8 ms·

Vitamins Hide the Low Quality of Our Food

63 points by boh 12y ago

ianlevesque 12y ago
"require refocusing our diets on minimally processed foods that are naturally nutrient-rich" Great, I'd like to start today. What do I eat? Where do I get it? I already try to do this, but with all this conflicting information out there how am I supposed to know what to do exactly. Too many articles bemoan the state of nutrition, in the United States in particular, but provide no actionable guidance to the reader.
- mkramlich 12y ago
  simplified cheatsheet: rice, beans, nuts, fruits, vegetables, eggs, milk (for calcium and vitamin D) prepare in variety of ways. hot or cold. add spices for taste. sometimes meat for protein and iron. walnuts for omega 3 fatty acids which brain needs but body can't produce. eat healthy snacks like washed pre-peeled carrots, etc. I'd argue this is well-solved, well-known and already well and often communicated. for example, there are books on this topic. many. anyone can read today.
  - derefr 12y ago
    > milk (for calcium and vitamin D) There's got to be some place we got this in the ancestral environment that wasn't animal milk. Our nearest animal sibling primates don't drink animal milk, and presumably have the same requirement for them that we do. So, where do they get them? Consumption of bone marrow, perhaps?
    - noir_lord 12y ago
      Vitamin D you get from been out in the sun (via biosynthesis) Calcium rich foods include leafy greans, beans and fish and other seafood. Lots of cultures around didn't have/don't have significant milk/dairy intake, those of us who can eat lactose into adulthood are mutants. http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471 http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1...
    - mikesickler 12y ago
      For calcium: spinach, broccoli, tofu Vitamin D: fish, soy, eggs
    - raverbashing 12y ago
      Sunlight for Vit. D Calcium from several vegetables.
      - code_duck 12y ago
        Sadly, if you live someplace like Canada or Finland the quest for sunlight in the winter is pretty difficult. I found that i do much better taking vitamin D supplements, in terms of mental state and reduction of symptoms like tingling limbs at night.
    - lambda 12y ago
      Sunlight. We can synthesize vitamin D ourselves when exposed to sunlight. One of the explanations I've seen for why Europeans are white is to enhance this effect, because Europe gets comparatively less sunlight than other regions in which civilization initially spread, but was warm enough due to the gulf stream to support agriculture, which produces a diet lower in vitamin D. So between the comparatively lower sunlight and agriculture, Europeans needed to evolve to be able to generate more vitamin D from sunlight, which losing pigmentation helps with.
      - SilasX 12y ago
        How does losing pigmentation help? Darker skin would absorb more sunlight.
        jjoonathan 12y ago
        Absorbing photons into melanin pigment and dispersing their energy as vibrational motion (heat) doesn't help synthesize vitamin D. For the synthesis you need the photons to hit an intermediate molecule in the pathway and boost an electron into an excited state. If there's a bunch of melanin absorbing photons before they get to the synthesis pathway, the synthesis will be inhibited.
        carey 12y ago
        Less sunlight being absorbed by eumelanin in the skin means more sunlight left to be converted to vitamin D. Window glass also blocks most of the UVB part of the sunlight that would be converted to vitamin D.
    - sliverstorm 12y ago
      Since we basically live indoors these days, sunlight (the historical source mentioned by others) is less viable. There were historical solutions for that- for example, the Inuits who live in the dim far north, bundled in furs: Vitamins A and D are present in the oils and livers of cold-water fishes and mammals. Vitamin C is obtained through sources such as caribou liver, kelp, whale skin, and seal brain; because these foods are typically eaten raw or frozen, the vitamin C they contain, which would be destroyed by cooking, is instead preserved. But that doesn't fit into a modern Western diet.
    - philwelch 12y ago
      In fact, most human beings are lactose intolerant.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  It seems that every decade, if not more often, the consensus of what is and isn't healthy changes. Sometimes it's due to fad diets, sometimes it's due to a typo, and sometimes it's just because this is complicated and sometimes we get closer and sometimes we get further from a perfect understanding. Hopefully, the general trend is to move closer, though.
  - VLM 12y ago
    "Hopefully, the general trend is to move closer, though." The general trend has always been to move toward the more profitable. Scientific research has never been a part of the decision making process.
  - logn 12y ago
    I see a lot of changing guidance around what works for weight loss and what helps prevent specific diseases. However, I think the science has been relatively stable for reaching healthy levels of vitamins and minerals .
- free2rhyme214 12y ago
  Actionable guidance: 1. Eat high alkaline foods that are organic, non gmo and make sure your diet is 80% alkaline, 20% acidic foods. 2. Fast regularly to clean out toxins 3. Make sure you drink water that isn't completely fluoridated. 4. Get daily exercise for a minimum of 1 hour per day 5. Limit processed and animal based foods 6. Don't consume any dairy products "If man made it, don't eat it." (Jack LaLanne) "You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of reality." (Ayn Rand) Sources: the pH Miracle by Robert & Shelly Young, Jack LaLanne, Paul Bragg, Ayn Rand (for kicks)
