7 ms·

In my lifetime virtually everything that was once good for you (wine, high grain diet, non-fat foods) is now a bad and vice versa (eggs, high fat - low carb foo

In my lifetime virtually everything that was once good for you (wine, high grain diet, non-fat foods) is now a bad and vice versa (eggs, high fat - low carb foods). And articles like this one have been appearing in some variation my entire life. My take away, long ago, is that nutrition is fundamentally complex and poorly understood topic and any extreme opinions are likely to be inverted. On the topic of alcohol, one things that has really become clear to me, is how directly tied to my environment drinking is. I've always liked to have a beer with dinner, but whether or not that was my only drink or one of many has much less to do with my personal decisions and much more to do with my environment, and I've noticed the same goes for most people. Many of us became pretty serious drinkers during the pandemic. As it eased up I never made the decision to drink less, I just naturally drank less. Point being is that no only am I skeptical of the claims of what I should and should not consume, I'm skeptical of entirely how much agency I have to change what I should consume baring case where the impact is immediate.

alamortsubite 2y ago
You'll probably enjoy this clip from the Woody Allen movie Sleeper, where his character is revived 200 years in the future after being cryogenically frozen in 1973. Just watch the first minute or so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2fYguIX17Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2fYguIX17Q
- xtracto 2y ago
  There's also a good sketch of a "time travel dietitian": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA
- orhmeh09 2y ago
  Powerful ideas in this film regarding robotics, personal assistant technology, technology addiction, and even bioethics.
radlad 2y ago
> Point being is that no only am I skeptical of the claims of what I should and should not consume, I'm skeptical of entirely how much agency I have to change what I should consume baring case where the impact is immediate. Can you elaborate on what you mean that you're skeptical of how much agency you have to change what you should consume? A common definition of addiction is that it is the inability to control your consumption. However, "I never made the decision to drink less, I just naturally drank less," doesn't sound anything like addiction. I began drinking both more frequently and in increased amounts of alcohol during the pandemic, but for me, this didn't stop or ease up until I made a conscious decision to stop. For me, it was habitual. And with habit came increased tolerance.
- PheonixPharts 2y ago
  To be clear, as an ex-smoker, I do believe we have agency in the cases where patterns are disruptive. Smoking tobacco got in the way of a range of activities, and I had to put in a serious effort to curb this behavior. Certainly drinkers who find their drinking interferes with other things are able to change their habits. Though even this is probably more environmental than not. I haven't smoked in 20+ years but I also no longer know any smokers. I'm not sure I would be a non-smoker today if smoking rates were closer to what they were in the 1950s. Similarly I have known people with problematic drinking behavior and their ability to stop has always been strongly correlated with having good reasons to stop. However, for the smaller things that "aren't good for you" in a less immediate sense, I don't think we have as much control over our behaviors as we'd like to believe. Another example is obesity. Many people still chalk this up to a "moral issue" where people are making "poor choices", but that doesn't seem like a good explanation for why we live in an obesity epidemic. I personally don't think people in 2024 are dramatically less "moral" than they were in 1990. My personal pandemic realization was that I'm far more of a node in a network of cells in a vast social organism that is humanity than I am an individual actor.
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    > Another example is obesity. Many people still chalk this up to a "moral issue" where people are making "poor choices", but that doesn't seem like a good explanation for why we live in an obesity epidemic. I'm going to add to the noise and give a "simple" answer: Prosperity and availability. Years ago I read an interview with an applied mathematician who did a lot of research on how food impacts the body - from a math perspective. He said that many things impact a person (and society's) weight. You've got the type of diet (carbs/proteins/fat/fiber). You've got the components of the food (stuff in nutrition labels). You've got genetic factors. You've got parasites. Health issues like hypothyroidism. And more. But they don't impact you equally. When looking at the contributions of each factor to the rise of obesity, one item stood out clearly: The production (or rather, overproduction) of food. It's really that simple. As the decades go on, we produce more food per capita than in the past. Some of it, of course, is wasted. But otherwise, the food has to go somewhere. And that somewhere is us. From what I've read, in the 1960's, the average plate size was 75% of what it is today. Most people don't measure the amount of food they put in a plate. They eyeball how "full" the plate appears. Increase the plate size, and you increase your food consumption. When I switched to smaller plates, I still feel satiated - I'm likely still overeating. In the US, finding