While it's really interesting to debate whether you should eat potatoes or beef, the real battle for the western world is that we stop eating processed foods. Wheat vs eggs seems like a silly debate when people are living off of Coke, Oreos and Capt'N Crunch.
Whenever I hear these arguments, I feel like these scientists aren't living in the same world as me. "Eggs are ok, declare scientists" reads the headline while the man sips from 32 oz soda.
In addition to that, having no education in biology, chemistry or any field remotely associated with health and fitness, I do have two eyes. In light of all the contradicting information and conspiracy theories, I'll trust what I've observed. And, what I've observed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that people who favor fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes over beef, pork and fatty foods are healthier.
I've observed rather different things. The people I know who eat the most meat are the Crossfitters around me. They are, in almost all cases, healthy.
I have a roommate who drinks fat-free milk and eats lots of salad and pasta, who avoids meat like the plague. He's been struggling with his weight for as long as I've known him. I drink coconut milk -- which contains nothing but fat -- and a meal usually consists of some randomly selected fatty cut of meat and vegetables fried in the drippings. That, or cheap canned fish. I lost weight eating like this. I fit in skinny jeans. I may with luck convince my almost-girlfriend to peg me. :3
But the important thing -- I don't advertise. I am not a walking bulletin of the health benefits of coconut and sardines. How do you really know about the diets of the people around you? I would say there are maybe four or five people around me whose diets I actually know well enough to analyze in any reasonable way.
Case A is a twenty-two year old recent Caltech graduate who is obsessed with freerunning and eats nearly-strict paleo. He can do a backflip. No further comments. We grew up together.
Case B is my roommate. He follows all the conventional advice to a T -- chicken, fish, whole grain, salad. Lots of "health food" products. Y'know, healthiest potato chips on the shelf. There is bread, there is soybean oil mayonnaise. It... doesn't seem to be working.
Case C is another good friend of mine. Eats a lot of processed cheap stuff; he's the sort that'll buy three pounds of animal crackers. When I first met him he was rather obese and said he was try'na learn to eat vegetables. He lost a lot of weight after we introduced him to ecstasy... and he's been eating healthier too. He's sloowly coming around; one of his recent facebook statuses involved making hard-boiled eggs. He looks better and seems happy. Score 281,443 for MDMA.
Case D is me. I'm kind of a dick, judging people like this. People who I like. I don't really know any other way to be honest about how I make decisions, though.
When I was eleven my parents tried to force me to switch from whole milk to 2%. I responded by walking two miles to the gas station to buy milk. I'm the only kid in my family who never had weight problems growing up.
Yep, after more than 10 years of eating "healthy whole grains", reduced fat, loads of fruit and veg and doing various different kinds of exercise -- all without seeing huge results -- I, my wife and several friends started eating in a much more primal/paleo style a year ago. All of us have seen major, effortless weight loss, muscle gain and all feel dramatically better. It's a no brainer.
So, because your body doesn't have the tendency to put on weight, you eat what you like. Your friends who tend to get fat easily watch what the y eat, but it's not helping them that much.
This really sounds to me like there are great differences in metabolism person to person.
I have always been skinny, and I eat a lot of whatever. I don't exercise much. I know people who are "big", but eat less than I do.
People don't have that much difference in metabolisms (unless we are talking about actual health problems or differences between severe overweight and athletes). What happens is most people don't know what they are eating.
BBC did a documentary where two friends, one skinny and one fat, swore the difference was due to metabolism, that the skinny one ate a lot and the fat one didn't. They tested it and found out that the fat one used more calories than the thin one, but also took a lot more calories per day.
The basal metabolic rate varies between individuals. One study of 150 adults representative of the population in Scotland reported basal metabolic rates from as low as 1027 kcal per day (4301 kJ) to as high as 2499 kcal (10455 kJ) [1]
Your metabolism also slows noticeably as you get older. In my 20s I could eat anything (and lots of it) without being able to gain any weight. Now in my 40s I have to lift weights (to increase metabolism) and watch what I eat to stop putting on fat.
According to the study, only 26.7% difference wasn't explained by age/sex/weight. Which means for almost 75% the values were somehow dependent on sex/age/weight.
And the difference between the top 5% and bottom 5% of the outliers was around 30% (which means for a 2000kcal average BMR, the bottom needed only 1700 and top 2300). This, in my opinion, is not enough for people to tout slow/fast metabolism for weight gain/loss as most people won't fall into the top/bottom 5%.
I'm not saying that eating 300kcal over daily maintenance everyday would not make you fat.
What I'm saying is that I really doubt the most of the people that are overweight/obese are eating according to what a BMR calculator says and because of slow metabolism they are getting fat. Also, body uses more kcals per day than BMR, you also have to take in account the activities per day.
Using Harris Benedict formula:
If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9
The thing is, most (and I know this is pure observational) people I know that are overweight/obese either underreport calories (they say they eat just a salad, but forget the 5 table spoons of dressing/olive oil they season it with) and over report activity levels (jogging is not moderate exercise!).
I know it isn't data, but my mother and my mother in law are some of the people that most annoys me related to this. They swear they don't eat treats (I see them eating on average 2-3 cake slices or ice creams per week) and they say they only dine salad (but include 2 loafs of bread and a lot of oil based seasonings) and complain they don't lose weight. And this is what I see in about 90% of the people I know that are overweight. Maybe it is cognitive dissonance/bias but some people just believe they can't lose weight, so they bend the truth to support that idea.
ps: sorry to be such a 'asshole' related to this. Fitness and nutrition is a passion of mine, and I hate when people use excuses for their lack of progress, or attribute 'genetics' or 'luck' to my progress (sure, they don't see me at the gym 1.5 hours every day working my ass off, or not eating bread for months at a time.)
I think we basically agree, it's very easy to miss high calorie foods that can totally throw your calculations out.
And you shouldn't use a slow metabolism as an excuse for accepting a certain state, maybe that's easy for you and me to say as we both seem to be lucky enough to be healthy.
But since you can alter your metabolism it can be a useful tool as part of weight loss. Do weights, increase muscle mass, increase metabolism, lose weight. In terms of time spent weights are very effective as well - 3-5 workouts of 45mins per week is plenty.
Actually, and that is my point entirely, luck isn't the word. I have shitty genetics (I think on both sides, for the last 2-3 generations my family has been overweight/obese). Heck, during my wife's pregnancy there were complications, and due to stress + bad food + no exercise I ballooned up 9 kilos (20 pounds) in about 2.5 months. If I don't take care of myself, I gain weight quite easily.
