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The complications of nutrition science

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Re: The complications of nutrition science

#41

Post by danieltillett »

Almaviva wrote: post #33
danieltillett wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it is more the other way around. The last 6-8000 years or so we have been genetically adapting to our historically poor diet. The average peasant has been eating nothing much more than a very limited range of grains and most of us have become pretty well adapted to this diet. This is one of the ironies of the palo diet craze.

8000 years is basically an eye blink, for evolution and natural selection to select a whole population (through death and differences in reproduction) with those who are thoroughly well adapted. Yes, humans might be better off for it than we were 8000 years ago, but that's necessarily not saying much.

3000 years is more than enough in humans. The lactase persistence mutation in Europeans basically went from 0% of the population to near 100% in Northern Europeans in 3000 years. This was totally due to a change in diet when adults started drinking animal milk.

Evolution speed is proportional to the population size as the rate of new genes appearing is directly proportional to the number of individuals while the speed a gene spreads through the population is proportional to the log10 of the population size. If you increase the population 1000 fold then you get 1000 times the rate of evolution. Because the human population has grown so much since the invention of agriculture the rate of human evolution over the last 10,000 years is more than than the preceding million years.

Re: The complications of nutrition science

#42

Post by Outdoorsman »

I think it's helpful to keep in mind, when deciding on our "individual" takeaways from this article, that our DNA requires nothing more of us than that we stay alive long enough to reproduce and pass it along...

The earliest humans likely ate whatever was immediately available to stay alive...some survived doing that and they became your ancestors...some died doing that, their DNA with them...

If you doubt that just observe babies when they first become ambulatory (start crawling), and come to your own conclusions--babies put a great number of things into their mouths to "try it out"...

We think about past humans, and ponder the dietary choices the fossil record indicates they appear to have made...

Is a diet that kept them alive long enough to reproduce a diet that has the potential to keep us feeling well into our 30s-50s, or to keep us alive well into our 60s-90s...?

Re: The complications of nutrition science

#43

Post by joe_the_user »

stevebmark wrote: post #8

This was fully covered in "In Defense of Food" - good intro read for nutrition. Read that, not Vox, which is rife with strange opinions, like "overeating" being the cause of modern disease? You damn nutritional science then come up with your own solution to everyone's problem, not based in evidence? Neat. It's oversimplifying to say the only studies nutritional science can use are observational ones. There are plenty…

Why is it strange to think that over-eating is could be considered problem?

One might better phrase it as "today, many humans have the ability to consume as much as they wish of many kinds of foods, a situation somewhat unique to evolutionary history and many problems seem to stem from this". I think a fair portion of nutrition experts think this. I don't know if it's a majority but as the article mentions, consensus is hard to find and just about any opinion is hard to support.

And you seem to recommend something closer to the cranky fringe as an alternative to a decent article whose main message seems to be "very little is uncontroversial"

Re: The complications of nutrition science

#44

Post by prostoalex »

Tycho wrote: post #18

Three thoughts 1. As Taleb has often argued, you dont need to fully understand a problem, all the interaction effects etc., in order to understand that nature has already solved it. Eat what your ancestors ate. 2. Could it be that the people who go into food science are basically rejects from more respected disciplines? 3. People seem to widely hold beliefs about diet which are patently illogical. For instance everyo…

Doesn't (1) essentially boil down to a variant of low-carb diet?

Re: The complications of nutrition science

#45

Post by lnufnu »

MCRed wrote: post #11

The only proof I have is an anecdote but it is consistent with my research-- and I've lost 100 pounds in 8 months as a result. The biggest problem is we have rejected science from food to begin with. We have government spending billions pushing a diet designed to create obesity (which is very high in carbs, effectively sugar, and low in fat.) Likely there are at least two types of people biochemically- those who are…

Dr. Robert Lustig has a talk called Sugar, the Bitter Truth, in which he talks about his research into pediatric obesity. He shows that many populations have thrived both low-fat and low-carb diets, then demonstrates why you cannot have both high fat and simple carbohydrates without expecting to see high rates of inflammatory disease. If you can predict that the population is going to keep consuming high amounts of sugar, would it be better to recommend a low fat diet?

Trans fat is a fat that has hydrogens next to double bonds on both sides of the carbon chain. The natural trans fats that sometimes occur in beef and milk have been shown to possibly have a positive effect on LDL.

The main source of trans fat in the modern diet has been through artificially created trans fat made in a process using high heat and a catalyst like nickel to rearrange the bonds. Partially hydrogenated fats are ones where not all the hydrogen bonds are saturated, and are technically cis fats.

They did a six year study with monkeys, using fat as a control in the diet. One group ate trans fat, the other saturated: http://www.wakehealth.edu/News-Releases/2006/Trans_Fat_Leads...

