6 ms·

Simple Rules for Healthy Eating

63 points by po 12y ago

venomsnake 12y ago
So it boils to "do not overeat" ...
- collyw 12y ago
  seemed more like "avoid processed crap as much as possible" to me.
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  As a summary I prefer Michael Pollan's advice: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." [1]. I thought the article was useful. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....
  - joshuapants 12y ago
    Does "mostly plants" refer to mass or calories?
    - andyjohnson0 12y ago
      I take it to mean "get most of your nutrition from plant-based sources". Some meat, dairy, etc. are ok if you want, but most of what you eat should be plant-based food. Apart from grains, its hard to eat too much plant based food - whether measured in mass or calories.
- ilitirit 12y ago
  Not really. If you eat poisonous things moderately it doesn't make it good for your health.
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    It is safe to assume that anything that has passed USDA and FDA approval is not outright poisonous ...
    - ilitirit 12y ago
      Sheesh... it's not that hard to understand. There is more to healthy eating than quantities and exercise. And besides that consumables that aren't labelled dangerous by the USDA or FDA (I don't know how they factor into this discussion - not everyone lives in the US, and I see them mentioned in the article) can still be dangerous to an individual if you have a certain condition. Easy example: nut allergies. Others: Celiac disease, diabetes. etc. And, eating nothing but something that might even be considered healthy can also be fatal if you don't supplement it, no matter how moderate your intake.
    - cratermoon 12y ago
      The GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) category is a wide open door, though.
- Swizec 12y ago
  "Eat big, lift big"
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    Eat clen, tren hard ...
- vlasev 12y ago
  Yeah, but the implementation of this is rather difficult to do in practice!
diminoten 12y ago
I suppose Soylent falls into the "highly processed" category, doesn't it?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- lkbm 12y ago
  Yes, though in a recent Q&A video he said Soylent is probably just fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwpgHvO4A0E#9m05s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwpgHvO4A0E#9m05s These are general guidelines for the masses. "Avoid processed foods, except things like Soylent" is unnecessarily clunky.
dschiptsov 12y ago
Rule 1. Eat accordingly with what you've spent (in calories). Rule 2. Avoid packaged/processed foods. There is no need for Rule 3.
- vlasev 12y ago
  The biggest problem here is being accurate and truthful to yourself. These rules are great theoretically but they are rather difficult to apply in practice. I've been tracking my intake and expenditure as accurately as possible over the last 2 months and the errors accumulate rather rapidly. There's variation in what you do, how much you do of it, how much energy you actually spend doing it. After this there is variation in the self-reporting itself - we tend to over-estimate the calories we've spend. Then there is variation in what you eat, how much you eat of it, how many calories it really has, how many calories you actually consume, how many you actually process in the end. Add to this things like water retention, stress and so on, and it becomes a rather messy problem.
  - dschiptsov 12y ago
    There is a so much of nonsense about food that it is worth it to look back at some traditional or tribal eating habits. For example, traditionally, majority of the Nepalese population is eating white rice with some kind of lentil curry and seasonal vegetables two times a day basically whole year and remain healthy and not overweight due to their active, working lifestyle. Modern memes are telling us that white rice is almost poisonous, despite the fact that more than half of the world population (almost whole Asia) feed on it. Tibetans, Sherpas and other Himalayan tribes are still rely heavily on cow/nak butter (the main commodity and the source of nutrition) and Tsampa (rusted barley flour) which they consume on a daily basis in the form of so-called Sherpa tea (butter, Tsampa, hot watter, sugar or salt) or in a form of bread-like mass (same ingredients). According to modern memes this is a disastrous diet, but, you see, these people are healthy and happy. I could go on, about various tribes of India or Sri Lanka (mostly rise and veges). The picture will be almost the same. Simple, homemade food and not being a couch potato makes it. There is no problem with traditional foods. The problems are with the food industry and its commercial products which, being aggressively marketed, altered the traditional eating habits. As for myself, I could confirm that especially in high altitudes (in Himalayas) the tribal eating habits, which I follow happily, are the evolved balance for energy storage and intake, according with the harsh conditions, seasons and available food sources. There is no alternative in calories efficiency to the a half-kilo lump of nak butter (just cream, no additions) and a small bag of Tsampa for weeks-long crossing of the ridges in Himalayas.
wodenokoto 12y ago
Why am I allowed to process food in my own home, but not buy food already processed?
- dagw 12y ago
  Because when you process the foods yourself you can control the processing and what you add. When you buy already processed, you generally can't. The corollary to this is that when you do buy pre-processed food, do so from people whom you trust to use essentially the same processing steps you would use if processing the food yourself.
- Swizec 12y ago
  Because industrially processed usually means something like "Split into base components, down to very basic chemicals, put back together in specific ratios" It's like making synthetic foods, but by first taking the components out of natural foods so you can call them natural.
  - MrDosu 12y ago
    This is science fiction, we can't and aren't doing this.
    - qnaal 12y ago
      where do we get doritos
      - MrDosu 12y ago
        Doritotrees?
      - icebraining 12y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIp_zhBIZ7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIp_zhBIZ7s
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
richardwigley 12y ago
Avoiding processed food should be what Cartman would call 'hippy nonsense'. Unfortunately, many food processors are interested in removing, expensive, nutritious food and replacing them with things that make us 'enjoy food', sugar, salt, and fats. Unless processors can see the point in changing formula, for whatever reason, it's good, and simple, advice for those wanting to live healthily.
csallen 12y ago
