Nutrition offers its resignation, and the reply
meaningness.com
meaningness.com
OT, it's always surprised me with the diversity of pets people buy that these animals can generally eat the same thing for every meal, while humans can't.
Not "be vegan or vegetarian" mind you.
The fun part is that humans are likely much more adaptable in terms of diet than other animals.
I think people care more about their pets diet than their own
For example pig farmers have known forever that if you want to have fat pigs you feed them grains, and if you desire lean meat you feed them high protein fodder.
Exercise regularly. Avoid extremes in diet - but eat a bit of variety. Get the minimum recommended amounts of vitamins and minerals. Keep your calories and your body fat low.
And if you have bad genetics, you're probably just screwed, and no amount of exercise or diet will fix it.
There is some evidence that certain kinds of atypical diet are slightly less beneficial in terms of mortality. (Low carbohydrate long term. Cause unknown, not CVD or cancer. Very good review, thoroughly recommended. The key word is "all cause mortality and morbidity") And the varied (in certain ways) Western diet is also shown to be quite bad.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, I like to review nutrition papers fairly and thoroughly but have never seen one on this...
Variety in moderation seems to be the only effective proxy to smooth over the constant "used to be good for you - nope, not any more - wait we were wrong it is good" oscillations.
I mean a variety of plant and animal sources, and a variety of macronutrients - to cover all the bases. With the exception of trans fats, and possibly red meat, nearly every food seems to be safe in moderate doses, so there's no reason to avoid or load up on anything in particular.
And when they find out that something like, for example, oily fish, is beneficial - you can look back and say hey, I ate a bit of that too.
I agree that not all forms of variation are good, but variation within what mainstream nutrition science recommends at this point probably mostly is.
tl;dr - no one really knows anything, so play the odds.
This is a bit like financial advice stating "don't become poor" or health advice stating "don't get cancer".
Of course both of these advices are easier to follow for some people than for others.
Exercise and/or don't stuff your face. Pretty simple, really.
And, unlike your finances or genetic predisposition for cancer, you have total control over it. No one is forcing you to over eat.
I'm not sure if there's any merit to this way of considering my diet, but it feels like the most sensible approach towards deciding what I should or shouldn't eat.
That doesn't sound too amazing to me.
[1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318931.php
[2] https://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/features/is-smoking-...
[3] https://www.dentalhealth.org/tell-me-about/topic/sundry/smok...
[4] http://time.com/4408977/erectile-dysfunction-quit-smoking/
No to mucus
Maybe to reduced smell (doesn't seem significantly worse in practice than anyone else)
Maybe to teeth, but I also drink a lot of coffee, and its not very substantially yellow
Erectile dysfunction != smaller penis, and afaik, none of the (actually) described effects in the article apply to me, at least enough to have noticed.
Also that last article is the only one I checked, and is citing studies composed of 40 (2016 study), and 65 (2012), participants. The first is about fertility, and nothing to do with ED or penis size.
And the second study compares 20 successful quitters against 40 not, with apparently 13 people starting with ED, (distribution after the study left unspecified), and only claims that the quitters had larger erections than the smokers. (Not comparing before/after quitting on the same individual; just which group had the larger dicks at the end (their state at the beginning left unspecified).
And the ED part is just bad reporting (despite being the article's title), intentionally referring to results that are "statistically insignificant". (13 people with ED; quitters/non-quitter count unspecified; both groups saw similar improvement during the study).
I'm assuming you didn't read the studies themselves, so I won't bother
I'm also going to assume the rest of your articles are of similar quality
In which case, you should probably improve your sources before making claims
> Results underscore the possibility that cigarette use may deleteriously affect erectile function peripherally, in part, by disrupting cardiac autonomic function.
It's not the gold standard of proof, but it seems not too far fetched.
Some people are more susceptible than others, and even then the telltale (as in other than "worse on ergometer") medical issues tend to start after years (sometimes many) of smoking. Based on stats it is about 20 years of delay in specific cancers. Then they are hard to reverse.
Sample of 1 is not compelling.
Yes, the problem is that I read it.
It indeed attributed the possibility, but at least from the article alone, the supporting evidence is incredibly weak. at the end of the study, a group of 20 people who quit had larger erections than a group of 40 who didn't.
Were they larger before the study too? Unstated.
Were they significantly larger? By how much? Unstated.
