5 ms·

"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

"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.

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.