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Comment by metanoia | Hacker News Reader

I've tried both ends of the spectrum (hard paleo/keto, and vegan) and find, that, n=1, for me, mostly plants, a small amount (10-20% roughly) super-nutrient dense, high quality animal, works the best long-term. There are benefits to going to the extremes temporarily but I think what Blue Zones highlights is that these are long-term sustainable diets and not fad diets designed to (detox | reduce weight | build muscle | etc).

The Blue Zones diets are also unique in that they're not "ancestral" but are currently working today.

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Roughly opposite percentages for me. I eat about 80% animal (protein + fat). My plants come from liver and onions, and eat lentils (for molybdenum) and some tomatoes once a week. If I want a crunchy cracker for paté, I'll eat some was wasa flaxseed flatbreads.

I don't hold much stock in the Blue Zones. There are regional/genetic and lifestyle differences in different parts of the world, particularly in isolated places. On the other hand, if you look at Hong Kong, it has the highest per-capita meat consumption in the world and the highest longetivity. I'm not implying that meat is the reason for their longetivity-- just point out that longevity is more complicated than the food in your diet.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/hong-kong-now-has-the-worlds...

> My plants from from liver

Oh. I didn’t know liver was a plant now?

You have a very odd diet. It may work for you. You may feel decent. But it’s not backed by the scientific at all. The American Heart Association, among others, have embraced a vegetarian/vegan (ideally full vegan) diet approach for optimal health.

What are your numbers? Blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI, etc?

Cute. "liver and onions."

I'm very fit and in excellent health. 50 year old male, a performance athlete, 6'4" 230 lbs, 14% body fat (i.e., lean and muscular). BP is 120/65, lipid panel is:

Total: 235 HDLC: 69 LDL: 154 TRIG: 58

I got a Coronary Calcium Scan (CAC) this year and my score was zero, i.e., no arterial calcification. This is a far superior indicator of heart/cv health than a lipid panel.

Nutrition is a backwater of poor science, mostly backed by epidemiological survey studies rather than randomized control trials. Eating meat is a proxy or associative marker for people with poor lifestyle habits eating a (terrible) standard american diet. The health orgs are usually political animals, esp the AHA who still believes that dietary cholesterol is a cause of heart disease, that polyunsaturated oils are good for heart health, etc. They look at nutrition as follows: "Let's see, you consume sugar soft drinks and beer, you eat hot dogs, bacon-cheeseburgers, pizza, cheesesteaks, french fries, wings, donuts, waffles and pancakes, eggs and sausage, candy bars and ice cream. You don't exercise, don't sleep well, you're obese, pre-diabetic and show signs of cardiovascular disease. THE PROBLEM HERE IS YOU NEED TO CUT ALL THAT UNHEALTHY MEAT OUT OF YOUR DIET!!"

Research gaps in evaluating the relationship of meat and health https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03091...

Good info. You should write more here; lately HN is gaining an anti-meat bias, but it seems that is starting to change.

The whole world is developing an anti-meat bias, and it's going to come at the cost of our collective health. About 60% of Western diet is plant-based already, in the form of sugar, flour, seed-oils and processed foods. Continuing to push plant-based food means that the obesity/T2 diabetes epidmic is going to explode even further over the next 15-20 years. If the meat industry hadn't f*ed up so royally with factory farming and mad cow disease, I wonder if meat would be less demonized today.

Your Blue Zones comment doesn’t account for Loma Linda, California. Not isolated, generic American suburbia. Low smoking, low drinking, high vegetarian.

https://www.bluezones.com/exploration/loma-linda-california/

You’re a good person to ask this then. Can you do paleo/keto plant based/whole foods? Or are beans/nuts not allowed at all.

It's usually best to start out with your goals. What is your primary goal? Weight loss, fitness, longetivity?

If it's weight loss, there are generally three (successful) ways to go about it:

1. Change nothing in your diet, but eat fewer (but larger) meals per day while maintaining a calorie deficit for your age/gender/weight. This is known as intermittent fasting. It may or may not work for you. 2. Eat mostly plants and/or low-fat meats such as chicken (and low fat fish). Plants are carby, so you'll need to keep your total calories from fat under 10% or the plant carbs will block fat burning. This diet tends to be a difficult adjustment for many, since it is a bit like eating like a rabbit. 3. Eat as few carbs as possible, and get your calories from predominantly meat (aka carnivore diet) or fat (keto diet) or a mix. Aim for > 65% calories from fat (while still keeping under daily calorie expenditure). Both carnivor or keto lend themselves well to lipolysis aka fat burning, especially if you also layer in intermittent fasting from item #1 in this list. If you don't like meat/dairy or fat, this option is pretty much dead-in-the-water.