And not to try to be the naysayer, but the effect of muscle on calories burned at rest has been quite the myth floating around. Check the references at the bottom of http://www.lanimuelrath.com/blog/calories-burned-by-muscle-v... and you will see that 10 pounds of extra muscle will burn at most 60-70 more calories than fat at rest.
Apart from that, I agree, do weight training 3-5 days a week. move around, eat healthy. That should be enough to at least get you to the normal weight range.
"Eventually"? That's putting on 30 pounds a year, assuming it's all about (caloriesIn - caloriesUsed) / 3600 = poundsOfFat.
Of course, anyone who has dieted long term knows that that's not the whole story. You might cut your calories in half and still plateau within a few months.
As you put on more weight the amount of calories you need increases.
I don't think cutting your calories in half would result in a plateau within a few months in most cases. That's quite a major reduction, pretty much a starvation diet.
As you put on more weight the amount of calories you need increases.
The initial claim was about 300 kcal more than you need, though.
My experience suggests plateau happens every time, without regard to the type of dieting done, unless it's quite literally a starvation diet. The only time I've manage to lose more than 100 pounds was on a diet of about 400 kcal a day. Reducing my diet from about 3500 kcal/day to half that (by the simple method of not eating every other day) worked really well for about two months, and then plateaued; total reduction, about 50 pounds. I've resigned myself to losing in bursts and concentrating on not putting much back on in between.
Of course, my sample size in number of people is low... :)
Ah ok, 100 pounds would be quite a challenging target. As I understand it though starvation diets don't work long term as they train your body to deal with food shortages by storing energy as fat.
Losing in bursts doesn't sound like it would be a healthy option for the rest of your body as well.
Do you include exercise at all? From what I've researched, and what trainers have told me, weight training is the most effective way to lose weight - when combined with calorie monitoring and some cardio.
Unfortunately skinny does not imply healthy. I am also skinny with high metabolism, but that doesn't mean it's okay to eat whatever you want and forego exercise as your internals could be like those of a much older individual (heart, lungs, etc).
Freerunner here. Most of my diet consists of peanut butter and blueberry jam on toasted bread, yogurt, chicken, eggs, rice, protein powder, cottage cheese, and hummus.
Oh yeah, and sometimes I buy a giant can of mixed fruit and eat the whole thing. It's like dessert.
Your diet sounds like a lot of the 'low carb' ones.
I personally try to eat a paleo/keto-ish diet which mainly consists of eggs, meat, veggies and a bit of fruit and nuts. In general anything that doesn't contain sugars or things that get metabolized into sugars (carbs, starches, sugary stuff itself...)).
I lost 12 kg while eating tons of meat. For me the 'just don't eat a lot of carbohydrates' part of it really works.
I don't think I'd advocate the E plan diet as a healthy weightloss program!
Coconut is another food that's been demonised. Supposedly it actually encourages weight loss - and is a super food. I only wish it were cheaper here in the UK.
Well Ecstasy as an alternative to alcohol might actually be good for your overall health. I seem to remember that epistemologically it's one of the safest of the recreational drugs; safer than alcohol, tobacco, speed etc.
I don't think that the associated brain damage linked to ecstasy makes it that safe in either form. Scientists can't assertain just yet as to whether the damage is human repairable or not.
I hadn't heard of the brain damage link. When searching for information on it, however, I mainly came across references to a study last year that said it is does not, in fact, cause brain damage. Additional mystery ingredients might be another story.
Moderation is often a side effect of paleo diets, isn't it? Traditionally structured diets with high carbs, moderate protein, and low fat, similar to "Case B" can work well too (see: Japan). However, it's easy to overeat on such a diet compared to paleo.
Weight is only one indicator of health. Gain or loss in weight is related purely to calorific intake, nothing to do with whether what you eat is good for you.
Your answer:
"It's due to too many people inside. Simple as that."
Real answer:
There is a popular band inside, which has caused more people to walk into the building in a given 3 hour period than leave it.
The "too many calories" people (you are one of them)all think that the effect of a bad diet (which is often bad caloric partitioning in the body, causing plummeting energy levels as fat cells steal nutrients from the rest of the body, causing a fat person to feel tired and hungry) is also the root cause.
Do kids grow because they eat more? No. They eat more because they are in a growth spurt. Obesity works the same way. A bad diet wreaks havoc on the endocrine system, mainly with insulin levels, causing excessive fat accumulation due to calories being partitioned to fat cells at the expense of the rest of the body. If a person with this kind of caloric partitioning doesn't eat excessive amounts of calories, they will feel tired. If they continue to eat the wrong kinds of foods (foods which continue the bad endocrine reaction) they will continue getting fatter in a feedback loop.
But hey, with advice like yours, you should really go and help others. Go to an insomnia board, and when someone complains of being tired, just say "Insomnia is because you don't get enough sleep. Simple as that."
yea, there may be reasons why they eat too many calories (they eat the wrong foods so eating less leaves them tired), but they gain weight because they are eating too many calories. it truly is that simple, however as i think you pointed out, truly fixing the issue is going to be more work than simply saying "eat less" and requires a lot of (re)education
What evidence do you have that too many calories dont result in weight gain?
I bet you that if eat 5000 calories of "healthy" food and your daily requirement is 3000 you will gain weight, and if you eat 2000 calories of "bad" food you will lose weight.
"What evidence do you have that too many calories dont result in weight gain?"
You should read the parent again, more carefully. The point is not that that is not a true statement, the point is that is a vacuous statement, and therefore, the wrong question. It is not controversial that things that cause weight gain cause you to gain weight, but it's not a useful statement for either science or engineering, and we have collectively wasted an awful lot of time and research while laboring under the delusion that this was some sort of actual explanation, rather than a mere restatement of the problem.
As you can see from the number of comments on this subject there is a lot of confusion subject. We make things difficult by talking about bad foods, partitioning, healthy food, etc. People get fat from eating more calories than they burn.
...healthiest potato chips on the shelf... ...bread, there is soybean oil mayonnaise...
All of these are fairly high calorie foods, even if you buy them in a health food shop. You'd need to have a fast metabolism and be pretty active to get through all these.
If you eat more calories than you burn you will put on fat.
I think metabolism is a huge factor when considering the above examples; the guy that eats only healthy foods might not have an efficient metabolism and be doing enough exercise to burn off the calories he is taking in.
Also, the big guy that takes loads of pills (e's) and eats what he wants... I don't think this is a good example at all and it sounds like you also take them too (perhaps an explanation for you and your skinny jeans?).