Were all of them larger, or did a few just skew the average? Unstated.
Was the quitting group larger than before they quit? Unstated.
All we have is that, in the end, the quitters had the larger, presumably average, erections. On a sample size of 20, and 40.
And of course, knowing that the article's headline is bullshit (claimed on results the writer himself acknowledges as statistically insignificant), it's probably likely that any other interpretation the author so freely takes is also bullshit.
That article isn't the gold standard of proof; its not even bronze. It goes very close to blatantly lying with its headline, and I think its safe to assume that out of everyone involved in determining those results, only the article's author would be so confident about it (at least, as much as he is).
If you're going to cite things, then use things worth citing. In the worst case, read the study itself. But don't go around feeding others such low quality summaries.
I avoid any sugared sodas these days, because I find if I am dehydrated and I drink a canned lemonade etc. I get a headache immediately afterward, with no lessening of my thirst. Plain water or coconut water works best for me.
Chocolate contains stimulants theobromine and caffeine. I am not a coffee drinker, nor regular consumer any other stimulant, making me rather sensitive to the effects. If I eat chocolate, particularly dark chocolate, I reliably experience a mild stimulant high.
There's not really a difference between foods containing these molecules and oral drugs containing the same molecules.
And sure, chocolate gives a bit of a stimulant high. That's part of why we like it. This is something else. It unfortunately comes with certain kinds of chocolate.
IT is not known to be a headache trigger though, but there are known sensitive individuals.
Same with Ramen. I even experience muscle aching at times after eating it. It's a shame because I find it so tasty!
You wouldn't notice the affects of a diet that is devoid of iron for several weeks... you especially wouldn't notice the affects after individual meals. Once you become iron deficient and anemic, you'll start "feeling good" from sugary foods and stimulants that offset the exhaustion from low red blood cells. You wouldn't even feel better from eating iron rich meals until about a week.
There's a similar story for every other vitamin.
It doesn't automatically create a good diet, but it's better than nothing. And at least we can both agree that it's effective, which is more than you can say for some of the nutrition advice out there.
Unless there is a case where feeling weird is actually a good thing, but I can only come up with fairly extreme examples where that would be the case, which comes closer to medicine than nutrition.
Off-hand I can’t think of any food that produces an immediate and significant bad feeling unless it’s rotten, spoiled or otherwise intolerable.
[1] Most people do. White bread has a high glycemic index.
If you are going to scientifically remove all the fiber from a food item, then boost its calorie content even higher with added sugars and oils, don't be surprised when people gain weight.
Fiber is a huge hunger modifier. It's hard to overeat 'bulky' lower calorie foods. The fiber takes longer to digest, and doesn't complete the digestion process until the small intestine giving the feeling of fullness longer than something made out of simple carbohydrates.
But hey, letting Conagra sell bright colored sugar at the lowest subsidized possible price is the American way!
But we don’t know anything about nutrition? What about the Krebs Cycle? I think that is good science right? Cellular health and energy production aren’t exactly controversial. How many people are arguing that inflammation in the body is good or promotes health? Does anyone suggest insulin spikes are good?
Unfortunately you can’t name the foods that cause inflammation or insulin spikes...because that’s when there is push back, but we all know what they are and we don’t need to name them, because there is consensus those things are detrimental to health, which should be the focus of nutrition.
Obviously I am discussing inflammation in the context of diet. Though if I’m mistaken, please link a study that suggests dietary inflammation is good for healing. I’m sure instead you will find articles and studies about dietary inflammation putting the body in a state of chronic inflammation which isn’t going to be beneficial for any healing process.
So if you look at the [Big Picture of the metabolic pathways in humans](http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1)... what do you have?
Fuzzily defined, extraordinarily complex tangle with feed back loops all over the place, some going through that amazing tangle of the brain.
If you were to translate this into a mathematical model and look at it from a purely mathematical perspective (even if you omit the parts involving the brain).
It's a highly non-linear system of Partial Differential Equation's with many variables and a bunch of fuzzily measured constants.
And then you compare it with a really really simple setup like, say, [3 bodies acting under gravity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem). You know, something almost as simple as it gets.
Way way way simpler than the metabolic pathways in humanity.
And we know from a purely mathematical point of view.... that except for a very very tiny set of special cases, we haven't clue what will happen with the 3 body problem.
