Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy? (2007) | Hacker News Reader

Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy? (2007)

nytimes.com

56 pointsgwern13 comments

Fairly simple, assuming that a person does not already have specific health problems:

Don't eat processed foods. Eat (very) slowly and enjoy your food.

Get fresh air and exercise. For most people, walking for 20 to 30 minutes a day is probably enough.

Set aside a few times during the day to relax. Possible activities: hike, meditation, hammock time, etc.

about processed foods: what is that? does processing begin with soil treatment? with how we cultivate plants? treat animals? isnt that also part of the process? i think we could design great processes for even greater processed foods, but our current food processing processes suck, since they are optimised for fast profit and nothing else. so i agree to better avoid it. even genetic technology could be used for great benefit, but its currently used mostly for short term cash and farmer enslavement. in general food production and processing need to be a lot more localised and be freed of any market pressure, like tap water is.

The problem with processed foods is allegedly high energy density combined with low satiety. So generally anything that involves a refining process. In other words it isn't about processed foods but refined foods.

Sugar, extracts, refined flour, that sort of thing.

Also a lot of bad stuff can be put in when food is refined.

Just take Mashed Potatoes. Should be simple - just potatoes. Ingredients of Betty Crocker Potato Buds "Potatoes, Mono And Diglycerides (To Improve Texture), Freshness Protected By Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Sodium Bisulfite And Citric Acid. Dried."

Another example, Edy's Slow Churned Light French Silk Ice cream has "Non-Fat Milk, Sugar, Cream, Chocolaty Chips (Sugar, Coconut Oil, Cocoa Processed With Alkali [Dutched Cocoa], Fractionated Palm Kernel Oil, Cocoa, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Natural Flavor), Corn Syrup, Cocoa Processed With Alkali (Dutched Cocoa), Whey Protein, Molasses, Buttermilk Powder, Soy Protein, Acacia Gum, Nonfat Dry Milk, Guar Gum, Carrageenan, Carob Bean Gum, Natural Flavor, Salt, Natural Flavors (Including Malt Extract), Xantham Gum, Caramel Color." Who knows what all those are?

Where possible I make my own food from scratch. (Within reason - I don't milk my own cows, or spend hours making custom bread or pasta)

"I can't pronounce these ingredients" doesn't mean they are bad for you. "Cocoa Processed With Alkali" is, as the list notes, a technical name for "Dutched Chocolate". Carrageenan is from seaweed. Guar gum is a ground bean. And so forth.

Sure. In any given case, they may or may not be bad for you. But in accepting processed foods over home grown, you are taking on faith that the provider shares your values. (Would they add more sugar and salt than you would to improve taste? Would they put in additives you wouldn't, and hide them under funny names?)

I'm not an off-the-reservation eat everything raw person, but I am skeptical that most managers would make food less addictive to make it healthier. There are exceptions, but this is one of the negative aspects of a market economy.

This quote is the part you should take away with you, I think. It's great advice. The rest of the article consists of largely the standard anecdotes on how long it takes the scientific community to really do a decent job of evaluating complex proposals in complex systems, and how that timing interacts poorly with the entirely admirable urge to get something done by deploying applications of scientific findings that might do some good in the world:

"So how should we respond the next time we’re asked to believe that an association implies a cause and effect, that some medication or some facet of our diet or lifestyle is either killing us or making us healthier? We can fall back on several guiding principles, these skeptical epidemiologists say. One is to assume that the first report of an association is incorrect or meaningless, no matter how big that association might be. After all, it’s the first claim in any scientific endeavor that is most likely to be wrong. Only after that report is made public will the authors have the opportunity to be informed by their peers of all the many ways that they might have simply misinterpreted what they saw. The regrettable reality, of course, is that it’s this first report that is most newsworthy. So be skeptical.

"If the association appears consistently in study after study, population after population, but is small — in the range of tens of percent — then doubt it. For the individual, such small associations, even if real, will have only minor effects or no effect on overall health or risk of disease. They can have enormous public-health implications, but they’re also small enough to be treated with suspicion until a clinical trial demonstrates their validity."

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From something I wrote a while back:

"The scientific method is the greatest of inventions: when used to organize and analyze the flawed output of we flawed humans, it leads to truth and discovery. It is how we sift the gems of progress from the rubble of short-sighted human nature, magical thinking, willful ignorance, and other self-sabotaging but entirely natural behaviors.

"The scientific community doesn't produce an output of nice, neat tablets of truth, pronouncements come down from the mountain, however. It produces theories that are then backed by varying weights of evidence: a theory with a lot of support stands until deposed by new results. But it's not that neat in practice either. The array of theories presently in the making is a vastly complex and shifting edifice of debate, contradictory research results, and opinion. You might compare the output of the scientific community in this sense with the output of a financial market: a staggeringly varied torrent of data that is confusing and overwhelming to the layperson, but which - when considered in aggregate - more clearly shows the way to someone who has learned to read the ticker tape.

"So how do you read the output of the research community for a particular topic of interest? Firstly you have to recognize that the output of any single researcher is meaningless when considered in isolation. At least a good half of the results produced by scientists are in some way flawed. That is par for the course when working at the cutting edge of new knowledge, and no slur upon the hard work of those involved - they know the odds. The high failure rate of risky ventures like scientific research is why we need the scientific method to weed out those failed results as time progresses and new results emerge. So when you read up on a topic of current research, you need to read around the subject: dig in to various sources, find the work of multiple scientific groups, and assess the support for different theories and interpretations."

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In terms of evidence for greater health nothing comes close to the twin mountains of data in support of calorie restriction and regular moderate exercise. If you are doing other things in the hopes of health without covering those two line items, then you really have to accept that you're not taking the best, most proven path.

Well, actually that's a complete lie. There is one thing that exceeds both of those items, and that is progress in medical science towards better treatments. The faster that goes the better off you are - so you should also put in time and energy to helping that happen. As you get older the calorie restriction and exercise fade as determinants of health in comparison to the present state of medical technology, and thus it becomes ever more important that you helped back in the day, giving your contribution a chance to snowball in effect.

Our way of life determines it.

I grew up in an Island in Greece, far away from polution and no way near fast food. I was eating things coming straight from the nature. Even when I needed meat it would be slaughtered the same day...

I moved to a big city. I can see how my fitness has changed a bit with the heavier breathing and the different hours plus the way that the eye cannot see beyond a certain block. Although I haven't adopted fast food life I can say that the things I prementioned have changed my fitness and peace of mind as well.

I wouldn't like my kids to grow up here.

I've been on a Ketogenic diet for 3 months now, lost almost 24 lbs. It's by far the best lifehack I've ever heard of.

I downvoted you because keto really has nothing to do with this article besides the association with its author, and tends to be an inflammatory topic.

Same, 6 months here and 45 lbs (255 to 210). I don't stay on it for the weight loss anymore, but rather because I feel great.

A thorough debunking of Gary Taubes

http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/gf8zy/a_thorough_de...

I think you mean a debunking of Taubes's insulin theory, which I've been convinced for a few years now is rubbish.

However, the posted article doesn't mention the words insulin or "carb" at all and it's a pretty interesting article about epidemiology. Taubes's GCBC ended with some ridiculous speculations about carbohydrates, but there was some solid stuff in there about the history of nutritional science and how we ended up demonizing dietary fat.

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