Since we are talking anecdotes and make-beliefs, I'll add what I saw with my own two eyes ...
My grandfather was eating between 5 and 10 eggs per day, every day. He also drank at least 1 liter of home-made red whine per day, while being a big consumer of dairy products (also made in-house).
Of course, because my grandparents lived on a farm and consumed what they produced or traded with neighbors, half of a normal week would go by without them consuming any meat. However my grandfather was also a big fan of raw and untreated pig bacon, the kind you never find in stores. It was one of his pleasures that he indulged whenever he could.
My grandfather died at 99 years old, 3 months before his 100 years anniversary. He died out of old age, never having any problems with his heart. He was able to work his land until 98 years old. And in his village, even though people live a really rough life, it's pretty common to see people past the age of 90 with no serious health problems.
So really, your own two eyes are biased by the culture you live in ;-)
Nowadays it's a common belief that living a healthy life means preferring fruits and vegetables ... however, be careful when sampling because it's possible that people taking more care of their health are healthy because they care more about their health, not necessarily because they consume less meat.
Same here; my grandparents died around 95 years old (other two are still alive closing in on 100); they ate butter in the pan with bread an eggs for breakfast, tons of meat, potatoes, frieds, eggs, etc. All fresh from the farm (they made most of what ate themselves). My grandfather smoked heavy tabacco rolled in a sigarette all day through since he was 12 (I have never seen him without a fag in his hand) and started at 11 in the morning with 2 jenevers, at 4 beer and after that red wine. He was always overweight and the doctor kept warning him for it. Has never seen a hospital (and i'm not kidding here) from the inside until the week he died. He died of a family heart disease which was only then caught (but too late) and his son was operated for that immediately as he had the same thing.
And to make the story even more crazy; my grandfather used jigsaw to saw asbestos for all his life, even far after it was forbidden. Real men don't care about that kind of stuff :)
Anecdotal 'evidence' is wonderful he :)
But now we have 2 cases (actually more; my grandfathers brother + sister are the same age and do the same things; no problem); maybe smoking (I know bad_user his grandfather didn't), drinking and eating fat actually prolongs life if you manage not to have stress and eat from the land. Because that's at least one major difference I saw; my grandparents didn't have stress. Things just happened to them and they didn't think twice about it.
Look towards your grandfather's daily activities and not just his diet. My grandparents too lived to a ripe old age eating foods that make so called experts cringe. The real difference between them and our generation was that they never led a sedentary lifestyle.
Sometimes I believe the office style of work that many celebrate; because it freed them from the fields and such; probably is the least beneficial change we have made.
Look towards your grandfather's daily activities
and not just his diet
Oh, definitely.
The point I tried making is that we cannot pinpoint yet the exact cause for the trends in heart-disease, obesity and diabetes. You simply cannot blame it all on meat, or on eggs, or on carbohydrates.
In fact it's quite the opposite ... by making changes to the diet of our grandfathers, we risk a ton of negative side-effects. People nowadays drink low-fat milk, but our grandfathers were drinking whole milk straight from their own cows without problems. And our metabolism is a complex mechanism - we forget that homo sapiens were unable to digest milk, but now we digest it just fine, so it's definitely a mater of context, like culture and genetics.
And personally I tend to blame this all on three things - sedentary lifestyles, stress and preprocessed crap that contains sugar, with sugar being the only common compound that is partly carbohydrate, partly lipid, while also being a nutrient that our grandfathers had little access to.
Chronic stress and sleep deprivation are known to have horrible effects on personal health -- up to, and including, fat storage and cardiovascular fitness. The extent of these effects has not received enough attention, and may be greater than we currently realize. I strongly suspect that, in the next ten or so years, we'll see a surge of scientific studies documenting the importance of these factors on health.
Over the last few decades, much fuss has been made over the societal switch from whole foods to processed foods. But people have been getting less and less healthy every decade, obesity rates have been increasing each decade, and food hasn't grown all that substantially more processed in the last few decades. (People in the 70s and 80s ate nearly as much processed junk as we do, and they were healthier on average. People in, say, Japan eat a metric fuckton of foods processed beyond our recognition, and they're healthier than we are).
Processed foods are probably to blame for our obesity crisis in some respect, but they're not the single issue. We should be taking a closer look at lifestyle factors, especially sleep and stress. Americans don't sleep enough, and lead more stressful work lives, than the citizens of almost any other developed country on the planet. (It's actually debatable if we're more or less sedentary than other nations, too. Pretty much everyone in white-collar work is sedentary these days, by the clinical definition of the term, and working out even an hour a day is not going to completely mitigate the effects of sitting on one's ass for the following 10 hours).
People in the 70s and 80s ate nearly as much
processed junk as we do
I suspect you're from the US. Your statement is simply not true, at least not for Central/Eastern Europe.
For instance in Romania we had no McDonalds until the early 1990s and they were amongst the first to enter, before other junk food providers like KFC, Burger King and such. One friend from the US visiting me was surprised that we only have 2 or 3 Starbucks joints in our capital that has a population of more than 2 million people.
And regarding preprocessed junk, the trend is very recent here. People used to laugh at such things as low-fat milk, or frozen French-fries / Pizza.
The result: I've never seen so many obese people in my life as I've seen in the US, but we're catching up.
Sorry, I should have clarified that my implied frame of reference was the US. But you're right. There seems to be a pretty linear correlation between obesity rates and the "American way of life," however we want to quantify its variables: processed foods, sleep deprivation, etc. Generally speaking, the pursuit of convenience at the cost of all other considerations.
And I don't deny that processed foods are major factors in the obesity problem, and probably necessary factors. But I'm saying that they don't seem entirely sufficient to account for the increased obesity rates within the US, which has been gorging itself on processed junk for 30+ years now.
probably is the least beneficial change we have made
Maybe, but there are trade-offs. For example, would you rather live to 100 but bust your ass every day, or live to 90 doing a desk job? Many people would pick the latter.
Please refrain from making these anecdotal observations.
Your observation is the equivalent of this from the movie "Get Him To The Greek":
"British mother fu##ers don’t die. You ever heard of a British rock and roll star dying? No. They don’t die. Mick Jagger. Keith Richard. Those Led Zeppelin. Themmotherfu##ers old as fuck! Fu##ing Ozzy Osbourne is gonna outlive Miley Cyrus"
I mentioned that it's an anecdote in the first sentence and it's something based on my own experience with the life of a close family member, not some myth I heard about from others.