  - fabian2k 12y ago
    The pH of the human body is tightly regulated, your diet can't really influence it all that much. Any dietary recommendation based on food pH is almost certainly pseudoscience. It's amazing how much pseudoscience you managed to cram into this short list. Fasting to eliminate "toxins" and avoiding fluoridated water are based on pseudoscience or conspiracy theories as well.
    - free2rhyme214 12y ago
      Have you studied blood work and the effect of pH on the human body? How do you know? Have you read any work by Paul Bragg before? Do you know the dangers of fluoride and where it comes from? You're probably the same person who thinks New World Order, the CFR, Builderberg Group, Central Bankers, Aliens and the rest of it is all made up tin hat nonsense. Keep watching tv and let me know how your body is 20 years from now dude.
  - nether 12y ago
    > toxins
  - bobcostas55 12y ago
    And then there's THIS guy.
- logn 12y ago
  Broccoli (5 cups), peanuts (1.5 cups), and milk (3 cups) will give you 100% of recommended intake for known nutrients/minerals/vitamins. So too will eating a good balance of meat, vegetables, legumes, and fruit (except iodine).
- matt4077 12y ago
  google "eat food, mostly plants, not too much" – it's Michael Pollan's summary of how to eat healthy. There's a long NY Times article and a short book based on it. By "food" he means "food your great-grandmother would recognise as such". A good rule of thumb is to focus on foods that don't have an ingredients label. Anything that is green is also a good bet – leafy plants are incredibly complex chemical cocktails and the human body evolved in tandem with it.
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    > By "food" he means "food your great-grandmother would recognise as such". So, no sushi, no fresh fruits except the few which were available around here circa 1900s, no African food, no Asian food, etc. > A good rule of thumb is to focus on foods that don't have an ingredients label. Yes. By all means, eat food which could contain who knows what. > leafy plants are incredibly complex chemical cocktails and the human body evolved in tandem with it. This only applies to foods found in the Rift Valley in Africa.
cbd1984 12y ago
If the food has what we need how is it necessarily low quality? This just sounds like the naturalistic fallacy.
- Brakenshire 12y ago
  The problem is we don't know what we need.
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    This is simply wrong.
wyager 12y ago
The article never actually established what made food healthy. Just because something is "natural" does not make it good (and conversely, something being "unnatural" does not make it bad). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature It made brief mention of a few chemicals the author claimed "processing" disrupted, but didn't really expand on that. If the food has all the chemicals we need, what does it matter if it's "low quality" by the author's standard? If the food doesn't have all the chemicals we need and this isn't obvious, that's a failure of our nutrient tracking scheme.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  The article mentions that it's not just a matter of having 20 grams of X, and 100% of our daily requirement of Y - a lot of these things seem to work together in concert, as catalysts.
- qnaal 12y ago
  > If the food has all the chemicals we need, what does it matter if it's "low quality" by the author's standard? If the food doesn't have all the chemicals we need and this isn't obvious, that's a failure of our nutrient tracking scheme. Our 'nutrient tracking scheme' does not claim to be 100% complete, any more than any other science. I feel it's legitimate to discuss differences between 'naturally' healthy food, and food that is notably deficient being 'fortified' with our best guess as to what's missing.
- frozenport 12y ago
  See the comment about broccoli. Today's science doesn't known the chemicals required in a healthy diet, missing some may lead to health problems like cancer. Indeed, this is one of the problems with products like Soylent as long-term risk (for example, cancer) remains poorly understood. You don't want to be eating the stuff for 10 years and realize you doubled your risk for cancer.
  - zo1 12y ago
    >"You dont want to be eating the stuff for 10 years and realize you doubled your risk for cancer." I'm not following... How does that not apply to "natural" foods as well? Without resorting to an appeal to nature.
Genmutant 12y ago
"In fact, for products like milk and flour, where fortification and enrichment have occurred for so long that they’ve become invisible, it would be almost irresponsible not to add synthetic vitamins." How come most countries don't do it, then? At least in Germany I have never seen added stuff in milk or flour.
- SixSigma 12y ago
  Not just "irresponsible" but adding them in the UK is a legal requirement : http://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/flour-and-ingredients/organic-flour/organic-plain-white-flour-1kg/ http://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/flour-and-ingredients/organic-flo... Organic Plain White Flour 1kg Ingredients: wheat flour* (contains GLUTEN), statutory ingredients (calcium carbonate, iron, thiamine & niacin).
- DanBC 12y ago
  Lots of countries do do it, although you're right that Germany doesn't. http://www.ffinetwork.org/regional_activity/europe.php http://www.ffinetwork.org/regional_activity/europe.php Here is the law for England & Wales; Northern Ireland, and Scotland. http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/multimedia/pdfs/breadflourguide.pdf http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/multimedia/pdfs/b...
