA does X, where X is anything.
    - taeric 13y ago
      Fair enough. I can understand the article's bend, though. Basically, that beats a lot of what has passed as official health advice; where not only were the claims unproven, the evidence was usually contrary.
narrator 13y ago
From what I've seen, I think diet science is affected by lobbying by environmentalists and ideological vegetarians. Anything that proves meat is bad for you seems to get the benefit of the doubt.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Is PubMed considered neutral? "Nucleotide excision repair gene polymorphisms, meat intake and colon cancer risk." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24607854 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24607854
  - frozenport 13y ago
    It should be considered controversial and a source for discussion, by people who know what they are talking about.
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      https://www.google.com/search?q=red+meat+cancer+%2Bsite:www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov https://www.google.com/search?q=red+meat+cancer+%2Bsite:www.... ~6600 results; I checked the first three pages of papers. All came to the conclusion that red meat causes a higher incidence of cancer.
taeric 13y ago
I'm not sure I actually saw an answer to a "why" question in this article. Did I just miss it?
csallen 13y ago
I'm skeptical of general and unscientific labels like "processed". What does that even mean? We as humans can understand it, yes, but it's too high-level a descriptor to be something our bodies differentiate on.
jcampbell1 13y ago
The factors we analyze in nutrition is calories, macro nutrient content, and micro nutrient content. In terms of obesity, what we really care about is satiation and satiety. These are words that no one talks about, and but get to the core of the issue. If I eat this food, how many calories will I consume before feeling full?(satiation). After eating this food, how long until I feel the need to eat again? (sateity). Unfortunately the research and measurements of these values is thin. We need to fix that. We already know things like whole milk better provides satiation and sateity than skim milk, and children that drink whole milk actually have less obesity than skim milk drinkers. If we just measured and labeled foods with a sateity/satiation index (what we really care about), then people would actually have a chance to pick better foods. Right now it is damn near impossible to determine if eating eggs and bacon for breakfast is more likely to drive over eating vs cereal. It can be measured, but we just don't do it.
- sekm 13y ago
  If you want a good measure then look at the carbs. More carbs approximates to less satiety. It's all based on where the food sits in terms of its Glycemic Index. High GI foods trigger an insulin release and insulin effectively tells your cells to lower your blood sure levels. Lower blood sugar reduces the feeling of satiety, aka makes you hungry. By avoiding insulin releases in the first place (sweet/grainy/starchy shit) you'll come out a far healthier person.
  - Tarrosion 13y ago
    From personal experience, I believe that it's not always so simple. When I eat a steak for dinner (rare), I notice that even right after the meal I feel incomplete, and I'm hungry within an hour or two. When I eat a muffin for lunch, I feel content for several hours. (And the muffin has about 2/3 the calories of the steak.)
    - adventured 13y ago
      It's a very interesting contrast of experiences. When I eat a steak I'm not hungry for a long time afterward (whereas a muffin doesn't sate nearly as well). It makes me wonder what causes such a variance between people with regards to how they experience food.
Noxchi 13y ago
For those that are skeptical about all this, Look into Nitric Oxide. Your veins / arteries produce it as a signaling molecule. When it is produced, your veins (I will use vein to reference both veins and arteries) expand. If you've ever exercised and seen your veins become larger, that is nitric oxide at work. It also clears out the plaque "pockets" or "cysts" that form in your veins. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2050816/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2050816/ If those pockets break open (the very thin inner lining of the vein breaks) and the plaque content gets into your bloodstream, it causes a heart attack because that plaque liquid causes your blood to clot, essentially make a big scab ball in your vein that blood can't get through, effectively depleting all the cells that rely on the blood from getting any oxygen or nutrients, killing the effected cells in minutes / hours if blood flow is not restored. The problem with fat is that is really slows down nitric oxide production. