Margarine may or may not be worse than butter (I think it is worse). It is better to avoid/reduce all refined fats (oils), except maybe for a high DHA omega 3 supplement.
If you want to eat for health, look into WFPB, they have a lot of science on their side.
That said, I don't recall where the target number came from.
The correct number depends on individual, weather, activity level, etc. The actual medical recommendation is merely that healthy people should pay attention to their thirst and drink when thirsty, and plan ahead for exertion and desert excursions etc.
Certainly some people don't pay attention to their own thirst, but that's not to say that 6 or 8 are the correct numbers. That may be too much or too little.
To get any consistency in results you have to control things to a point of being unrealistic, and then the results aren't very useful because nobody's real diet and genetic makeup fits with the fake abstract setting of the experiment.
Then results get simplified and abstracted even more to make easily understandable conclusions... like maybe for 78% of people cacao is good, but for 0.3% of people it doubles the risk of stroke (although this bit doesn't get studied because it wasn't in the initial hypothesis). Results are reduced to "cacao is good for you"... but you might not part of the 78%. Maybe you're in the 0.3%.
I'm not trying to say that science is useless, just that applying it isn't as simple as people like to make out (and a lot of people don't want to accept that life may not be as methodical and predictable as they want it to be). Nuance is too hard.
For myself I decided to go with WFPB diet because pretty much everyone agrees that fruits, vegetables, greens and whole grains are good for you. There's no controversy there.
Basically without more good science on the subject, we are all just mostly guessing.
I't the point where you refine something (oil from seeds, sugar from beets) where it is against the protocol.
> Seems a bit of a misery diet to me.
I was not trying to make you happy. I stated it has a lot of science on it's side. There are some great cooking resources on how to make it taste/look/whatever great. Wanna know more about the science, see How Not To Die.
I'd say it's a lot easier to make butter in your kitchen than it is tofu.
There's a really good book about the food industry called "Eat Your Heart Out" by Felicity Lawrence. I already thought tofu was a plasticky non-food but that book put me off it for life.
You need a cow in your kitchen to make butter!
Tofu got some haters. But as far as I know, it is bad for health (if not contaminated with pollutants).
You talk about "appealing" and "off putting". I try to keep the discussion on healthy vs not.
What this WFPB appears to be is a religion in dietary form, complete with diatribes of papers written by them. And it ignores why we have the jaws that we do, on some moral epithet that eating animals is evil and bad.
I'll pass.
I would highly recommend to avoid any diet which is less than 30-40% in calories from fat.
That said the worst thing you can have is high fat and high carb since the insulin would cause your body to store all the fat and turn the extra sugar into more fat.
Our GI tract is very similar to that of primates. I think it is best to eat like they do: HCLF.
> That said the worst thing you can have is high fat and high carb
100% agree.
> the insulin would cause your body to store all the fat and turn the extra sugar into more fat.
Nope. The extra glucose with spike in your blood (as the fay blocks your insulin on the cells), glucose is only converted to fat a tiny bit.
Gorillas nearly only eat leaves while chips are omnivores that hunt even monkeys and even practice cannibalism.
Glucose will turn into triglycerides and be stored into fat but more importantly what insulin does is instruct your fat cells to store energy.
1 cup of sugar = 201 g. 1 cup of Butter = 227 grams. 201/227 = a given volume of sugar is about 89% as heavy as the same volume of butter.
1 gram of sugar contains 4 calories. 1 gram of butter is about 7.2 calories (a gram of fat is 9 calories and butter is roughly 85% fat + milk solids and water). 4/7.2 = a gram of sugar contains about 56% as many calories as a gram of butter.
4 tbps of sugar = 50 grams = 200 calories
4 tbps of butter = 56.8 grams = 408 calories
But that's HCLF me :)
Many would dispute this if you're alluding to it being heavy in saturated fat which there's heavy dispute over.
> Margarine may or may not be worse than butter (I think it is worse).
Doesn't seem consistent with your logic of less refined is better.
> If you want to eat for health, look into WFPB, they have a lot of science on their side.
So basically veganism. Pretty much a non-starter for most people.
> Doesn't seem consistent with your logic of less refined is better.
That's why I continue to say its better to avoid both. More or less as bad as butter is still quite bad either way.
> So basically veganism.
Yeah. When applied for health reasons, it's called a plant based diet. Since you can make junk-food from plants, the WFPB word came about.
> Pretty much a non-starter for most people.
Stopping smoking is also hard. Wanne live longer/healthier? Look into WFPB. Wanne do what you always did? It is still legal, no worries as of yet.
It’s animal fat. It gets broken down into glycerides.
> It is too calorie dense.
If you need fewer calories eat less.
> It blocks insulin.
Insulin is part of glucose metabolism. Dietary fat does not effect it.
> It becomes fat (carbs barely become fat), especially when combined with carbs (as is common).
Untrue. If you have a calorie deficit you’ll lose weight, a surplus you’ll gain it. Whether the energy comes from fats or carbs is irrelevant.
