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Comment by palish | Hacker News Reader

Thank you. It's so rare nowadays to find someone willing to give perfectly honest feedback, like "your posture sucks, and you look sleepy". I didn't realize hair quality might be linked to nutrition. Also, I appreciate how much work you put into your reply.

Do you have any thoughts on using Crystal Light to make water taste less terrible?

Someday, when I have more than $1k of savings, I hope to live in a nice rental house with a garden in the back. What all foods do you grow?

As they say: cheers!

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>Do you have any thoughts on using Crystal Light to make water taste less terrible?

Water tastes fantastic. It's sweet. An all-soda-and-mcsquats' diet has killed your taste buds, so anything that isn't loaded with sugar and salt (never mind the Coke, your McChicken has a crazy amount of added sugar) will taste bland to you. Cut the crap out of your diet, and the good stuff will taste good again.

Now, all of this is modulo your local water supply. Here in Vancouver our water tastes great, but we're lucky. You might not be in the same boat. Try grabbing a brita water filter and keep it full, in the fridge.

As for grown foods: tomatoes are great and easy to grow. If you have sun, blackberries are literally weeds and will take care of themselves. Carrots and potatoes are the same way. You should always have some chives growing somewhere; they add delicious flavour to most things. Lettuces and cabbages are fairly easy, but you have to keep slugs and whatnot away or they'll eat them before you get the chance. Same deal with spinach. Peas and beans are pretty easy to grow, although you'll need a lattice. Cucumbers and zucchini are easy to grow, as well. Note, that is in no way an endorsement of zucchini. I don't advocate it's consumption; I'm just pointing out that it's easy to grow.

Could you explain that comment about zucchinis? I can't find any information about why one wouldn't recommend its consumption.

Pretty sure that was a joke regarding his personal aversion to zucchini.

Not sure what the OP was talking about, but I won't touch them because they're completely lacking in flavor!

Your doin' it wrong. Zucchini is a fantastic filling and flavor carrier. It loves spices, olive oil, onions, tomatoes and what have you.

Thus it should be used as something that adds volume and takes on flavor of other ingredients.

I used to dislike zucchinis too - since people putting them on my plate didn't have a proper idea of how to use them. But once you use it as Lord intended them to be used, they are THE fruit. Zucchinis are in fact my favorite fruit.

That makes it sound a whole lot like tofu, which is another "food" that should be avoided by anyone who isn't a culinary masochist.

No, tofu tastes like nothing unless you saturate it with marinade or something.

Courgette actually has flavour. But just like white mushrooms, they'll be (nearly) flavourless chunks if you just throw them in a sauce and practically boil them instead of frying.

You need to fry them, get them just slightly brown on the edges to get the flavour out.

I had some off the BBQ yesterday and I was amazed how delicious they were. Cut them in long strips, bit of olive oil, and grill them. Season with a tiny bit of pepper and salt.

Then, maybe your courgettes are flavourless, it can very well be. It's like that with tomatoes over here, and then I get to Italy and mmm

TL;DR: Yeah, changing your diet is going to feel like you're eating stuff you don't enjoy. Just try to stick to your convictions and give it a month or so, you're very likely to find your tastes change in response to your diet change.

"Water tastes fantastic. It's sweet. An all-soda-and-mcsquats' diet has killed your taste buds, so anything that isn't loaded with sugar and salt (never mind the Coke, your McChicken has a crazy amount of added sugar) will taste bland to you. Cut the crap out of your diet, and the good stuff will taste good again."

This is _so_ true.

I'm still fighting a battle with my own brain which I've been fighting (on and off) for 5 or 10 years now.

I don't actually like french fries, but my brain keeps tricking me into eating them. I spent so much of my life eating them that the smell, their appearance on a menu, even sometimes just the idea of fries; triggers incredibly strong desires to buy and eat them.

If I resist those desires for 3 or 4 weeks, then "give in" and eat some, they're incredibly disappointing - they strike me as slimy/oily salty mush with an unappealing flavour and leave me with an unsatisfying heavy feeling in my gut. This (sometimes) makes it really easy for me to only eat a few, then not buy any again for quite a long time.