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21903940 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21903940 Because to produce nitric oxide, your veins need a couple ingredients. Lets call them A, B, and C. A + B + C = Nitric Oxide A B and C fit together like a puzzle. Well, fat has a molecule, lets call it D. That can ALSO combine with A and B to produce something else. So picture this: AAAAAA BBBBBBB CCCCCCCCCC DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD If those can randomly form to their produce ABC, or ABD, looking at the quantities above, which are you more likely to have, ABC or ABD? ABD... Which is not nitric oxide... Which is not what we want! This is why eating too much fat is not good. It really harms your arteries because you can't produce the stuff that's needed to clean them out and help them expand properly. Unfortunately, "too much" is a relative term. Considering in this age that 1 table spoon of olive oil is all the oil found in 50 olives... The fat quantities we evolved for are waaaaay too low for what is so readily available now. This is why the MAJORITY of people have atherosclerosis. That is the condition of plaque built up in your veins, which leads to heart attacks, strokes, and your dick not working. P.S. vegetables increase nitric oxide production (because they contain the "C" molecule) P.P.S. you should buy L-Arginine (the "C" molecule) from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013OVX3U/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0013OVX3U&linkCode=as2&tag=k003f-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013OVX3U/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... (affiliate link, I am thinking of selling it and this post is my MVP sales pitch).
newman314 13y ago
So basically, still no good information in general about what a "good" diet is.
Buonaparte 13y ago
Up until just over a year ago I was eating well and exercising regularly. In response to acquaintances continually preaching about how bad carbs were, and because I thought differently (and looked forward to being a bit lazy), I spent last year doing minimal exercise (pretty much none), and eating whatever I liked (excluding fast food chains). This was a primarily carbohydrate focused diet. I ate pasta several times a week, cereal or its equivalent for breakfast. The only thing I kept my eye on was my fat intake, especially saturated fat. For that whole year, I went from about 80kg to a whopping 80kg, fluctuating up and down a only few kg throughout the year. The only time I noticed that I was putting on weight was after a trip overseas where I was eating significant amounts every two to three hours. Even then I only put on 3kg. Correct portion size is pretty much what I swear by for my unchanging weight.
- buckbova 13y ago
  I haven't exercised in a year for various reasons. I've lost 15 lbs. Since I don't exercise I'm not as hungry and I probably lost some muscle mass as well.
Aloha 13y ago
The conclusion I came to years ago was that I should care about how much I eat more than what, so long as I'm filling my core nutritional requirements - doing so I lost 120 lbs.
- pcurve 13y ago
  Even though I know large portion is bad for me, I still get annoyed when I go to a restaurant and get unexpectedly small portion. So I think the trick is to eat out less, because portion control is much harder, restaurant food is much more caloric. And when you eat dinner at home, eat early, and light.
beat 13y ago
A great piece of advice... "If it has a nutritional label, you probably shouldn't eat it."
hitekker 13y ago
Do any of the guys working on Noom want to comment on this? So far the diet suggestions of their app have been pretty helpful for me.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
The article criticizes the standard of evidence provided for mainstream diet advice, and yet they provide absolutely no evidence for their claim that the really important factor is eating natural, unprocessed food.
pbreit 13y ago
In case you don't read to the bottom, this is pretty good advice: "avoid processed food". I don't really understand why in the year 2014 there is still so much conflicting thought around diet. You'd think we'd have a better handle on it by now. I don't find statement like this very compelling: "there is no convincing evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease". Does that leave open the door for "there is evidence that saturated fats contribute to heart disease"?
- vixen99 13y ago
  This is an interesting question. If you look at the literature the word 'evidence' really means 'observations purported to lead one to the conclusion that ....'. Definitely confusing for the casual reader - and it seems also for the health professionals (as they like to call themselves) specifically those who have egg on their faces over this volte face. Fact is there is nothing new about all this. As an example it's been noted that countries with a high saturated fat consumption have higher cholesterol levels and high death rates from heart disease. Is this evidence that saturated fats contribute to heart disease? The 2005 Malmo study of 28,000 men and women showed no relationship with cardiovascular disease in men and a statistically insignificant <downward> trend for women. If you use WHO public data and compare the seven countries with the lowest consumption of saturated fat with the seven countries with the highest consumption you get an interesting result. Every country with the lowest saturated fat consumption has higher rates of heart disease than every country in the group with the highest saturated fat consumption. Wherever you go from there it's not leading to the conclusion that saturated fat is a major culprit (any biochemical can be linked to a dysfunction if you try hard enough) in heart disease.
Delmania 13y ago
I don't honestly think this is all that surprising. All the information on food seems to be on caloric content and the makeup of the food. These studies never seem to account for the fact that genetics, lifestyle, mental health, and emotional well being all play a role in a person's condition. Given the complex nature of the human body, I seriously think we need to take a more holistic approach to these studies; meaning, we need to look at the complete picture in order to understand all the factors that contribute to a person's well being.