It's also in the context of the comment I replied to, which also contains conclusions based on personal experience. And when speaking about nutrition these days, most known facts are based on flawed studies or anecdotes.
And HN itself is filled with anecdotes. It's actually in this community's culture to talk in anecdotes.
Please refrain from playing "know-it-all" every time someone writes an anecdote
Also what is mentioned has been observed multiple times in several countries.
"Anecdote is not data waa waa waa" or in your example, " No. They don’t die. Mick Jagger. Keith Richard" it certainly does not condone drug usage, but it certainly shows there are exception to "drugs are bad and you will die early" (especially given the amount consumed)
But please let us know if eggs are good or bad for people this week.
An informed observer would supplant his anecdote with a smidgen of studied data.
My-grandfather-lived-to-be-99-and-hes-from-swine-country is spectacularly useless.
Make an effort. Add detail.
We are not demanding khi-square tests just some detail.
Race, Geography, Family history, Rigor of vocation, Illnesses, Special abilities etc.
No amount of detail will approach the rigor of a proper study.
But make an effort.
I agree that we should all rely more on actual facts and studies and that we tend to perpetuate myths heard from a friend of a friend, which is just bad, especially for us since we should think like scientists. However it is not our job to do studies on nutrition and the available studies on nutrition are either biased or not conclusive of anything - listening to your gut feeling about what is right is actually the better path to take at this point in time.
Also, I could have added details, such as race (Caucasian), geography (Europe, temperate climate, hills), family history (war veterans, poverty after communism came, rough life), etc... but I usually don't because these are personal details and I like my privacy on the Internet, even though you could probably find plenty about me or my family if you wanted to, but that doesn't mean I have to make that info easy to find.
You also misunderstood me. I actually think that genetics, lifestyle, local culture are all factors that play a role, so I don't disagree with you. I also haven't said that my grandfather's diet would be healthy for everybody, I only said that it was healthy for him personally, so you have to be careful about making generalizations based on limited data and biases.
How about you just point out that it the story is anecdotal? There's not any call for telling anyone to "please refrain" from their comments if they aren't abusive.
For the record, I'm not crash hot about this anonymous anecdotal evidence either. I think that eating unhealthily is bad no matter whether you are on a farm or not. But to tell someone to be quiet? That's a losing argument - refute it, don't silence anyone.
Just... no. You're presenting "anecdotal" as if to contrast it with something like "established pattern." But "anecdotal" just means that something is a remembered story, nothing else.
So, there is something which we do called "observation." This is when we want to know the truth of something, so we set up some sort of meaningful experiment which we can do in the world, and find out. We go out and observe.
The reason that an anecdote is not an observation is because it comes to you first. That is, you already know the result of the anecdote before you select the data; it is something you "remember" when you hear about a new situation. This invokes all kinds of biases about how you remember, because you tend to remember anomalies -- and you tend to misremember their content. In anecdotes there is no "control group" and there isn't even a hope for a control; it's all been selected out anyway.
In this respect a single observation is not anecdotal, because they come from separate places. If a doctor puts a flow-meter in an artery after a bypass surgery to see if there is blood flowing at a normal cardiac rate, that is not an "anecdote", that is an "observation." It is not based on some sort of human reckoning; "I've done many bypass surgeries and I once saw an artery which looked just like that and was not, in fact, obstructed," but rather it's something reliable: at this time, a normal amount of blood was flowing through this artery.
Things like living on a village and having an stress free life can greatly improve your life expectancy.
In some rural areas on my country it's usual to live around 100 - 120 years. In some places, even having a pork farm based economy and eating all sorts of different pork derivatives on a daily base.
IMHO, what kills us on cities is just contamination and stress.
"Fruit and veggie eaters" being healthier is just as likely to be a confirmation bias on your part, that you simply not paying attention to contrary examples. But even if it was true and there was a correlation, there is another possible explanation for it:
People who are obsessed with health will do "X" and they will eat fruits and veggies, because both are believed to be good. "X" does a lot of good, while F&V does nothing at all. Since you don't pay attention to "X", not even knowing what it is, you come to conclusion that F&V are good, while in fact "X" is what decides who is healthy.
The point here is be careful with "I do have two eyes...".
I firmly believe diets are like software development methodologies. Doesn't matter which one you subscribe to as long as it isn't universally recognised as junk, you'll still see results because it is better than what you'd be doing by default. Once everyone gets to a certain baseline we can quibble about what's more effective.
Observations aside, there is actually scientific evidence to the contrary.
The fact is that our bodies require certain types of fats (omega3, omega6, etc..) in order to function properly. Your body is built to break down fats, this is why you have a gall bladder. Diets low in animal fats (not ala omega3's and 6's, which your body has to break down and consequently only gets a very small percentage of usable omegas) cause the body to more easily synthesize fat from other sources, most notably carbohydrates. Diets high in carbs trigger leptin signaling surges which can cause averse reactions like your brain no longer receiving leptin signals. "In Framingham, Massachusetts, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate,the lower people’s serum cholesterol. We found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories weighed the least and were the most physically active." [1].
If you want to have the best brain function (your brain is made up of mostly fats) and body function you should strongly consider cutting out gluten based foods (which interfere with so many things in a bad way [2]) and start eating grass fed and finished beef, and wild game with a side of veggies. Cut out as many tubers as you can get away with as well.
Foods that you cannot eat unless they are cooked are probably not the best for your diet, in my mind this makes perfectly logical sense. We are people of the ice age, our diets for many thousands of years consisted of what could be eaten raw, including meats. While we do not yet have a full understanding of the rate at which humanity evolves; it is understood that the core functioning of our bodies energy system can not completely change in the span of a few thousand years.
[1] Dr. William Castilli, "concerning the possibility of a nut...," archives of internal medicine
[2] Journal: Neurology - Hadjivassiliou 2001
I agree with you entirely. The problem with some of the responses you've received, as well as an issue which Taubes seems to ignore, is that when you look outside the USA, it's a different story. In many Asian countries, rice is a staple and eaten with almost every meal. Noodles are heavily consumed as well. Yet they don't have the obesity issues we do. The major difference being they don't eat heavily processed foods (at least not until recently). They do consume all types of meats but their portions are not astronomical.
Pasta, rice and potatoes are not the culprit, depending on where they come from. But soda is. And its not just the chemicals involved in processing food, it's also the abundance that the technology creates - lots of food for relatively cheap prices.
Dont trust your eyes. You dont see people eating fatty foods at McDonalds. You see them eating a shitload of sugar, salt, and a little bit of fat and proteine.