I've always found the various debates, fads, and gimmicks related to healthy eating interesting for a couple of reasons. First, the word "healthy" is problematic due to its ambiguity. It means very different things to different people. If you're overweight, then it means whatever helps you lose weight. If you have high blood pressure, it means whatever helps you fight high blood pressure. If you're a bodybuilder, it means whatever helps you build muscle and burn fat. If you're an athlete, it means whatever helps you perform the best. For many people, it means whatever helps them live the longest. Or feel the best. Or look the best. In other words, it depends on your goals. Given so much room for interpretation, it seems downright irresponsible for anyone to write an article about healthy eating without making explicit their particular definition of "healthy". But alas, it happens more often than not, and no one seems to notice or care. Second, as far longevity and diseases go, diet is only one of many significant players. Among other things, our mortality is affected by our genes, macro and micro environments and exposure to various chemicals, exercise and physical fitness, medical treatment quality, stress, relationships, etc. It therefore stands to reason that there are diminishing returns to how your diet affects your life expectancy -- beyond a certain point, continuing to eat "healthier" will have a near-negligible effect on your health compared to other factors. And yet people remain obsessive about fine-tuning their diets based rumors and inconclusive studies, even as they continue to sit at stressful desk jobs for 9 hours a day in smog-filled cities. I wonder if it's because diet is (or, at least, seems) easier to control than competing factors? Or maybe it's that deliberately putting substances into our bodies all day every day is an intuitively health-related action?
- martijn_himself 12y ago
  I don't agree with your first point. "Healthy" eating in this article (and in general) is quite unambigious in that it refers to the avoidance of foods that have been shown (to varying degrees of ambiguity) to increase your risk of developing health problems. This has nothing to do with an athlete's (short term) goals to build muscle or run a certain distance. Your second point should be included as a disclaimer by anyone trying to sell us the latest health craze.
Kiro 12y ago
I have an issue with #7. I can't really enjoy food in company of others. It's like I need to focus on them instead of the taste and all of a sudden the food is gone. That's why I always eat alone.
deepGem 12y ago
Or... just drink Soylent. Don't get me wrong - I like what has been told in this article. In my world, this is day to day eating. We all eat mostly unprocessed food - almost 95%, even at restaurants or when we eat out food's unprocessed but definitely contaminated ( food colors, pesticides etc ). Urban elites are moving towards processed food, but it'll take a really long time before processed food takes over - I really hope that day doesn't ever come. However, it pains me to see that in the western world, you need to take an extra effort beyond your means just to eat right, and it's ridiculously expensive for a common man earning minimum wage to do that. So for scalable nutrition in this rapidly urbanizing world, Soylent and similar solutions are my only hope.
- codewithcheese 12y ago
  I am very tempted by Soylent, but one key issue for me is that you miss out on thousands and probably millions of compounds that you ingest when you eat a varied diet of whole foods. There's so much unknown about what our bodies really require. Likely if you eat mostly Soylent every day you will end with a deficiency of some unrecognized but vitally important nutrient.
  - sanswork 12y ago
    Would the variety of diets around the world not make it pretty unlikely there is some unknown but vitally important to survival nutrient in what we already eat? No matter who you are you can be pretty certain most of the world eats very differently from you.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - willstepp 12y ago
    This is exactly how I feel about processed nutrition. We don't yet know what we don't know, so we think we have it all figured out. This is true for medicine as well, but the difference is we already have a solution that works in whole, unprocessed foods.
aurora72 12y ago
This article sucks really. Aaron E. Carroll says that he's read many books and articles on the topic but he hasn't read 2 books by David Perlmutter and Davis Williams it looks like otherwise he wouldn't recommend 'whole grains over refined grains' in #1. He hasn't watched Mark Hyman's videos on Youtube either, otherwise he wouldn't recommend 'butter' in #3. The #2 conflicts with #4. They may be combined into one simple line: All the restaurants are either unhealty or wallet blowing. #5 is missing some detail, such as the one that no alcohol but red wine should be taken. #6 should be modified to read: Treat all beverages with total negligence.
- Kurtz79 12y ago
  Since there are probably contrasting point of views on most of the points you list, how do you propose to choose the one to reccommend as "correct" ?
  - aurora72 12y ago
    Well, both Perlmutter and Davis say to avoid all kinds of grains at all costs and Hyman says to avoid all kinds of dairy products (butter, yoghurt, milk) with a possible exception of white cheese and they are all based on science. So I propose based on science. My claims about the restaurants and beverages are based on economic/profitability, restaurants and supermarkets offer decent priced and good tasting meal at the expense of health. If I'm able to get cheap and good tasting chicken at a fried chicken restaurant, I do it at the expense of health, need no science to see that.
    - lkbm 12y ago
      It's definitely not settled science that you should never eat grains. Yes, some experts say you shouldn't, but if you're rejecting one expert because he disagrees with two others, it's definitely not sufficient to say it's "based on science". As for dairy, while he mentioned using butter without paranoia about fat, he didn't seem to advocate for dairy. Eating dairy might be bad, but "don't eat dairy" is bad (or ineffective) advice because _people won't follow it_. Don't make perfect the enemy of better. (If it makes you feel any better about him, Dr. Carroll regularly rails against "the milk industrial complex"[0][1][2][3].) [0] http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/finally-someone-takes-on-the-milk-industrial-complex/ http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/finally-someone-... [1] http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/another-blow-against-the-milk-industrial-complex/ http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/another-blow-aga... [2] http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/yet-another-blow-against-the-milk-industrial-complex/ http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/yet-another-blow... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzyFZcuHmeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzyFZcuHmeI
tomglindmeier 12y ago
Good article. Simplicity is key for the masses.
MrDosu 12y ago
One of the main points that gets often neglected and a major skill required is food procurement. What kind of food exists and how do I judge it's quality. Most modern people I know cannot pick the riper and more nutritious fruit, vegetable or animal product when given two alternatives.
maxerickson 12y ago
Of course, the rice at the grocery store has all been hulled. And much of it has been par cooked.
cratermoon 12y ago
"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants"