91 points by chestnut-tree 13y ago

"Yes, Pearson conceded, "there is not enough evidence to be firm about [healthy eating] guidelines", but no, the findings "did not change the advice that eating too much fat is harmful for the heart". Saturated fat reduction, he said, was just one factor we should consider as part of a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle." So, pretty much get a balanced diet and do not overeat.

oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
- Retric 13y ago
  Like most diet advice that's still way to simplistic. Eat a wide range of minimally processed foods avoiding anything your allergic to. Eat animals not just fat and meat. Things like brains, bone marrow, intestines, cartilage, and liver are all part of a nutritious diet. Again, eat most of the plant not just the most high energy parts. But also a wide range of plants and plant types potato's, rice, soy, and grains are just the tip of the iceberg. Remember if your not starving you don't need to focus on maximizing energy consumption.
  - loup-vaillant 13y ago
    > Like most diet advice that's still way too simplistic. It's not. It's minimalistic, it's insufficient, but it is in no way misleading: following this advice is invariably better than not following it. Your criticism doesn't disagree in any way. Are you sure you replied to the right comment? Ninja edit, maybe?
- EC1 13y ago
  You mean mostly meat and some plants.
  - rsl7 13y ago
    No. Nobody means mostly meat.
    - sethammons 13y ago
      Aside from, you know, those that do. Like the Inuit. According sourced material via Wikipedia, due to the complete and utter lack of any formal agriculture, "[t]raditional Inuit diets derive approximately 50% of their calories from fat, 30-35% from protein and 15-20% of their calories from carbohydrates, largely in the form of glycogen from the raw meat they consumed." Tubers, berries, seaweed and the like make up very little of their diet. From the intro on Wikipedia: According to Edmund Searles in his article "Food and the Making of Modern Inuit Identities," they consume this type of diet because a mostly meat diet is "effective in keeping the body warm, making the body strong, keeping the body fit, and even making that body healthy".
      - rsl7 13y ago
        So a diet of mostly wild caught raw meat. Sounds totally doable.
  - oneeyedpigeon 13y ago
    Health aside, for reasons of sustainability, I think that's a bad idea.
    - gress 13y ago
      Once health is aside, so is sustainability.
      - garrettgrimsley 13y ago
        No, while the length of the human lifespan consuming a certain product might be reduced the environmental impact that the person's diet had remains. Meat production has very real environmental impacts.[1] Switching to a vegetarian diet, or even to a meat that consumes less resources to produce[3], drastically reduces one's environmental impact.[2] Meat consumption also has direct fiscal impacts by way of the increased cost of treatment for those that consume meat. If the price of grain increases because of an increased demand for meat then the world's poor will be the ones most negatively impacted.[4] Disclaimer: I currently consume all forms of meat, including beef. [1] https://woods.stanford.edu/environmental-venture-projects/consequences-increased-global-meat-consumption-global-environment https://woods.stanford.edu/environmental-venture-projects/co... [2] http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS09-05.pdf http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS09-05.pdf [3] http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-80... [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.htm...
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Try telling that to a Tibetan or an Inuit, they would starve to death.
  - yaketysax 13y ago
    What's "ok" to eat can depend on your ancestry. It makes no sense to point at different populations and say "it must be ok since they're doing it".
    - sethammons 13y ago
      I've read that Inuit have a larger liver. I wonder if this is a case of genetics or if increasing the percent of meat in your diet leads to a larger liver.
      - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        Agriculture is a recent invention, only about 10kya old, and many cultures never adopted it for various reasons. It makes sense that evolution has had a bit of time to work its random magic on plant eaters.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      Who said anything about ancestry? The developed western world bias on HN is disturbing. What you eat depends on what you can get from the land you live in. You can't grow much above 4,000 meters or near the arctic, obviously. Indians are mostly vegetarian because you can grow alot in India, the much of the rest of the world isn't so lucky (I always crave veggies whenever I tour in high country because they are so unavailable).