If fat would make people fat, why are americans the mos obesive nation? Your diets, relatively speaking, consist of less fat than most european diets.
But way way more sugar. In the states, sugar is in everything, including most hamburgers, bread slices and soft drinks.
I've always found the whole diet debate a bit silly and overly complicated. Most people are probably going to be fine as long they eat a varied diet,don't overeat and get enough physical exercise, with emphasis on the physical exercise. The human body is simply not design to sit on a chair 24/7 no matter how incredibly healthy the food you're eating is.
You missed my point..for every 1 scientist that says "fruits are bad", I'll find you 1 or more that says "eat more fruits!" That this scientist's views comes in book form doesn't change anything, and whatever graphs and studies he uses will only confuse me because someone saying the exact opposite will use equally impressive graphs and studies.
Watching nutrition experts is like watching economist...they can each prove that they are right, even though they are making mutually exclusive claims. No doubt they mostly all have good intentions...I don't begrudge them their enthusiasm.
While I won't claim that wheat is some magical food, no book will change my view (based on what I've seen), that I'm better off eating wheat and fruits than KFC.
Unsurprisingly, those dieticians overwhelmingly say that meat-heavy diets like paleo (ranked 25th out of 25) are horrific. The idea that there is some controversy about this is mostly due to people on HN without much formal education.
It seems that the only real error made by Wheat Belly's author was bending the study by claiming its subjects were all obese with celiac disease. Apart from this, the comments contains many anecdotal responses from people who have dropped not only gluten, but all grain from their diet and had positive results. Moreover, take into account the blog's author who has published three books circulating around gluten-free foods -- something that Wheat Belly advises the reader to jettison altogether.
You should see US News' annual survey of dieticians.[1] They agree with you, it's just an odd publication bias that gives these "alternative" diets traction.
not true in the least, the healthiest of my friends from outward appearances eat no fruit or veggies what so ever. Observations on small samples sizes are useless.
> people who favor fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes over beef, pork and fatty foods are healthier
I have two eyes and that doesn't square at all. The fat people eat packaged food and restaurant food, which are very skimpy on meat and real animal fat.
The main thing I notice about fat people is they eat very often. Thin people eat moderate meals and don't snack. Fat people continuously have handfuls of crap like nuts and fruit and soy and soda.
> The main thing I notice about fat people is they eat very often
Probably because they're hungry a lot. The more weight you put on, the more food you need to eat.
The funny thing is that snacking can actually help you lose weight, and is actually recommended by many fitness gurus and bodybuilders. It helps keep your energy levels constant during the day, and also avoids hunger pangs, plus the associated over eating at appointed mealtimes. This will happen if you're working out a lot, since your body is processing your food faster because of the energy you burn in the gym/track/wherever
You just have to make sure you're eating the right stuff. nuts, protein shakes, fruits (minimize the ones with a lot of sugar for really strict definition).
Probably because they're hungry a lot. The more weight you put on, the more food you need to eat.
Also, I read that the more sugars you consume, the more you eat as it messes with your insulin and therefore your body does not signal that you are no longer hungry even though you've eaten enough. Can't remember where I read this, so if anyone has any citations or wants to correct me if I got it wrong, I'd appreciate that.
Sure, protein shakes might be digested faster, but I'm against processed, I'm for natural. Who knows what essential nutrient is missing in these shakes that comes for free with meat.
If you're not working to actively put on weight or keep it on and you live in the west, you probably don't really need to worry about protein. Even those on plant based diets can get enough.
If nothing else, we agree that processed foods are the real problem. Maybe people who eat fruits, vegetables and legumes are simply more likely to avoid eating processed foods.
I will challenge you on your last point. You seriously see a lot of fat people eating fruits and soy?!
Fruit is so artificially selected that it's high in sugar, and probably not as healthy as people think - if not eaten in moderation.
I eat mainly wholefoods. My vices are probably beer and the odd bag of white flour. I'm pretty much sedentary (sat most of the day in front of computer.) A little overweight.
I haven't been to the doctors for over 10 years. That's not to say I haven't got a few ailments. I certainly don't feel super healthy or anything. Though I did cycle 6 miles yesterday with no issue.
Fruit is high in natural sugars, like anything you put in your body over consumption of more than your body needs or can handle will be stored as a fat for later use. The body is good at converting the natural sugars in to glycogen for muscle fuel. The problem is people are not using as much muscle movement (desk jobs - i'm in the same boat during the day, but I make sure I exercise in the evenings)to use up the glycogen to replenish the muscle with the reserve fat stores.
Absolutely. Fat white people in desk jobs eat handfuls of soy loaded trail mix in the afternoon, and an apple an hour before lunch. It's SWPL emotional eating.
There's a lot of talk of soy here on this thread. Is this a US thing? What soy are you eating? It's not that big in the UK. You can get soy milk and it's mixed in with some meat products and found in veggie burgers - but it's not that mainstream.
I buy frozen 'fresh' soybeans, which are quite hard to find. They're nice.
Not here in Australia. Our wheat = American corn. Subsidised and used in everything. Its terrible for coeliacs.
Though as my fiance found out while living in the US, over there things can be sold as gluten free which have oats in them. Bad news for 1 in 4 coeliacs.
You had me until "don't snack". My experience is that moderate snacks help to ensure meals are also of a moderate size - otherwise you get that urge to gorge at your next meal...
Twelve years ago I had read too many peer-reviewed papers to know that low-cholesterol diets were a bad idea, and useless from the point of view of having a good blood-cholesterol profile.
Useless because, for example, population study after population study showed that low-cholesterol diets did not improve blood-cholesterol. Furthermore, it was common to find populations with high-cholesterol diets that had an excellent blood-cholesterol profile, and, conversely, populations with low-cholesterol diets and a bad blood-cholesterol profile.
A bad idea because, among other things, low-cholesterol diets will immediately lower your blood Testosterone. Recall that cholesterol is the most basic steroid; from it, all other steroids, including anabolic androgenic steroids such as Testosterone, are metabolized. A diet with a good amount of cholesterol is a necessary condition to achieve good levels of Testosterone.
Why would a hacker care about his Testosterone levels?? Some examples:
Males with high Testosterone perform better in arithmetic and mathematics than males with low testosterone. Males with high Testosterone levels have better short-term-memory. Males with high Testosterone have good mood; whereas low Testosterone causes depression, mood-swings, and angry reactions to minor things.
So, for at least 12 years, I have made it a point to have two jumbo eggs for breakfast. And that's not the only source of cholesterol and saturated fat in my diet. I do, however, make sure that I do not ingest too much saturated fat ... and there are too many more details to my diet to discuss here.