- antirez 12y ago
  Same in Italy, but many people here buy fresh milk, and I guess the same is true in Germany. It lasts only 3/4 days but is only treated with light pasteurization that leaves most nutrients unaltered.
  - barrkel 12y ago
    Few people buy fresh milk in Germany. Almost all milk in supermarkets is UHT, and fresh milk is typically only drinkable for a couple of days, and is frequently almost soured even when you buy it. UK supermarkets on the other hand sell filtered milk (at a premium price). Filtered milk stays and tastes fresh for over a week.
    - 12y ago
300bps 12y ago
I had elevated liver enzymes (i.e. signs of liver damage) for two annual physicals in a row. My doctor tested me for all the usual culprits including all types of hepatitis and everything came back negative. She then asked me if I took a daily multivitamin. I told her I did and she told me to stop taking it. That was 12 years ago and I have not had elevated liver enzymes since. According to my doctor, people that get enough vitamins and minerals through their diet can actually overdose on the sledgehammer of vitamins in a typical Centrum-style multivitamin. This can then cause liver damage which shows up in an ALT/AST blood test. I think it's prudent to only take vitamins for which you know you are deficient either because of dietary restrictions or through actual testing. For example, my vitamin d level gets low in the winter time so I take vitamin d3 for that.
- daemonfire300 12y ago
  The damage does not just come from taking too much, it also comes from consuming "synthesized" Vitamins. Many ingredients aren't close to the quality of vitamins in natural food.
- yid 12y ago
  This sounds like an excellent use case for blood-level monitoring for personalized medicine (or in this case, vitamins). I'm not sure how viable the hardware aspect is, but there are sure a lot of things you could do in software with a real-time stream of that data.
teekert 12y ago
But what does a typical American eat then? In my country (Netherlands) we eat fresh vegetables every day, we cook every day using many different ingredients and usually Rice, Potato of Pasta as the basis. Is it so typically American to eat highly processed foods? Don't you have a vegetable department in the stores? Here it would also be quite expensive to buy prepackage stuff as one gets peppers, cucumbers, zucchini etc for under 40 cents a piece, a bag of washed fresh spinach is about 1 euro, potatos costs less than 50 cents/kilo. Veggies are even cheaper now that we are not allowed to sell to Russia. I have worked with Italian colleagues, they are even more puristic. Is this really a cultural thing or are vegetables just so expensive in the US? Are you not taking the time to cook? (about 30 min hands-on a day for preparing warm meals is considered normal here.)
- darkxanthos 12y ago
  Southern California native now living in Chicago. Most of the meals from my childhood were packaged TV dinners we microwaved. Nowadays I will slow cook a soup once a week in a large crockpot. Maybe cook 2-ish other times during the week and the rest is pre-packaged or eating out. Others probably do better, but to your point, people like me exist. :)
- amalag 12y ago
  US people in general eat a lot of processed, canned and frozen food. Even in the areas where fresh foods are available. I see even many immigrants who don't do it in their home countries do it when they come here. I do think vegetables are overpriced in general grocery stores. The large asian grocery stores are pretty fairly priced.
- pXMzR2A 12y ago
  > we eat fresh vegetables every day that shit's very very expensive here.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    No it's not! Green Beans. Cauliflower. Broccoli. Brussels sprouts. None of that's "expensive." I've been feeding myself exclusively on ordinary grocery store veggies, steak, and fish. It's not expensive or time consuming at all, and it's quite delicious when you catch on to how to do it, which you will very quickly, if you cook all your own meals.
mrxd 12y ago
I'm not sure what universe this statement is true: > we refuse to change our eating habits in the ways that would actually protect us, which would require refocusing our diets on minimally processed foods that are naturally nutrient-rich It doesn't seem to be the one I live in, where all the trends of the last decade or longer have been towards various "natural" food diets. Even Walmart sells organic food. "All natural" is an extremely common marketing slogan and has been for decades. I know many "health conscious" people, and none of them are obsessed with vitamins. The facts about vitamins vs minimally processed foods may be true, but the article seems to seriously mischaracterize American food culture.
- glesica 12y ago
  I suspect the trend is much more prevalent among higher-income and better-educated individuals (not necessarily the same group). It is also important to note that "all natural" is not an FDA regulated statement, therefore it is effectively meaningless.
- matt4077 12y ago
  This confusion might be due to different meanings of the word 'natural'. You can get a certified organic frozen pizza, but it wouldn't be 'natural' in the sense the article uses. The best definition is probably 'everything that doesn't have an ingredients label'.
stcredzero 12y ago
