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Comment by buzzerbetrayed | Hacker News Reader

Oh boy. Now we’re entering the fiber era. We’re just leaving the protein era. Before that it was the intermittent fasting era. Before that it was the keto era. The low fat era was probably a few before that.

I hear about fiber constantly all of the sudden. You might be right about it, but how do we know it’s different than. All the past nutrition tends?

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I'm in my 50s and I've been hearing about the benefits of fibre pretty much all my life. I doubt it's some sort of diet fad.

Idk about cholesterol, fiber is well known to be very healthy. Same for protein.

Losing body fat will often have the biggest impact by far if one is overweight, though. It also stabilizes blood sugar and has a lot of benefits in general.

Before manufactured insulin shots, the treatment for diabetes was a multi-day oatmeal fast. This has been around for many decades. The only thing that's changed is that you are finally hearing about it.

It is funny how you can break diet/nutrition into generations like this.

I think the trends are a reflection of poor education. Fiber/protein/whatever being important components of a diet isn't new information. But the information is new to folks that never had nutrition explained to them.

I feel like we're due for something really ridiculous next. I've been paying attention to macros, fibre, salt, and having a reasonably varied diet for years; we've done salt, fat, carbs, protein, and now we're doing fibre.

"Eat a varied diet" seems boring but maybe those influencers selling pills made from 500 vegetables were ahead of the curve all along.

It would probably be better to just eat all those different vegetables as part of actual meals to get a varied diet, rather than in pill form.

I was under the impression that more protein and less salt/fat/carbs are still kinda the trend? If more fiber gets added to the mix I guess it is essentially telling people to eat more plants, thus leading to more varied diets overall.

> I was under the impression that more protein and less salt/fat/carbs are still kinda the trend?

kinda sorta. The low-carb, higher-protein diet is standard diet advice for T2D, and even more so if on a GLP-1 drug to reduce muscle loss.

I heard about fiber for the last 30 years. But I'm also not American.

Heard about fiber all my life, but also went in school in Europe.

Because the trends are bullshit and nutrition is just not that complicated.

The trends are a strange type of nutrition entertainment for people to read and then ignore in practice. There is some kind of psychological comfort in the knowing you can switch to oatmeal next week while gorging yourself at the Cheesecake Factory.

Oatmeal is good for you. News at a 11. We have known this for at least that last 50 years.

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