It has also been found that diets high in cholesterol and/or saturated fat also lowers testosterone [1,2,3]. I think the best course of action is to reduce rather than eliminate. i.e. "control" your intake of cholesterol and saturated fats. Blindly increasing your intake of either (above acceptable levels) goes against many scientific studies.
This kind of thinking is simply not medically correct. The idea that eating a will lead to increase in b and then improve all these functions has no basis in evidence. The body is way more complex and the relationships between different proteins etc. is very complex and not well understood, yes, even despite all the work on micro-arrays and rapid DNA sequencing.
High blood cholesterol for example, has a large endogenous component, which is why statins work. It would be nice if the body was simpler and obeyed simple rules of cause and effect. But it's very complex and simple thinking like this aren't based in fact.
>This kind of thinking is simply not medically correct. The idea that eating a will lead to increase in b and then improve all these functions has no basis in evidence.
Well, sometimes it does, and I don't think the parent post made any sort of general point asserting that this was a universal principle. So if A is a necessary precursor to B and cannot be manufactured from more base components, we have a situation where low levels of B can impair some performance metric, and up to a point an increase in A will increase that metric. The body will maintain endogenous control of the various systems so long as it has the base inputs it requires. As an aside, even if A can be manufactured by cells e.g. cholesterol, there is the whole issue of whether the cells have enough energy/capacity to produce this compound in sufficient quantities at a given time along with all the other demands of them.
>Trust me. I'm a doctor :-)
You basically oversimplified the parent's post and presented it as a straw man, noting generically that we have low understanding of many processes in the human body without refuting his specific argument. That is not a well structured enough of an argument for you to be asking anyone to trust you just based on some imagined superiority in rank. (Hint: being an MD, even a PHD is not a refutation of an argument)
Non-correlation between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol would most likely be due to the fact that blood cholesterol, and blood lipids generally, are more strongly related to total caloric intake.
The correlation with testosterone is equally invalid. Low-hanging fruit: it is not the simplest steroid (1). But lets go a bit further: by this logic, men with hypercholesterolemia should be bulls among men. Clinically, this is not the case (FWIW, I'm a physician and have diagnosed a few of these). Yes, cholesterol is a precursor to testosterone. But it is also a precursor to estrogens. Most cholesterol is synthesized by the cells themselves. There is no essential dietary minimum of cholesterol. You can't really avoid it in your diet either, because all cells have cholesterol (broccoli, beef, rice, you choose). Never mind the thermodynamic equilibria of the various enzymes involved, the hormonal regulation of the adrenals and gonads, etc, etc. And if you want to walk the biochemistry back further, the cholesterol is derived from lipids, which can easily be assembled from carbohydrates, especially in an anabolic state (i.e.: growing).
Counterpoints on your "males with..." theories. Spatial reasoning differences disappeared in the only known study of two genetically identical societies where one was matriarchal and one was patriarchal (2). From a more consequentialist perspective, vegetarianism increases with income in developed countries. (3)
The cholesterol in arterial plaques is a red herring. That cholesterol represents something less than a rounding error compared to total body cholesterol, and even less when compared to the total flow of cholesterol that must pass over the plaques in named vessels. A plaque is like a scab of the arterial wall. The plaques are more likely due to repetitive macroscopic injury potentiated by weak connective tissue, due to the connective tissue molecular injuries (collagen cross-linking, glycosylation, etc) caused by excess free radicals and other high-energy intermediaries (introduced from, e.g., smoking, excess dietary calories).
The answer remains the same: eat less. If your weight is outside the normal range according to wolfram alpha, you probably need to visit bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov.
I assure you, many of your forefathers on the Serengeti lived long lives without jumbo eggs, and still had some wicked hacks (like wheels, music, property rights, etc).
People want to hack their bodies. Hack your relationship to the society you're in, that's the problem: figure out how to eat in moderation despite all the messaging. Get rid of Earl K. Butts' stain on the farm bill. Get rid of the farm bill entirely. Quibbling about tenth-degree issues like the relationship between eggs and testosterone is just a win for Monsanto. They got you to talk about something other than the problem. The problem is there's too much food.
You rant about non-correlations and such, and then end your post by jumping to a conclusion of your choice ("The problem is..."). Either you allow arguments by others (you are no biochemist either I guess?), or you stick to it, and leave it where it is - there is no scientific consensus about what "is the problem in our society". We can only argue about that, without facts.
I can't find the paper, but I read that high insulin levels are the new devil. If that's true, then bread (remember, mass production started only during the industrial revolution), corn, and especially sugar, are to be restricted as much as possible. Alas, you in the US have a massive corn lobby (real sugar became scarce during the Cuba crisis), so it would be difficult to do away only with corn.
IMHO the root of the problem is not that there's too much food, but the industrialization of the food processing industry. Everything has both advantages and disadvantages - we can choose from 1000 bread sorts, but many of them are heavily processed and freed from all micronutrients. And like every system, the food industry can go haywire, and I think it already has. E.g., look at what kind of chickens KFC breeds for use in their products. Food has therefore become a comodity, and people treat it like that. We are just not used to paying large parts of our income for food anymore, but we really should be - it's an essential part of life, just like housing. They key is quality, and being nice to both animals and environment is important.
Agree, but eating healthy isn't that much more expensive than eating processed foods. Or at least doesn't have to if you buy the right things (bulk frozen veggies, meat etc.).
Oh, by healthy I also mean that the animals I eat have eaten healthy :) E.g., beef quality is really bad if cattle are not fed grass, but corn and soy instead (or animal meal, shudder). Same with chicken/turkey which are fed mostly corn instead of grains, seeds, worms, etc.
If organic is too expensive for you (here in Austria organic farms have a huge financial overhead because of cert. programmes -> products are almost twice as expensive), you can still by meat of good quality, e.g. grass-fed beef. Because you will find residuals or even large quantities of their fodder virtually everywhere - mostly stored in the fat.
Another thing is the way animals are kept - if they are kept in crowded rooms, then you need antibiotics for them to survive until they are slaughtered. Those antibiotics residuals reportedly act like estrogens in our bodies, reducing sperm count and testosterone level. That's the actual reason why I consider organic meat the only meat worth buying - at least in Austria, organic means there is a minimum of available space for animals, they have to be fed a certain percentage of natural fodder, they must not be fed antibiotics, etc.
Guys, please notice that I said that "a diet with a good amount of cholesterol is a necessary condition to achieve good levels of Testosterone." I did not say that it is a sufficient condition.
