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It occurs to me that this “exactly balanced proportion” argument doesn’t explain how animals turn vegetables into the meat you crave. The argument would dictate that cows should be fed meat, which regresses into absurdity.

Most people should probably cook their own food, avoid most ultra-processed foods (twinkies, not flour) and eat a healthy balance of food types.

Cows have huge digestive system, and chew all day long — to be able to extract nutrients from plants. You, as a human, probably have more productive uses of your day.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't eat veggies. I am just saying that staying long-term healthy on a vegan diet seems to me much more complicated than just eating meat. Of course, eating a single product all the time is unhealthy, no matter what product — every living organism requires variance.

> You, as a human, probably have more productive uses of your day.

Much like a cow, I don't think about my digestive system -- I let the parasympathetic system take care of that :-)

> Of course, eating a single product all the time is unhealthy, no matter what product — every living organism requires variance.

This is a very different statement than "the simple answer is just fatty meat," which is what you originally claimed.

> This is a very different statement than "the simple answer is just fatty meat," which is what you originally claimed.

It's a different statement, but it's not contradictory. Simple answer is: eat fatty meat. Complex answer is: just like everything in this universe, it depends on many factors, and no single answer is correct in every single context - but eating fatty meat will get you 90% where you want to be for 10% of effort.

We could look at the diet of the species most closely related to us chimps which is mostly fruit nuts, tuberous roots, insects, and opportunisticly meat (about 2%). You could bump the meat up a few percent to avoid bugs or add more nuts/legumes and acheive a healthy diet.

It's a good point. As I understand, it is still debated whether increased meat consumption allowed our bigger brains — though I agree that a balanced and varied diet of natural unprocessed ingredients is likely the healthiest, although not the easiest to maintain, I think.

From a documentary: cows are about 30% carnivore. They grow bacteria in their guts, on low quality food (grass) and then that bacteria gets devoured with the rest of the food when it's pushed in the next stomach (or intestine).

They had a hilarious setup, a cow with a plastic flap attached to the side. They would open the flap to get instant access to the guts of the cow to collect samples of food.

Consuming prokaryotes i.e. bacteria as part isn't the same thing as eating the tissue of animals. By that definition, just about every living animal is a carnivore, which would erase the relevant distinction (eating plants versus animal tissue).

It's the term they used. Also, it's 30%, a significant percent.

This doesn’t pass a basic sniff test. We mostly don’t eat food to replace our physical form. We mostly eat food to fuel the processes of our physical form. Big difference. Like trying to put steel, rubber, and plastic into a car’s gas tank.

If cars were constantly 3d-printing themselves from the inside to replace every single part with a new one every day (as living multi-cellular organisms do), I'm pretty for them consuming other running cars as a source materials would be best (as cars would contain the necessary rubber and steel in proportions that are perfect for cars). You don't even need to consume fuel separately — your car would re-cycle fuel from the consumed car's tank — sorry for continuing your metaphor.

After I posted, I wished I hadn’t added the car metaphor. You’re right that it doesn’t map to the body well. That said, it’s still true that most of what food is doing is fueling activity and not replacing parts of the body. Carbs work really well.

Carbs do work well as a powerful supplement, but as a single source of nutrients, animals are the best.

You can healthily live for years just consuming cow parts (see "carnivore diet" — it works for most).

If one just eat potatoes or some other single plant, most are likely to lose their health in the long run.

This is a hypothesis, but it doesn't bear out in human out come research no matter how popular it might be on social media. No "perfect meal" would be high in saturated fat.

Animal flesh also doesn't contain all of the nutrients. Just plug 2000 calories of steak into Cronometer.com and look.

What's wrong with saturated fats though? You're probably thinking of the same debunked papers which said that sugary cereals are the healthy way to start your day

Well, instead of getting into that, the simpler debunk is that fatty meat only gives you a fraction of your daily nutrition. Even when you add in eggs and dairy.