There are a ton of sources for all of the above approaches and their various rules, tips and pitfalls. I recommend trying each for 6-8 weeks and seeing which diets feel like something you could see yourself living with for the next 12-18 months.

Do whatever feels good and keeps your energy up and mind sharp. You may experience a significant positive shift with a new diet but when you feel like it's not helping, or even hurting, don't blindly stick to it - re-evaluate and change things up.

I personally don't have the microbiome for beans (not to mention the high phytate [antinutrient] concentration), but I do eat macadamia nuts because they have a good omega 6:3 ratio (ideally close to 1:1 for Americans because our diet is generally very high in omega 6 from vegetable oils).

It is certainly possible to do keto completely plant based but you'll be eating a lot of macadamias, avocados and coconut oil, and a lot of leafy greens with maybe some low-sugar citrus like lime and lemon mixed in for flavor. Don't think that's sustainable for very long but could be a good cleanse. Not a plant keto expert (or any expert, or a doctor, or nutritionist, or lawyer, or your lawyer....so do your research.)

I agree with QuantumAphid's suggestions for you, especially around intermittent fasting. IF is like your body's garbage collection process - stop eating long enough (ideally 16 hours) and your body starts to divert metabolic processes towards cleanup and restoration [1] in addition to burning fat for weight loss [2]. A combination of this and choosing a relatively low carb diet with high quality (organic) plant foods is great. For animal foods, go with pasture raised/grass fed - you want your food eating the food it naturally eats, not some processed, bastardized grain byproduct out of a freight car shipped from ADM or Cargill.

For now and the foreseeable future, minimize fish. If you really want fish, go with wild-caught Alaskan salmon or small fish like another poster said. Sardines are great. Stay at the bottom of the food chain... but monitor mercury levels over time. Seems like Pacific ocean mercury is on the rise from Chinese/Indian coal burning and Atlantic is finally on the decline from coal plants in the US closing down.

I will have to strongly caution against going long term carnivore or keto, however. Regardless of the quality of your meat products, animals still have metabolic processes that concentrate toxins, especially higher in the food chain. You need to set your body up for success by giving it a varied diet with nutrients from different kinds of food. This is anecdata on my part, but a combination of plants, which tend to detoxify and animals, which tend to nourish is my preferred long-term diet. It's not a popular stance out there because only extremes sell these days, but I am in favor of a balanced diet, a little of everything, mostly plants, and high-quality animal organ meats. Ruthlessly eliminate processed/fast and most packaged foods. My wife says this: is it food that your great grandmother would recognize as food? If not, don't eat it.

My wife and I have tried the extremes and have harmed ourselves, and had to recover from deficits. Each camp has their "just stick to it" reasons; there are many well-meaning people on the internet that are pro-vegan or pro-keto/paleo/carnivore and you have to assume that there is a need to continue getting clicks. There also may be a strong survivorship bias out there... however, the vegan survivorship bias is starting to show cracks (google "Rawvana" for details).

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/

[2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5371748/

Thank you for the thought out comment.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I was asking as a “proof of existence”. Is it possible and what would a plant based keto diet look like. As a curiosity.

I have zero inclination and no interest in meat and/or keto. Thank you though.

"I will have to strongly caution against going long term carnivore or keto, however."

I tend to agree here. Again it gets back to your goals. (Strict) Carnivore and (strict) keto are great tools to achieve your diet/fitness goals, but I don't really consider these diets in their strict form to be "maintenance" diets. Once you achieve your goals I would relax things and reintroduce more diversity of foods. On the other hand, if keto/carnivore is the only thing that seems to work for you, I'd keep doing it and just listen carefully to your body.

"Regardless of the quality of your meat products, animals still have metabolic processes that concentrate toxins, especially higher in the food chain."

I recommend eating primarily ruminants (cattle, bison, sheep, goats, deer, moose, etc.) and small fish / shellfish. With regard to ruminants, these animals are plant-eating herbivores and are on the bottom of the food-chain-- they are "predators" of only plants. Biomagnification of toxins is more of an issue for consumption of omnivores (e.g., pig, chicken, dunno... bear meat?) and predators (e.g., tuna, shark, swordfish)-- the animals which eat other animals.

"You need to set your body up for success by giving it a varied diet with nutrients from different kinds of food. ... I am in favor of a balanced diet, a little of everything, mostly plants, and high-quality animal organ meats."

I like this advice very much. I'm not much of a detoxification proponent, I don't think there's much science to support a lot of the kooky practices out there. I think your body is surprisingly good at sequestering and eliminating toxins from your system. If you eat a natural, whole-food and simple/unprocessed diet which is varied (including plant and animal sources), this is going to give you great odds of being metabolically fit and free of toxins. Once you get that down, I'd also be sure to try to address other lifestyle factors such as sleep, stress, exercise, personal connections, etc.

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