63 points by po 12y ago

venomsnake 12y ago

So it boils to "do not overeat" ...

collyw 12y ago
seemed more like "avoid processed crap as much as possible" to me.
andyjohnson0 12y ago
As a summary I prefer Michael Pollan's advice: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." [1]. I thought the article was useful. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....
- joshuapants 12y ago
  Does "mostly plants" refer to mass or calories?
  - andyjohnson0 12y ago
    I take it to mean "get most of your nutrition from plant-based sources". Some meat, dairy, etc. are ok if you want, but most of what you eat should be plant-based food. Apart from grains, its hard to eat too much plant based food - whether measured in mass or calories.
ilitirit 12y ago
Not really. If you eat poisonous things moderately it doesn't make it good for your health.
- venomsnake 12y ago
  It is safe to assume that anything that has passed USDA and FDA approval is not outright poisonous ...
  - ilitirit 12y ago
    Sheesh... it's not that hard to understand. There is more to healthy eating than quantities and exercise. And besides that consumables that aren't labelled dangerous by the USDA or FDA (I don't know how they factor into this discussion - not everyone lives in the US, and I see them mentioned in the article) can still be dangerous to an individual if you have a certain condition. Easy example: nut allergies. Others: Celiac disease, diabetes. etc. And, eating nothing but something that might even be considered healthy can also be fatal if you don't supplement it, no matter how moderate your intake.
  - cratermoon 12y ago
    The GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) category is a wide open door, though.
Swizec 12y ago
"Eat big, lift big"
- venomsnake 12y ago
  Eat clen, tren hard ...
vlasev 12y ago
Yeah, but the implementation of this is rather difficult to do in practice!

diminoten 12y ago

I suppose Soylent falls into the "highly processed" category, doesn't it?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lkbm 12y ago
Yes, though in a recent Q&A video he said Soylent is probably just fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwpgHvO4A0E#9m05s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwpgHvO4A0E#9m05s These are general guidelines for the masses. "Avoid processed foods, except things like Soylent" is unnecessarily clunky.

dschiptsov 12y ago

Rule 1. Eat accordingly with what you've spent (in calories). Rule 2. Avoid packaged/processed foods. There is no need for Rule 3.