Fish oil is not a trans fat. As far as a government boogeymen go, you may be confusing the research done in the late seventies that led to government recommendations against consuming saturated fats. You can read more about that, trans, and cis fats here: http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Biological_Chemistry/Lipids/Fatt...

Re: The complications of nutrition science

#46

Post by fallous »

joe_the_user wrote: post #43
stevebmark wrote: post #8

This was fully covered in "In Defense of Food" - good intro read for nutrition. Read that, not Vox, which is rife with strange opinions, like "overeating" being the cause of modern disease? You damn nutritional science then come up with your own solution to everyone's problem, not based in evidence? Neat. It's oversimplifying to say the only studies nutritional science can use are observational ones. There are plenty…

Why is it strange to think that over-eating is could be considered problem? One might better phrase it as "today, many humans have the ability to consume as much as they wish of many kinds of foods, a situation somewhat unique to evolutionary history and many problems seem to stem from this". I think a fair portion of nutrition experts think this. I don't know if it's a majority but as the article mentions, consensus…

I don't disagree with your critique of the parent's preferred "source," but "over-eating" has a certain hand-waving component as well (IMO at least.)

If you eat 10 pounds of celery, there is no doubt that the vast majority of people would consider that over-eating but the negative health effects would at best be an abundance of fiber I suspect.

Re: The complications of nutrition science

#47

Post by lnufnu »

noondip wrote: post #30
qwtel wrote: post #3

Via negativa: Avoid what is most likely bad (food processed by industry, sodas, excess sugar, excess salt, trans fat and food blogs). Beyond that there isn't too much you can do.

So avoid all animal products, then? Trans fat are found in all of them.

Naturally occurring trans fats (vaccenic acid and conjugated linoleic acid) occur in trace amounts in animal products. They also have been shown to possibly be beneficial for LDL and triglycerides, while hydrogenated oil is harmful.

Re: The complications of nutrition science

#48

Post by Tycho »

oilywater wrote: post #34
Tycho wrote: post #18

Three thoughts 1. As Taleb has often argued, you dont need to fully understand a problem, all the interaction effects etc., in order to understand that nature has already solved it. Eat what your ancestors ate. 2. Could it be that the people who go into food science are basically rejects from more respected disciplines? 3. People seem to widely hold beliefs about diet which are patently illogical. For instance everyo…

Our ancestors at one point in time had a diet consisting 60-80% of animal flesh. Do you think that this is what nature solved? I mean, technology has given us a way to rise above the evolution. We do not have claws, or teeth that could pierce an elephant, lion, gazelle. It doesn't seem that nature solved anything. Or us, drinking cows milk? Did nature solve the digestion of human to consume milk of another mammal? Wa…

Nature, over time, destroys what is fragile. If your ancestors have been drinking milk for millennia, then it is probably safe for your body. In similar dosages. Eat what has been field tested by nature, not the latest voodoo food.

Re: The complications of nutrition science

#49

Post by Gibbon1 »

throwaway2343 wrote: post #36
MCRed wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low carb for 8 months, so I think I'm beyond the short term measure. My bloodwork is better now than before. I can't imagine what nutrition I'm being deficient in, and the things that are potential issues I already take supplements (and since there's not a lot of risk in vitamins I take more than I probably need and for more types of vitamins than I need.) Of course this is anecdote and it gets to the key problem the…

What did this person do to deserve to be downvoted? They're trying to contribute to the conversation and you're being rude. Sincerely, a lurker's voice.

I think it's because it goes against the last 45 years of common wisdom about why people get fat. Namely it's all about dietary fat and lack of will power. If you ask your doctor, nutritionist, your mom, or the man on the street they'll tell you this. Try to tell them different and they'll label you as crazy. (Hint hit the vote button now)

If you ask someone that does endocrine research, especially pediatric endocrine research they'll tell you that when you exclude people that are overweight for one of a large number of genetic reasons, the rest are fat because if a diet containing too much added sugars and processed carbs[1]. They'll also tell you normal dietary fat[2] is good for you.

[1] And booze though it breaks my heart to say so. [2] As opposed to trans-fats which are terrible.

Re: The complications of nutrition science

#50

Post by saosebastiao »

noondip wrote: post #28

I've really enjoyed learning about nutrition science through http://nutritionfacts.org , especially in videos about the conflict of interest present in modern research.

Conflicts of interest like the one that Michal Greger has himself, as an employee of the Humane Society? He literally gets paid to put an MD stamp of approval on anything vegan and attempting to discredit anything that is not vegan.

Have you actually critically read anything from this bullshit factory?

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/death-as-a-foodborne-il...

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