How we're scammed into eating phony food

> In my experience, if I want to stop gaining I need to cut out sweets and sodas, and that takes some effort and will, but I feel okay replacing my mountain dew with carbonated water and tea.

I do the exact same thing! I get absurdly cheap sparkling water and leave it chill in fridge. Sometimes I add crystal light lemon or cherry.

> I have successfully gotten down to a normal BMI this way, but if that's how being thin feels, I don't really see the point.

Sure but a chocolate bar just tastes incredible if you haven't had one for a long time. I think sweets are much harder to kick than fats.

> I ran a lot when I was thin, but as a fat person, trying to run enough to stress the cardiovascular system properly usually resulted in minor injuries that prevented me from running often enough to get into shape

Don't bother running! Walking is shown in study after study to make you more creative. Better yet walk in a forest (maybe you saw the plant research thread?). A mysterious journey in the brain happens when physically walking.

> if you really believe that man is an incredibly efficient machine, well, you probably have not seen me engage in any sort of sport.

Take a look at hurling. It's like a sport found in Harry Potter but without broomsticks.

I think it is worth improving physical coordination abilities. You might be bad at it but improving in weak areas should improve seemingly unrelated areas in your brain. Even if it didn't, you will live longer.

> I personally have a goal of 5 hours a week of intense (read: I'm dripping with perspiration) cardio every week.

Trust me, you're the 1%. Your gym's existence depends on the fact.

Sometimes the anonymous white discs will have a bit sliced almost off and coloured with orange food dye. Often not.

You'll see genuine (imported) scallops at markets occasionally, but it's years and years since I saw a restaurant serve the real thing.

"The more food is altered, the less sure we become about that."

Except with genetic engineering, by being precise as to how and where the new genes are inserted, we are actually altering it less than with traditional breeding or mutagenics. Those types of breeding have far less testing than transgenics. We can potentially create new genes with those older methods that have never existed before and never know about it.

This is something that taleb was criticised for by biologists and geneticists (and basically his reply was "that they are idiots", yup, great argument).

"Normal food has the advantage that we already know it has no disastrous ecological consequences".

There is no such thing as normal food: Take the sweet potato. It has been altered transgenically using the agrobacterium twice in its history without human intervention. The agrobacterium is the same bacteria used when doing transgenic GMO. Basically nature beat us to it a long time ago when it comes to transgenics.

You can breed a potato the old fashion way to contain high level of solanine (which can be poisonous). Its not how the genes are altered, its what they do that is key.