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Comment by nonbel | Hacker News Reader

> "Despite the popularity of the Atkins and Paleo diets, however, there is minimal evidence that high-protein diets really do bring about long-term benefits. So could the “Okinawan Ratio” – 10:1 carbohydrate to protein – instead be the secret to a long and healthy life?"

In the low-carb diet you are mostly replacing calories from carbs with calories from fat. Not sure why they are focused on this carb to protein ratio.

> "The traditional Okinawan diet is therefore dense in the essential vitamins and minerals - including anti-oxidants - but also low in calories.

[...]

For this reason, some scientists believe that Okinawans offer more evidence for the life-enhancing virtues of a “calorie restricted” diet."

Well, the benefit of low-carb is that you crave less food so naturally "calorie-restrict" relative to a high carb diet. So if they are accomplishing this another way it all makes sense (they mention some genetic factors in tfa).

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Also, there's good food and there's bad food. It's hard to find something that you could label 'keto' that's downright terrible (once big food catches on I'm sure there's gonna be a ton of awful 'keto' food).

I spend a lot of time in Japan and US. In Japan food is simple, unprocessed, healthy. When I come to US and even though I eat well the food feels like glue in my stomach. And everything has horrible carbs in it. Salads? So much sugar I can barely eat them. Meat? Laced with sugar.

I wouldn't mind carbs from vegetables but they get mixed in this sugary garbage and then people come out and say "carbs are good for you" and then you end up fat and unhealthy.

Also, when I eat carbs I simply don't feel so good. Keto has been great so I'm going to stick to it.

I don't mind going off-keto but I won't touch anything with added sugar. Go to Whole Foods and look at kombucha. Why does it need a ton of sugar? It's hard to find one that doesn't. Or that "healthy" cucumber something something kale juice? Ton of sugar. Yuck.

> Go to Whole Foods and look at kombucha. Why does it need a ton of sugar?

It needs to ferment in order to become Kombucha, which requires sugar.

While true it's a very grey area in how the sugar is reported. It's not clear whether they are reporting macronutrients pre or post fermentation. Ferementation in kombucha is particularly efficient from what I understand and the residual sugars after fermentation are not significant. So it's unclear whether the high carb count is due to sugars added pre-fermentation or if they are only including sugar added post fermentation to make it sweet.

There are too many with added sugar, presumably to make it "taste better" for sugar addicted populace. You can find some with low sugar content, generally ginger flavored.

But its the same with everything. Cucumber juice, watermelon juice, this and that, most bottled teas, etc. Sugar, sugar, sugar. Everywhere.

In Japan I can go to convenience store and buy dozens of drinks with no sugar.

Or electrolyte supplements. No sugar versions are much harder to find!

It needs to start with sugar, not necessarily end with it, for the same reason that most beers do not have sugar.

Bacon and other cured meats are technically keto but terrible for you.

That is just not true at all. The nitrates thing is far from proven (there is also uncured bacon available if it bothers you) and bacon itself is a high fat meat source that is very good for you.

Please tell me more.

“Studies have shown increased risks of colon, kidney, and stomach cancer among people with higher ingestion of water nitrate and higher meat intake compared with low intakes of both, a dietary pattern that results in increased NOC formation. Other studies have shown modest evidence that higher nitrate intake can increase the risk of thyroid cancer and ovarian cancer among women.”

https://progressreport.cancer.gov/prevention/nitrate

Ah, slinging studies. Well it's a correlation. I did a lot of research on this and all I could conclude is that the science is still very unclear.

Nitrates/nitrites are also found in vegetables. Actually, from what I understand vegetables are one of the largest dietary sources of nitrates by far.

In fact, they can have some health benefits. From what I have found, the primary danger of nitrites comes when they go through high heat cooking. This is why nitrites/nitrates in vegetables isn't as big of a concern - you typically do not cook them at very high heat. So heating up bacon in the oven or even medium heat in a pan does not release nitrosamines in the same amount.

I'm not trying to sway you either way, just pointing out there are a lot of factors that study does not take into account and it's much more nuanced than a simple correlation.

From the The European Code Against Cancer:

"Avoid processed meat; limit red meat and foods high in salt." [1]

[1] https://cancer-code-europe.iarc.fr/index.php/en/

Yea, a big confound with the keto stuff is you pretty much are forced to cook for yourself. Sugar is added to everything you can imagine, its ridiculous. Sugar used to be considered a spice/medicine...

>"There are records of knowledge of sugar among the ancient Greeks and Romans, but only as an imported medicine, and not as a food. For example, the Greek physician Dioscorides in the 1st century (AD) wrote: "There is a kind of coalesced honey called sakcharon [i.e. sugar] found in reeds in India and Eudaimon Arabia [i.e. Yemen[17]] similar in consistency to salt and brittle enough to be broken between the teeth like salt. It is good dissolved in water for the intestines and stomach, and [can be] taken as a drink to help [relieve] a painful bladder and kidneys."[18] Pliny the Elder, a 1st-century (AD) Roman, also described sugar as medicinal: "Sugar is made in Arabia as well, but Indian sugar is better. It is a kind of honey found in cane, white as gum, and it crunches between the teeth. It comes in lumps the size of a hazelnut. Sugar is used only for medical purposes."[19]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sugar

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