> It often comes with cholesterol.
Serum cholesterol and dietary cholesterol are unrelated.
It's about the other nutrients that come with the calories. If you eat cal dense foods you will not consume enough (micro/phyto) nutrients. Think lettuce/fruit vs oil/butter. Throw 2500 kcal of each group into cronometer.com and see for your self.
> It blocks insulin.
On the cell, so cell become insulin resistant:
> It blocks insulin.
> > It becomes fat (carbs barely become fat), especially when combined with carbs (as is common).
> Untrue. If you have a calorie deficit you’ll lose weight, a surplus you’ll gain it. Whether the energy comes from fats or carbs is irrelevant.
True, but I'm talking about having a surplus. In that case very little carbs can be turned into body fat, while consumed fat is easily turned into body fat.
> Serum cholesterol and dietary cholesterol are unrelated.
Some studies may show that, but many other do not. Looking at the methods they use it is clear to me which studies to trust...
How does that make it healthy?
Here you go. I hope it helps someone, because I took a bit karmic penalty on HN spreading what I think is proven truth. (still worth it for me)
Fats are not inherently bad for you, doesn’t matter if they are plant based or not.
It is fat that blocks insulin on yr cells. No (or little) fat and you can absorb your carbs as nature intended.
> Fats are not inherently bad for you, doesn’t matter if they are plant based or not.
I agree. It is the refined fats that are bad.
Also the human genetic and epigenetic landscape is utterly different just like the difference between any other species. And you also ignore our gut flora which is drastically different than apes in the wild (you would also not find apes with the same flora ofc, Gorillas and Chimps would have drastically different floras).
But sure eat like a gorilla around 50-60 I don’t remember if it’s lbs or kg of leaves a day but at those figures it doesn’t matter and see how long would you survive.
(just in case someone somehow would take that jest seriously, please don't eat like a Gorilla you will die, and if not you will suffer irreversible damage to your colon to the point where you quite possible wish you were dead)
I read "Western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla): This subspecies consumes parts of at least 97 plant species. About 67% of their diet is fruit, 17% is leaves, seeds and stems and 3% is termites and caterpillars."
Another type of gorilla eats more/mostly leafs.
Still gorilla eat HCLF. I'm not saying eat only leafs. I'm saying other primates eat fruit-leaves-bugs mostly (yes some chimps hunt, but given enough fruit they are not so much compelled to). And we have a quite similar GI tract. Not the same, but much more similar than comparing to cats or cows.
We are not made for processed food. We are made for HCLF. We are quite similar to other primates GI-tract wise. What do you not agree with?
We do not have a similar GI tract to other primates we have a GI tract simmilar to some primates Gorillas have a closer GI tract to hippos than to humans.
Even the lowland gorilla which it eats “fruit” would say not eat a banana, in fact they destroy banana trees as they eat the leaves and the stem rather than the fruits.
Gorillas can digest about 70% of the plant cell wall material they consume they are one of the most efficient herbivores on the planet in this regard the fruits they eat at rich in cellulose not sugar or starch.
And while cellulose is carb the fermentation process turns it into fatty acids.
What little ripen fruit they eat seem to involve around maintaining fermentation not as a source of energy.
See dogma1138's child post to this parent as well as his other responses to cies other posts in this thread.
No offense cies but your posts here reek of soccer-mom-esque health blog level of basic research and espousing of ideas as facts.
Eating some "nuts, meat" does not make it HFLC. Do you know what consitutes HCLF? Well name me one type of primate that does not eat HCLF in the wild and you may correct me. But so far you have not.
> No offense cies but your posts here reek of soccer-mom-esque health blog level of basic research and espousing of ideas as facts.
No offense taken. We're just discussing here. Please provide evidence for your claim there is a not-HCLF (thus HFLC) type of ape in some location. I will fix my beliefs with proper evidence (I just could not find it).
I'm not interested in reading back-alley nutritionist blogs to discover what HCLF is (that is basically all that came up on google, Vegan or LDS sites). You want to link to a research paper discussing it I'm happy to hear about it.
The not "other" primates. They humans using tech to survive in harsh conditions.
> The Neanderthals didn’t either. Hominids [...]
They dead! And hard to study as sibling poster shows.
Name one wild ape in one location not on HCLF please. I will change my understanding given proper evidence.
The macronutrient profile of this diet would be as follows: 2.5% energy as fat, 24.3% protein, 15.8% available carbohydrate, with potentially 57.3% of metabolizable energy from short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) derived from colonic fermentation of fiber. Gorillas would therefore obtain considerable energy through fiber fermentation.
The largest macro nutrient of nearly all apes boils down to fatty acids just through various different mechanisms.
Even the fruits they eat at very different non-domesticated ripen fruit and pith isn’t rich in sugar it’s rich in fatty acids.
https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/127/10/2000/4722347
No offense but what ever vegan eat like an ape BS you’ve been sold on its categorically wrong.
