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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

What's missing in this article is mention of actual scientific evidence. I can believe that traditional nutritional recommendations are on flimsy ground, but replacing them with new cargo-cult ideas isn't necessarily better. Do these newer recommendations have good science behind them? My lurker experiences in /r/fitness are quite mixed; they seem like nice people, but the specific diet plans are very heavy on anecdotal evidence, with people professing very high confidence in recommendations relative to how much evidence there is (if anything, it reminds me of alternative-medicine communities). They're also a bit too focused for my interests on bodybuilding/image/etc. rather than measurable health outcomes, e.g. reduction in heart-attack or diabetes risk rather than muscle definition.

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Far from alternative medicine. The beliefs touted by /r/fitness, such as intermittent fasting, increased protein consumption (many times more than the FDA recommendation), progressive load resistance training, and NOT focusing on cardio for weight loss are highly researched. The leaders of the /r/fitness community are incredibly well-versed in science and there are extremely intelligent debates that take place on /r/ fitness. The problem is that these concepts rarely make it to the mainstream on their own.

There's lot of links to the research, but this wasn't the appropriate article to include them. :)

Yeah, lots of broscience there. There are other communities where people actually are looking at the scientific literature and testing hypotheses on themselves. I think the fitness stack exchange is closer to that.

That was my methodology for fixing my condition that I was told was incurable. I looked at pubmed for any study at all on the condition, even animal studies. And if there was anything promising that was not dangerous to do, I tried it.

Have you actually looked at fittit? A lot of the most vocal and active contributors and moderators are credentialled to hell and back.

Silverhydra, for example, is considered a minor deity thereabouts. He's a registered dietitian, an amateur bodybuilder and is the co-founder of examine.com, for which he reads literally dozens of studies per month.

> He's a registered dietitian, an amateur bodybuilder and is the co-founder of examine.com, for which he reads literally dozens of studies per month.

I am not amused by this. So he reads a dozen papers per month? That's not good... that's just terrible. Is there anyone that reads a more healthy amount?

And you read more? Less? Your qualifications to opine are?

Well, yes, I do like to read more than that. But I am not selling myself off as an expert on nutrition or whatever? I'd rather find someone who reads more, so that I can avoid the garbage.

Mate.

He's not "selling himself" as an expert in nutrition.

He is an expert in nutrition.

I'm actually thankful for the focus on near-term goals rather than living to 75 instead of 70.

I don't mind that people are interested in bodybuilding/fitness, but if it's positioned as a replacement for traditional nutritional science, that's not the main goal of nutritional science. And personally it's not my interest: I don't really care about bodybuilding/fitness, but I do care about minimizing my risk of serious health problems. It's not clear to me that the two goals even result in the same recommendations; it's quite possible that there are diets that are good for short/medium-term muscle building which are not good for, say, long-term organ health. At least, I would want to see scientific evidence one way or another.

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