8 ms·

Lately I've been having this feeling that the pseudo science of nutrition (not talking about the researchers but the food and lifestyle artists on social media)

by zython 9y ago

Lately I've been having this feeling that the pseudo science of nutrition (not talking about the researchers but the food and lifestyle artists on social media) makes it very hard to find out what a good diet is and what isnt. Meat ? Bad unless it isnt. Dairy and Eggs ? Even worse except when it isnt. Vegan/vegetarian nutrition ? The worst except, you guessed it, when it isnt. If you dont believe me just google any food and try to find out a general consensus about it. A lot of these sites talk about facts without sources, use terms like "toxins" without going into detail about what exactly they are etc.pp. Thoughts ?

Swizec 9y ago
Eat stuff, exercise, measure results, adjust. This stuff is extremely individual, unless we're talking extremes. Just do whatever makes your favorite KPI trend in the direction you want. Experiment. The rest is bullshit.
- atopuzov 9y ago
  Exactly, find what suits you. I'm having great results with a low carb diet (been even keto for a period) but I'm not 100% sure it works for all.
  - charlesdm 9y ago
    Worked great for me too, though I didn't have to lose a massive amount of weight (8kg). Just cutting back on sugar itself already does a ton -- nothing more than an addiction. :(
- adrianN 9y ago
  We don't have many biomarkers that can be measured cheaply and say something about your expected remaining healthspan.
  - Swizec 9y ago
    Don't weight and bodyfat% have high correlation to lifespan? You can get a good enough scale for both for pretty cheap. Fitbits and such also measure resting heart rate for cheap. As far as I've heard, that correlates well to lifespan as well.
    - adrianN 9y ago
      You can control your weight and bodyfat reasonably well on a diet that consists solely of Twinkies, so only measuring those won't tell you much about the quality of your diet.
tomxor 9y ago
I know what you mean, and my answer probably wont be very satisfying to you: Use common sense, eat what your grandma tells you (if you have a good grandma), ignore all the crap on the internet which is 90% confusing rubbish (with the exception of some scientific studies which can be insightful but not necessarily anything to base a diet on). Try to cook your own food at least half the time and have a balanced intake (just the basics: meat + veg + fruit), if you stick to natural unprocessed foods it's pretty hard to go wrong, avoid sugary treats and highly processed food as much as possible, that's basically all you need to know (sounds pretty obvious because it's common sense). The fad diets and contradicting advice do not arise out of a failure of your grandmas advice, they arise out of supermarket foods, high sugar, high carbs, ready meals etc. Same with the obesity epidemic, it does not come from lack of will power to not eat like most people think, it comes from the laziness and temptation that we all get from supermarkets. I try to cook at least half the time and keep an eye on my tendency to be lured by what is becoming way over half of supermarket isles these days (sugar and carb packed processed shit), go to the meat and veg isles out of habit don't even walk down the others unless you want to treat yourself (sugar is a treat not an everyday thing).
- charlesdm 9y ago
  Personal experience: I lost some weight using a low carb diet, and now I'm slowly switching back. Basically I've cut back on everything processed, because frankly most of it is garbage. Cooking using good quality foods (veg + fresh fish and/or meat) does a lot + I feel much better. If I do go for a sugary treats, then it's some good quality artisanal chocolate instead of mass produced crap. One downside: I noticed my bi-weekly shopping bills to have definitely gone up. Probably spend double or even triple now what I spent before. But hey, you only live once.
  - sundvor 9y ago
    > I noticed my bi-weekly shopping bills to have definitely gone up. On the flip side, that might be a very cheap investment for your health vs future medical bills, lost productivity due to illness / lethargy etc, etc.
  - 9y ago
tr1ck5t3r 9y ago
Its about getting the balance right. Amplifying the intake of some chemicals can alter the efficiency & rate of certain pathways in the body which can then lead to deficiencies due to other pathways being down regulated, leading to clinically detectable deficiencies. Of course, sub clinical illnesses are still as important and is what rate limits the abilities of the medical profession to be 100% accurate and effective, which is where instincts and food cravings can be useful for, some of the time. Whilst listening to your body can be useful, obesity shows you how some chemicals can create an imbalance which then has a knock on effect for mental and physical health. Plus how do you quantify the psychosomatic effect from reading articles, studies or listening to an entity with some level of authority. In other words, can knowledge skew the outcome in a negative way, with fixation of knowledge thats currently easily accessible to the consciousness due to the information having been recently obtained? Oxygen could be considered a "toxin" in excess but can also kill if its absent, in otherwords oxygen could have negative effects if you dont get enough or get too much which can lead to a rise in Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) where the body is unable to cope with the ensuing harm caused to essential organs as a result of its (ROS) presence. I guess its that age old fight between light and dark, good v evil, ying & yang in a myriad of different platforms or domains of knowledge.
gaius 9y ago
Thoughts ? It doesn't matter - the underlying mechanism of all these diets is simply that ANY amount of thinking about what you eat is better than the default choice of just eating whatever's in front of you.
DiThi 9y ago
A very big problem has been the misunderstanding of fat that people still have to this date, leading to glaring contradictions. This video (and the other videos of the channel) explains very well the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6-v37nOtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6-v37nOtY (text version and sources in the description)
Lewton 9y ago
> Meat ? Bad unless it isnt. Dairy and Eggs ? Even worse except when it isnt. Vegan/vegetarian nutrition ? The worst except, you guessed it, when it isnt. What's good for me might not be what's good for you. Lifestyle, genetics, gut biome can all make a huge difference in the way your body reacts to different foods
fghtr 9y ago
Harvard School of Public Health [0] provides advices backed by research and the main points did not change already for a long time. Meat is only recommended in small portions as well as diary [1]. [0] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/ [1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-plate/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-...
- in_hindsight 9y ago
  Thank you for these links
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
It seems the best thing is to be reasonable. For example, eat a variety of foods from different food groups. Try to expand your pallette. Eat a fair amount of fruit and veg. Ideally, whatever you eat will fit in your lifestyle. For me, I found a few things (and I've actually lost weight and kept it off for years): Mostly vegetarian works for me - I eat fish a couple times a month. I had gall bladder problems, though, and have had it taken out. This works well for my body and I like the food. I cook at home 95% of the time. I skip breakfast (I'm not hungry!). I use butter and cream. I also walk often.
dade_ 9y ago
I appreciate the work that Daria Rose (Kevin's wife) has done with her book The Foodist and blog summer tomato. She had the same problem, but she is a Ph D and was looking for a project.
jm2721 9y ago
I agree that there is a ton of misinformation floating around on the internet. Even legitimate nutritional research is notoriously difficult to conduct well. As you say, almost every diet has its benefits and supporting evidence. You will have people who claim that mostly vegetarian diets are best, and cite the Okinawans. Then you'll have the paleo crowd, who claims that you don't need fruits/vegetables at all and cite the Maasai. I think this comment pretty much sums it up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813840. If I were you, I'd steer clear of any sites that talk about 'toxins', 'detox', 'cleanses', or anything else like that as it's likely to be junk science. Juice cleanses can be particularly hazardous (I am honestly baffled that anybody would think drinking a ton of sugary juice is healthy). I was going to say look for articles that cite their sources, but even the medical literature can be cherry picked to support any hypothesis. We still have a long way to go before we have nutritional advice that 1. Is actually correct, meaning it's heavily supported by scientific research and has been shown to work and 2. Is accepted mainstream. Until then, I think everyone can at least agree on a few things: 1. Don't eat sugar. Yes, natural alternatives like honey or agave are also sugar. 2. Don't eat refined, processed carbohydrates. 3. Don't eat trans fats. I think correcting those will eliminate the majority of most peoples diet-related health issues. Everything else pales in comparison.