The biggest thing these all “diets” ignore is the actual underlying energy mechanisms which change the macronutrient landscape of the diet completely as different apes and humans have different GI and metabolic paths.
The article makes a suggestion ("potentially"), and does so for one type of gorilla (the foliage eating one). How can you generalize from this to all apes? Just curious.
The fruits you eat are also rich in fructose since they are domesticated fruits this is in stark opposite to what "fruits" wild apes consume.
I'm not generalizing it for all apes because different apes have different diets and different metabolic paths chimps do not ferment cellulose in their colon but they do eat ripen fruit in which the fatty acids develop they also eat fruit which ferments on the ground, they also eat pith all of which is rich in lipids, when you discount the fiber in the chimp diet you will see that it's also nearly 50% lipids even when accounting for plant sources only and not them sucking the skulls of small monkeys for the juicy fatty acids that make up their brains (don't go looking for that, trust me this is something you cannot unsee...).
Human physiology is very different than that apes if we go back again to the gorilla then the small intestine and colon ratios are reversed in humans the small intestine is about 50% of the overall digestive tract in gorillas the colon is 50% that is because they get most of their nutrients from secondary fermentation where human physiology is centered nearly exclusively around absorbing available nutrients in the food hence why we also cook food and why eating raw vegan or raw anything is a terrible terrible idea.
Saying that our GIs are similar to apes is true but it's like saying that our muscular and skeletal systems are similar but the differences are still night and day. Our bodies are designed to consume ready to use nutrients and more importantly pre-processed nutrients (is suggest reading "Cooking as a biological trait") and to extract as much of them as possible in the shortest time as possible, we don't spend all our day eating and we don't eat 30-40kg of food a day even those of use that weight like a gorilla. Our GI is the gasoline engine while most apes are coal powered steam engines they both still use pistons and consume some form of hydrocarbons but put one in the other and the result will not be pretty.
I find it hard to believe that we are designed to do something that we have later "designed" ourselves. I see cooking as a survival strategy, by which we have grown our habitat by a lot. I look at man as a tropical being, its the only place I can survive without cloths. In the tropics there is also fruits that man can gather/eat without the use of tech. Fruits, leaves, seeds and bugs. Therefor I expect that to be our diets (see bugs there? so not dogmatically vegan here). Also when I put together a diet of said ingredients in cronometer.com it adds up to what we know about RDIs nowadays.
I'l have a look at the book you recommended, tnx for that. Much appreciated.
Comparison with apes: https://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/smalllarge-intest... We didn't invent cooking there are good indications that our ancestors cooked food as early as 2m years ago, and cooking here is defined as chemical alteration limited to roasting or boiling.
In fact some animals technically "cook" as they intentionally let food undergo chemical changes and even induce it buy collecting, digging fermentation pits and even covering them with foliage to induce anaerobic fermentation.
Also the reason we are who we are and the rest of the apes are an evolutionary dead end is that we were better at exploiting our environment specifically better at extracting lipids and proteins which was beneficial for cognitive development.
How and what we eat is a the very core reason to why we are considerably more developed than the rest of our ape cibilings, and that is a very important fact to remember.
Thanks again. Why I agree, I also the the opposite. An sick and obese population. I see similarities with other animals that we feed (ie dogs). Humans and dogs are often in bad health at the end of our lives, while apes and wolves are doing well...
What do you think of this? BTW how did you get into this field, own interest (like me) or some formal studies?
(we're running out of replies, I may reply in some other way if you do not mind)
For most apes in captivity the life expectancy is nearly 50% greater than those in the wild even those who are in reservations, for some it’s duble or more.
You will not find gorillas older than 30-35 years in the wild those in captivity live up to 50-60.
I never said they were the same, I say they are similar. A quote from the article you provided (thanks again for that):
"Anatomically, the digestive tracts of humans and great apes are very similar (Stevens and Hume 1995)"
Also there are many other factors like the move towards more western diets often also includes a less active lifestyle to to moving towards more modern "working/middle-class" type of jobs.
If you eat nothing than rice and some fish from time to time and work in the field all day ofc you won't have problems, if you are loading on fat and sugar or even sugar alone you will.
However fat on it's own does not make you fat on it's own, and with the diet available to most people in the west today reducing their carb intake to 30% or less will do wonders, I'm not advocating for everyone to be on a 20g carbs a day ketogenic diet but obesity is not tied to fat at all.
Don't forget that we have had populations that do not eat carbs or eat very little carbs, inuits, Chukcha etc. traditionally ate little to no carbs as carbs were rarely available, essentially all the population close to the arctic primarily consumes fat and protein and they also doing just fine.
Cutting back on refined sugar really makes things taste better, lots of subtle flavour makes previously bland stuff like oats taste really nice. But the downside is being unable to stomach the excessive amounts of salt and sugar in a lot of stuff. The upside is I save a fortune on buying junk food since most of it now tastes awful.