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Comment by TrainedMonkey | Hacker News Reader

"Yes, Pearson conceded, "there is not enough evidence to be firm about [healthy eating] guidelines", but no, the findings "did not change the advice that eating too much fat is harmful for the heart". Saturated fat reduction, he said, was just one factor we should consider as part of a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle."

So, pretty much get a balanced diet and do not overeat.

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Except that "balanced diet" means absolutely nothing. It's just begging the question, because the balance is the whole thing we're trying to figure out.

Should saturated fat make up 1% or 30% of your calories? Should processed carbs and/or high-starch vegetables make up 5% or 50% of your calories? Should meat make up 0%, 10%, 40%, or 80% of your calories?

(Because remember, vegetables like broccoli, kale, tomatoes, carrots, and so on, while they provide essential nutrients, don't contribute meaningfully to your calorie intake.)

You might want to say, well, just put everything between 20-40%, isn't that balanced? But we used to think that trans fats were part of a balanced diet, a healthy replacement for saturated fats. Now we realize they're basically poison. Some people are coming to the same realization about processed carbs, high-starch vegetables like modern varieties of potato, and sugar.

I know that saying "well, just eat a balanced diet" is the most common response to new nutritional research. But it's actually a harmful attitude, because it trivializes what is arguably the most important public health issue today in America.

> Except that "balanced diet" means absolutely nothing.

I feel like it means to simply eat food in moderation. People who are severely obese aren't obese because they eat slightly too much saturated fat or eat a few extra potato chips beyond the recommended serving. Who otherwise have great diets except for a mixup here and there with their ratios.

We're talking about many people who have seriously unhealthy eating habits that are extremely high in things like saturated fat, sugar and sodium. We're not talking about people who are eating 30% of their calories from fat when it should be 20%, we're talking about people who are absolutely blowing the recommended daily limits for fat and sugar out of the water by crushing soft drinks and making junk food a huge portion of their diet.

But what foods and in what ratios. That is the central question. Severely obese people already know the answer (put less everything into the hole in the middle of their face). For the rest of us, we have to decide (as above), what to eat and in what ratios, and if we should worry about our LDL and HDL cholesterol scores on our annual bloodwork. Also, I wonder if the science relating those to heart disease is any more sound than the science saying salt is bad (only true for chf / high blood pressure / a few other cases), etc.

My point is that the "health crisis" people are talking about has nothing to do with the rest of us. If you take those with extreme diets out of the equation, there is no health crisis. There's just people who are generally healthy wringing their hands over whether to have 2 slices or 3 slices of bacon, wondering if they are getting that perfect ratio in their diet. At which point I'm not sure it's worth the mental stress to be worrying about such things.

Some things aren't within our control. There are people who will surely get their ratios "perfect" (whatever perfect is) and still die an early death of heart disease because of their genetics.

well, if cholesterol is linked to heart disease, and if that can be effectively reduced via diet, it's probably worth our while to care, especially in your 30s on while you can still affect change

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

To add context to this comment, it comes from Michael Pollan, who coined it in the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma".

http://michaelpollan.com/books/the-omnivores-dilemma/

Also recommend his other book, In Defense of Food.

Like most diet advice that's still way to simplistic.

Eat a wide range of minimally processed foods avoiding anything your allergic to. Eat animals not just fat and meat. Things like brains, bone marrow, intestines, cartilage, and liver are all part of a nutritious diet. Again, eat most of the plant not just the most high energy parts. But also a wide range of plants and plant types potato's, rice, soy, and grains are just the tip of the iceberg.

Remember if your not starving you don't need to focus on maximizing energy consumption.

> Like most diet advice that's still way too simplistic.

It's not. It's minimalistic, it's insufficient, but it is in no way misleading: following this advice is invariably better than not following it. Your criticism doesn't disagree in any way.

Are you sure you replied to the right comment? Ninja edit, maybe?

Try telling that to a Tibetan or an Inuit, they would starve to death.

What's "ok" to eat can depend on your ancestry. It makes no sense to point at different populations and say "it must be ok since they're doing it".

Who said anything about ancestry? The developed western world bias on HN is disturbing.

What you eat depends on what you can get from the land you live in. You can't grow much above 4,000 meters or near the arctic, obviously. Indians are mostly vegetarian because you can grow alot in India, the much of the rest of the world isn't so lucky (I always crave veggies whenever I tour in high country because they are so unavailable).

"What you eat depends on what you can get from the land you live in."

yes... and so different groups of people were under different pressures. So when oneeyedpigeon said "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.", and you responded mentioning the Inuits, I decided to remind you that that's not relevant. You haven't made a counterargument to the claim that you should be eating mostly plants. A given person's ancestors were probably not under the same sort of pressure to consume meats.

> Indians are mostly vegetarian because you can grow alot in India

"mostly"? I would love to know where this statistic was pulled from? Personal experience living in India for 5 years suggests that only Brahmin Hindus and a few other castes are purely vegetarian. Every one else eats meat albeit not as frequently as Americans. Wikipedia stats suggests 20-40% (a huge variance).