So yes, the article is spot on.
In terms of individual chemical reactions, we have some ideas.
In terms of dietary advice to individuals or populations... We floundering and should admit it.
Because of this, I strongly disagree with the following statement:
> We’re pretty darn sure no one else knows anything about nutrition, either. Please don’t listen to “alternative” nutrition quacks. We’ve been there, and we know.
The reasoning goes like this: "if we can't figure this stuff out, no on can!" That's sheer hubris. These kinds of systems are sometimes best tackled with idiosyncratic methods.
Well, that's false. The reality is that everybody knows about nutrition, otherwise they would die. Nutrition is an evolutionary, messy, irrational art-science.
It's just important to understand that everyone's body is a unique, multifaceted universe of sorts. What two people have in common, nutritionally, could be totally off for a third person.
"And we know from a purely mathematical point of view.... that except for a very very tiny set of special cases, we haven't clue what will happen with the 3 body problem."
Yet there are dancers who perform spectacular 3 person pieces all the time. Go figure! That should be "impossible" but it's not. Because life is infinitely more nuanced and wondrous than closed-minded "scientists" want (you) to believe.
Just be careful whom you call a quack... dietetics has way too many facets that are being analysed at the time.
We also have science that works quite well on unknown systems - epidemiology and statistics.
While it is not good enough to figure out causes, correlations are good enough in typical cases to be actionable.
The strongest one we have is "eating plenty of greens and raw vegetables will make you look like other healthy people". I haven't seem any contravening evidence to this very not ground-breaking conclusion. The problem is that it flies in the face of 70 years of dietary recommendation (which was grains) and in the face of all the industry (because it is not shelf stable).
Exercise so far while improving health in the elderly has not been linked to persistent weight loss.
I could be more specific about thresholds there as well. (In terms of volume.) Butt what good does it do? These are fuzzy thresholds.
Them we have evidence that high fat diets are effective at weight loss (about the same as low fat diets) but some that they have no other health effects that are not really explained by weight change. Thus the diets are not specifically recommended, one over another. Even the high fat diets resulted in caloric restriction.
The long term analysis gives slight but existent increase in all cause mortality that is not explained by CVD mortality nor cancer. Thus we do not know the cause. Quacks like to tell that they know the causes.
Or other that any kind of diet is somewhat effective so the right placebo in weight studies is regular weight monitoring. Not no diet.
And a lot of evidence that people cannot really self regulate to health with bad substrates.
I just really don't care for the term. It's derogatory. Since when did a derogatory term have anything to do with science? I've studied science all my life, and I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather be personally called a quack pseudo-scientist than ever find myself calling other people quacks for having the courage to stick with unconventional or marginalized ideas.
Here in the U.S., anti-fluoridation activists have been labelled "quacks" for years. But the evidence keeps flowing in that too many fluorine ions in your body can cause trouble, especially if you're a developing embryo or child. It even seems that the evidence has been actionable, since in 2015, the DHHS cut the maximum recommended water fluoridation level in half. The DHHS maximum limit is now 0.7 mg/L, but the EPA's "enforceable standard" is 4.0 mg/L. ?
But anti-fluoridation activists activists are still being called "quacks" to this day.
Actually nice "case in point".
I have seen evidence presented that it's not the spikes that are the problem, but the "area under the curve".
ie. An insulin spike is just the body doing what it should, keeping the blood sugar in bounds.
However, it's how long times it goes on for times how high that does the damage (to an obese person).
ie. Nutrition science is packed solid with fine fine print and noxious little interactions and feedback loops.
Very little of which fits in a Cosmo magazine sound bite or is applicable to a general population.
You do X and lose weight.
The error is thinking that you lost weight because of Y, and not because of a secondary unlisted effect of doing X.
The same applies for certain diets/organisms causing conditions/diseases/etc. i.e. the whole cholesterol back and forth.
We've learned lots from nutrition and in general informed people live healthier lives. Just because we don't know exactly what's going on inside our bodies doesn't mean that zero improvement has been made. We'll fuck up once in a while and get some bad advice, but in general we've improved lots.
It's weird to realize that pretty much no one knows what's up with nutrition. It's the opposite of data-driven.
That said, current nutritional recommendation is 45–65% of your caloric intake should be complex carbohydrates. Now that doesn't necessarily mean grain, but grain is an easy source.
