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What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

nautil.us

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Re: What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

#71

Post by jensen123 »

It's nice to see an article that explains that too much animal protein can be bad for your health, without advocating a 100% plant-based/vegan diet. We humans are apes, and when you look at other apes, they eat mostly plants, but not always only plants. For example, chimpanzees eat small amounts of meat.

I'm a bit skeptical to the claim that whole grains is a nearly perfect food, though. Think about it - we apes have not eaten huge amounts of grains for most of evolution. Also grains contain various anti-nutrients, otherwise they would have been eaten by insects. It does not seem inconceivable that some of these insect-harming anti-nutrients could also be harmful for humans.

Many dietary studies are done with rodents, but I think (I'm not an expert here) rodents have eaten far more grains than apes during most of evolution. So studies with rodents showing that high-grain diets are healthy, are perhaps showing just that - that high-grain diets are healthy for rodents (and not necessarily apes).

Re: What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

#72

Post by Joof »

pedalpete wrote: post #44
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course paleo is absolute BS, so why does it matter?

rather than just saying an absolute, why not give some facts as to why "you agree with those who say paleo is BS". I'm not suggesting it isn't but your dismissive comment doesn't enlighten those who are not aware of the controversy.

Is there a controversy? Eating more nutrious food and fewer calories (assuming a previous diet of too many calories and poor nutrucian) typically benefits people whether it's paleo, vegan or just a regular healthier diet.

Paleo's basic premise is loosly based on the malnourishment seen when we transitioned from a diverse hunter-gatherer diet to a much less diverse agricultural diet (largely caused by iron deficiencies). Its a misunderstanding of history. We ate those foods before, but they weren't the ONLY things people ate. The result is ultimately still restricting diet to healthier foods which means it's nutricious, but still unnecessarily restrictive and without a realistic premise.

Re: What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

#73

Post by Joof »

1535537 wrote: post #70
arjie wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone else wants a quick summary of what you can find on Google Scholar for this: There is currently no strong evidence in support of the idea that A2 milk has better digestive or other health properties than A1 milk. Most of the stuff I found out there concluded that there was no significant difference, and the few that I found on the rest of the Internet were contradicted elsewhere.

This is correct and does not contradict anything I said. It is quite easy to try it for yourself and see if it does anything. Of course you will want to avoid consuming large amounts of other dairy sources while you are trying it.

While anecdotal evidence is useful it doesn't prove anything. Research is stronger, but more limited in scope.

Re: What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

#74

Post by Joof »

jensen123 wrote: post #71

It's nice to see an article that explains that too much animal protein can be bad for your health, without advocating a 100% plant-based/vegan diet. We humans are apes, and when you look at other apes, they eat mostly plants, but not always only plants. For example, chimpanzees eat small amounts of meat. I'm a bit skeptical to the claim that whole grains is a nearly perfect food, though. Think about it - we apes have…

What? Looking at other apes is a poor indicator. What an animal eats has to do with it's environment and it's digestion mechanisms. Some apes largely ate grasses. Nutrients matters, but largely is solved by eating a varied diet.

You might have noticed that we do something other species don't. Cooking! It's a pre-digestion mechanism that saves a lot of work. Combined with our omnivorous digestive system we can probably be considered radically distinct from our ape ancestors (in a good way).

Re: What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

#75

Post by JupiterMoon »

Retric wrote: post #27
Sargos wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those grains aren't good for paleo though since we didn't really eat them while evolving. Our bodies haven't been primarily digesting them for very long.

I think you underestimate how fast evolution happens. Lactose tolerance is a fairly recent, but widespread adaptation.

Aren't lactose tolerances wildly different between populations? With e.g. Northern European ancestry people having very high lactose tolerance and East Asian ancestry people having much lower lactose tolerance?

Re: What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

#76

Post by Joof »

scholia wrote: post #53
OldSchoolJohnny wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read Good Gut, it's a very very very bad book. About 10% enlightening accepted science and about 90% rampant and very wild speculation. Filled with little chapters that take in many cases very tenuous unproven theories (they come out and say that) and then use weasel words to then write a whole speculative chapter about it. I learned a lot about how digestion works and then a lot about how to make a book out o…

Views obviously differ. Both the authors (1) have very senior positions at the Sonnenburg Lab in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University, so I'd be quite surprised if the book is as bad as you claim. Also, Amazon reviewers have given it 4.7 stars out of 5, which suggests quite a few people found it useful. (1) Justin L. Sonnenburg. Principal Investigator, and Erica D. Sonnenburg. Senior R…

Maybe, but remember that the process of review is removed.

Even the most brilliant people quite happily believe dumb things.

Re: What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

#77

Post by edem »

asciimo wrote: post #7

This article opens with, "[New science] is also showing us that advocates of trendy paleo and vegan diets are missing the big picture of how our omnivorous digestive system works." But it concludes with, "Pick a modest-sized plate and make meals using vegetables, legumes, leafy greens, beans, fruits, and unmilled whole grains as the main ingredients. Add some meat if you want and dollops of healthy fats on the side o…

If you omit something it is not the same anymore. It is like omitting pasta from a spaghetti bolognese: you will end up with something completely different and not even remotely pleasant.

Re: What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

#78

Post by edem »

> The amount of meat in the Western diet can also pose problems. When consumed in relatively large quantities, animal protein is not completely broken down by the time it reaches the lower end of the small intestine. Eat too much meat and your overwhelmed small intestine delivers partially digested animal protein to the colon. When bacteria in the colon encounter intact or partially digested protein, a different kind of alchemy gets underway—protein putrefaction.

Do someone has any information on the "relatively large quantities" part? How much meat can I eat before protein putrefaction kicks in?

Re: What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

#79

Post by hjura »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #41
Sargos wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those grains aren't good for paleo though since we didn't really eat them while evolving. Our bodies haven't been primarily digesting them for very long.

Of course paleo is absolute BS, so why does it matter?

I don't get why paleo diet is not congruent. So our DNA is build upon iterations(generations), and the aliments that were eaten in the majority of those are better suited for our current generation.

Any argument?

Re: What Your Microbiome Wants for Dinner

#80

Post by scholia »

Joof wrote: post #76
scholia wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Views obviously differ. Both the authors (1) have very senior positions at the Sonnenburg Lab in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University, so I'd be quite surprised if the book is as bad as you claim. Also, Amazon reviewers have given it 4.7 stars out of 5, which suggests quite a few people found it useful. (1) Justin L. Sonnenburg. Principal Investigator, and Erica D. Sonnenburg. Senior R…

Maybe, but remember that the process of review is removed. Even the most brilliant people quite happily believe dumb things.

Sure. But brilliant people generally don't believe dumb things that in their core area of expertise....
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