As in, Indian food is mostly vegetarian, not that most Indian people are strict vegetarians.

When I was working in Delhi, the office canteen offer only veg food 4 days a week, with an optional meat item for a small surcharge on Fridays only. Down south, 100% veg food in restaurants is pretty much the rule, not the exception, although it's not hard to find fish/meat if you look.

Also, a good Indian friend of mine is nearly 100% vegetarian, except that every now and then he gets a craving for a cheeseburger. That's "mostly vegetarian" in my book.

...and getting back to the health thing, it's kind of striking how many obese Indians are Brahmins, who may keep veg but like to slather everything in ghee (clarified butter).

> ...and getting back to the health thing, it's kind of striking how many obese Indians are Brahmins, who may keep veg but like to slather everything in ghee (clarified butter).

Vegetarianism != Healthy. A diet high in protein/fat doesn't necessarily have a causal link with weight increase. The problem is eating beyond what your BMR/TDEE is. A large portion of Indian food is calorifically rich, e.g. bowls of rice and flat breads.

Even Indians who eat meat still eat a lot of (and probably more) veggies. I didn't say "most indians were vegetarians."

The semantics police are out in full force today :) BTW, The Microsoft cafeteria in Bangalore is pure veg.

I've read that Inuit have a larger liver. I wonder if this is a case of genetics or if increasing the percent of meat in your diet leads to a larger liver.

Agriculture is a recent invention, only about 10kya old, and many cultures never adopted it for various reasons. It makes sense that evolution has had a bit of time to work its random magic on plant eaters.

You mean mostly meat and some plants.

Health aside, for reasons of sustainability, I think that's a bad idea.

> sustainability, I think that's a bad idea.

Does not look like it. Humanity and Meat production have scaled pretty well in the 20th century. And we have way less food shortages that we have ever had before.

Once health is aside, so is sustainability.

No, while the length of the human lifespan consuming a certain product might be reduced the environmental impact that the person's diet had remains. Meat production has very real environmental impacts.[1]

Switching to a vegetarian diet, or even to a meat that consumes less resources to produce[3], drastically reduces one's environmental impact.[2]

Meat consumption also has direct fiscal impacts by way of the increased cost of treatment for those that consume meat.

If the price of grain increases because of an increased demand for meat then the world's poor will be the ones most negatively impacted.[4]

Disclaimer: I currently consume all forms of meat, including beef.

[1] https://woods.stanford.edu/environmental-venture-projects/co...

[2] http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS09-05.pdf

[3] http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-80...

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.htm...

I see that you are convinced that meat consumption is detrimental to health.

Also health and lifespan are not the same thing.

My post was addressed at your claim that "Once health is aside, so is sustainability."

I believe that I it made clear that this is not the case. Your view is myopic and selfish, as it ignores the very real effects that a meat-eater diet has on other humans and the environment.

I did not imply that health and lifespan are the same, and I even addressed them separately.

My beliefs are based in well-documented evidence. Eating meat has a strong positive correlation with increased healthcare costs.[1] Whether or not meat has a negative impact on health only has a bearing on the costs of healthcare for meat-eaters, which is a minor point that I mentioned as an aside. It does not have a bearing on the environmental impacts of a meat-eater diet.

You are nitpicking minor details of my post. Perhaps instead of vaguely implying that I'm mistaken you should produce evidence that contradicts me.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2012/03/12/bad-news-...

Where would you rank eating meat in the order of negative effects humans have on one another and the environment?

Is it above or below overpopulation?

Also bad for health.

No. Nobody means mostly meat.

Aside from, you know, those that do. Like the Inuit. According sourced material via Wikipedia, due to the complete and utter lack of any formal agriculture, "[t]raditional Inuit diets derive approximately 50% of their calories from fat, 30-35% from protein and 15-20% of their calories from carbohydrates, largely in the form of glycogen from the raw meat they consumed." Tubers, berries, seaweed and the like make up very little of their diet.

From the intro on Wikipedia: According to Edmund Searles in his article "Food and the Making of Modern Inuit Identities," they consume this type of diet because a mostly meat diet is "effective in keeping the body warm, making the body strong, keeping the body fit, and even making that body healthy".

So a diet of mostly wild caught raw meat. Sounds totally doable.

> Eat food.

Question begging.

> Not too much.

Question begging.

> Mostly plants.

Actual recommendation, although vague and unsupported.

If you read Pollan's actual formulation, he deconstructs it further:

• Eat food: real, minimally processed produce, grains, or meats. As opposed to highly-processed, vaguely food-like substances.

• Not too much: addresses the point that, at least as concerns obesity, quantity is crucial. So get that quantity right.

• Mostly plants: here arguments vary, but Pollan's big on vegetables (less so grains and such), and the complex compounds, many apparently helpful, they provide.

His books are quite a delight to read. I recommend them strongly.

It's a quote. That makes perfect sense. Give it a rest.

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