In other words, good cholesterol intake + "other things" (such as resistance training) = good total Testosterone levels. Sub-optimal cholesterol intake + "other things" != good total T levels.
How about we all just eat real food? Stay in the perimeter of the super market -- with the exception of some canned fish -- and you should be okay. You can't go wrong with fruit, vegetables, meat, seafood, tubers, nuts, and seeds. As for wheat...come on, don't kid yourself. A refined white powder that is highly processed is not real food. Drink water, exercise a few times a week, and get some sun. If nothing else, living this way will make you healthier than most Americans.
I do believe you can get fat even if you eat only "real food", the trick is to eat in moderation. If you eat more calories than you use up you will gain weight. It really is that easy. You could loose weight eating pastries only, just as long as you don't eat too much. It wouldn't be healthy though...
It's really hard to eat too many calories if they come in the form of vegetables. Caloric density is important. So are additives like MSG that mess up your sense of satiation.
Our body doesn't posess the enzymes to dehydrate saturated fats, therefore we can't process them as efficiently,
Additionally saturated fats lead to cell membrane instability and 'crystallisation' due to the straight-line chemical arrangement of the carbon atoms.
Cis - (A type of) unsaturated fats by contrast, have kinks in the chains which induces fluidity into cell membranes. Interestingly Cholesterol is used to maintain membrane stability/'fine-tune' membrane fluidity when there are lots of Cis fats.
I haven't listened to the whole talk yet and take it the poster's angle is that there is a lot more to diet, nutrition and preventable diseases like Ischaemic heart disease than just 'saturated fats and cholesterol'. Yes. No doubt. But they are still terrible for you in high doeses, Epidemiological studies have shown this beyond a doubt and the basic science is sound.
I believe it coincided with converting to a nearly sedentary culture. Nothing is as bad for you as being sedentary and since many/most people refuse to exercise, and you can't buy exercise pills (let alone get people to take them), you have to get people to want to cut down on the stuff their body isn't using.
Cholesterol isn't bad, saturated fat isn't bad, but if you're sitting around all day festering so are they.
Nutrition is far from an exact science and humans from around the world react to foods differently in subtle ways giving any Nutritional conclusions limited relevance.
IMHO, The 2 most important things you can do are exercise and pay attention to your body. Also, a lot of these "mis-conceptions" come from media and laymen thinking that phrases like "a link between saturated fat and heart disease" imply causation.
Remembered one more thing: A lot of shit food is loaded with saturated fat and cholesterol (and salt and sugar). Frozen dinners, snack cakes and fast food are some great examples. These products, which significantly contribute to the fattening of the world, help give their main flavor sources a bad name.
Wow that's a great way of explaining the underlying issue. The way that everyone reacts differently to the same foods is also the reason that thousands of different diet books continue to make money. Its a mess and the internet has only added to the confusion.
The issue gets super complicated once you add chronic emotional stress. A huge problem with all these dietary disease models is they ignore cortisol and stress levels, which may ultimately turn out to be the single-most important variable.
In short, the original findings to do with fat intake -> cholesterol -> atherosclerosis weren't outright invalid. It's just that in healthy, unstressed people the final link to atherosclerosis doesn't actually happen, even in old age. But the situation in the industrialized world is massive numbers of people living in chronic stress, so who knows. Turns out chronically elevated cortisol levels produces the arterial damage that make "bad" cholesterol a problem at all.
I read through the first 3 of your links by taubes, which all seemed to be extremely verbose sophistry that don't address Guyanet's points at all.
At what point does Taubes actually address Guyanet's (clearly stated) claim, that if food is tastier, people eat more of it, consume more calories, and become fatter?
I would say that if you want people to read a relevant link, you should at least say "here are 6 links, all but $N are all red herrings." Have a little respect for the time of the reader.
At my former company we had free access to beverages (sodas, water, energy drinks, ... even beer). I gained a lot of weight while working there. After I quit I stopped drinking sodas altogether, while mainly keeping my diet (vegetarian, one "big" meal per day + snacking) and level of physical activity. I lost about 18kg (40 pounds) in about 2 months. Went from 103kg to 85kg. I'm 1.84m so that's an ok weight I guess.
Is the link submitted here throwing 403 errors for other HN users? I notice that many comments here on HN could just as well be responding to the bare title alone, whether or not the participant has read the fine article. Until I can read the article (I can't so far after repeated attempts), I'll give some history of how the cholesterol hypothesis was developed.
Ancel Keys, a member of the Terman longitudinal study of high-IQ children and inventor of the K ration for United States soldiers during World War II,
He did studies of human nutrition, including starvation, in an intellectual milieu that included some of the first studies (by other researchers) on surgery to treat heart disease. (It was the surgical research that prompted my mother, a nurse, to move to Minnesota after completing nursing training in another state.) Keys hoped to find a dietary explanation for the prevalence of heart disease in industrialized countries, and he thought his regression methods of statistical analysis pointed to dietary fat and cholesterol as the main risks factors for heart disease. He lived to the age of 100, so it's hard to say that he was completely crazy in his ideas, but the idea that cholesterol intake from the diet alone is the whole story in heart disease rates is now generally discredited, and it is especially controversial to say that a diet of the kind he recommended is as good for all-cause mortality reduction as it appears to be for heart disease reduction.
Like all other members of the Terman longitudinal study, Keys was never awarded the Nobel Prize. Two young people who were rejected for the Terman study (William Shockley and Luis Alvarez) because their IQ scores were too low later went on to win a Nobel Prize in physics (in separate years).
Check out Fat Head. A Documentary response to Super Size Me that discusses how what we "know" about fat and cholesterol was the result of a politician lining his pockets by pushing the agenda of one of his friends in the business world http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Fat_Head/70115017?trkid=23...
I defer to Walter C. Willet, M.D., who writes in "Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy" (co-developed with the Harvard School of Public Health):
"There's no question that two types of fat -- saturated fat, the kind that's abundant in whole milk or red meat, and trans fats, which are found in many margarines and vegetable shortenings -- contribute to the artery-clogging process that leads to heart disease, stroke, and other problems...monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats found in olive oil and other vegetable oils, nuts, whole grains, other plant products, and fish -- are good for your heart.... Our bottom line is this: It is perfectly fine to get more than 30 percent of your daily calories from fats as long as most of those fats are unsaturated."
"The term saturated means that the carbon atoms in a chain hold as many hydrogen atoms as they can...saturated fats come in gradations of bad...butter and other dairy products most strongly increase LDL (bad) cholesterol. Those in beef fat aren't quite as powerful at boosting LDL and those in chocolate and cocoa butter have an even smaller impact."