smaller plates (that are not flat, and not bowls) is not easy. I had to resort to visiting Chinese/Korean/Japanese stores to buy them. Presumably they still use smaller plates in those countries. How often do you feel hungry? Not craving hungry but stomach pangs hungry? I was very thin when young and was known to eat little. Hunger pangs were part of daily life (and not a sign of malnourishment). You eat breakfast, and you should get hungry by the time you eat lunch, and so on. I now go months before I feel any such thing. I often skip lunch altogether. Part of it is due to slowing metabolism, for sure. But the reality is I'm eating quite a bit for breakfast and random snacks. I grew up in other countries. Portion sizes at restaurants in the US are huge. For a long time I avoided eating at such places because it was just too much food. I often would have enough leftovers for another meal. People who consume a whole entree are likely eating way too much. And that problem exists everywhere. In other countries, the standard Pepsi can was 330ml, and you could easily buy 220ml ones. In the US, it's gotten hard for me to find a chilled 350ml can when I'm on the go. Regular grocery stores don't carry them. Now most gas stations/convenience stores don't either. You get 500ml bottles/cans. Ever read the nutrition label on them? 500ml bottles are listed as 2.5 servings. People consuming them are consuming a lot. I've mostly switched to the 220ml cans for soda. It's extremely rare that I drink one and think to myself "That really wasn't enough. I need to drink more!" Tic Tac boxes are larger in the US than in many other countries. The nearby Target only has "supersize" chocolates at the checkout register. You want a smaller portion size? You need to buy a whole box. I won't even get into cookies. They're huge in the US. Milk shake type drinks are both huge and loaded. In many countries, the portion size is small (e.g. 250ml), and they have the good sense not to put ice cream in it! Desserts, in general, are crazily loaded. Any dessert that's over 350 calories is too much. Dessert is supposed to be a "sweet extra", not a whole meal. I'm looking at a popular chain's milkshake calories. The lowest is 680. The highest is 1160. Often, when you get a dessert item from a restaurant, you are consuming the calories of 1-2 meals just from the dessert alone. I won't even talk about cheesecakes! Sorry, I know it's distracting from your overall point. Of course, environment matters. If you happen to have a lot of junk food at home, it's hard not to eat it. If you go to stores that have your favorite snack by the counter, it's hard not to buy. These do play a role. But as the researcher said, it's secondary/tertiary. But to anyone trying to figure out why it's so hard to lose weight: 1. Get smaller plates. 2. Try to reduce food intake so you feel hungry at least once per day (I achieve this for a while, and then drop the ball). Don't feel bad if for a long time you're having only 2 (or even 1) meal per day. It'll take a while before your body will feel hungry. 3. Drink soda in the smallest 220-250ml cans/bottles. Prefer Izze over Pepsi/Coke. And prefer Spindrift over all (it's OK that Spindrift is over 300ml!) 4. Avoid foods that trigger cravings. The usual offenders are fried/salty foods. If you get soda cravings, track whether you just ate some fried/salty food. If you want an extreme experiment, try eating really bland foods. You'll notice you probably never get a soda craving.
BrandoElFollito 2y ago
My mother told me that when she was young, tomatoes vere very suspect. So yes, these nutritional advices are very volatile.
- czl 2y ago
  FYI: Tomato leaves and stems contain solanine, a toxic glycoalkaloid that can cause digestive issues, headaches, and other symptoms if consumed in large quantities.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Who eats leaves and stems??? But some people did incorrectly believe that tomatoes were poisonous. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-tomato-was-feared-in-europe-for-more-than-200-years-863735/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-tomato-w...
frereubu 2y ago
I like the Michael Pollan dictum: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I don't think you can go far wrong with that.
- Abekkus 2y ago
  For the food portion of that instruction, I'd tell people to "eat cells, not substances." Pasta and rice don't look good along that spectrum.
  - jahbrewski 2y ago
    Not sure I’m tracking here. Can you explain this further?
    - JasserInicide 2y ago
      Limit processed food intake
      - rcoveson 2y ago
        "Eat cells, not substances" is a somewhat similar rule to "limit processed food intake", but the former would seem to encourage both pasta and rice while the latter would discourage pasta if you're being strict about it and rice if you're being extremely strict.
      - caseyohara 2y ago
        Isn't that congruent with "mostly plants"?
    - gnicholas 2y ago
      Not GP, but presumably it's a reference to the fact that (white) rice and (refined) pasta are processed in a way that makes them tastier but not as healthy. While you can eat brown rice and whole wheat pasta, they are quite a bit less common, and not as tasty.
dang 2y ago
These flips seem to happen on a cycle of 20 or 30 years. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is roughly the generational cycle. My theory is that each new generation of researchers establishes itself by overturning the findings of the previous generation—especially the shakiest ones.
- mattmein 2y ago
