Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
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.
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?
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).
"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).
The semantics police are out in full force today :) BTW, The Microsoft cafeteria in Bangalore is pure veg.
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).
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.
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.
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".
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...
Also health and lifespan are not the same thing.
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-...
Is it above or below overpopulation?
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.
Question begging.
> Not too much.
Question begging.
> Mostly plants.
Actual recommendation, although vague and unsupported.
• 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.