I'm surprised that roasting isn't more popular in the programming community. Supposedly, we like having devices do the work for us, and we're known for getting jazzed about emergence. Why don't more of us apply this to cooking? (As an aside, my inclination is to cite a decline in education and a distancing of knowledge from the real world, as in: http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education) Instead of doing a lot of fussing over our cooking, most of the time, for everyday meals, we should be sticking things into the oven with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then letting the magic of roasting magically create wonderful flavors for us. (Garlic? If you feel like changing it up, go for it! I've solved the "garlic peeling problem" so it's a good way to change things up. It's a mistake to be too consistent with flavoring, so garlic every time isn't necessary, needed, or wise, IMO.) Also keep in mind, that unless you are one of them, you aren't cooking to impress your "foodie" friends. You have a different set of priorities. So a helpful thing to do, in your own mind (NOT out loud) tell all your "foodie" friends to "smeg-off!" Go ahead and do things "wrong." So long as you're okay with it. It's your relationship with food, not theirs! Steak, cauliflower, fish, asparagus...so many wonderful things to have as everyday meals, and if you approach the task with efficiency in mind, the overall wait is usually 30 to 45 minutes, but active preparation/labor time is very slight. Do very minimal prep, stick something in the oven, go and play a game or write some code, then take really yummy complexly flavored food out of the oven. Truth be told, some of us who aren't very focused on food thoughtlessly imitate people we shouldn't imitate when we cook. One example: How often do you get out a cutting board and use a full sized chef's knife? I haven't used a full sized chef's knife in over a year and get out a cutting board most often when I just need a place to set ingredients. Let's face it, we aren't chefs! We aren't pulling amazing feats of multitasking rapid culinary excellence. We don't need such a highly specialized and versatile tool to rapidly accomplish a dozen different operations and exercise well honed skills as we zip around in a restaurant kitchen. Basically, it's the inversion of the "teaching" segment in Ratatouille: You are your mother! Cut your broccoli in the air over your bowl or pot. Use a really sharp knife. (Look up the Victorinox Fibrox knife http://amzn.com/B0000CFDD5 http://amzn.com/B0000CFDD5 then look at this video by America's Test Kitchen. That $24 knife has the same grain size and performs as well as the top-rated $300 knife in the video, and it's cheap enough for you to simply donate and buy a new one every year.) I now cook all my own food, I roast and steam everything, and the effect is that I eat better than I ever have while doing just a fraction of the work I used to do. "Change your relationship to food" with Soylent? Nah. (Tried it.) An oven, judicious use of aluminum foil, a baking pan, a pot with a steamer insert, and olive oil. Use your brain and observe what you do and adjust it to your priorities. (I call it "hyper-lazy cuisine for programmers.")
cbd1984 12y ago
If the food has what we need how is it necessarily low quality? This just sounds like the naturalistic fallacy.
- dalke 12y ago
  Quoting from the article: > The problem with this approach to nutrition is not that there’s anything inherently wrong with synthetic vitamins — it’s the shortsighted nutritional philosophy that our obsession with vitamins encourages. ... > Indeed, natural foods contain potentially protective substances such as phytochemicals and polyunsaturated fat that also are affected by processing, but that are not usually replaced. If these turn out to be as important as many researchers suspect, then our exclusive focus on vitamins could mean we’re protecting ourselves against the wrong dangers. ... > .. extra vitamins do not protect us from the long-term “diseases of civilization” that are currently ravaging our country, including obesity, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes — many of which are strongly associated with diet. This is not a naturalistic fallacy. As my example, which I think is more direct than phytochemicals, consider that alcoholism can lead to B1 deficiency. In the 1970s people proposed vitamin fortified alcohols, which would prevent the institutionalization of 1,200 alcoholics yearly (in the 1970s) due to Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. (See http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2706&dat=19780812&id=JtxJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xx0NAAAAIBAJ&pg=1531,5747063 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2706&dat=19780812&id=J... for a newspaper article from the time. The PubMed reference is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/96343 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/96343 .) This wasn't done because, as I recall, the labeling of "vitamin fortified" would likely influence some people to consume more alcohol, on the idea that it was healthier because it contains vitamins. Unfortunately I can find no reference to this decision, and I'm not sure my memory is correct, since http://www.newsweek.com/are-vitamin-enhanced-alcohols-heathier-choice-75801 http://www.newsweek.com/are-vitamin-enhanced-alcohols-heathi... says "Stampede Light Plus beer, fortified with B vitamins, is soon planning a relaunch. The beer first got its start with Jessica Simpson, who touted it in ads urging beer guzzlers to "Be Smart, Drink Smart."" Beer is low quality nutrition. Adding vitamins to beer does not make it high quality nutrition.