  Reminds me of Planck's principle: > A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ...
- autoexec 2y ago
  I think a lot of it is just garbage science by people who were paid by some industry to come up with anything that could result in a snappy headline that might boost sales of their product, combined with media being perfectly happy to misrepresent even honest research if they can get a clickbait title out of it. "Science says Bad Thing you like is actually good for you!" is about as sure to generate clicks/views/ad impressions as "Science says Healthy Thing is actually killing you!" With near zero accountability for bad science and journalism this situation isn't likely to change any time soon.
- robwwilliams 2y ago
  No, I disagree that these flips are just moody periodic “flips of a coin”. The target article explains very clearly WHY the flip. Here are the three main reasons: 1. An ascertainment bias that is built in to studies that recruit and compare “non-drinkers” to light drinkers. Non-drinkers may not be as inherently healthy as light drinkers. They may have had adverse effects earlier in their lives due to alcohol. 2. Since the 1970s most of NIH research has focused on alcoholism and alcohol abuse—-not on the epidemiologucal impact of drinking alcohol. These are entire distinct topics. Alcoholism is treated as a “disease” in the same way as other addictions. But a significant majority of drinkers are not alcoholics, and what is the impact on mortality of alcohol use on all types of age related diseases. 3. There was a long-term phantasy that resveratrol in red wine is responsible for the French paradox metabolic benefits. That gas been debunked for a decade but still lives in our brains as a zombie meme.
brookst 2y ago
Well said, but I think some of this boils down to people who prefer prescriptive versus descriptive health and diet info. I’m similar in that I’ll drink more or less based on environment; a vacation on the beach, I’ll probably drink more. A vacation in the Middle East, I’ll likely drink not at all. But I don’t really care. I’ll enjoy drinks sometimes and skip others. Some people really just want to have best practices defined for them, like they can be happy if they check the right boxes.
- poincaredisk 2y ago
  >But I don’t really care. I’ll enjoy drinks sometimes and skip others. I am trying to interpret what you said in the best possible way, but I'm not sure how. Maybe you don't have alcohol problems, but some people do (like I used to) and they absolutely should control their alcohol intake. Maybe you don't have obesity problem, but some people do, and they absolutely should count calories. Maybe you rebuttal is "obviously if you have problem with X you should improve your X", but then your statement comes off a vacuously true. Even worse, your sage advice may make it worse and make people think that their alcoholism/obesity is not a problem, because they just eat/drink what they enjoy, as much as they want. Believe me, as a (former?) alcoholic, "it's ok to drink as long as you are great at your job and healthy" is exactly what I wanted to hear (and believe).
_yb2s 2y ago
This... our understanding of biology is way too primitive to have a meaningful mechanistic understanding of what is healthy, and what is not. Most of the nutrition advice is based on simple observational correlations that are assuming a cause and effect that just isn't there. People with high cholesterol also tend to have more cardiovascular disease, but it turns out eating cholesterol and fat doesn't actually increase risk of cardiovascular disease. People who eat a lot of fish tend to have better health outcomes, but it turns out taking fish oil does not reproduce those outcomes, and so on and so on. Scientific nutrition is mostly just "scientism" - an irrational overconfidence bordering on a religious faith in unfounded assumptions based on observational studies, without admitting what we don't know. I think it is reasonable to avoid trying to make decisions about diet based on this stuff, but I think ideas like the paleo diet or evolutionary nutrition make a lot of sense- eat diets similar to those that humans have eaten safely for a long time, as those are what we are likely adapted to. Interestingly though this itself is massively diverse: there are hunter gatherer societies with almost every diet composition imaginable: from artic diets that are high protein and fat but nearly zero carb, to cultures like the kitavans whose diet is very high carb and low protein. Our metabolism is very adaptable and any diet that is mostly fresh nutrient dense foods from plant and/or animal sources is probably about equally healthy. Ironically, the stress of worrying constantly about if your food is optimally healthy, is probably more harmful to your health than anything typically considered unhealthy.
- NumberWangMan 2y ago
