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Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

It'd be nice to have this squared with research in vegetarianism (high-carb, low-fat) which long term studies indicate has a number of health benefits [1]

My own take, which I've mentioned before, is that the the starting point is so bad (refined carbohydrates) that you can pretty much walk in any direction and get positive results. That is, what people are eating doesn't matter nearly as much as what people aren't. Or, more specifically, any diet will make people pay attention to what they're eating, and that's the real win.

[1] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/70/3/516s.full

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Vegetarianism isn't necessary high-carb low-fat.

Plenty of vegetarians stay away from pastas, grains, and other refined carbohydrates.

Yes fruits and dairy are also sources of sugars, but linking vegetarianism to high-carb, is like linking low-carb to risk for heart disease.

Vegetarians who do gain wait, are likely substituting high fat animal products for refined carbs like pasta, grains, starches, etc.

This is just my own personal observation, but all the vegetarians I know try to stay away from high carb diets, and specifically do not eat a lot of pasta or grains. Some do consume far too much fruit (often in the form of guzzling fruit juice), thinking that fructose is fine in any quantity so long as it's "natural sugar."

I just always assumed a carb heavy vegetarian diet is entirely contradictory to the health benefits a vegetarian is often seeking from their diet.

My observation is the complete opposite. Vegetarians I know eat tons of starchy foods. And the pursuit of vegetarianism is mostly avoidance of meat, mainly red.

Yeah. Pasta, bread, tortillas and so on are staples of the diets of vegetarians I know. Who are all athletic and healthy...

Maybe this is a west vs east thing (I'm in the east), but all the vegetarians I know eat a high-carb diet: vegetables, legumes, fruits and grains. What do you see as contradictory to "health benefits" from a diet with those staples? And, genuinely, what are the vegetarians you know eating?

Many (most?) vegetarians do so primarily for ethical or economic reasons: environmental, animal rights, food cost. Or religious reasons. Adding more dietary restrictions, like low-carb or low-sugar, would make the diet more expensive and onerous.

I believe the health benefits of vegetarianism are largely attributable to lifestyle choices that vegetarians are more likely to make than omnivores. They're less likely to drink, smoke, more likely to exercise, the list goes on.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15824171

Pretty much. You could probably come up with a diet that says you're not allowed to eat anything starting with a letter in the first half of the alphabet, and anyone who stuck to it would lose weight, because all of a sudden they'd be thinking carefully about what they ate rather than eating whatever took their fancy at any given moment.

Sticking to these diets is the hardest thing. I spent a few months on a paleo diet and got a bunch healthier, but it was really hard to find things to eat, and pretty expensive as well. I don't think dietary changes are worth it unless you can reasonably stick to them for the rest of your life, and anything that says "no X ever again" is likely to fall into that category.

> I don't think dietary changes are worth it unless you can reasonably stick to them for the rest of your life

Curious if you could name one food that was particularly difficult to cut out.

Can't speak for your parent, but cheese seems to be a major stumbling point for a lot of people.

Alcohol was a real pain to cut out, although it's been some years now.

I've tried many times to cut out chocolate, and managed for up to 6 months at a time before coming crashing down. A few months ago I switched to "mindful eating", which says I can eat chocolate whenever I want, and life has been better.

As long as you're eating dark chocolate when you do, you'll be fine.

And becoming a bit snobby about chocolate helps as well. Single plantation chocolate is delicious (and for obvious reasons dark) and their prices make you want to eat less of it anyway ;)

Sure. Bread. It's so convenient and easy, and it shows up in 90% of the things that you might be able to get for breakfast and lunch at the average food joint.

The study they are discussing set up test subject with two different diets. One low in fat, one low in carbs. Low in carbs had far better outcomes. I agree that cutting anything will implicitly cut calories, it seems low carb really is superior.

They didn't test low fat. It was just carb restricted versus 30% fat (not low fat). Feeding was ad libitum, so it just confirms what we already knew: fewer food choices leads to spontaneous calorie restriction.

If it just told us that "fewer food choices lead to spontaneous calorie restriction", then both groups should have roughly equal results. They didn't. Any putative explanation of the results really needs to, well, explain the results. Not explain results other than the ones obtained.

Well, they did have roughly equal results if you look at the study. Both groups went from obese to slightly less obese. That said I don't follow your reasoning about equivalence. One diet was low carb. The other allowed for quite a bit of both fat and carbohydrate. Can't you see the difference?

12 lb lost vs 4 lb lost is extremely significant especially given neither diet was calorie restrictive.

The one group had to watch their fat intake and the other group had to watch their carb intake. It isn't exact equivalence but you are incorrect to say that only one group was restricted.

And you are also incorrect that both groups had equal results. There was an 8 pound weight loss difference on average. Did you even read the article?

The degree of squinting you're applying to call the results "equal" is not scientifically useful.

In fact I'd suggest you consider this a clue... you're clearly explaining away, rather than explaining. "Explaining away" is in a way the most fundamentally unscientific operation there is... the fact that you're joined by a number of people who call themselves "scientists" even so doesn't change that.