But for some reason, my brain retains the "OMG! Fries! I want some!" memories _way_ more strongly than the "Oh, actually they're not very nice..." ones. And it's _so_ easy (for me) to drop back into the habit of eating them, and once I've eaten just half a serve or so, the unpleasant oilyness and flavour somehow doesn't affect me any more. Then I need to struggle through the 3 or 4 weeks of denying myself something I'm strongly convinced I really want to eat again.

The same for sodas - though it's easier for me to (more or less healthily) work around the soda-desire by buying diet soda instead of sugar (of hfcs) laden soda... (which just leave me open to the problems with chemical sweeteners, but for now I'm writing that down as less of a concern than the sugar/calories of regular soda).

At a guess, I strongly suspect the "fast food industry"'s manipulation of fat, sugar, and salt levels; is very strongly targeted at manipulating our tastes and desires to make us think we enjoy their version of "food" over what food really tastes like.

On the positive side, over ~10 years I've managed to get from a high of ~130kg (285lb) down to a fairly consistent 92kg (202lb) - I'm still "overweight", but I've settled on a diet/lifestyle that's a lot healthier than I had a decade ago. I need to "get fit" now, if I can incorporate some proper exercise into my lifestyle, I'm pretty sure I will be able to drop the next 10-15kg to get down to the 75-80kg (165-175lb) that the health industry says is "normal" for my height... (This is also something I've had many more or less successful false-starts at, I manage to get into the habit of walking for 40min to an hour 3 or 4 times a week, and keep it up for a few weeks or months, but then something interrupts the habit and I have to struggle with myself to start it up again...)

I have the same problem as palish: I want my water to taste like something :) (and we do have some excellent water here).

My brain does want me to eat fries and salty stuff, too.

I managed to go down to about 200 lb which is still overweight (and in my country it IS considered overweight, like palish would be as well), I'd like to go down to 75-80 kg as well but I work 12 hs and study 4 (Master's degree, plus it kills my entire weekend). I managed to go down 10 kg in 2 months with a diet of about 1000 calories, but it was killing me (I've since regained 8 of the 10 kgs).

Food did start to taste better at the end of that diet, but I still love the sugary and salty unhealthy stuff.

Thanks for the post and the entire discussion.

AFAIK - Crystal Light at worst, has a lot of same stuff as sodas, minus the sugar. Which is already a substantial improvement. I don't know what the tap water quality in your area is - but it could very well be bad. However there might be ways of getting a good, cheap water supply if you are in mountainous areas. Id recommend that you stick to pure water if possible - otherwise do what it takes (you might even buy bottled water - but note that in some scenarios bottled watter is worse than tap water - I am super lucky here again, since I live in alpine area where water supply is abundant and of extreme quality).

Regarding vegetables: Onions, garlic, potatoes (early variety), cucumber, cabbage, green beans (we buy dry beans in bulk), beet root, tomatoes and pumpkins. I grow various medicinal herbs and spices. Of fruit I have some grapes, apples, plums and raspberries. Its all just standard central European crops really.

With this capacity we are able to satisfy all vegetable requirements for a family of 5 from late April till late autumn. You should plant various strains of lettuce and green-beans so you have a constant supply over whole season.

Hope you will be able to grow your own food someday.

I can't take a look at your photo right now, but in general "healthy" mainly equates to two things: looking alert, and looking like this- http://www.daviddarling.info/images/muscles_human_body_front...

There are of course many variables- body builders are not necessarily healthy, and neither are people on speed- but when you are healthy, you feel bright and sharp, and you look bright and sharp, and your skin does not hide your muscles.

Look at the image I linked to. Consider yourself. Every place on your body you cannot see the crease formed by two muscles next to each other, is a deposit of fat. The key to this is, nowadays if your proportions are correct (no huge belly, etc) you are seen as "in good shape"- but in reality, many people "in good shape" are hiding a lot of fat on the surface of their body, and no-one realizes it because we have lost touch with what muscles really look like.

