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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

Better than "without sugar", I recommend avoiding foods with fiber removed, which includes sugar, also white flour, corn syrup, fruit juices, and most aisles of the supermarket. At least I found it better.

It forces you to a lot more fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Plus it doesn't feel like an arbitrary division. Looking back, it seems weird to take fiber out of food. It makes things taste sweeter and extends their shelf lives, but at the cost of complexity of flavor, texture, and nutritional value.

Since avoiding foods with fiber removed, my diet has become more varied, fresh, cheaper, more delicious, and I eat more food. The biggest surprise was that stopping using olive oil, which I had allowed at first, felt natural and I don't miss it. As a result, I eat to stuffed almost every meal.

At 45, my ab definition started coming in after the change for the first time, despite my eating more food.

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Olive oil is good for you! 1 tbsp/day minimum is recommended.

Your body needs lipids -- cell walls are made of them! An extremely low-fat diet increases cancer risk substantially. And some lipids are better than others. Polyunsaturated oils are easily oxidized, creating free radicals. Saturated animal fats -- well, this is debated, and there is some indication they may have been unfairly blamed for problems that are actually caused by sugar, but I still avoid them. Olive oil, being mostly monounsaturated, is the best.

I don't miss olive oil, but if I wanted it, I'd just eat whole olives.

I eat nuts in my oatmeal every day.

why stop olive oil? what is so bad about it?

Your body can synthesize all the lipids it needs save the essentially fatty acids. If you're limiting your fat intake, omega-3 eggs are your best choice, they're rich in phospholipids and essential fatty acids. Omega-6 fats are actually not bad for you, just get them in their natural nut form.

I would be interested in the data behind your statement that low fat diets increase cancer risk. I have seen papers demonstrating the contrary.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of delicious food do you eat that does not contain sugar or olive oil?

The ingredients of the stew cooking right now are: lentils, pumpkin, kale, habanero, jalapeno, onion, parsley, nutritional yeast, water, cabbage, salt.

I make these stews a lot with what's in season through my farm share and from the local farmers market. Usually about 20 minutes preparation time for 6 or 7 meals. Guests are uniformly surprised at how delicious they are and how easy they are to cook.

I cooked with almost none of those ingredients before starting avoiding fiber-removed foods. Now I'm amazed at how sweet and juicy vegetables and fruit are.

Breakfast was oats, apple, chia seeds, nuts, apple, water.

Lunch was leftover stew made of: split pea, onion, cabbage, jalapeno, kohlrabi, a beet, water, nutritional yeast, carnival squash, salt.

Snack was a vegetable salad of kohlrabi, onion, apple, vinegar, nuts, salt, pepper.

Another snack was a persimmon and an apple.

I've never been able to only eat one persimmon, alas.

Against the dimensions of Potency, Frequency, and Volume, where would you place your farts?

I will accept absolute values, or a vector relative to your pre-no-fiber-removed-diet days.

There was a month or two of being bloated, then things went back to before.

My hunch is my gut had to adjust, or maybe the bacteria in it. I think problems people have is with the transition between eating habits, not the final situation.

I noticed you did not include any meat in your description. Do you find health reasons to avoid it for you or are you vegan?

I haven't eaten meat since 1990. I don't completely rule out non-meat animal products. I have something like 100 grams of cheese per year.

Health is a side effect for my eating habits. Deliciousness is by far the biggest reason, followed by convenience, lower cost, getting to eat more, less pollution, and health.

I just love eating delicious foods. I've come to find taking out the fiber leaves things too sweet. Fruit became incredibly sweet after I got used to it and I love eating it. Now vegetables are tasting sweet. I didn't intend or expect to experience this change in tastes, but I'm glad it did.

Olive oil though, has quite a lot of health benefits. Its only downside is the calories from it.

The calories are easily adjusted for by reducing carbohydrate intake.

>Its only downside is the calories from it.

How is that a downside? Deriving calories (and nutrients) from food is the entire purpose of eating.

Or put another way: it is calorie dense. Very easy to overconsume calorie dense foods. If most of your calories came from them, you would miss the chewing you are used to.

Consuming fat makes you feel full. Like many people, I find that eating a higher-fat diet makes me feel full & able to tolerate eating fewer calories overall.

Sure. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be aware of the calorie density of all of your food. 100 calories of olive oil looks very different from 10o calories of carrots.

When you add it to a salad, not only are you making the salad more satiating, but it will help you absorb the fat soluble vitamins in the salad.

It's a bit strange that food having energy is now seen as a bad thing.

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