63 points by boh 12y ago

"require refocusing our diets on minimally processed foods that are naturally nutrient-rich" Great, I'd like to start today. What do I eat? Where do I get it? I already try to do this, but with all this conflicting information out there how am I supposed to know what to do exactly. Too many articles bemoan the state of nutrition, in the United States in particular, but provide no actionable guidance to the reader.

mkramlich 12y ago
simplified cheatsheet: rice, beans, nuts, fruits, vegetables, eggs, milk (for calcium and vitamin D) prepare in variety of ways. hot or cold. add spices for taste. sometimes meat for protein and iron. walnuts for omega 3 fatty acids which brain needs but body can't produce. eat healthy snacks like washed pre-peeled carrots, etc. I'd argue this is well-solved, well-known and already well and often communicated. for example, there are books on this topic. many. anyone can read today.
- derefr 12y ago
  > milk (for calcium and vitamin D) There's got to be some place we got this in the ancestral environment that wasn't animal milk. Our nearest animal sibling primates don't drink animal milk, and presumably have the same requirement for them that we do. So, where do they get them? Consumption of bone marrow, perhaps?
  - noir_lord 12y ago
    Vitamin D you get from been out in the sun (via biosynthesis) Calcium rich foods include leafy greans, beans and fish and other seafood. Lots of cultures around didn't have/don't have significant milk/dairy intake, those of us who can eat lactose into adulthood are mutants. http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471 http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1...
  - mikesickler 12y ago
    For calcium: spinach, broccoli, tofu Vitamin D: fish, soy, eggs
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    Sunlight for Vit. D Calcium from several vegetables.
    - code_duck 12y ago
      Sadly, if you live someplace like Canada or Finland the quest for sunlight in the winter is pretty difficult. I found that i do much better taking vitamin D supplements, in terms of mental state and reduction of symptoms like tingling limbs at night.
  - lambda 12y ago
    Sunlight. We can synthesize vitamin D ourselves when exposed to sunlight. One of the explanations I've seen for why Europeans are white is to enhance this effect, because Europe gets comparatively less sunlight than other regions in which civilization initially spread, but was warm enough due to the gulf stream to support agriculture, which produces a diet lower in vitamin D. So between the comparatively lower sunlight and agriculture, Europeans needed to evolve to be able to generate more vitamin D from sunlight, which losing pigmentation helps with.
    - SilasX 12y ago
      How does losing pigmentation help? Darker skin would absorb more sunlight.
      - jjoonathan 12y ago
        Absorbing photons into melanin pigment and dispersing their energy as vibrational motion (heat) doesn't help synthesize vitamin D. For the synthesis you need the photons to hit an intermediate molecule in the pathway and boost an electron into an excited state. If there's a bunch of melanin absorbing photons before they get to the synthesis pathway, the synthesis will be inhibited.
      - carey 12y ago
        Less sunlight being absorbed by eumelanin in the skin means more sunlight left to be converted to vitamin D. Window glass also blocks most of the UVB part of the sunlight that would be converted to vitamin D.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    Since we basically live indoors these days, sunlight (the historical source mentioned by others) is less viable. There were historical solutions for that- for example, the Inuits who live in the dim far north, bundled in furs: Vitamins A and D are present in the oils and livers of cold-water fishes and mammals. Vitamin C is obtained through sources such as caribou liver, kelp, whale skin, and seal brain; because these foods are typically eaten raw or frozen, the vitamin C they contain, which would be destroyed by cooking, is instead preserved. But that doesn't fit into a modern Western diet.
  - philwelch 12y ago
    In fact, most human beings are lactose intolerant.
pavel_lishin 12y ago
It seems that every decade, if not more often, the consensus of what is and isn't healthy changes. Sometimes it's due to fad diets, sometimes it's due to a typo, and sometimes it's just because this is complicated and sometimes we get closer and sometimes we get further from a perfect understanding. Hopefully, the general trend is to move closer, though.
- VLM 12y ago
  "Hopefully, the general trend is to move closer, though." The general trend has always been to move toward the more profitable. Scientific research has never been a part of the decision making process.
- logn 12y ago
  I see a lot of changing guidance around what works for weight loss and what helps prevent specific diseases. However, I think the science has been relatively stable for reaching healthy levels of vitamins and minerals .
free2rhyme214 12y ago
Actionable guidance: 1. Eat high alkaline foods that are organic, non gmo and make sure your diet is 80% alkaline, 20% acidic foods. 2. Fast regularly to clean out toxins 3. Make sure you drink water that isn't completely fluoridated. 4. Get daily exercise for a minimum of 1 hour per day 5. Limit processed and animal based foods 6. Don't consume any dairy products "If man made it, don't eat it." (Jack LaLanne) "You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of reality." (Ayn Rand) Sources: the pH Miracle by Robert & Shelly Young, Jack LaLanne, Paul Bragg, Ayn Rand (for kicks)
- fabian2k 12y ago
  The pH of the human body is tightly regulated, your diet can't really influence it all that much. Any dietary recommendation based on food pH is almost certainly pseudoscience. It's amazing how much pseudoscience you managed to cram into this short list. Fasting to eliminate "toxins" and avoiding fluoridated water are based on pseudoscience or conspiracy theories as well.
  - free2rhyme214 12y ago
    Have you studied blood work and the effect of pH on the human body? How do you know? Have you read any work by Paul Bragg before? Do you know the dangers of fluoride and where it comes from? You're probably the same person who thinks New World Order, the CFR, Builderberg Group, Central Bankers, Aliens and the rest of it is all made up tin hat nonsense. Keep watching tv and let me know how your body is 20 years from now dude.
- nether 12y ago
  > toxins
- bobcostas55 12y ago
  And then there's THIS guy.
logn 12y ago
Broccoli (5 cups), peanuts (1.5 cups), and milk (3 cups) will give you 100% of recommended intake for known nutrients/minerals/vitamins. So too will eating a good balance of meat, vegetables, legumes, and fruit (except iodine).
matt4077 12y ago
google "eat food, mostly plants, not too much" – it's Michael Pollan's summary of how to eat healthy. There's a long NY Times article and a short book based on it. By "food" he means "food your great-grandmother would recognise as such". A good rule of thumb is to focus on foods that don't have an ingredients label. Anything that is green is also a good bet – leafy plants are incredibly complex chemical cocktails and the human body evolved in tandem with it.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  > By "food" he means "food your great-grandmother would recognise as such". So, no sushi, no fresh fruits except the few which were available around here circa 1900s, no African food, no Asian food, etc. > A good rule of thumb is to focus on foods that don't have an ingredients label. Yes. By all means, eat food which could contain who knows what. > leafy plants are incredibly complex chemical cocktails and the human body evolved in tandem with it. This only applies to foods found in the Rift Valley in Africa.