HDL and LDL are lipoproteins: "...fats must somehow get from your digestive system to your cells...like oil and water, fats and blood don't mix. If your intestines or liver simply dumped digested fats into your blood, they would congeal into unusable globs. Instead fat is packaged into protein-covered particles that mix easily with blood and flow with it. These tiny particles, called lipoproteins (lipid plus protein), contain some cholesterol to help stabilize the particles.
"Lipoproteins are generally classified by the balance of fat and protein they contain. Those with a little fat and a lot of protein are heavier and more dense than the lighter, fluffier, and less dense particles that are more fat than protein. The proteins also act like address labels that help the body route fat-filled particles to specific destinations.
"LDL is often referred to as the bad cholesterol...they can end up inside cells that line blood vessels. Once there, LDL is attacked by highly reactive free radicals and transformed into oxidized LDL. Oxidized LDL can damage the artery lining and kick off a cascade of reactions that clog the artery and set the scene for artery-blocking blood clots.
"In contrast, HDL particles sponge up excess cholesterol from the lining of blood vessels and elsewhere and carry it to the liver for disposal."
He goes on to list several studies: Ancil Keys' 1956 international survey called the Seven Countries Study which found a strong link between saturated fat and heart disease; the Framingham Heart Study, which identified high levels of cholesterol as linked to impending heart disease; the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (both very large cohort studies); the Lyon Diet Heart Study; and others. "In the 1950s and 1960s, dozens of carefully controlled feeding studies among small groups of volunteers showed conclusively that when saturated fat replaced carbohydrate in the diet, total cholesterol levels in the blood rose...."
The book also talks about the challenges of practical, large-scale studies of nutrition "in the wild": it's not easy to track and correlate people's eating habits over decades, for any number of reasons.
The more interesting debate is about overall health outcomes. Even the most ardent low-cholestrol folks are forced to admit that this link between higher LDL (particularly the big "fluffy" stuff) and heart disease exists.
There are two really interesting things, however.
1. The link between dietary saturated fats and increased LDL isn't nearly as strong as those earlier studies suggest. This is certainly supported by my own anecdotal evidence: My LDL levels went way down when I moved to a higher fat diet.
2. Some studies have suggested that controlling for all natural deaths that OUTCOMES on higher fat diets are better, meaning people on those diets tend to live longer. It appears that cancer rates are reduced for those eating higher saturated fat diets for one thing.
This is all outlined in "Good Calories, Bad Calories", and there is a wealth of study to support the idea.
I recently was seated with a prominent nutrition researcher at a local university. His take was interesting. Essentially he laid out why these studies are very difficult (as your cited book did). He said there are two clear things that comes up in research time and time again:
- Many preservatives, particularly the high sodium nightmares found in processed foods, are pretty bad for you.
- Sugar is the devil. Studies have suggested time and time again that it's sugar that is responsible for elevated LDL levels. Worse yet sugar promotes higher levels of very dense LDL which is a huge risk factor for heart disease.
He recommends a whole food diet. Basically don't worry so much about what your eating and more about how fresh it is. The shorter the time between something living and the time you eat it the better. The fewer steps it takes for something to be prepared the better.
Calories still count of course, but I've essentially been following that idea for awhile. I eat more fruits and vegetables and I've drastically cut my sugar intake. I eat more steak and pizza (made from high quality and fresh ingredients) than the ADA would like. My blood chemistry levels have been amazing ever since.
Even the most ardent low-cholestrol folks are forced to admit that this link between higher LDL (particularly the big "fluffy" stuff) and heart disease exists
I'm not a researcher, but I have been hanging around /r/advancedfitness a lot. What I seemed to understand is that the ratio of triglycerides to LDL to HDL is what is an indicator of heart disease.
When you say wheat, do you mean processed and refined flour? And by potatoes, do you mean chips and fries?
Potatoes are loaded with vitamins and minerals. Some of the starch isn't easily digestible and acts similarly to fiber (in addition to the fiber found in the skin).
The fact that they are little bombs of nutrition aside (along with sweet potatoes, yummm!), they will also keep fresh for months.
I'm aware that corn plays a huge part of North American diet (less so elsewhere since corn-fed beef isn't nearly as common), but I've never heard it said about potatoes..and while you mention it, you only provide links about corn.
Don't mean to be flippant, but it kinda sounds like you lumped potatoes in with corn for the sake of it.
And a lot of US corn and soy is GM. I'm guessing the majority of which is animal feed.
See Jeremy Rifkin's: Beef, if you want to read up on a fascinating piece of North American history. Nice fatty corn fed beef was (and probably still is) highly prized.
Any wheat and any potatoes according to people like Gary Taubes. Sweet potatoes are probably better than regular spuds. Wheat and potatoes are mostly just carbohydrates which, as explained in the video we're discussing, should be reduced. There's no such thing as an 'essential carbohydrate' and all other vitamins and minerals in potatoes and wheat can also be found in more than sufficient quantities in 'good' foods like meat and leafy veggies.
This is where I find Dr. Ludwig's work interesting. My understanding is that you can't just look at nutrients individually. For example, a carbohydrate eaten in a highly processed form is digested, substantially different, at a chemical level, than carbohydrates eaten with fiber.
I don't doubt that carbohydrate consumption has gone up and with it, suspiciously, so too has obesity. But I can't help but think we should be looking at the package containing these newly consumed carbohydrates.
A mars bars contains 40g of carbohydrate...are people grouping that with 40g of carbohydrates yielded by potatoes and wheat?
Yea I think you should add 'Eat foods that can be eaten raw' and you'll probably be pretty close to optimal. Potatoes and wheat can't be eaten raw. Although sugar can be eaten raw and most of us will agree that lots of sugar is bad.
In short: coconut oil (also palm oil) will be useful after you use it to fry, while olive oil will stop being olive oil after just some heating. In fact, do not fry anything with olive oil. Olive oil should be added to food in your plate only.
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
You could at least read the site's guidelines before complaining.
Whenever I hear these arguments, I feel like these scientists aren't living in the same world as me. "Eggs are ok, declare scientists" reads the headline while the man sips from 32 oz soda.
In addition to that, having no education in biology, chemistry or any field remotely associated with health and fitness, I do have two eyes. In light of all the contradicting information and conspiracy theories, I'll trust what I've observed. And, what I've observed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that people who favor fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes over beef, pork and fatty foods are healthier.