      - eshvk 13y ago
        > Indians are mostly vegetarian because you can grow alot in India "mostly"? I would love to know where this statistic was pulled from? Personal experience living in India for 5 years suggests that only Brahmin Hindus and a few other castes are purely vegetarian. Every one else eats meat albeit not as frequently as Americans. Wikipedia stats suggests 20-40% (a huge variance).
- sheri 13y ago
  To add context to this comment, it comes from Michael Pollan, who coined it in the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma". http://michaelpollan.com/books/the-omnivores-dilemma/ http://michaelpollan.com/books/the-omnivores-dilemma/
  - grinich 13y ago
    Also recommend his other book, In Defense of Food.
- jdminhbg 13y ago
  > Eat food. Question begging. > Not too much. Question begging. > Mostly plants. Actual recommendation, although vague and unsupported.
  - pbreit 13y ago
    It's a quote. That makes perfect sense. Give it a rest.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    If you read Pollan's actual formulation, he deconstructs it further: • Eat food: real, minimally processed produce, grains, or meats. As opposed to highly-processed, vaguely food-like substances. • Not too much: addresses the point that, at least as concerns obesity, quantity is crucial. So get that quantity right. • Mostly plants: here arguments vary, but Pollan's big on vegetables (less so grains and such), and the complex compounds, many apparently helpful, they provide. His books are quite a delight to read. I recommend them strongly.
crazygringo 13y ago
Except that "balanced diet" means absolutely nothing. It's just begging the question, because the balance is the whole thing we're trying to figure out. Should saturated fat make up 1% or 30% of your calories? Should processed carbs and/or high-starch vegetables make up 5% or 50% of your calories? Should meat make up 0%, 10%, 40%, or 80% of your calories? (Because remember, vegetables like broccoli, kale, tomatoes, carrots, and so on, while they provide essential nutrients, don't contribute meaningfully to your calorie intake.) You might want to say, well, just put everything between 20-40%, isn't that balanced? But we used to think that trans fats were part of a balanced diet, a healthy replacement for saturated fats. Now we realize they're basically poison. Some people are coming to the same realization about processed carbs, high-starch vegetables like modern varieties of potato, and sugar. I know that saying "well, just eat a balanced diet" is the most common response to new nutritional research. But it's actually a harmful attitude, because it trivializes what is arguably the most important public health issue today in America.
- brandon272 13y ago
  > Except that "balanced diet" means absolutely nothing. I feel like it means to simply eat food in moderation. People who are severely obese aren't obese because they eat slightly too much saturated fat or eat a few extra potato chips beyond the recommended serving. Who otherwise have great diets except for a mixup here and there with their ratios. We're talking about many people who have seriously unhealthy eating habits that are extremely high in things like saturated fat, sugar and sodium. We're not talking about people who are eating 30% of their calories from fat when it should be 20%, we're talking about people who are absolutely blowing the recommended daily limits for fat and sugar out of the water by crushing soft drinks and making junk food a huge portion of their diet.
  - x0x0 13y ago
    But what foods and in what ratios. That is the central question. Severely obese people already know the answer (put less everything into the hole in the middle of their face). For the rest of us, we have to decide (as above), what to eat and in what ratios, and if we should worry about our LDL and HDL cholesterol scores on our annual bloodwork. Also, I wonder if the science relating those to heart disease is any more sound than the science saying salt is bad (only true for chf / high blood pressure / a few other cases), etc.

icameron 13y ago

The annoyed tone of the article makes it sound like the author is hungry. HAngry even...

asciimo 13y ago
Yes, and irritated by an ineffective fad diet.