P.S. skin quality is another, lesser factor that falls in with hair quality. Truly healthy skin is smooth, supple and elastic, almost like velvet or thin high-quality well-oiled leather drawn tight over your frame. Skin products will not get you this, only regular exercise and a good diet.

I will say that I used to drink coke/sodas regularly and was consuming too much sugar and was in the same boat as you that water was not satisfying enough unless I just got done exercising. As other posters have said, this is your body adapting to your diet, but not in a good way. You can train your body to crave the good stuff and mostly intollerate the bad, but it is through slow, daily changes. Don't expect to just stop drinking soda and drinking water as you will start craving it and going back to it. Instead you need to slowly swap good for bad and over time you will naturally desire good choices which will help you avoid any damage you are doing while you are young which you will certainly pay for in the future.

I think most of us were invincible at one time, but we come to realize it is an illusion as we get older and your older self has to pay for it. Also, keep in mind that you really are what you eat, or from a programmer point of view, your results are only as good as your data(i.e. "Junk in, junk out"). Cokes and McChickens are just chemicals and preservatives.

Not sure where you live, but near where I used to live we had this: http://www.waterspring.com/ (we now have similar ones nearby, but this one was the best we've used).

It's basically massively filtered, recycled tap water that tastes better than bottled spring water, and at about $0.25 a gallon, it costs a few dollars a month per person for a much better taste.

>Do you have any thoughts on using Crystal Light to make water taste less terrible?

I suggest tea. Herbal for when you don't want caffeine.

> Do you have any thoughts on using Crystal Light to make water taste less terrible?

That's the zero calorie flavoured carbonized spring water, right? I'd guess it's definitely a step up from soda :) Artificial sweeteners may (or may not) be questionable, but my intuition (not research, sorry) says their health effects should be rather small in comparison to the huge effects of generally healthy eating and skipping sodas.

Additionally, water tastes terrible depending on where you are. I found that places such as Turkey, Spain or New York are horrible cause the water is heavily chlorinated. Other places may not be chlorinated (rare) or just well below the taste threshold. In addition there can be many other factors that can give tap water an "off" flavour. I'm lucky that my tap water tastes great (can't tell a difference with bottled water--which I consequently only ever buy when I'm on the road and I need water, in a bottle :) ). One time when I was in the US though, somebody brought a decanter (?) with a built-in activated charcoal filter, and I was amazed, the previously slightly-off slightly-chlorinated tap water tasted great!! [additionally you keep the decanter in the fridge so it's chilled]

In case you find just water too boring, squeeze a few drops of lemon or lime in it. Or even better--and this is absolutely great--crush a few fresh mint leaves in your decanter (or bottle), sooo subtle, but definitely no longer "just water".

One thing, the other guy said beans, rice, pasta, potatoes, nuts, vegetables and dairy should be the staple of your food. That's correct, though I'd try to focus on the nuts vegetables and dairy, don't go overboard on the starches. And if possible, get whole-grain rice and whole-grain pasta. It does taste different, but it's a world of difference for your body, the "white" version is just simple starches that get converted to sugar very quickly (which is why athletes eat it), whereas the "whole" version is much slower, and the fibers are good for pooping. It's the difference between healthy food that probably still makes you gain some weight and food that doesn't.

Additionally, I read that dairy isn't particularly healthy or unhealthy and that skimmed versus whole-fat hardly makes any difference whatsoever. So if you like it, go ahead. Oh except yoghurt. It's got those probiotic beasties in them, which is extra plus good for you. I suggest you try and find some nice 10%+ fat Greek yoghurt and try a few spoons just plain. The really fat stuff is actually pretty damn good.

And I think somebody already mentioned it, but in terms of sugar content, 100% fruit juices are nearly just as bad as sodas. Real shame, that, I used to think they were healthy :) I still like a glass of OJ before breakfast though.

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