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Comment by thenmar | Hacker News Reader

Evidence of fasting having value is interesting, but I wouldn't put much stock in the "wisdom of the ancestors".

Take a look at what Weston Price learned as he traveled around healthy cultures. I'm certainly not implying "everything old is good", but we have adopted an attitude of "they were all stupid", which isn't true. Let's take a look:

  Wisdom: Fat is a good energy source.
  "Science": Fat makes you fat and clogs your arteries.
  Now: Fat is important for regulating satiety and nervous system health.

  Wisdom: Simple carbs and sugar should be very limited.
  "Science": You can eat as much as you want without any problems.
  Now: High glucose and fructose loads are significant players in NAFLD, diabetes, heart disease and dimentia.

  Wisdom: Fermented foods like keifer, sauerkraut, and miso are important parts of the diet.
  "Science": Kill all the bugz!
  Now: Gut biome health may be a significant factor in many physical and mental health problems.

  Wisdom: Regular periods of fasting are good for mind and body.
  "Science": You should eat 6 small meals every day to keep blood sugar even.
  Now: See TFA.

I'm sure I could keep going...

Science has never said you can eat as many simple carbs as you like with no problem.

There have been "scumbag food advertisers" and "unqualified unregistered pseudo nutritionists" who have said that you must not eat any fat at all but that sugar is fine. That's not science.

The current US government nutritional guidelines call for 6-10 servings of grains per day. It is only in the last 10 years that "whole grains" (white flour with a little bran added back) has been added, but the glycemic index of whole grain bread is almost identical to white bread. Grains are the "foundation" of the food pyramid.

We've also been told for 50 years that sugar is metabolically inert, so you "just have to worry about the calories". Sugar is a fine substitute for anything, just look at Snackwells.

The message has been driven home so well that stupid things happen like a mother getting fined for packing a nutritious lunch for her daughter, but not including the all-important "Ritz" food group[1].

1. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/daycare-gives-kids-cr...

By coincidence USG guidelines are also not science, but something that is hammered together with the permission of the food lobies.

The USG guidelines have been well-founded on scientific research.

If you want to argue that the USG guidelines were founded on scientific research that they (or other government branches) paid for, that they've managed to distort the resulting science to the point of destroying it, and that the whole process has been beholden to large food interests and national interests by virtue of the control of the purse strings... be my guest!

It is, however, what the "science" has been for the past 50 years. There has been no other "science". Attempts to pretend otherwise are simply and straight-up revisionist history, now that real science is finally poking through and the science of the past 50 years is not looking all that good. However, it is our moral duty to not pretend that "science" has been right the past 50 years, has been telling us the same things that we are just figuring out now, and it was, just, uh... umm... very very quiet or something?

Has there been simple experiment - take 10000 well sampled people, put them on the guidelines diet for two years and observe the outcomes compared to the general population.

Are you really referencing the US Government's guidelines in the process of arguing how wise our ancestors were compared to today's food science?

You might as well ask Coke and McDonald's about their idea of a food pyramid.

Our ancestors knew exceptionally little about food nutrition. They ate what was naturally available to them, as they had absolutely no alternative. Doing something by default because it's the only option, does not make you wise. Our ancestors were in fact ignorant about nearly anything to do with the properties of food / health / nutrition et al. And they also did incredibly stupid things because of that ignorance, history books are filled with this fact.

Every entry in the food guidelines is backed up by reams of scientific references. If the guidelines are well referenced yet can still say whatever Coke and McDonalds want, how can we call that science?

> Every entry in the food guidelines is backed up by reams of scientific references.

Just because something references science doesn't mean its well grounded in it.

> If the guidelines are well referenced yet can still say whatever Coke and McDonalds want, how can we call that science?

We can't. That's the point -- evaluating the merits of science by looking to policy that references but does not reflect science is invalid on its face.

Yes, they ate what was available to them. For generations upon generations. Those who survived were usually the ones whose bodies could thrive on that diet. The mankind of today are descendants of those people, with their genetics. So while the idea of a "paleo" lifestyle might be a bit too simplistic, it's vastly better than the USG's current guidelines. If you could just remove refined sugars, starches, and fruit juices from the food pyramid, that'd be a fantastic start. Their negatives vastly outweigh their positives. Whole, unadulterated food products seem to be the way to go.