Falling3 13y ago

I skimmed and landed on this: >The first generation margarine-type spreads turned out to be heart-stoppers, which makes it hard to trust anything the marge industry says. Well, that's good science. I'm sure there were some more worthwhile ideas in there, but that one made me wonder.

tormeh 13y ago

It's not news that official recommendations lag behind scientific discovery, mostly, I suspect, because changing the recommendations too often would be confusing. This article's advice that we should disregard official recommendations and eat as low-tech as possible without any kind of scientific inquiry is complete horseshit. Classic Luddite homeopathy conspiracy theory horseshit. On the other hand, there's absolutely no excuse for the amount of sugar and salt in products that absolutely don't need them. Why can't we have healthy frozen and microwave ready food? Because the marketing execs say there's no overlap between the demographics that want healthy and the ones that want fast food. Well, at least we'll soon have Soylent.

crusso 13y ago
It's not news that official recommendations lag behind scientific discovery Calling nutrition research "scientific" is kind of generous. But not as generous as calling the onerous government guidelines that reshaped the food production industry and drove obesity to epidemic proportions in the USA "recommendations".

Nursie 13y ago

Oooh, oooh, I know! Is it because the field is rife with pseudoscience anyway, and that by the time this has been filtered through a layer of ignorant* journalists, the advice we get left with is mostly nonsense? *I don't mean that in an insulting way, I'm ignorant about a lot of stuff outside my field

WalterSear 13y ago

This is everything that is wrong with science journalism. The meta analysis made no control for dietary alternatives, and it is hard to argue that, given the sociological factors involved (ie - middle americans), that the participants in the studies didn't simply replace their saturated fats with carbs. In other words, they just replaced an excess of one bad thing with an excess of another. There was an in depth article about this, that I can't seem to find now. If you know what I'm talking about, please post it.

alrs 13y ago

I've lost 50 pounds since October by following a ketogenic diet. I start each day with coffee mixed with butter and MCT oil. I eat meat for lunch. I eat meat for dinner. I feel better than I have for years. http://reddit.com/r/keto http://reddit.com/r/keto is a reasonable place to get started.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Because you eat solely meat? I'm on keto, but I use DIY Soylent and vegan protein sources for it. Not because I don't like meat (I LOVE bacon), but because I'm lazy. Keto is wonderful because it keeps your blood sugar level low, which helps burn fat and prevents your body from storing excess energy as fat. Don't overdue the red meat though; there is a body of evidence that shows that red meat can cause cancer through the digestive track. Also, much love for /r/keto. It's a wonderful community. Keto on!
- mrfusion 13y ago
  What's your DIY soyulent recipe?
  - greyskull 13y ago
    I'd like to know this too.
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/quidnycs-ketofood-for-induction-phase-ketosis http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/quidnycs-ketofood-for-inductio... http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/quidnycs-ketofood-for-ongoing-ketosis http://diy.soylent.me/recipes/quidnycs-ketofood-for-ongoing-...
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485059

sjtrny 13y ago

The irony of the headline is that even the article itself is wrong. "A 2004 review of the evidence said that while CLA seemed to benefit animals, there was a lack of good evidence of human health benefits, despite the many claims made for it." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid

taeric 13y ago
That seems to say more that we need more studies. That is, lack of good evidence is not necessarily bad evidence. Right?
- jaggederest 13y ago
  Damned by faint praise - when a review says 'more studies are needed', they mean 'you haven't proved a damn thing yet'. That's essentially the default conclusion of a review study, lack of good evidence means any claim at all is bogus. CLA could be a stone cold killer, or it could be Lazarus juice, but there's no way to tell from the current state of affairs. As such, the article is incorrect when it says CLA does X, where X is anything.
  - taeric 13y ago
    Fair enough. I can understand the article's bend, though. Basically, that beats a lot of what has passed as official health advice; where not only were the claims unproven, the evidence was usually contrary.

narrator 13y ago

From what I've seen, I think diet science is affected by lobbying by environmentalists and ideological vegetarians. Anything that proves meat is bad for you seems to get the benefit of the doubt.