cbd1984 12y ago

If the food has what we need how is it necessarily low quality? This just sounds like the naturalistic fallacy.

Brakenshire 12y ago
The problem is we don't know what we need.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  This is simply wrong.

wyager 12y ago

The article never actually established what made food healthy. Just because something is "natural" does not make it good (and conversely, something being "unnatural" does not make it bad). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature It made brief mention of a few chemicals the author claimed "processing" disrupted, but didn't really expand on that. If the food has all the chemicals we need, what does it matter if it's "low quality" by the author's standard? If the food doesn't have all the chemicals we need and this isn't obvious, that's a failure of our nutrient tracking scheme.

pavel_lishin 12y ago
The article mentions that it's not just a matter of having 20 grams of X, and 100% of our daily requirement of Y - a lot of these things seem to work together in concert, as catalysts.
qnaal 12y ago
> If the food has all the chemicals we need, what does it matter if it's "low quality" by the author's standard? If the food doesn't have all the chemicals we need and this isn't obvious, that's a failure of our nutrient tracking scheme. Our 'nutrient tracking scheme' does not claim to be 100% complete, any more than any other science. I feel it's legitimate to discuss differences between 'naturally' healthy food, and food that is notably deficient being 'fortified' with our best guess as to what's missing.
frozenport 12y ago
See the comment about broccoli. Today's science doesn't known the chemicals required in a healthy diet, missing some may lead to health problems like cancer. Indeed, this is one of the problems with products like Soylent as long-term risk (for example, cancer) remains poorly understood. You don't want to be eating the stuff for 10 years and realize you doubled your risk for cancer.
- zo1 12y ago
  >"You dont want to be eating the stuff for 10 years and realize you doubled your risk for cancer." I'm not following... How does that not apply to "natural" foods as well? Without resorting to an appeal to nature.

Genmutant 12y ago

"In fact, for products like milk and flour, where fortification and enrichment have occurred for so long that they’ve become invisible, it would be almost irresponsible not to add synthetic vitamins." How come most countries don't do it, then? At least in Germany I have never seen added stuff in milk or flour.

