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Comment by barking | Hacker News Reader

WFPB, whole food plant based diet. No meat, no fish, no dairy. You can eat fruit but you can't juice it. Seems a bit of a misery diet to me.

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Eating fresh vegetables and fruits all day is glorious, not miserable. Foods like legumes, seitan, tempeh, tofu, nuts, and mushrooms are all excellent sources of protein and can even be made to taste very similar to meat. Since I stopped eating meat there are a few tastes that I'll miss like bluefin tuna, soft-shell crabs, etc. but overall it's not difficult.

I know what anthropology has said about who we homo sapiens have smaller jaws and larger craniums - we went from omnivores to omnivores who cooked meat. Higher calorie density and better nutrient profile. So our muscles for tearing through tough meat got smaller, so we could have more brain.

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.

Not eating steak, brisket, bacon, pork, etc....is definitely misery... esp. a good smoked brisket with good marbling...

Juicing, cooking, tofu making is minimally pocessed and generally accepted in WFPB circles.

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 like the interpretation of minimally processed food as something that you can fairly easy make in your own kitchen. Freshly squeezed juice is fine. Packaged juice from concentrate with added refined sugar is not.

Correct. Still juicing what you can eat WITH the fiber is better consumed as a whole. I therefor prefer juicing veggies over fruit (which I prefer to blend if not eat straight)

Surely milk is good for you, whereas American-style cheese is perhaps better avoided. It seems somewhat misguided to knock out whole food groups like that.

Source for milk begin healthy? As the evidence of the contrary is mounting up to a stack that can rival smoking.

It seems weird to suggest that tofu is less processed than butter. I suppose if you're buying the most high-end expensive tofu it might be a bit better but from what I know of how it's made I don't find it very appealing.

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.

Given that soy is the raw material you are "just given"

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.

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