toomuchtodo 13y ago
Is PubMed considered neutral? "Nucleotide excision repair gene polymorphisms, meat intake and colon cancer risk." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24607854 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24607854
- frozenport 13y ago
  It should be considered controversial and a source for discussion, by people who know what they are talking about.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    https://www.google.com/search?q=red+meat+cancer+%2Bsite:www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov https://www.google.com/search?q=red+meat+cancer+%2Bsite:www.... ~6600 results; I checked the first three pages of papers. All came to the conclusion that red meat causes a higher incidence of cancer.

taeric 13y ago

I'm not sure I actually saw an answer to a "why" question in this article. Did I just miss it?

csallen 13y ago

I'm skeptical of general and unscientific labels like "processed". What does that even mean? We as humans can understand it, yes, but it's too high-level a descriptor to be something our bodies differentiate on.

jcampbell1 13y ago

The factors we analyze in nutrition is calories, macro nutrient content, and micro nutrient content. In terms of obesity, what we really care about is satiation and satiety. These are words that no one talks about, and but get to the core of the issue. If I eat this food, how many calories will I consume before feeling full?(satiation). After eating this food, how long until I feel the need to eat again? (sateity). Unfortunately the research and measurements of these values is thin. We need to fix that. We already know things like whole milk better provides satiation and sateity than skim milk, and children that drink whole milk actually have less obesity than skim milk drinkers. If we just measured and labeled foods with a sateity/satiation index (what we really care about), then people would actually have a chance to pick better foods. Right now it is damn near impossible to determine if eating eggs and bacon for breakfast is more likely to drive over eating vs cereal. It can be measured, but we just don't do it.

sekm 13y ago
If you want a good measure then look at the carbs. More carbs approximates to less satiety. It's all based on where the food sits in terms of its Glycemic Index. High GI foods trigger an insulin release and insulin effectively tells your cells to lower your blood sure levels. Lower blood sugar reduces the feeling of satiety, aka makes you hungry. By avoiding insulin releases in the first place (sweet/grainy/starchy shit) you'll come out a far healthier person.
- Tarrosion 13y ago
  From personal experience, I believe that it's not always so simple. When I eat a steak for dinner (rare), I notice that even right after the meal I feel incomplete, and I'm hungry within an hour or two. When I eat a muffin for lunch, I feel content for several hours. (And the muffin has about 2/3 the calories of the steak.)
  - adventured 13y ago
    It's a very interesting contrast of experiences. When I eat a steak I'm not hungry for a long time afterward (whereas a muffin doesn't sate nearly as well). It makes me wonder what causes such a variance between people with regards to how they experience food.

Noxchi 13y ago

For those that are skeptical about all this, Look into Nitric Oxide. Your veins / arteries produce it as a signaling molecule. When it is produced, your veins (I will use vein to reference both veins and arteries) expand. If you've ever exercised and seen your veins become larger, that is nitric oxide at work. It also clears out the plaque "pockets" or "cysts" that form in your veins. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2050816/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2050816/ If those pockets break open (the very thin inner lining of the vein breaks) and the plaque content gets into your bloodstream, it causes a heart attack because that plaque liquid causes your blood to clot, essentially make a big scab ball in your vein that blood can't get through, effectively depleting all the cells that rely on the blood from getting any oxygen or nutrients, killing the effected cells in minutes / hours if blood flow is not restored. The problem with fat is that is really slows down nitric oxide production. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21903940 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21903940 Because to produce nitric oxide, your veins need a couple ingredients. Lets call them A, B, and C. A + B + C = Nitric Oxide A B and C fit together like a puzzle. Well, fat has a molecule, lets call it D. That can ALSO combine with A and B to produce something else. So picture this: AAAAAA BBBBBBB CCCCCCCCCC DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD If those can randomly form to their produce ABC, or ABD, looking at the quantities above, which are you more likely to have, ABC or ABD? ABD... Which is not nitric oxide... Which is not what we want! This is why eating too much fat is not good. It really harms your arteries because you can't produce the stuff that's needed to clean them out and help them expand properly. Unfortunately, "too much" is a relative term. Considering in this age that 1 table spoon of olive oil is all the oil found in 50 olives... The fat quantities we evolved for are waaaaay too low for what is so readily available now. This is why the MAJORITY of people have atherosclerosis. That is the condition of plaque built up in your veins, which leads to heart attacks, strokes, and your dick not working. P.S. vegetables increase nitric oxide production (because they contain the "C" molecule) P.P.S. you should buy L-Arginine (the "C" molecule) from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013OVX3U/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0013OVX3U&linkCode=as2&tag=k003f-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013OVX3U/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... (affiliate link, I am thinking of selling it and this post is my MVP sales pitch).

newman314 13y ago

So basically, still no good information in general about what a "good" diet is.