  I don't think that the scientific consensus on nutrition as unsettled as you say. As an example, there are a lot of people making money selling various diets as well as promoting uncertainty and doubt around the issue, but there seems to be pretty definitive evidence in favor of cholesterol and fat increasing cardiovascular disease risk. People love to misrepresent studies, or cherry-pick poorly designed studies, and use them to claim that the consensus is wrong. I'm not talking about observational studies either, but actual controlled feeding trials where they put you on a strictly controlled diet for a period of time. Even if you look at what humans are evolved to eat -- evolution puts selective pressure on reproductive fitness. As a process, it does not put any pressure on you to live a long time, as long as you reproduce successfully (which is why insects like the mayfly can even exist). So looking at what primitive people ate does not really give us information about what is healthy if you want to live a long time (aside from avoiding things that are obviously immediately poisonous). Even hunter gatherer tribes that eat a meat-and-dairy-heavy diet like the Maasai have been examined and have pretty significant cardiovascular disease -- but they are also so ridiculously active their blood vessels are much wider than people with a modern sedentary lifestyle, and that mostly balances out the narrowing from arterial plaque. Native people who eat a traditional diet heavy in whole grains, legumes, and tubers for calories have them beat by a mile when it comes to arterial health.
bushwald 2y ago
The agricultural lobby sold us things like the food pyramid which said eat more grain, for example. I think people have become more conscious of such manipulation and so things have turned around. Unfortunately, capital, as always, has figured out how to co-opt the change in attitudes as well as weird Internet fad diets (e.g., gluten free) to keep people buying from the middle of the store.
glenstein 2y ago
I find takes like this to be true in the specific details but wildly wrong as a big picture takeaway. A lot of people are citing their favorite quotes here, so here's one of mine from the Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov: >When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. So I think there's a relativity of wrong problem that you run into when suggesting it's all just so complex and leaving it at that. I would nevertheless absolutely agree that nutrition science and communication around it has been disorganized, contradictory, and without much in the way of a north star or a reliable "vanguard" of communicators representing a firm consensus. I feel much better about public communication from, say, astrophysics, archeology, geology, etc. and I think there's a characteristic degree of stability of knowledge particular to each of those fields.
- hobobaggins 2y ago
  Fundamentally, the human body seems to be an incredibly complex system that is far more dynamic, rapidly changing, and with far more unpredictable interactions than any of those other fields. It's fascinating that, at least on some axes, we might know less about core processes in our own bodies than we probably have already ascertained about planetary motion or materials composition from millions of miles away.
  - voisin 2y ago
    Everything you’ve said is bang on. Future generations will look at our time and those that came before us as the nutritional dark ages where we tried to apply the same rules to everyone irrespective of whatever factors turn out to define an individual’s optimal nutrition protocol.
    - ruszki 2y ago
      I think we know that for decades. The problem is mainly cost. But of course, looking at how the past millennia is presented to us, you’re probably right.
draw_down 2y ago
[dead]
stanleykm 2y ago
I had a similar drinking habit as you. Beer is more interesting to drink with food than water is. But it’s still a bunch of alcohol for your liver to deal with so probably not great for it. Low/no alcohol beers have gotten pretty good in recent years and I switched to those. I’ll still have alcohol in social settings, just not at home anymore (or rather much much much less)
- JackMorgan 2y ago
  I switched to kombucha with meals and way prefer it. It's got that tart sharp flavor but doesn't feel addicting in the same way.
throw46365 2y ago
Ehh. I rarely drank before the pandemic and now I essentially never drink. I don’t miss it at all. Wasn’t out at social events so I wasn’t drinking at all. I have probably drunk five, maybe ten units a year since. I consider it obvious that it’s generally unhealthy now. I sort of lucked into a much healthier diet during the pandemic —- I had suspected Covid just before the UK lockdown, managed to get a supermarket delivery slot, panic-bought a load of healthy food and veg and then spent the next ten days reading recipes and rediscovering cooking for myself, as I tried to make things I could taste. Also developed quite a usefully healthy dependency on apples. Both of these stuck, and I don’t really know why; habits are confusing to me because I am so disordered otherwise. It’s interesting how the pandemic affected people in ways they might not have expected, with or without the benefits of furlough or the new-to-many experience of WFH.
CyberDildonics 2y ago
I would say people should have been more skeptical of the conventional wisdom that sugar is fine but fat is bad while obesity skyrocketed.
democracy 2y ago
Interesting, I started drinking much less with covid since stopped going to the pubs after work for non-stop celebrations of firings/hirings/bdays/babies/catchups etc...
7bit 2y ago
> Point being is that no only am I skeptical of the claims of what I should and should not consume Science does not that you that. It just tells you that there is no healthy amount of alcohol to consume. Science also tells you that there is no healthy amount of tan, but you still need the sun to get vitamin D. Leaving it still up to you what to do with that information.
ml-anon 2y ago
To your first paragraph partly because just about everything to do with health and nutrition communication and policy is overwhelmingly influenced by corporations and industries whose interests are not aligned with our health.