SixSigma 12y ago
Not just "irresponsible" but adding them in the UK is a legal requirement : http://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/flour-and-ingredients/organic-flour/organic-plain-white-flour-1kg/ http://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/flour-and-ingredients/organic-flo... Organic Plain White Flour 1kg Ingredients: wheat flour* (contains GLUTEN), statutory ingredients (calcium carbonate, iron, thiamine & niacin).
DanBC 12y ago
Lots of countries do do it, although you're right that Germany doesn't. http://www.ffinetwork.org/regional_activity/europe.php http://www.ffinetwork.org/regional_activity/europe.php Here is the law for England & Wales; Northern Ireland, and Scotland. http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/multimedia/pdfs/breadflourguide.pdf http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/multimedia/pdfs/b...
antirez 12y ago
Same in Italy, but many people here buy fresh milk, and I guess the same is true in Germany. It lasts only 3/4 days but is only treated with light pasteurization that leaves most nutrients unaltered.
- barrkel 12y ago
  Few people buy fresh milk in Germany. Almost all milk in supermarkets is UHT, and fresh milk is typically only drinkable for a couple of days, and is frequently almost soured even when you buy it. UK supermarkets on the other hand sell filtered milk (at a premium price). Filtered milk stays and tastes fresh for over a week.
  - 12y ago

300bps 12y ago

I had elevated liver enzymes (i.e. signs of liver damage) for two annual physicals in a row. My doctor tested me for all the usual culprits including all types of hepatitis and everything came back negative. She then asked me if I took a daily multivitamin. I told her I did and she told me to stop taking it. That was 12 years ago and I have not had elevated liver enzymes since. According to my doctor, people that get enough vitamins and minerals through their diet can actually overdose on the sledgehammer of vitamins in a typical Centrum-style multivitamin. This can then cause liver damage which shows up in an ALT/AST blood test. I think it's prudent to only take vitamins for which you know you are deficient either because of dietary restrictions or through actual testing. For example, my vitamin d level gets low in the winter time so I take vitamin d3 for that.

daemonfire300 12y ago
The damage does not just come from taking too much, it also comes from consuming "synthesized" Vitamins. Many ingredients aren't close to the quality of vitamins in natural food.
yid 12y ago
This sounds like an excellent use case for blood-level monitoring for personalized medicine (or in this case, vitamins). I'm not sure how viable the hardware aspect is, but there are sure a lot of things you could do in software with a real-time stream of that data.

teekert 12y ago

But what does a typical American eat then? In my country (Netherlands) we eat fresh vegetables every day, we cook every day using many different ingredients and usually Rice, Potato of Pasta as the basis. Is it so typically American to eat highly processed foods? Don't you have a vegetable department in the stores? Here it would also be quite expensive to buy prepackage stuff as one gets peppers, cucumbers, zucchini etc for under 40 cents a piece, a bag of washed fresh spinach is about 1 euro, potatos costs less than 50 cents/kilo. Veggies are even cheaper now that we are not allowed to sell to Russia. I have worked with Italian colleagues, they are even more puristic. Is this really a cultural thing or are vegetables just so expensive in the US? Are you not taking the time to cook? (about 30 min hands-on a day for preparing warm meals is considered normal here.)

darkxanthos 12y ago
Southern California native now living in Chicago. Most of the meals from my childhood were packaged TV dinners we microwaved. Nowadays I will slow cook a soup once a week in a large crockpot. Maybe cook 2-ish other times during the week and the rest is pre-packaged or eating out. Others probably do better, but to your point, people like me exist. :)
amalag 12y ago
US people in general eat a lot of processed, canned and frozen food. Even in the areas where fresh foods are available. I see even many immigrants who don't do it in their home countries do it when they come here. I do think vegetables are overpriced in general grocery stores. The large asian grocery stores are pretty fairly priced.
pXMzR2A 12y ago
> we eat fresh vegetables every day that shit's very very expensive here.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  No it's not! Green Beans. Cauliflower. Broccoli. Brussels sprouts. None of that's "expensive." I've been feeding myself exclusively on ordinary grocery store veggies, steak, and fish. It's not expensive or time consuming at all, and it's quite delicious when you catch on to how to do it, which you will very quickly, if you cook all your own meals.

mrxd 12y ago

I'm not sure what universe this statement is true: > we refuse to change our eating habits in the ways that would actually protect us, which would require refocusing our diets on minimally processed foods that are naturally nutrient-rich It doesn't seem to be the one I live in, where all the trends of the last decade or longer have been towards various "natural" food diets. Even Walmart sells organic food. "All natural" is an extremely common marketing slogan and has been for decades. I know many "health conscious" people, and none of them are obsessed with vitamins. The facts about vitamins vs minimally processed foods may be true, but the article seems to seriously mischaracterize American food culture.

glesica 12y ago
I suspect the trend is much more prevalent among higher-income and better-educated individuals (not necessarily the same group). It is also important to note that "all natural" is not an FDA regulated statement, therefore it is effectively meaningless.
matt4077 12y ago
This confusion might be due to different meanings of the word 'natural'. You can get a certified organic frozen pizza, but it wouldn't be 'natural' in the sense the article uses. The best definition is probably 'everything that doesn't have an ingredients label'.

