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Comment by collinf | Hacker News Reader

This is so true. I used to be consume articles about healthy eating, but it after all the contradiction I have decided that I'm done reading about it all. I keep it simple with the opinion that eating protein, your veggies and drinking water will be near optimal for most humans, and anything after is just not worth the effort to optimize. 80/20, people.

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Make sure you get some fat and carbs in there too, nutrition is nutrition.

I've concluded that eating is good for your health.

> I've concluded that eating is good for your health.

[citation needed]

Jokes aside, you and GP are right; with this level of confusion, there's not much ground for trying to micromanage your diet.

Protein foods generallt have some fat, and veggies have carbs

I've generally found Michael Pollan's advice to be a good rule of thumb: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Assuming anything more narrow runs the risk of being speculation.

> eating protein

My impression is that you have to be running a major caloric deficit to worry about protein sufficiency (barring an incredibly strange diet), so you may be able to simplify your dietary guidelines even further.

ETA: e.g. brown rice, russet potatoes, and whole wheat bread all have approx the same %DV of protein as they do calories.

I believe that from the minimal perspective, you are right. I actively lift weights/run though so I try to hit around .75-1g/lb daily for recovery (and vanity) purposes.

"I've decided I'm done with all the advice out there. I'm just going to [insert my own advice]."

> and drinking water

I've seen lots of articles on this too.

The vast vast vast majority of people drink way too little water. I drink a little over a gallon a day in addition to the occasional coffee or soda and still occasionally feel the effects of dehydration. I know people who may only have 2-3 glasses of water in a day and nothing else. It's crazy they're still alive.

Agreed. After getting it pounded into my head in the military, I drink tons of water a day.

The only thing that sucks, is getting up to pee every 30 to 60 minutes is kind of disruptive to coding in the zone :-)

Overhydration is a thing. Living at the extreme end of anything isn't good for us.

Totally agree. I've heard the simplest "test" is to look at your pee color. It should be very light yellow. If it's clear, you're probably overdoing it.

Uh, you sure you don't have something going on?

128+ oz today is a ludicrously high consumption if you aren't working outside in the sun all day long or running a marathon or something.

Don't drink a lot when running a marathon or doing other heavy activities - that's how most people die of water poisoning.

If you just drink when you are thirsty, you should be fine, it has sustained us as a species for a very long time.

It's easy to not drink when you are thirsty, causing discomfort, weakness, and headaches.

As in you don't know you are thirsty or you don't have access to water?

We have genes that help regulate the use of water in our system. These genes can turn on and off depending on our environment and the availability of water. If you feel the urge to drink over a gallon of water, more power to you, but most of us really don't need that much water. Also, if your pee is consistently clear, you're probably drinking way more water than your system needs.

You may also need to consume more salt and glucose so your body retains more of the water you're consuming. Due to osmotic pressure, your cells can't actually absorb water without the correct salt and glucose to help act as a transport.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11193601

Reading the latest research on healthy eating isn't a path to health -- especially if the research hasn't been replicated. It's just a news article on preliminary research. Why be upset about that?

Because regular people read this bullshit uncritically, journalists write more pop articles based on that, which makes more people read it... and suddenly your mother starts calling you about pills you should/should not be taking, and your SO starts to insist on random dietary changes.

Even if this stuff doesn't cause huge hurt, it definitely causes annoyance.

I can assure you that "regular people" are not reading journal articles on the latest advances in nutrition research.

They are not (unless someone quotes one in a Facebook comments "debate"). But this is a BBC article, and regular people read that.

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