alamortsubite 2y ago

You'll probably enjoy this clip from the Woody Allen movie Sleeper, where his character is revived 200 years in the future after being cryogenically frozen in 1973. Just watch the first minute or so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2fYguIX17Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2fYguIX17Q

xtracto 2y ago
There's also a good sketch of a "time travel dietitian": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ua-WVg1SsA
orhmeh09 2y ago
Powerful ideas in this film regarding robotics, personal assistant technology, technology addiction, and even bioethics.

radlad 2y ago

> Point being is that no only am I skeptical of the claims of what I should and should not consume, I'm skeptical of entirely how much agency I have to change what I should consume baring case where the impact is immediate. Can you elaborate on what you mean that you're skeptical of how much agency you have to change what you should consume? A common definition of addiction is that it is the inability to control your consumption. However, "I never made the decision to drink less, I just naturally drank less," doesn't sound anything like addiction. I began drinking both more frequently and in increased amounts of alcohol during the pandemic, but for me, this didn't stop or ease up until I made a conscious decision to stop. For me, it was habitual. And with habit came increased tolerance.

PheonixPharts 2y ago
To be clear, as an ex-smoker, I do believe we have agency in the cases where patterns are disruptive. Smoking tobacco got in the way of a range of activities, and I had to put in a serious effort to curb this behavior. Certainly drinkers who find their drinking interferes with other things are able to change their habits. Though even this is probably more environmental than not. I haven't smoked in 20+ years but I also no longer know any smokers. I'm not sure I would be a non-smoker today if smoking rates were closer to what they were in the 1950s. Similarly I have known people with problematic drinking behavior and their ability to stop has always been strongly correlated with having good reasons to stop. However, for the smaller things that "aren't good for you" in a less immediate sense, I don't think we have as much control over our behaviors as we'd like to believe. Another example is obesity. Many people still chalk this up to a "moral issue" where people are making "poor choices", but that doesn't seem like a good explanation for why we live in an obesity epidemic. I personally don't think people in 2024 are dramatically less "moral" than they were in 1990. My personal pandemic realization was that I'm far more of a node in a network of cells in a vast social organism that is humanity than I am an individual actor.
- BeetleB 2y ago
  > Another example is obesity. Many people still chalk this up to a "moral issue" where people are making "poor choices", but that doesn't seem like a good explanation for why we live in an obesity epidemic. I'm going to add to the noise and give a "simple" answer: Prosperity and availability. Years ago I read an interview with an applied mathematician who did a lot of research on how food impacts the body - from a math perspective. He said that many things impact a person (and society's) weight. You've got the type of diet (carbs/proteins/fat/fiber). You've got the components of the food (stuff in nutrition labels). You've got genetic factors. You've got parasites. Health issues like hypothyroidism. And more. But they don't impact you equally. When looking at the contributions of each factor to the rise of obesity, one item stood out clearly: The production (or rather, overproduction) of food. It's really that simple. As the decades go on, we produce more food per capita than in the past. Some of it, of course, is wasted. But otherwise, the food has to go somewhere. And that somewhere is us. From what I've read, in the 1960's, the average plate size was 75% of what it is today. Most people don't measure the amount of food they put in a plate. They eyeball how "full" the plate appears. Increase the plate size, and you increase your food consumption. When I switched to smaller plates, I still feel satiated - I'm likely still overeating. In the US, finding smaller plates (that are not flat, and not bowls) is not easy. I had to resort to visiting Chinese/Korean/Japanese stores to buy them. Presumably they still use smaller plates in those countries. How often do you feel hungry? Not craving hungry but stomach pangs hungry? I was very thin when young and was known to eat little. Hunger pangs were part of daily life (and not a sign of malnourishment). You eat breakfast, and you should get hungry by the time you eat lunch, and so on. I now go months before I feel any such thing. I often skip lunch altogether. Part of it is due to slowing metabolism, for sure. But the reality is I'm eating quite a bit for breakfast and random snacks. I grew up in other countries. Portion sizes at restaurants in the US are huge. For a long time I avoided eating at such places because it was just too much food. I often would have enough leftovers for another meal. People who consume a whole entree are likely eating way too much. And that problem exists everywhere. In other countries, the standard Pepsi can was 330ml, and you could easily buy 220ml ones. In the US, it's gotten hard for me to find a chilled 350ml can when I'm on the go. Regular grocery stores don't carry them. Now most gas stations/convenience stores don't either. You get 500ml bottles/cans. Ever read the nutrition label on them? 500ml bottles are listed as 2.5 servings. People consuming them are consuming a lot. I've mostly switched to the 220ml cans for soda. It's extremely rare that I drink one and think to myself "That really wasn't enough. I need to drink more!" Tic Tac boxes are larger in the US than in many other countries. The nearby Target only has "supersize" chocolates at the checkout register. You want a smaller portion size? You need to buy a whole box. I won't even get into cookies. They're huge in the US. Milk shake type drinks are both huge and loaded. In many countries, the portion size is small (e.g. 250ml), and they have the good sense not to put ice cream in it! Desserts, in general, are crazily loaded. Any dessert that's over 350 calories is too much. Dessert is supposed to be a "sweet extra", not a whole meal. I'm looking at a popular chain's milkshake calories. The lowest is 680. The highest is 1160. Often, when you get a dessert item from a restaurant, you are consuming the calories of 1-2 meals just from the dessert alone. I won't even talk about cheesecakes! Sorry, I know it's distracting from your overall point. Of course, environment matters. If you happen to have a lot of junk food at home, it's hard not to eat it. If you go to stores that have your favorite snack by the counter, it's hard not to buy. These do play a role. But as the researcher said, it's secondary/tertiary. But to anyone trying to figure out why it's so hard to lose weight: 1. Get smaller plates. 2. Try to reduce food intake so you feel hungry at least once per day (I achieve this for a while, and then drop the ball). Don't feel bad if for a long time you're having only 2 (or even 1) meal per day. It'll take a while before your body will feel hungry. 3. Drink soda in the smallest 220-250ml cans/bottles. Prefer Izze over Pepsi/Coke. And prefer Spindrift over all (it's OK that Spindrift is over 300ml!) 4. Avoid foods that trigger cravings. The usual offenders are fried/salty foods. If you get soda cravings, track whether you just ate some fried/salty food. If you want an extreme experiment, try eating really bland foods. You'll notice you probably never get a soda craving.