> The current US government nutritional guidelines call for 6-10 servings of grains per day.

US government policy and science aren't exactly the same thing.

These are pretty disingenuous, uncited, and generalized examples. For example, fat has always been fine, excess calories are not. That leads to fatty build-up that does cause serious health issues. The problem is that casuals see 'fat' and equate it with body fat, instead of being focused on what science has been saying saying all along: eat that calories you need and not past that as you'll gain weight. Marketers have used this confuse to sell products, "low fat" craze, but that has never been the staple of nutritional understanding.

Lets also remember even the ones that the "ancients" got right, they got millions wrong, most of which were seriously dangerous. The modern person's appeal to the past is insane to me. I think if you could travel back in time to live in one of those cultures you value so much, you'd see nothing but sickness, death, and other horrible things that would be trivially treated in post-enlightenment societies.

Unfortunately, bullshit like 'ancient wisdom' has become popular of late thus parents not vaccinating their children, a return to extreme/fundamentalist religiosity, and dangerous cargo cult-like beliefs like treating cancer with green tea.

Where do you get from that 'fat has always been fine'? It's been the target of demonization by trendy dietitians for essentially the second half of the 20th century. This article on the subject made it to the top of HN a while ago:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230367840...

I think the point is that "trendy dietitians" != "science"

This is a mischaracterization of the past 30 years. In the 1980s, American's really were told to drastically reduce their fat intake due to a misunderstanding of LDL. It remains recommended to only be 10% of your daily intake of calories -- a statement of the percentage of calories you should eat as fat, not a statement about excess calories, which can be regarded as bad in general regardless of their source. If you look at what took place in the following 30 years since this stance, fat intake has in fact been reduced quite considerably in the United States, yet heart disease has increased. This has nothing to do with worshiping "ancient wisdom", its simply identifying an error science made (which it is allowed to do), and rectifying it without historical revisionism.

There is more involved than just calories. It's surprising that this myth continues to hold, when we understand how differently macronutrients are treated in the body. Calories are a second-order effect: you don't gain weight because you eat too many calories, your body demands more calories because it is hormonally/nutritionally imbalanced and, therefore, shunting energy into fat cells instead of allowing it to be used for energy. And this doesn't get into the fact that a high percentage of chronically ill patients (CVD, diabetes, dimentia) are thin.

Having dealt with being overweight most of my life, I can't help but believe the reason the myth holds on is because it is a way to justify judging fat people as less than skinny people since they just "can't control themselves".

Eat a better macronutrient ratio, and the body responds positively, even for isocaloric diets, whether for weight loss[1] or for maintenance[2]. But, really, isocoloric doesn't mater; what matters is ad libitum eating. Ironically, every study that I've read that compares low carb diets against low fat diets allows ad libitum eating for the low carb but restricts caloric intake for the low fat. Why is that? Even with that constraint, the low carb diets win[3].

1. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2014/04/30/ajcn.113....

2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22735432

3. http://nutrition.stanford.edu/documents/AZ_abstract.pdf (I have a lot of respect for Christopher Gardner. He's a vegetarian who started this study because he believed a vegetarian diet would trounce other diets. It didn't, but he didn't try to game the results. That's an unfortunately rare behavior in nutrition research where so many people seem to be more concerned with proving their idea correct than finding the truth.)

Unfortunately, bullshit like 'ancient wisdom' has become popular of late thus the parents not vaccinating their children, a return to extreme/fundamentalist religiosity, and general dangerous cargo cultness like treating cancer with green tea.

That's a false dichotomy. It is possible to look to ancient practices with an eye towards using those as foundations for research. We didn't do that; instead, we let threw out all of that knowledge, the good and the bad, and we have 100 million sick people in the US and over a billion around the world.

I'm a firm believer that we can find good answers in science, but we are doing a piss-poor job and have been for 50 years. In fact, I'd go so far to see we've done very little nutritional science over the last 50 years; instead, we've done nutritional marketing in white coats. If people are rejecting what nutritional researchers are saying, they have only themselves to blame.

Things have gotten a little better in the last decade, but large organizations like the AHA, ADA, AND, and, of course, the US government, still seem to be stuck following the marketing literature of companies like Conagra and Monsanto rather than the science.

We didn't do that; instead, we let threw out all of that knowledge, the good and the bad, and we have 100 million sick people in the US and over a billion around the world.