stcredzero 12y ago

I'm surprised that roasting isn't more popular in the programming community. Supposedly, we like having devices do the work for us, and we're known for getting jazzed about emergence. Why don't more of us apply this to cooking? (As an aside, my inclination is to cite a decline in education and a distancing of knowledge from the real world, as in: http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education) Instead of doing a lot of fussing over our cooking, most of the time, for everyday meals, we should be sticking things into the oven with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then letting the magic of roasting magically create wonderful flavors for us. (Garlic? If you feel like changing it up, go for it! I've solved the "garlic peeling problem" so it's a good way to change things up. It's a mistake to be too consistent with flavoring, so garlic every time isn't necessary, needed, or wise, IMO.) Also keep in mind, that unless you are one of them, you aren't cooking to impress your "foodie" friends. You have a different set of priorities. So a helpful thing to do, in your own mind (NOT out loud) tell all your "foodie" friends to "smeg-off!" Go ahead and do things "wrong." So long as you're okay with it. It's your relationship with food, not theirs! Steak, cauliflower, fish, asparagus...so many wonderful things to have as everyday meals, and if you approach the task with efficiency in mind, the overall wait is usually 30 to 45 minutes, but active preparation/labor time is very slight. Do very minimal prep, stick something in the oven, go and play a game or write some code, then take really yummy complexly flavored food out of the oven. Truth be told, some of us who aren't very focused on food thoughtlessly imitate people we shouldn't imitate when we cook. One example: How often do you get out a cutting board and use a full sized chef's knife? I haven't used a full sized chef's knife in over a year and get out a cutting board most often when I just need a place to set ingredients. Let's face it, we aren't chefs! We aren't pulling amazing feats of multitasking rapid culinary excellence. We don't need such a highly specialized and versatile tool to rapidly accomplish a dozen different operations and exercise well honed skills as we zip around in a restaurant kitchen. Basically, it's the inversion of the "teaching" segment in Ratatouille: You are your mother! Cut your broccoli in the air over your bowl or pot. Use a really sharp knife. (Look up the Victorinox Fibrox knife http://amzn.com/B0000CFDD5 http://amzn.com/B0000CFDD5 then look at this video by America's Test Kitchen. That $24 knife has the same grain size and performs as well as the top-rated $300 knife in the video, and it's cheap enough for you to simply donate and buy a new one every year.) I now cook all my own food, I roast and steam everything, and the effect is that I eat better than I ever have while doing just a fraction of the work I used to do. "Change your relationship to food" with Soylent? Nah. (Tried it.) An oven, judicious use of aluminum foil, a baking pan, a pot with a steamer insert, and olive oil. Use your brain and observe what you do and adjust it to your priorities. (I call it "hyper-lazy cuisine for programmers.")

cbd1984 12y ago

If the food has what we need how is it necessarily low quality? This just sounds like the naturalistic fallacy.

dalke 12y ago
Quoting from the article: > The problem with this approach to nutrition is not that there’s anything inherently wrong with synthetic vitamins — it’s the shortsighted nutritional philosophy that our obsession with vitamins encourages. ... > Indeed, natural foods contain potentially protective substances such as phytochemicals and polyunsaturated fat that also are affected by processing, but that are not usually replaced. If these turn out to be as important as many researchers suspect, then our exclusive focus on vitamins could mean we’re protecting ourselves against the wrong dangers. ... > .. extra vitamins do not protect us from the long-term “diseases of civilization” that are currently ravaging our country, including obesity, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes — many of which are strongly associated with diet. This is not a naturalistic fallacy. As my example, which I think is more direct than phytochemicals, consider that alcoholism can lead to B1 deficiency. In the 1970s people proposed vitamin fortified alcohols, which would prevent the institutionalization of 1,200 alcoholics yearly (in the 1970s) due to Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. (See http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2706&dat=19780812&id=JtxJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xx0NAAAAIBAJ&pg=1531,5747063 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2706&dat=19780812&id=J... for a newspaper article from the time. The PubMed reference is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/96343 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/96343 .) This wasn't done because, as I recall, the labeling of "vitamin fortified" would likely influence some people to consume more alcohol, on the idea that it was healthier because it contains vitamins. Unfortunately I can find no reference to this decision, and I'm not sure my memory is correct, since http://www.newsweek.com/are-vitamin-enhanced-alcohols-heathier-choice-75801 http://www.newsweek.com/are-vitamin-enhanced-alcohols-heathi... says "Stampede Light Plus beer, fortified with B vitamins, is soon planning a relaunch. The beer first got its start with Jessica Simpson, who touted it in ads urging beer guzzlers to "Be Smart, Drink Smart."" Beer is low quality nutrition. Adding vitamins to beer does not make it high quality nutrition.