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Comment by meristohm | Hacker News Reader

Author Bren Smith recommends this in his book Eat Like a Fish. He also recommends eating seaweed and mollusks, and that the water of the eastern seaboard may have been mostly clear due to all the filter-feeders.

My general recommendation is to treat meat like a luxurious delicacy and to instead rely on sprouted seeds (legumes, nuts) and other plant parts for protein, until human population and customs can scale back to a point where the carrying capacity of the land and sea can support not only us but so much other life we share the planet with. Strength and resilience through diversity of species. I'm willing to give up a lot of luxuries for this. At the end of the day it's nice to settle down in a shelter with loved ones, all having eaten enough.

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I always read general recommendation for diets as conditioned under the culture for which the author lives in. Without the cultural aspect, it always sound like telling people in rice eating cultures that they should all shift to wheat because of lower methane emissions (or asking wheat eating cultures to switch to rice because of lower CO2 emissions, both arguments has a point).

I do want to see a cultural change towards seaweed and mollusks on a global scale. Nutrition rich runoff from farms create a lot of damage in oceans, lakes and rivers, and both seaweed and mollusks are great in picking up that excess nutrition. I would also like to see a change towards consuming overpopulated fish. It is a completely cultural phenomenon that we can have both overfishing and fish overpopulations at the same time (usually not the same type of fish).

I would also like to see a return towards using domesticated animals in order to replace combustion. Waste food should be prioritized towards animal feed rather than bio gas. Household animals used to be a common practice, and it allowed people to eat meat with much smaller footprint. Chickens are also excellent lawnmowers that do not operate on fossil fuels.

Agreed most countries don’t appreciate meat like Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. If everyone lived like us the planet would be a lot more healthy and enjoyable.

Ideally Europe would stop farming and restore its forests to an equal percentage of the land as Brazil. Sadly Europe has ignored the environment for millennia and is unwilling to change its ways.

> sprouted seeds (legumes, nuts) and other plant parts for protein

Doing so will drive demand for better diabetes treatments. Managing diabetes is a longer and more nuanced conversation than one can have here. The rule of thumb is that all carbohydrates harm blood glucose control. The best diet is based on your body type. For me (and many others), a low-carb, inulin-rich diet (unprocessed meats, low-starch vegetables) seems to give lower blood glucose increases.

Some claim a low-fat vegan diet will put diabetes into remission, and I'm sure it does for some body types. I can not judge the validity of that claim except that I do not have that body type, and it made my diabetes control significantly worse.

> The rule of thumb is that all carbohydrates harm blood glucose control.

This is untrue. Only simple carbohydrates harm blood glucose control. Complex carbs such as whole grains and fruit aid in it, in part thanks to their fiber. If you have a source that supports your claim, please share it, it must be bleeding edge nutritional science.

I've not seen any research showing that whole-grain carbohydrates have a lower impact on blood glucose than quick carbohydrates. We have only proof by repeated assertion.

My freestyle Libra CGM has recorded the impact of whole-grain products on my body. Whole-grain products consistently spike my blood sugar. 40 g of oatmeal or Bob's Red Mill 10-grain mix will push me up to 100-120 milligrams per deciliter. Whole-wheat pasta, 60g, will push me up about 150-200 mg/dL.

Eating more than 25 g carbs per meal pushes me up beyond 50 mg/dL at the one-hour mark. If I consistently let my blood sugar climb between 75 and 100 mg/dL at the one-hour mark, my fasting blood sugar starts to climb. This is how I learned that low-fat vegan was a bad diet for me. My A1c went from 6 to 7.8 in less than a year.

Too much dietary advice for diabetics is, at best, mythology.

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