Buonaparte 13y ago

Up until just over a year ago I was eating well and exercising regularly. In response to acquaintances continually preaching about how bad carbs were, and because I thought differently (and looked forward to being a bit lazy), I spent last year doing minimal exercise (pretty much none), and eating whatever I liked (excluding fast food chains). This was a primarily carbohydrate focused diet. I ate pasta several times a week, cereal or its equivalent for breakfast. The only thing I kept my eye on was my fat intake, especially saturated fat. For that whole year, I went from about 80kg to a whopping 80kg, fluctuating up and down a only few kg throughout the year. The only time I noticed that I was putting on weight was after a trip overseas where I was eating significant amounts every two to three hours. Even then I only put on 3kg. Correct portion size is pretty much what I swear by for my unchanging weight.

buckbova 13y ago
I haven't exercised in a year for various reasons. I've lost 15 lbs. Since I don't exercise I'm not as hungry and I probably lost some muscle mass as well.

Aloha 13y ago

The conclusion I came to years ago was that I should care about how much I eat more than what, so long as I'm filling my core nutritional requirements - doing so I lost 120 lbs.

pcurve 13y ago
Even though I know large portion is bad for me, I still get annoyed when I go to a restaurant and get unexpectedly small portion. So I think the trick is to eat out less, because portion control is much harder, restaurant food is much more caloric. And when you eat dinner at home, eat early, and light.

beat 13y ago

A great piece of advice... "If it has a nutritional label, you probably shouldn't eat it."

hitekker 13y ago

Do any of the guys working on Noom want to comment on this? So far the diet suggestions of their app have been pretty helpful for me.

yetanotherphd 13y ago

The article criticizes the standard of evidence provided for mainstream diet advice, and yet they provide absolutely no evidence for their claim that the really important factor is eating natural, unprocessed food.

pbreit 13y ago

In case you don't read to the bottom, this is pretty good advice: "avoid processed food". I don't really understand why in the year 2014 there is still so much conflicting thought around diet. You'd think we'd have a better handle on it by now. I don't find statement like this very compelling: "there is no convincing evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease". Does that leave open the door for "there is evidence that saturated fats contribute to heart disease"?

vixen99 13y ago
This is an interesting question. If you look at the literature the word 'evidence' really means 'observations purported to lead one to the conclusion that ....'. Definitely confusing for the casual reader - and it seems also for the health professionals (as they like to call themselves) specifically those who have egg on their faces over this volte face. Fact is there is nothing new about all this. As an example it's been noted that countries with a high saturated fat consumption have higher cholesterol levels and high death rates from heart disease. Is this evidence that saturated fats contribute to heart disease? The 2005 Malmo study of 28,000 men and women showed no relationship with cardiovascular disease in men and a statistically insignificant <downward> trend for women. If you use WHO public data and compare the seven countries with the lowest consumption of saturated fat with the seven countries with the highest consumption you get an interesting result. Every country with the lowest saturated fat consumption has higher rates of heart disease than every country in the group with the highest saturated fat consumption. Wherever you go from there it's not leading to the conclusion that saturated fat is a major culprit (any biochemical can be linked to a dysfunction if you try hard enough) in heart disease.

Delmania 13y ago

I don't honestly think this is all that surprising. All the information on food seems to be on caloric content and the makeup of the food. These studies never seem to account for the fact that genetics, lifestyle, mental health, and emotional well being all play a role in a person's condition. Given the complex nature of the human body, I seriously think we need to take a more holistic approach to these studies; meaning, we need to look at the complete picture in order to understand all the factors that contribute to a person's well being.