But only in diet camps (usually "carnivore"/"keto" camps) on social media do people tell you that research on saturated fats is debunked because it condemns the foods they wish to eat. We know that, for example, saturated fat increases apoB concentration in the blood which is independently causal in atherosclerosis.

We have converging lines of metaanalyses that show this connection which is why reducing saturated fat and LDL cholesterol are unanimous guidelines, not social media fringe positions. ;)

> the simpler debunk is that fatty meat only gives you a fraction of your daily nutrition

I have tried the hyped-up "carnivore" diet myself for over 1.5 years and counting (started at a tender age of 35), with different levels of strictness (diary/no diary, no cheat days / once a month / twice a month / once a week), while doing blood tests every month. My wife thought I would die, but I was curious whether I would die, or how quickly my health would deteriorate.

Happy to report that you're wrong (based of my own anecdata), and not only fatty meat (even without diary) does provide enough nutrients and energy, but it noticeably _improves_ the blood work results and _lowers_ blood cholesterol.

> apoB concentration in the blood which is independently causal in atherosclerosis

I am pretty sure you're unintentionally mixing up 'causal' and 'correlated'. Correlation is not causation. For example, atherosclerosis might be causal in in increased apoB concentration, or something else completely might be causal in both atherosclerosis and increased apoB concentration, but apoB concentration by itself could be independent from atherosclerosis, or even inverse causal.

> We have converging lines of metaanalyses that show this connection which is why reducing saturated fat is a unanimous guideline.

If you're a US resident, I'd like to let you know that your newly elected administration is allegedly going to change the unanimous guidelines soon. Not saying whether it's a good or bad thing, just that your argument from authority is much weaker in our discussion than you think it is.

I reject this line of reasoning because by it the best meal is other humans. If you accept that eating other animals is OK and eating fellow humans is bad then you are halfway to the next step, where eating fellow animals is bad and eating non-animals is OK. Just be smart about your diet. Call yourself sapiens not for nothin'!

There is no logic in GP. It's just typical bioscience.

I think you misspelled "broscience"!

I did. Ironically it made the whole comment the opposite of what I meant to say.

To continue this, the next step is eating fellow life is bad and eating non-life is OK. Just use an Instagram filter to recolour your face away from grey.

Define life;)

Tricky! I'll go for "Anything your gut is meant to digest that isn't classed as a vitamin."

Cool! So unless you think your gut is meant to digest conscious beings that feel pain your previous comment is just empty trolling right?

It's meant to digest anything it can digest. Morally I would disagree with someone who says "eat anything but conscious beings" because that would include eating people who are asleep or passed out, or dead.

> It's meant to digest anything it can digest.

So you think your gut is meant to digest human flesh? Fun worldview

> eat anything but conscious beings

"conscious" here means "possessing consciousness" not "conscious right now".

> include eating people who are asleep or passed out, or dead

The point is we eat what we think is acceptable to eat not just any random thing we can digest. Because we have some norms about what is OK to eat. Most norms say eating humans (dead or alive) is bad. Other norms say eating animals is also bad. QED.

> Just be smart about your diet

The original question was about a "meal that provides all the essential nutrients the average person needs to stay healthy over the long term"

The simplest, easiest, and the most correct answer is "just eat animals".

Of course, one can be "smart" about their diet, spend a lot of time on carefully balancing vegetables, fruit, grains and tofu, while also making sure to consume proper blend of vitamin and mineral pills and doing regular blood tests. BUT that's far from a "single meal", far from "easy" and "simple", and consumes a lot of time and mental capacity which many humans might not have a luxury to allocate in order to be fellows with farm animals, I think.

> The original question was about a "meal that provides all the essential nutrients the average person needs to stay healthy over the long term"

> The simplest, easiest, and the most correct answer is "just eat animals".

Stop right there. This is playing switcharoo.