Basically what I'm saying is, eating fewer calories doesn't necessarily mean you're hungry, because putting food into your mouth isn't just a reaction to being hungry, and because we tend to eat more than is necessary to satisfy hunger anyway.
However, eating fewer calories by cutting out grains is not the same thing as being on a calorie-restricted diet.
FWIW I also have cut out grains but my weight is very stable, so it seems fair to assume I now just eat more of other things.
More generally, it's just a bit pedantic to say that eating fewer calories than you would otherwise should be called a "calorie-restricted diet". The first reason is because the phrase "calorie-restricted diet" implies a significant restriction instead (for example, I'm only 1200 calories per day right now; that's a significant restriction compared to what I would be eating if I wanted to maintain my current weight). The second reason is because "calorie-restricted diet" implies a diet focused around tracking calories. Cutting out grains isn't a diet focused on calorie intake (heck, it's not tracking calories at all), it's just a diet that has the side effect of likely reducing calorie intake.
That's kind of a misleading sentence. Fat is about 9 kcal per g. Carbohydrates and proteins are about 4 kcal per g (it's slightly more complicated than that because proteins have slightly higher caloric content, but take energy to absorb, while larger carbohydrates are can not be absorbed at all, but let's just take these as rough values).
Grain isn't very "caloric" at all compared to, say, butter. 10g of white flour is 36 kcal, while 10g of butter is 72 kcal. Compared to lettuce it's quite "caloric". 10g of lettuce gives you only 2 kcal. But that's because lettuce is all water.
Although I really like eating grains, I'm also a pretty big fan of vegetables. If you imagine that a meal is about 600 kcal (give or take), I think it's instructive to assemble a variety of food and see what quantity of food that is. 3/4 of a stick of butter; or half a loaf of bread (assuming a 1 lb loaf); or 6 large heads of iceberg lettuce.
You can see pretty easily that if you want to eat more food, while maintaining the same caloric intake, then vegetables are the way to go -- because they have a lot of water. But you can also have soups, etc to get the same effect. Even grains work well: a bowl of porridge made with 250 ml of semi skimmed milk is only 254 kcal according to google -- but that tablespoon of brown sugar is going to bump it up to over 300 kcal.
So that's really the thing: if you remove water from stuff (flour, sugar, oil, butter) it's pretty calorie dense -- especially oils and fats. Eating things that are essentially dried out conglomerations of these things (potato chips, cookies, muffins, cheese, granola, etc, etc) means that you can only eat a ridiculously small amount of food if you are trying to hit a calorie target. Virtually all of our "convenience foods" fall into that category -- even sandwiches are often bread, meat, mayonnaise and a token slice of greenery. The secret is to cook so as to maintain flavour while keeping the water content up (or to enjoy eating more intense foods, with much smaller portions).
Of course if you cut them out of your diet and still eat the same amounts of everything else you will lose weight, that's just thermodynamics!
Did you track your calories? Dropping grains almost certainly means you cut your calories and thus lost weight. Exercise doesn't burn as many calories as people think. The adage 'abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym' rings true.
Of course, the point is there is almost no amount of exercise (8 hours/day in the pool like Phelps maybe) that can make up for a bad diet when it comes to abs. Abs are almost strictly a function of body fat percentage.
The real issue is, and the author's real point (whether he knows it or not), is that non-scientists don't, and currently mostly can't, know anything about nutrition. To get a decent, self-respecting nutritional fact, you need to trace it back to the studies (to make sure it's not corporate BS,) make sure these studies are relatively recent (so that they're not deformed by the various assumptions and flawed conceptual frameworks that dominated the field a couple decades ago,) and ensure that the researchers and statistics at work are reasonably trustworthy (to make sure it's not some of the bad research that is still being done[1].) This is not something that most people can do, and that's simply to access the limited and uncertain facts we currently have. To the typical highschool graduate trying to make dinner, it's worse than useless.
([1] Which is, again, not unique to nutritional science. Bad papers are published in every field.)
More than a lack of knowledge, we have a lack of trustworthy authority. If someone wants to know about chemistry or math, trustworthy sources are easy to find, and their pronouncements can be taken on faith if the student doesn't want to get bogged down in the details. If someone wants to know next week's weather, the available answers will be uncertain and untrustworthy, but everyone at least knows the right people to ask, and has some idea of how to deal with "50% chance of rain." In nutrition, no one knows where to ask, and no one knows how to deal with what information that is available (for instance, raise your hand if you know the glycemic index of your most recent meal.) The answer to this can't be the scientific method; it's a social process.