BrandoElFollito 2y ago

My mother told me that when she was young, tomatoes vere very suspect. So yes, these nutritional advices are very volatile.

czl 2y ago
FYI: Tomato leaves and stems contain solanine, a toxic glycoalkaloid that can cause digestive issues, headaches, and other symptoms if consumed in large quantities.
- nradov 2y ago
  Who eats leaves and stems??? But some people did incorrectly believe that tomatoes were poisonous. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-tomato-was-feared-in-europe-for-more-than-200-years-863735/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-tomato-w...

frereubu 2y ago

I like the Michael Pollan dictum: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I don't think you can go far wrong with that.

Abekkus 2y ago
For the food portion of that instruction, I'd tell people to "eat cells, not substances." Pasta and rice don't look good along that spectrum.
- jahbrewski 2y ago
  Not sure I’m tracking here. Can you explain this further?
  - JasserInicide 2y ago
    Limit processed food intake
    - rcoveson 2y ago
      "Eat cells, not substances" is a somewhat similar rule to "limit processed food intake", but the former would seem to encourage both pasta and rice while the latter would discourage pasta if you're being strict about it and rice if you're being extremely strict.
    - caseyohara 2y ago
      Isn't that congruent with "mostly plants"?
  - gnicholas 2y ago
    Not GP, but presumably it's a reference to the fact that (white) rice and (refined) pasta are processed in a way that makes them tastier but not as healthy. While you can eat brown rice and whole wheat pasta, they are quite a bit less common, and not as tasty.

dang 2y ago

These flips seem to happen on a cycle of 20 or 30 years. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is roughly the generational cycle. My theory is that each new generation of researchers establishes itself by overturning the findings of the previous generation—especially the shakiest ones.