You devised a hypothesis that elegantly goes like "healthiest simplest diet is what is closest to your own body". (And that you used as a justification to eat other animals)

But hey I guess the closest to your body is other humans. So seeing as you now backtrack and are not suggesting humans eat humans, thankfully you understand that the original question implies some norms about what is acceptable and what is unacceptable to eat even if it is contains all you need.

Now you just need to see why growing numbers of people think about eating not only fellow humans but fellow animals who are conscious, feel pain and suffer, especially the ones who grow up for consumption and suffer entire life tortured as unacceptable and you're all set.

In addition there is another "little problem" with your argument and that is that humans don't eat through by absorbing stuff like some sort of amoeba. It goes through complex digestive process that extracts some stuff from other stuff. And a bunch of stuff a human body can/should synthesize. Remember healthy eating is also NOT getting stuff you don't need and synthesize. And if you find the closest thing to what's in your body, that'll be a whole lotta stuff you do not need.

So no "just pick what's the same as your body" is not the most "simple healthy meal". On more than one level. It's just an excuse to justify a existing taste for meat.

That person has backtracked or weakened all of their positions under scrutiny so far.

Okay, maybe a single food source won't give you all your nutrition.

Okay, maybe "just eat fatty meat" is insufficient.

Okay, maybe it's not just the food with the most similar composition that is best.

Average nutrition discourse on social media.

As I mentioned in the other place, I've tried the carnivore diet, and I think you 100% can just eat fatty meat for months (and likely years), and you will feel great, and you blood work will improve.

Am I saying it's what you should do? No, primarily because I am not your mother, and also I don't know your current focuses in life.

I've explained why you shouldn't eat humans here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42611868

As I understood your argument, you primarily don't like the idea of eating animals based on your beliefs, and you would oppose it even if animals were the healthiest food available ever. So I don't think we contradict each other here — I've heard you, and I understand your ethical position.

> And a bunch of stuff a human body can/should synthesize

You're 100% correct here, I am aware of that. For example, if you only eat meat, your body will synthesize glucose which it would be otherwise lacking (which technically means that meat does not contain the "optimal amount" of sugars).

> Remember healthy eating is also NOT getting stuff you don't need and synthesize

And also getting stuff that a body cannot synthesize enough. Like the notorious B vitamin pills that vegans pop like candy.

> It's just an excuse to justify a existing taste for meat

No excuse needed, god (or nature) made cows delicious — what do you think is the reason for that?

> No excuse needed, god (or nature) made cows delicious — what do you think is the reason for that?

Again elegant but broken theory to justify a taste. Have you tried eating cow as it appears in "nature"? Let me know how delicious raw meat is. If you manage to kill it mano el mano as "nature" intended of course ;)

And of course apples are delicious. Beans. Avocado. Nuts.

Stuff can be very bad for you but taste very good. How do you know this is not that case with animals? If you think "god" made them tasty check maybe it was the satan actually? Animal conditions make me think of that guy more;)

The simple healthy meal is not eating animals. Coincidentally not the most tasty by a long shot but taste is subjective and always changes depending on what you get used to

> Like the notorious B vitamin pills that vegans pop like candy

Anecdotal like a lot of this but I take a single 2000mcg B12 pill once per week and have never been deficient in 19 years as a vegan. Once a week is pretty far from popping like candy.

Another commenter already said it; closest to you is other humans, so simple, eat other humans.

Obviously don't do that for two obvious reasons (which I am highlighting just to be technically correct and to entertain ourselves):

1) Socially, not good idea. We are social creatures, and want to be accepted as a part of healthy group of our own species.

2) Eating your own kind more likely to transmit diseases, so less healthy.

Also cows and sheep have 99.99% same chemical composition as you, you don't really need to go that far, and any additional benefits (if any) are below statistical noise, but two downsides above are huge.

Yeah, but you have to go all the way to a farm to find cows and sheep. People are right next door, ready to be eaten.