by zython 9y ago

Swizec 9y ago

Eat stuff, exercise, measure results, adjust. This stuff is extremely individual, unless we're talking extremes. Just do whatever makes your favorite KPI trend in the direction you want. Experiment. The rest is bullshit.

atopuzov 9y ago
Exactly, find what suits you. I'm having great results with a low carb diet (been even keto for a period) but I'm not 100% sure it works for all.
- charlesdm 9y ago
  Worked great for me too, though I didn't have to lose a massive amount of weight (8kg). Just cutting back on sugar itself already does a ton -- nothing more than an addiction. :(
adrianN 9y ago
We don't have many biomarkers that can be measured cheaply and say something about your expected remaining healthspan.
- Swizec 9y ago
  Don't weight and bodyfat% have high correlation to lifespan? You can get a good enough scale for both for pretty cheap. Fitbits and such also measure resting heart rate for cheap. As far as I've heard, that correlates well to lifespan as well.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    You can control your weight and bodyfat reasonably well on a diet that consists solely of Twinkies, so only measuring those won't tell you much about the quality of your diet.

tomxor 9y ago

I know what you mean, and my answer probably wont be very satisfying to you: Use common sense, eat what your grandma tells you (if you have a good grandma), ignore all the crap on the internet which is 90% confusing rubbish (with the exception of some scientific studies which can be insightful but not necessarily anything to base a diet on). Try to cook your own food at least half the time and have a balanced intake (just the basics: meat + veg + fruit), if you stick to natural unprocessed foods it's pretty hard to go wrong, avoid sugary treats and highly processed food as much as possible, that's basically all you need to know (sounds pretty obvious because it's common sense). The fad diets and contradicting advice do not arise out of a failure of your grandmas advice, they arise out of supermarket foods, high sugar, high carbs, ready meals etc. Same with the obesity epidemic, it does not come from lack of will power to not eat like most people think, it comes from the laziness and temptation that we all get from supermarkets. I try to cook at least half the time and keep an eye on my tendency to be lured by what is becoming way over half of supermarket isles these days (sugar and carb packed processed shit), go to the meat and veg isles out of habit don't even walk down the others unless you want to treat yourself (sugar is a treat not an everyday thing).