mattmein 2y ago
Reminds me of Planck's principle: > A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ...
autoexec 2y ago
I think a lot of it is just garbage science by people who were paid by some industry to come up with anything that could result in a snappy headline that might boost sales of their product, combined with media being perfectly happy to misrepresent even honest research if they can get a clickbait title out of it. "Science says Bad Thing you like is actually good for you!" is about as sure to generate clicks/views/ad impressions as "Science says Healthy Thing is actually killing you!" With near zero accountability for bad science and journalism this situation isn't likely to change any time soon.
robwwilliams 2y ago
No, I disagree that these flips are just moody periodic “flips of a coin”. The target article explains very clearly WHY the flip. Here are the three main reasons: 1. An ascertainment bias that is built in to studies that recruit and compare “non-drinkers” to light drinkers. Non-drinkers may not be as inherently healthy as light drinkers. They may have had adverse effects earlier in their lives due to alcohol. 2. Since the 1970s most of NIH research has focused on alcoholism and alcohol abuse—-not on the epidemiologucal impact of drinking alcohol. These are entire distinct topics. Alcoholism is treated as a “disease” in the same way as other addictions. But a significant majority of drinkers are not alcoholics, and what is the impact on mortality of alcohol use on all types of age related diseases. 3. There was a long-term phantasy that resveratrol in red wine is responsible for the French paradox metabolic benefits. That gas been debunked for a decade but still lives in our brains as a zombie meme.

brookst 2y ago

Well said, but I think some of this boils down to people who prefer prescriptive versus descriptive health and diet info. I’m similar in that I’ll drink more or less based on environment; a vacation on the beach, I’ll probably drink more. A vacation in the Middle East, I’ll likely drink not at all. But I don’t really care. I’ll enjoy drinks sometimes and skip others. Some people really just want to have best practices defined for them, like they can be happy if they check the right boxes.

poincaredisk 2y ago
>But I don’t really care. I’ll enjoy drinks sometimes and skip others. I am trying to interpret what you said in the best possible way, but I'm not sure how. Maybe you don't have alcohol problems, but some people do (like I used to) and they absolutely should control their alcohol intake. Maybe you don't have obesity problem, but some people do, and they absolutely should count calories. Maybe you rebuttal is "obviously if you have problem with X you should improve your X", but then your statement comes off a vacuously true. Even worse, your sage advice may make it worse and make people think that their alcoholism/obesity is not a problem, because they just eat/drink what they enjoy, as much as they want. Believe me, as a (former?) alcoholic, "it's ok to drink as long as you are great at your job and healthy" is exactly what I wanted to hear (and believe).

_yb2s 2y ago

This... our understanding of biology is way too primitive to have a meaningful mechanistic understanding of what is healthy, and what is not. Most of the nutrition advice is based on simple observational correlations that are assuming a cause and effect that just isn't there. People with high cholesterol also tend to have more cardiovascular disease, but it turns out eating cholesterol and fat doesn't actually increase risk of cardiovascular disease. People who eat a lot of fish tend to have better health outcomes, but it turns out taking fish oil does not reproduce those outcomes, and so on and so on. Scientific nutrition is mostly just "scientism" - an irrational overconfidence bordering on a religious faith in unfounded assumptions based on observational studies, without admitting what we don't know. I think it is reasonable to avoid trying to make decisions about diet based on this stuff, but I think ideas like the paleo diet or evolutionary nutrition make a lot of sense- eat diets similar to those that humans have eaten safely for a long time, as those are what we are likely adapted to. Interestingly though this itself is massively diverse: there are hunter gatherer societies with almost every diet composition imaginable: from artic diets that are high protein and fat but nearly zero carb, to cultures like the kitavans whose diet is very high carb and low protein. Our metabolism is very adaptable and any diet that is mostly fresh nutrient dense foods from plant and/or animal sources is probably about equally healthy. Ironically, the stress of worrying constantly about if your food is optimally healthy, is probably more harmful to your health than anything typically considered unhealthy.