I'm not sure what you expected scientists to do. None of the "traditional wisdom" was confirmed as true, it all had to be tested and was considered suspect until such testing had taken place.

On top of that, traditional diets had shortcomings. It's hard to produce enough calories for today's population to survive, without a larger proportion of those calories coming from grains.

Faced with this change in the food landscape, and with faith in traditional wisdoms rightly shaken, nutritionists have been basing their advice on reasoning from first principles, and preliminary results. They got it wrong badly. But at least we were on the path to a better understanding of nutrition. It's been too slow, and nutritionists were not skeptical enough of preliminary results, but lucky us, these are problems science knows how to fix.

GP is not making a very clear argument, but you are piling on a fat helping of hubris.

First you appear to believe the specious nutritional myth that weight gain is a matter of calories in vs calories expended. Of course that appeals to scientifically-minded due to the comforting immutability of the laws of thermodynamics, but it ignores the fact that the human metabolism and satiety mechanisms are extremely complex and powerful. Even if you had a magic meter of all calories going in and out it wouldn't begin to solve our nutritional problems at a society level.

Second, things like the paleo (little p) approach to diet and health are not about "ancient wisdom". It's about the fact that we evolved under certain conditions, and while those conditions were constantly changing, the rate of change accelerated exponentially after industrialization and have completely been completely decimated in the last 60 years (less than one lifespan). While western medicine has made amazing strides in the last century, nutrition is still very much in its blood-letting dark ages. Looking to ancestral lifestyle clues is just good sense given the paltry information we have available. None of that is to poo-poo the scientific evidence we have, but understand that human nutrition is far too complex for nutritional science to yet provide convincing answers.

A lot of folks around here are so quick to look down their nose to people are too "granola" and make seemingly un-scientifically-subtantiated decisions like not eating processed foods or preferring "natural" or "whole" foods. But you know what? In the lack of sufficient knowledge, these hippies are making far smarter decisions than the geek who decides that since we don't have proof we might as well carry on with the average American diet. We pat ourselves on the back for our scientific literacy and rational decision-making, but deep down we are animals subject to the same conditioning and addicted to the same heavily processed foodstuffs which are almost certainly leading to all kinds of nasty health outcomes. We don't want to change our diet not because it's the rational decision, but because it fucking tastes good.

People don't look down their noses at those who say things like "eating food that has been processed less is probably better for you".

People do, rightly, criticise those who claim problems with diet are all fixed with a single thing - paleo! Keto! No HFCS! No carbs!

Also, it's easy to deride calories out : calories in but it is fundamentally true that if a person eats fewer calories than they use they will lose weight. The fact that some people have gut flora that helps them stay thin and others have gut flora that makes it easier to gain weight and other people have a small genetic influence does not stop CO:CI being true, it just means that CO:CI is very hard to follow for some people. Suggesting that those people receive cognitive behaviour therapy and exercise programs along with lifestyle change to help them lose weight is usually met with stiff disagreement about the efficacy of these evidence based interventions.

CO:CI is impossible to follow period. There is simply no way to measure accurately both ends. It might be useful as a tool to some people, but as an objective solution it's just a banal truism with no reproducible path to success.

Other than that, I'm in complete agreement with what you said.

Would you like to continue also mentioning the instances popular "wisdom" was also wrong?

You know what's funny? Before the 1940s, we didn't really have a problem with obesity, heart disease, diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, PCOS, or any number of other diseases tied to diet. The groups that had problems had a diet much like we do today (high in flour and sugar, low in fat) except with less protein.

I'm not saying we can't improve on what was "known", and we can certainly understand the methods of actions. They also got a lot wrong. I'm just looking for a little humility in nutrition science.

So, what did they get wrong?

  Smoking is ok (or, maybe even healthy).
  Exercise is unhealthy[1].
  Making dinner after wiping away black plague puss w/o washing hands is OK.

1. Ironically, the alternative of too much exercise may be unhealthy as well.

I am quite sure the list can be at least as long as the one with items popular wisdom got right.

Longer actually.

You are using the Straw man fallacy here.

You know, Software Maven does sound a bit like Straw Man.