vlasev 12y ago
The biggest problem here is being accurate and truthful to yourself. These rules are great theoretically but they are rather difficult to apply in practice. I've been tracking my intake and expenditure as accurately as possible over the last 2 months and the errors accumulate rather rapidly. There's variation in what you do, how much you do of it, how much energy you actually spend doing it. After this there is variation in the self-reporting itself - we tend to over-estimate the calories we've spend. Then there is variation in what you eat, how much you eat of it, how many calories it really has, how many calories you actually consume, how many you actually process in the end. Add to this things like water retention, stress and so on, and it becomes a rather messy problem.
- dschiptsov 12y ago
  There is a so much of nonsense about food that it is worth it to look back at some traditional or tribal eating habits. For example, traditionally, majority of the Nepalese population is eating white rice with some kind of lentil curry and seasonal vegetables two times a day basically whole year and remain healthy and not overweight due to their active, working lifestyle. Modern memes are telling us that white rice is almost poisonous, despite the fact that more than half of the world population (almost whole Asia) feed on it. Tibetans, Sherpas and other Himalayan tribes are still rely heavily on cow/nak butter (the main commodity and the source of nutrition) and Tsampa (rusted barley flour) which they consume on a daily basis in the form of so-called Sherpa tea (butter, Tsampa, hot watter, sugar or salt) or in a form of bread-like mass (same ingredients). According to modern memes this is a disastrous diet, but, you see, these people are healthy and happy. I could go on, about various tribes of India or Sri Lanka (mostly rise and veges). The picture will be almost the same. Simple, homemade food and not being a couch potato makes it. There is no problem with traditional foods. The problems are with the food industry and its commercial products which, being aggressively marketed, altered the traditional eating habits. As for myself, I could confirm that especially in high altitudes (in Himalayas) the tribal eating habits, which I follow happily, are the evolved balance for energy storage and intake, according with the harsh conditions, seasons and available food sources. There is no alternative in calories efficiency to the a half-kilo lump of nak butter (just cream, no additions) and a small bag of Tsampa for weeks-long crossing of the ridges in Himalayas.

wodenokoto 12y ago

Why am I allowed to process food in my own home, but not buy food already processed?

dagw 12y ago
Because when you process the foods yourself you can control the processing and what you add. When you buy already processed, you generally can't. The corollary to this is that when you do buy pre-processed food, do so from people whom you trust to use essentially the same processing steps you would use if processing the food yourself.
Swizec 12y ago
Because industrially processed usually means something like "Split into base components, down to very basic chemicals, put back together in specific ratios" It's like making synthetic foods, but by first taking the components out of natural foods so you can call them natural.
- MrDosu 12y ago
  This is science fiction, we can't and aren't doing this.
  - qnaal 12y ago
    where do we get doritos
    - MrDosu 12y ago
      Doritotrees?
    - icebraining 12y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIp_zhBIZ7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIp_zhBIZ7s
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

richardwigley 12y ago

Avoiding processed food should be what Cartman would call 'hippy nonsense'. Unfortunately, many food processors are interested in removing, expensive, nutritious food and replacing them with things that make us 'enjoy food', sugar, salt, and fats. Unless processors can see the point in changing formula, for whatever reason, it's good, and simple, advice for those wanting to live healthily.

csallen 12y ago

I've always found the various debates, fads, and gimmicks related to healthy eating interesting for a couple of reasons. First, the word "healthy" is problematic due to its ambiguity. It means very different things to different people. If you're overweight, then it means whatever helps you lose weight. If you have high blood pressure, it means whatever helps you fight high blood pressure. If you're a bodybuilder, it means whatever helps you build muscle and burn fat. If you're an athlete, it means whatever helps you perform the best. For many people, it means whatever helps them live the longest. Or feel the best. Or look the best. In other words, it depends on your goals. Given so much room for interpretation, it seems downright irresponsible for anyone to write an article about healthy eating without making explicit their particular definition of "healthy". But alas, it happens more often than not, and no one seems to notice or care. Second, as far longevity and diseases go, diet is only one of many significant players. Among other things, our mortality is affected by our genes, macro and micro environments and exposure to various chemicals, exercise and physical fitness, medical treatment quality, stress, relationships, etc. It therefore stands to reason that there are diminishing returns to how your diet affects your life expectancy -- beyond a certain point, continuing to eat "healthier" will have a near-negligible effect on your health compared to other factors. And yet people remain obsessive about fine-tuning their diets based rumors and inconclusive studies, even as they continue to sit at stressful desk jobs for 9 hours a day in smog-filled cities. I wonder if it's because diet is (or, at least, seems) easier to control than competing factors? Or maybe it's that deliberately putting substances into our bodies all day every day is an intuitively health-related action?

martijn_himself 12y ago
I don't agree with your first point. "Healthy" eating in this article (and in general) is quite unambigious in that it refers to the avoidance of foods that have been shown (to varying degrees of ambiguity) to increase your risk of developing health problems. This has nothing to do with an athlete's (short term) goals to build muscle or run a certain distance. Your second point should be included as a disclaimer by anyone trying to sell us the latest health craze.