NumberWangMan 2y ago
I don't think that the scientific consensus on nutrition as unsettled as you say. As an example, there are a lot of people making money selling various diets as well as promoting uncertainty and doubt around the issue, but there seems to be pretty definitive evidence in favor of cholesterol and fat increasing cardiovascular disease risk. People love to misrepresent studies, or cherry-pick poorly designed studies, and use them to claim that the consensus is wrong. I'm not talking about observational studies either, but actual controlled feeding trials where they put you on a strictly controlled diet for a period of time. Even if you look at what humans are evolved to eat -- evolution puts selective pressure on reproductive fitness. As a process, it does not put any pressure on you to live a long time, as long as you reproduce successfully (which is why insects like the mayfly can even exist). So looking at what primitive people ate does not really give us information about what is healthy if you want to live a long time (aside from avoiding things that are obviously immediately poisonous). Even hunter gatherer tribes that eat a meat-and-dairy-heavy diet like the Maasai have been examined and have pretty significant cardiovascular disease -- but they are also so ridiculously active their blood vessels are much wider than people with a modern sedentary lifestyle, and that mostly balances out the narrowing from arterial plaque. Native people who eat a traditional diet heavy in whole grains, legumes, and tubers for calories have them beat by a mile when it comes to arterial health.

bushwald 2y ago

The agricultural lobby sold us things like the food pyramid which said eat more grain, for example. I think people have become more conscious of such manipulation and so things have turned around. Unfortunately, capital, as always, has figured out how to co-opt the change in attitudes as well as weird Internet fad diets (e.g., gluten free) to keep people buying from the middle of the store.

glenstein 2y ago

I find takes like this to be true in the specific details but wildly wrong as a big picture takeaway. A lot of people are citing their favorite quotes here, so here's one of mine from the Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov: >When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. So I think there's a relativity of wrong problem that you run into when suggesting it's all just so complex and leaving it at that. I would nevertheless absolutely agree that nutrition science and communication around it has been disorganized, contradictory, and without much in the way of a north star or a reliable "vanguard" of communicators representing a firm consensus. I feel much better about public communication from, say, astrophysics, archeology, geology, etc. and I think there's a characteristic degree of stability of knowledge particular to each of those fields.

hobobaggins 2y ago
Fundamentally, the human body seems to be an incredibly complex system that is far more dynamic, rapidly changing, and with far more unpredictable interactions than any of those other fields. It's fascinating that, at least on some axes, we might know less about core processes in our own bodies than we probably have already ascertained about planetary motion or materials composition from millions of miles away.
- voisin 2y ago
  Everything you’ve said is bang on. Future generations will look at our time and those that came before us as the nutritional dark ages where we tried to apply the same rules to everyone irrespective of whatever factors turn out to define an individual’s optimal nutrition protocol.
  - ruszki 2y ago
    I think we know that for decades. The problem is mainly cost. But of course, looking at how the past millennia is presented to us, you’re probably right.

draw_down 2y ago

[dead]

stanleykm 2y ago

I had a similar drinking habit as you. Beer is more interesting to drink with food than water is. But it’s still a bunch of alcohol for your liver to deal with so probably not great for it. Low/no alcohol beers have gotten pretty good in recent years and I switched to those. I’ll still have alcohol in social settings, just not at home anymore (or rather much much much less)

JackMorgan 2y ago
I switched to kombucha with meals and way prefer it. It's got that tart sharp flavor but doesn't feel addicting in the same way.

throw46365 2y ago

Ehh. I rarely drank before the pandemic and now I essentially never drink. I don’t miss it at all. Wasn’t out at social events so I wasn’t drinking at all. I have probably drunk five, maybe ten units a year since. I consider it obvious that it’s generally unhealthy now. I sort of lucked into a much healthier diet during the pandemic —- I had suspected Covid just before the UK lockdown, managed to get a supermarket delivery slot, panic-bought a load of healthy food and veg and then spent the next ten days reading recipes and rediscovering cooking for myself, as I tried to make things I could taste. Also developed quite a usefully healthy dependency on apples. Both of these stuck, and I don’t really know why; habits are confusing to me because I am so disordered otherwise. It’s interesting how the pandemic affected people in ways they might not have expected, with or without the benefits of furlough or the new-to-many experience of WFH.

CyberDildonics 2y ago

I would say people should have been more skeptical of the conventional wisdom that sugar is fine but fat is bad while obesity skyrocketed.

democracy 2y ago

Interesting, I started drinking much less with covid since stopped going to the pubs after work for non-stop celebrations of firings/hirings/bdays/babies/catchups etc...

7bit 2y ago

> Point being is that no only am I skeptical of the claims of what I should and should not consume Science does not that you that. It just tells you that there is no healthy amount of alcohol to consume. Science also tells you that there is no healthy amount of tan, but you still need the sun to get vitamin D. Leaving it still up to you what to do with that information.

ml-anon 2y ago

To your first paragraph partly because just about everything to do with health and nutrition communication and policy is overwhelmingly influenced by corporations and industries whose interests are not aligned with our health.