Now, I'm not saying that person is a troll, but he kind of smells like one and as they say, if it smells, it stinks.

sounds like science is doing a fine job, the important thing is that it self-corrects and we have a far, far deeper understanding of subtile complexities.

one of the few things that gives me hope for humanity is the hope that most things we "know" today will (rightly) be wrong in 100 years.

knowledge from conventional wisdom doesn't compound over time.

  Wisdom: Regular periods of fasting are good for mind and body.
  "Science": You should eat 6 small meals every day to keep blood sugar even.
  Now: See TFA.

These recommendations don't actually conflict. Maybe it's best to eat lots of small meals when you're eating, and still fast periodically.

This line of reasoning is ridiculous and I will give an analogy.

Pick an ancient "wisdom" at random. What probability do you assign to this belief being true? You get "throwing salt over your shoulder increases luck." Obviously ridiculous right? You aren't going to actually do it just cause "the ancients" said it was good.

Now imagine some study comes out saying that exposure to salt in the air actually increases your something-or-other levels making you healthier. Ha, the ancients were right (kinda-sorta, about one thing, and for the wrong reasons, and with the wrong predicted effect)! All modern science must be wrong and all ancient wisdom must be correct! Proof we must go back to draining blood to to treat diseases and stop abandoning ancient practices.

But that wisdom is all from different periods. Fat in particular is the old sugar - it makes food taste good. It's also the most calorie-dense macronutrient. Of course you're going to put as much as you can in your food. Want some more old wisdom? Bread: eat as much as possible, because it's cheap and fills you up. Bread and butter - the foundation of a good diet.

You can't just take any old practice and follow it blindly, you need to have some idea if it's good for you or simply doesn't kill you. Because there's a whole ton of shit that doesn't kill you.

Nutritional science may be bunk, but at least you can usually tell when they're speaking bunk and it sure beats the old system of "My parents ate this and they lived to the ripe old age of 50".

Why not? Don't you want to attach a bunch of leeches to your stomach and bleed away that flu?

And come to think of it, storing dead bodies in the well was very pro-biotic.

Well, we still use leeches today in modern medicine, so there's clearly some efficacy on display.

The fact that particular traditions exist implies that they might have some net benefit. Otherwise, people who practiced these traditions might have been out-competed by other groups who did not.

The tribes that practiced cargo cults weren't wiped out.

True but thats most likely because they were/are highly isolated from other groups.

100 years is probably not enough time for this sort of selection to take place.

Why would one want to ignore beneficial knowledge received in the form of tradition? To be able to re-invent the wheel?

Because the past had proportionally more hucksters to scientists than today. And because a lot of that 'ancient wisdom' was invented later, by the aforementioned hucksters:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

> Why would one want to ignore beneficial knowledge received in the form of tradition?

You want to be skeptical of tradition as a source of factual information because, while there exists beneficial knowledge that may be received in the form of tradition, it is impossible to reliably separate it from harmful false "knowledge" received in the form of tradition, without first turning it into knowledge derived from structured scientific information gathering.

Thanks, but no thanks to FDA approved or "scientifically" structured and tested and accredited health recommendations for me.

I am willing to put to test the the traditional practices that I am (or become) aware of.

> it is impossible to reliably separate it from harmful false "knowledge" received in the form of tradition

Evolution/Survivability of a group usually takes care of that

Yeah, slightly harmful/long term harmful things will go though, but not major things.

Someone discovered cheese with mold is edible (probably happened in a low food situation), but there's a high likelihood on people having tried other things with mold and it didn't work out as expected.

>Evolution/Survivability of a group usually takes care of that

Not washing hands survived for a very long time, and lead to huge child mortality. Humanity survived, but lots of people died for no good reason.

A thousand years ago, it may have been more dangerous to send three times as many villagers to collect water from the river 20km away so that the village would have enough water for everyone to wash their hands, than to have people not wash their hands before eating. The benefits of a practice/tradition can vary over time.

Lots of people may have died from avoidable diseases, but lots of people may also have avoided death by bandits, wild animals, and starvation. (due to more workers allocated to water collection than food production; the extra food produced may have been the difference between life and death during famines for some people.)

Because tradition isn't knowledge. While tradition could be (valuable) source of leads, everything inside must be tested, experimented on and see why it does or doesn't work.

That article is perfect example - lots of cultures have fasting. We look at the fasting results and we find something interesting about how out body works. Now we have knowledge that we can build upon.

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