(No joke. The fundamental breakthrough of science philosophy is that instead of asking the cognitively-natural "How can I prove I am correct?", science teaches us to ask "How can I prove I am wrong?" Everything else is just elaborations on that theme. "Explaining away" is one of the easiest ways to do the first, and is thus one of the easiest unscientific things to do. The fact that we've managed to train a great number of people who fancy themselves scientists but think their job is more about the first than the second is an indictment of our society, not an excuse to follow those people.)

This is different that what we have been told which is to reduce fat and eat more whole grains and vegetables. You are saying that we just need to restrict our food choices.

Visiting Buenos Aires, I noticed the patrons at a vegetarian restaurant were fatter than usual in that famously meat-centric city. (I went there three times.) This is just an anecdote, I know.

I agree that a good vegetarian diet's probably much healthier than a standard American one.

The heavier vegetarians I know tend to be chocolate monsters.

The benefits of vegetarianism are probably a lot more modest than you think, if at all.

Your study shows 1) no difference for everything except ischemic heart disease, 2) that fish eaters fare best and 3) fails to account for the lousier other food likely eaten by meat eaters.

I think (outside of the other effects mentioned related to being health conscious) that protein restriction has something to do with it.

Autophagy may be an important cellular cleanup process that never happens with three square meals a day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autophagy#Autophagy_and_caloric...

The idea is plausible and there is some early research on this, but there's definitely not a consensus. I personally try to fill this void with intermittent protein fasting on a diet that is otherwise composed of meats, fruits, and vegetables.

Case study of one, but I've been a (lacto-ovo) vegetarian for roughly eight years now. I do eat a lot of pasta and cheese (because I find it delicious). I've always had a high metabolism, and I actually have trouble gaining weight. I've always been under the impression that there is not one universal diet for everybody. Instead, people should choose something that works for them. This is what works for me, and I'm pretty dang happy with it, so I've stuck with it.

>any diet will make people pay attention to what they're eating, and that's the real win

Except for a fruitarian diet, which is usually very high in fructose. Look at what that diet did to Steve Jobs. While he was still alive, way before it was revealed he had pancreatic cancer, I heard a story where he turned orange, which can only be jaundice, a sign of a failing pancreas. The pancreas metabolizes fructose and it can't be good to abuse it by overloading your body with high fructose.

You also turn orange if you eat too many carrots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotenosis

You turn yellow from jaundice.

I hope you're right. Low-carb (meat-based as practiced by most) is amplifying climate change and world food shortages. Not to mention the needless gigascale animal suffering.

Refined carbohydrates are not a problem. Sugar, potatoes, properly prepared white flour, and white rice are excellent food choices. In fact they are superior choices to foods like whole grains and beans, which tend to have allergens and antinutrients like phytic acid and trypsin inhibitors.

Anyway, any apparent epidemiological advantages to avoiding animal products in the industrialized world come down to two things. 1) The meat is mostly garbage; you have to consider only grass fed. 2) People are eating large amounts of muscle meat to the exclusion of the organ meats and connective tissue. This results in a chronic excess of tryptophan and a major deficiency of glycine. Iron overload is also a problem with eating too much muscle meat. A diet of steaks and chicken breasts without eating the rest of the animals is totally unnatural.

Dairy doesn't have these problems of low quality meat and too much muscle meat. Vegetarian with high dairy intake is an excellent nutritional choice.

Sugar, potatoes, properly prepared white flour, and white rice are excellent food choices.

All mentioned, except probably potatoes, have very low nutrient density (also called "empty calories"). That alone makes them horrible food choices, even not considering the effects on metabolism.

Potatoes are ok though, I was surprised to find out that they contain complete protein. There were also some studies that recorded benefits from "potato diet".

Sugar and white rice are on that list and you single out potatoes?

Nutritiondata.self.com has a "completeness score" of 57/100 for potatoes, but only 27/100 for white rice (long grain), and a 0/100 for sugar (which is nothing but empty calories). FWIW, wheat flour is listed as 33/100 so potatoes are the top of the whole list.

Edit: for comparison, Kale (raw) has a "completeness score" of 85/100 and Spinach (cooked) has a 93/100.

Sugar and white rice are on that list and you single out potatoes?

Yes, sorry - I singled out potatoes as a decent food, while the others are truly horrible.

Gotcha, Sorry for jumping to a conclusion then.

You're giving out excellent advice and I have no idea why you're being down-voted. It seems to me that some folks can't stand to lose their scapegoat, which currently happens to be sugar/fructose, as saturated fat was in the 80s.

As for the empty calories counter argument, sometimes you just need energy/heat and simple sugars are a wonderful source. The average healthy person is eating between 2500 and 3000 calories a day. So even if you're eating half of them as junk you're still leaving enough room for nutrient dense foods.

Great points. You're being down-voted because you're asking people to think for themselves.

I have a question: if I cook chicken, meat etc. with "bone-in", do I get the benefits of bone-broth, glycine, etc.?

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