Kiro 12y ago

I have an issue with #7. I can't really enjoy food in company of others. It's like I need to focus on them instead of the taste and all of a sudden the food is gone. That's why I always eat alone.

deepGem 12y ago

Or... just drink Soylent. Don't get me wrong - I like what has been told in this article. In my world, this is day to day eating. We all eat mostly unprocessed food - almost 95%, even at restaurants or when we eat out food's unprocessed but definitely contaminated ( food colors, pesticides etc ). Urban elites are moving towards processed food, but it'll take a really long time before processed food takes over - I really hope that day doesn't ever come. However, it pains me to see that in the western world, you need to take an extra effort beyond your means just to eat right, and it's ridiculously expensive for a common man earning minimum wage to do that. So for scalable nutrition in this rapidly urbanizing world, Soylent and similar solutions are my only hope.

codewithcheese 12y ago
I am very tempted by Soylent, but one key issue for me is that you miss out on thousands and probably millions of compounds that you ingest when you eat a varied diet of whole foods. There's so much unknown about what our bodies really require. Likely if you eat mostly Soylent every day you will end with a deficiency of some unrecognized but vitally important nutrient.
- sanswork 12y ago
  Would the variety of diets around the world not make it pretty unlikely there is some unknown but vitally important to survival nutrient in what we already eat? No matter who you are you can be pretty certain most of the world eats very differently from you.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- willstepp 12y ago
  This is exactly how I feel about processed nutrition. We don't yet know what we don't know, so we think we have it all figured out. This is true for medicine as well, but the difference is we already have a solution that works in whole, unprocessed foods.

aurora72 12y ago

This article sucks really. Aaron E. Carroll says that he's read many books and articles on the topic but he hasn't read 2 books by David Perlmutter and Davis Williams it looks like otherwise he wouldn't recommend 'whole grains over refined grains' in #1. He hasn't watched Mark Hyman's videos on Youtube either, otherwise he wouldn't recommend 'butter' in #3. The #2 conflicts with #4. They may be combined into one simple line: All the restaurants are either unhealty or wallet blowing. #5 is missing some detail, such as the one that no alcohol but red wine should be taken. #6 should be modified to read: Treat all beverages with total negligence.

Kurtz79 12y ago
Since there are probably contrasting point of views on most of the points you list, how do you propose to choose the one to reccommend as "correct" ?
- aurora72 12y ago
  Well, both Perlmutter and Davis say to avoid all kinds of grains at all costs and Hyman says to avoid all kinds of dairy products (butter, yoghurt, milk) with a possible exception of white cheese and they are all based on science. So I propose based on science. My claims about the restaurants and beverages are based on economic/profitability, restaurants and supermarkets offer decent priced and good tasting meal at the expense of health. If I'm able to get cheap and good tasting chicken at a fried chicken restaurant, I do it at the expense of health, need no science to see that.
  - lkbm 12y ago
    It's definitely not settled science that you should never eat grains. Yes, some experts say you shouldn't, but if you're rejecting one expert because he disagrees with two others, it's definitely not sufficient to say it's "based on science". As for dairy, while he mentioned using butter without paranoia about fat, he didn't seem to advocate for dairy. Eating dairy might be bad, but "don't eat dairy" is bad (or ineffective) advice because _people won't follow it_. Don't make perfect the enemy of better. (If it makes you feel any better about him, Dr. Carroll regularly rails against "the milk industrial complex"[0][1][2][3].) [0] http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/finally-someone-takes-on-the-milk-industrial-complex/ http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/finally-someone-... [1] http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/another-blow-against-the-milk-industrial-complex/ http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/another-blow-aga... [2] http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/yet-another-blow-against-the-milk-industrial-complex/ http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/yet-another-blow... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzyFZcuHmeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzyFZcuHmeI

tomglindmeier 12y ago

Good article. Simplicity is key for the masses.

MrDosu 12y ago

One of the main points that gets often neglected and a major skill required is food procurement. What kind of food exists and how do I judge it's quality. Most modern people I know cannot pick the riper and more nutritious fruit, vegetable or animal product when given two alternatives.

maxerickson 12y ago

Of course, the rice at the grocery store has all been hulled. And much of it has been par cooked.

cratermoon 12y ago

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants"