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The problem with the "science" around food and fitness is that there is an underlying assumption that is wrong, and that assumption is this: There are things th

The problem with the "science" around food and fitness is that there is an underlying assumption that is wrong, and that assumption is this: There are things that are inherently good for us. Nothing belongs anywhere, and nothing exists on purpose. Nothing is "designed" for us. So many diets and fitness fads tap into this idea of what is "natural" and try to implicate that there are certain things we are supposed to do. That the human body is "designed" to consume certain things in certain proportions. When you think about it for a second it becomes obvious that this is patently wrong. Everyone is different. Everyone is going to be genetically predisposed to certain conditions as a result of consuming certain things. There are some things we all have in common (basic need for certain vitamins and minerals), and there are certain things we know are bad for us. Our natural evolution has lead to the current state of things, but our consumption habits, behavior and understanding have now surpassed our natural evolution. Even when we try to get back to our most primal it doesn't make sense, because even humans running around 50,000 years ago eating berries weren't "designed" to do that. They simply didn't die as a result of doing it before reaching sexual maturity. We need to stop thinking about food as being good for us, as if we are going to find some magic diet that works for everyone. It's never going to happen. Our understanding of genetics and the human genome may lead us to a point in the future were we have a better understanding of how our individual genetics are affected by different foods—and we can synthesize substance or specific diets that are optimal for each individual—but we will never reach a state where we "figure it out." Why? Because there exists no correct answer.

samspot 12y ago
This begs the question of why we consider the science of evolution to be so trustworthy, while considering nutritional science untrustworthy. At least we can experiment on nutritional science. Evolution has all the same headline-grabbing power as nutrition. Nutrition is actually what I think of when considering this. I am supposed to take their word for it on this complex topic, but we can't even decide if eggs are good or bad for us?
- exelius 12y ago
  We actually know shockingly little about a lot of topics relative to our bodies. One big reason for this is that, ethically, we can't just go experiment on live humans. But genetics and human biological systems may only play a part of how nutrition affects us. As an example, science is just now coming around to is that the bacteria in our intestines has a huge impact on how our body reacts to food - and that those bacteria vary wildly from person to person. Some peoples' intestinal bacteria are better at breaking down different types of fat, sugar or protein than others. Some people are lactose intolerant. Slight variations in the intestinal bacteria levels might even lead to obesity or other metabolic disorders - we just don't know because nobody's found a good way to study it yet. The net is that the human body is far more complex an organism than I think many people realize. DNA only tells part of the story. The entire way we design studies and test hypotheses is practically prehistoric - there's so much noise in the data that we can't pick out the signal because we don't even know what to look for. We're getting better data - which is helping - but we're still flying in the dark about this subject because there's no ethical way to disassemble a living human and perform the types of horrible experiments we can perform on machines or animals.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    > One big reason for this is that, ethically, we can't just go experiment on live humans The US has an enormous prison population. They get fed for $2.50 per day. Is it possible to recruit prisoners ethically to take part in diet research?
    - exelius 12y ago
      Just think how much progress we could make in neurology if we could open up prisoners' brains and tinker around with them? Or to link back to the nutrition topic, what if we could just take prisoners and replace their intestinal bacteria with different mixes of gut bacteria? Continue to feed them a control diet and see who lives, who dies, who gets fat and who loses weight. Obviously, that experiment would be terrible -- but we'd find out pretty quickly what the "magic formula" is. Could we bioengineer a gut bacteria biome such that an otherwise unmodified human could consume crude oil as a source of nutrition? How about one that can't get drunk because the bacteria break down the ethanol right in the stomach? We probably could -- but many people would die in the research process. I'm not saying that we should do this type of research -- but our lack of ability to do it has hampered our understanding of the human body, and will continue to slow progress relative to other scientific fields where such research IS ethically possible (e.g. building the LHC to understand subatomic particles).

samspot 12y ago

This begs the question of why we consider the science of evolution to be so trustworthy, while considering nutritional science untrustworthy. At least we can experiment on nutritional science. Evolution has all the same headline-grabbing power as nutrition. Nutrition is actually what I think of when considering this. I am supposed to take their word for it on this complex topic, but we can't even decide if eggs are good or bad for us?

exelius 12y ago
We actually know shockingly little about a lot of topics relative to our bodies. One big reason for this is that, ethically, we can't just go experiment on live humans. But genetics and human biological systems may only play a part of how nutrition affects us. As an example, science is just now coming around to is that the bacteria in our intestines has a huge impact on how our body reacts to food - and that those bacteria vary wildly from person to person. Some peoples' intestinal bacteria are better at breaking down different types of fat, sugar or protein than others. Some people are lactose intolerant. Slight variations in the intestinal bacteria levels might even lead to obesity or other metabolic disorders - we just don't know because nobody's found a good way to study it yet. The net is that the human body is far more complex an organism than I think many people realize. DNA only tells part of the story. The entire way we design studies and test hypotheses is practically prehistoric - there's so much noise in the data that we can't pick out the signal because we don't even know what to look for. We're getting better data - which is helping - but we're still flying in the dark about this subject because there's no ethical way to disassemble a living human and perform the types of horrible experiments we can perform on machines or animals.
- DanBC 12y ago
  > One big reason for this is that, ethically, we can't just go experiment on live humans The US has an enormous prison population. They get fed for $2.50 per day. Is it possible to recruit prisoners ethically to take part in diet research?
  - exelius 12y ago
    Just think how much progress we could make in neurology if we could open up prisoners' brains and tinker around with them? Or to link back to the nutrition topic, what if we could just take prisoners and replace their intestinal bacteria with different mixes of gut bacteria? Continue to feed them a control diet and see who lives, who dies, who gets fat and who loses weight. Obviously, that experiment would be terrible -- but we'd find out pretty quickly what the "magic formula" is. Could we bioengineer a gut bacteria biome such that an otherwise unmodified human could consume crude oil as a source of nutrition? How about one that can't get drunk because the bacteria break down the ethanol right in the stomach? We probably could -- but many people would die in the research process. I'm not saying that we should do this type of research -- but our lack of ability to do it has hampered our understanding of the human body, and will continue to slow progress relative to other scientific fields where such research IS ethically possible (e.g. building the LHC to understand subatomic particles).