Incidentally, the present nutritional wisdom is probably best summed up by Michael Pollan's "eat food; not too much; mostly plants." From that you'll be fine. (If you want to be really fancy, know the calories-per-serving of the ~10 most common foods you eat; by then you'll be eating healthier than about 95% of Americans, most likely. Know the glycemic index and you're past 99%.)
On the curve of "knowing how much we don't know" we're just realizing this is way harder than anyone expected even a few years ago.
1) Drink a lot of water everyday.
2) Calories are the most important baseline measure that affect your weight.
3) Walking for 20 minutes a day will give you 90% of the exercise you need. Go for a walk after lunch with your colleagues!
4) Don't trust food scientists, including ones that work for the government. They are paid to sell more food.
5) Putting vegetables on pizza doesn't make that pizza healthier. It may make it "less unhealthy". Think in terms like that.
6) The more synthetic a food is (i.e. the more processed it is), the more unhealthy it is. Human evolved to eat a certain way -- remember that. Use olive oil, real butter, etc. Eat whole fat everything.
7) Eat a lot of vegetables. Don't eat a lot of red meat. Yogurt is really good for your gut.
8) If you're going to eat something unhealthy, embrace it! Acknowledge that you are treating yourself.
9) THINK about your diet. Evaluate how you feel.
10) Look at your body in the mirror more than you step on a scale.
Check out this talk by Dr Neil Barnard https://youtu.be/v_ONFix_e4k
11) Don't trust anything you hear in a TEDx talk.
Maybe it is because of outside influence, maybe it is due to much to broadly asked question and/or premature generalization. Or following leads without actually testing their veracity, which probably has another cause.
Maybe partly ethics preventing us from experimenting on ourselves as a species in a rational way. (Unlike the random uncontrolled irrational experiments we run every second of our life.)
Glory, finding or requirement to prescribe action even if we do not know what should be done. Also known as leadership in some circles...
Full Disclosure: I am currently building these tools.
Education mostly doesn't work. Most people can consume huge amounts of sweet/fat/salty food, far beyond there caloric needs, even when they know it is bad for them. Maybe the small portion of humanity that can execute portion control inherits the Earth. Maybe we lock down businesses freedom to pettle crap foods to addicts. I'm not sure what the answer is.
Otherwise it's just shameless praise to ignorance. (The good ol' fallacy that if you can't get it 100% correct for everyone, then might as well not even try)
The weightlifting crowd seems to have figured out nutrition for themselves just fine. So have millions of fit, active people.
Nutritionists may be quackery as a job/profession, but nutrition is still a valid part of biology and a science.
edit: wow! I was expecting some pushback, but this is still a surprize. Please take a bit of time to look at the actual content before being to critic. Also it's made to be a bit entertaining and simple so it can reach a larger audience.
The fact is, Greger is not a scientist. Science requires honest investigation, and a willingness to update one’s beliefs. Greger is an activist — he has already decided what his beliefs are, and he is selectively choosing to emphasize studies that support his beliefs (while ignoring those that don’t).
I wouldn’t have a problem with this if his site was called veganopinions.org. You’re allowed to have beliefs based on morality, not science. But when you corrupt the science to advance your cause, you’ve lost me entirely.
I'm not trying to be nit-picky, this seriously is confusing for me (probably no small-part due to marketing).
I suspect everyone's definition varies.
But you're obviously capable of doing any number of harmful processes on your own, it's just somewhat unlikely. Most people aren't incentivized to process their own foods for optimal shelf life and profitability over nutrition and health.
Dead animal and the fire are definitely part of Homo, especially Homo Sapiens.
You can call that a Paleo diet if you will, I don't, as the term as been tainted by quackery (see also: Superfood).
"animals products" - We have been omnivores since before the genus Homo evolved. Our physiology has evolved to extract nutrition from animal products efficiently. A herbivore diet isn't sufficient for our species. Even our closest relatives, Chimpanzees, eat meat.
So? Evolution doesn't optimize for the lifespan we're targeting currently.
And by all mean, you are still free to read all the papers if you have the time, but that is probably a one man job just for the blueberries.