charlesdm 9y ago
Personal experience: I lost some weight using a low carb diet, and now I'm slowly switching back. Basically I've cut back on everything processed, because frankly most of it is garbage. Cooking using good quality foods (veg + fresh fish and/or meat) does a lot + I feel much better. If I do go for a sugary treats, then it's some good quality artisanal chocolate instead of mass produced crap. One downside: I noticed my bi-weekly shopping bills to have definitely gone up. Probably spend double or even triple now what I spent before. But hey, you only live once.
- sundvor 9y ago
  > I noticed my bi-weekly shopping bills to have definitely gone up. On the flip side, that might be a very cheap investment for your health vs future medical bills, lost productivity due to illness / lethargy etc, etc.
- 9y ago

tr1ck5t3r 9y ago

Its about getting the balance right. Amplifying the intake of some chemicals can alter the efficiency & rate of certain pathways in the body which can then lead to deficiencies due to other pathways being down regulated, leading to clinically detectable deficiencies. Of course, sub clinical illnesses are still as important and is what rate limits the abilities of the medical profession to be 100% accurate and effective, which is where instincts and food cravings can be useful for, some of the time. Whilst listening to your body can be useful, obesity shows you how some chemicals can create an imbalance which then has a knock on effect for mental and physical health. Plus how do you quantify the psychosomatic effect from reading articles, studies or listening to an entity with some level of authority. In other words, can knowledge skew the outcome in a negative way, with fixation of knowledge thats currently easily accessible to the consciousness due to the information having been recently obtained? Oxygen could be considered a "toxin" in excess but can also kill if its absent, in otherwords oxygen could have negative effects if you dont get enough or get too much which can lead to a rise in Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) where the body is unable to cope with the ensuing harm caused to essential organs as a result of its (ROS) presence. I guess its that age old fight between light and dark, good v evil, ying & yang in a myriad of different platforms or domains of knowledge.

gaius 9y ago

Thoughts ? It doesn't matter - the underlying mechanism of all these diets is simply that ANY amount of thinking about what you eat is better than the default choice of just eating whatever's in front of you.

DiThi 9y ago

A very big problem has been the misunderstanding of fat that people still have to this date, leading to glaring contradictions. This video (and the other videos of the channel) explains very well the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6-v37nOtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6-v37nOtY (text version and sources in the description)

Lewton 9y ago

> Meat ? Bad unless it isnt. Dairy and Eggs ? Even worse except when it isnt. Vegan/vegetarian nutrition ? The worst except, you guessed it, when it isnt. What's good for me might not be what's good for you. Lifestyle, genetics, gut biome can all make a huge difference in the way your body reacts to different foods

fghtr 9y ago

Harvard School of Public Health [0] provides advices backed by research and the main points did not change already for a long time. Meat is only recommended in small portions as well as diary [1]. [0] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/ [1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-plate/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-...

in_hindsight 9y ago
Thank you for these links

Broken_Hippo 9y ago

It seems the best thing is to be reasonable. For example, eat a variety of foods from different food groups. Try to expand your pallette. Eat a fair amount of fruit and veg. Ideally, whatever you eat will fit in your lifestyle. For me, I found a few things (and I've actually lost weight and kept it off for years): Mostly vegetarian works for me - I eat fish a couple times a month. I had gall bladder problems, though, and have had it taken out. This works well for my body and I like the food. I cook at home 95% of the time. I skip breakfast (I'm not hungry!). I use butter and cream. I also walk often.

dade_ 9y ago

I appreciate the work that Daria Rose (Kevin's wife) has done with her book The Foodist and blog summer tomato. She had the same problem, but she is a Ph D and was looking for a project.

jm2721 9y ago

I agree that there is a ton of misinformation floating around on the internet. Even legitimate nutritional research is notoriously difficult to conduct well. As you say, almost every diet has its benefits and supporting evidence. You will have people who claim that mostly vegetarian diets are best, and cite the Okinawans. Then you'll have the paleo crowd, who claims that you don't need fruits/vegetables at all and cite the Maasai. I think this comment pretty much sums it up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813840. If I were you, I'd steer clear of any sites that talk about 'toxins', 'detox', 'cleanses', or anything else like that as it's likely to be junk science. Juice cleanses can be particularly hazardous (I am honestly baffled that anybody would think drinking a ton of sugary juice is healthy). I was going to say look for articles that cite their sources, but even the medical literature can be cherry picked to support any hypothesis. We still have a long way to go before we have nutritional advice that 1. Is actually correct, meaning it's heavily supported by scientific research and has been shown to work and 2. Is accepted mainstream. Until then, I think everyone can at least agree on a few things: 1. Don't eat sugar. Yes, natural alternatives like honey or agave are also sugar. 2. Don't eat refined, processed carbohydrates. 3. Don't eat trans fats. I think correcting those will eliminate the majority of most peoples diet-related health issues. Everything else pales in comparison.