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Comment by simplicio | Hacker News Reader

Hence my including "a diet lacking essential vitamins". But nutritional science figured out stuff like "preventing scurvy" pretty well several decades (or in some cases, centuries) ago. It's further attempts to refine diet to promote health that don't seem to have really led to any really actionable results, to the point that it seems worth considering that it might just not be possible.

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Not something proponents of Orthomolecular medicine would agree on. That entire branch exists soly becuase of failure of standard medicine to use required doses. Ignoring those researchers doesn't make entire thing untrue. As an example, vitamin C level for optimal health is vastly higher then vitamin C levels needed to prevent scurvy (which is total meltdown of the organism).

Replacing nutrition science with some quackery is not any better - even quackery supported by one of the fathers of modern medicine.

The metabolism of vitamin C in particular is pretty well understood, and no magical benefits of getting huge doses has ever been proven to have any of the claimed positive effects (despite many prominent supporters' efforts, including Mr Pauling).

okay well eating lots of fruits and vegetables and some meats is a natural step from essential vitamins and minerals actually.

If you don't eat meat, it will be hard to get iron and B12 and carnitine and some other things. It will also be harder to get enough calories.

The amount of most vitamins and minerals you need are easily found in virtually any diet, including eating every day at McDonald's.

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