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Ask HN: What should we eat?

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Re: Ask HN: What should we eat?

#91

Post by eavc »

wlievens wrote: post #24
megablast wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "it works very well for me"? It hasn't killed you yet?

When I eat bad for a while, I feel unenergetic, I get sporadic bowel cramps and headaches. When I eat consistenly healthy for a period, I really feel it. Maybe he means that?

I'm addicted to refined carbs and caffeine and junk food, so when I don't eat those for a while, I feel pretty awful.

How things feel doesn't always give you the best guidance, especially if you're not good at tracking those things accurately.

Re: Ask HN: What should we eat?

#92

Post by kranner »

riffraff wrote: post #70
meric wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I don't know if its arbitary, I can tell if a food is 'hot' or 'cold' just by eating it, even if I've never seen it before. For me, only eating 'hot' foods means I get more ulcers, so I am always watching out.

if the hot/cold idea is deeply rooted in you, it makes sense that you are able to tell what is what, but that does not mean it's not arbitrary, just that you have assimilated the method on a deeper level. Consider italians, and pasta. Basically everybody knows "instinctively" if a sauce makes sense with short or long pasta, but in the end it's still completely arbitrary :)

Not sure you have a basis for declaring it arbitrary yet, not even in the absence of evidence that it isn't.

Re: Ask HN: What should we eat?

#93

Post by kranner »

meric wrote: post #60
sliverstorm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In China, for example, some foods are considered "heating", while others "cooling". Based on the time of year and your own condition, you may be advised to eat this set of foods, and avoid that. gah... I dated a chinese girl, and she would discuss that with me when she got sick. It feels like folk medicine, the decision of what makes something 'hot' or 'cold' and so on seemed so arbitrary.

Hmm I don't know if its arbitary, I can tell if a food is 'hot' or 'cold' just by eating it, even if I've never seen it before. For me, only eating 'hot' foods means I get more ulcers, so I am always watching out.

To me, the hotness/coldness of a food is not always obvious.

Would you have guessed that apples are 'hot'?

Re: Ask HN: What should we eat?

#94

Post by Bdennyw »

da5e wrote: post #12
briandw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect and naive. Our teeth evolved to eat a wide verity of things, molars to chew plants, and incisors and canines to rip meat. Look at the diet of chimps, they eat whatever they can get their hands on, meat included. "Cooked foods are bad" is a crock. You can over cook foods, and maybe cooking some foods is bad, but cooking increases the nutritional value of many foods. Processing makes more nutrients av…

"specifically the no GMO part" That's a huge unscientific leap to say that. We don't know GMO is safe. And it's certainly not logical to say that concerns about them are crap.

Whats more unscientific; genetics are scary and we should never intentionally modify genes for our benefit, or lets investigate what can be done with this new tool? I'd say that investigation and experimentation would be the scientific thing to do.

Re: Ask HN: What should we eat?

#95

Post by zoomzoom »

eavc wrote: post #85
zoomzoom wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that you are so naive about what being "science-minded" on this issue means. There is so much variation in human physiology and digestive tract composition that a universal "healthy" diet is probably even more backwards of a notion than the USDA recommendations. What will be best for you to eat needs to be determined by your experiments with various different diets and will depend on how much you exerci…

No need to be disingenuous. You don't know me from Adam, so your surprise is just rhetorical. Mine was genuine and aimed at getting additional responses, maybe responses more in line with the intent of the OP. In adjacent sentences, you say that there are no probably no universals, science can tell us nothing, but that we have certain foods that are proven to work. Yes, there are common themes in this thread, and tha…

Look - I think that my sparse history of commenting on HN says more than I can express here about my stance on flame wars. I don't want to start one.

But this whole food issue is something that I feel quite strongly about. My surprise is hardly rhetorical, and while I may have treated you as a straw man for a moment, I think that the larger point is still valid. The attempt to get scientific about eating strikes me as the problem, and I think that my post was a response in line with the OP in that sense. What I am trying to tell you is that I have been in your shoes; I have read all the books about diet; and I think that asking for more books is not going to give you the answers that you need.

Your anxiety is not caused by a lack of data - it is caused by an unhealthy reliance on outside opinion for your mental stability. Nobody who is writing the books knows enough to give you the answers that you want. Don't rely too much on scientists and experts. The scientists invented the HFCS that is giving us all diabetes and lay people in the 1400's didn't think that the earth was flat - the "experts" did. I am not asking you to rely on common themes or popular opinion - I am asking you to do some experiments and gather data - try eating different foods and see what makes you feel best. Don't ask a scientist what to do - become one.

Re: Ask HN: What should we eat?

#96

Post by Roridge »

In layman terms: The body requires ATP for power, it is the rawest energy base unit for your body and is produced from Carbohydrate.

Your body is a machine built for changing fat into carbohydrate and then into ATP.

If you give your body too much carbohydrate it takes what it needs and converts the rest into fat. The fat you eat is already fat, so it just stores that too because it has already taken the raw carbohydrate it needs.

If you reduce your carbohydrate intake and eat more protein and fat (read "red meat" but also chicken, pork, non root vegetables et cetera) then your body will stop being lazy and start doing what it did for thousands of years before we invented preservatives and microwaves and cocacola and take that fat and make it into carbohydrate.

If you give your body less carbohydrate then you are doing it a massive favour.

That said, everyone is as genetically different as they are similar, so what works for some people wont work for others. For instance, Doctors are currently researching a hormone that comes from your bowls that tells you that you need carbohydrates, like all hormones they can over produce and make you crave them even if you aren't hungry, and they are working on a blocker which will help the super obese and probably reduce the need for any gastric band surgery.

Re: Ask HN: What should we eat?

#97

Post by rphlx »

modeless wrote: post #43
shib71 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I have the same problem with sources as the original poster. Nutrition science has become so sensationalized that it's hard to take any of it seriously. I take my cue mostly from an instinct developed over years of paying attention to how my diet makes me feel. Stuff like CSIRO's book [ http://www.csiro.au/science/TWD.html ] do influence that instinct - I feel that their research is somewhat removed fro…

I prefer science to instinct. One human lifetime doesn't provide nearly enough opportunities for diet experiments to determine all the correct answers for yourself, even if you could separate real diet effects from personal bias, the placebo effect, and other influences in your life.

On the contrary, it only takes about 4 weeks to try a new protein/fat/carb split. Try high protein and high fat, then fine tune whatever worked best for you.

I agree you can't detect subtle long term health problems this way, though.

Re: Ask HN: What should we eat?

#98

Post by koanarc »

(I.A.NOT.A.Dietician/Nutritionalist, so more lay/anecdotal/armchair discussion follows)

I've had the same problems in trying to sort out truth and nonsense, so I just try to maintain an elementary understanding of the basic components of our diets and experiment. List the fundamentals of human nutrition and spend a day on wikipedia taking notes on what we do know. My rules:

1. Know my calorie requirements. How many to maintain current weight, to lose weight, to gain weight?

2. Pay attention to calorie ratios - Protein/Carbs/Fats. Am I working out this week? Anaerobic or aerobic? Do I have extra energy stores right now? What am I burning and what am I storing?

3. Protein quality & diversity of protein sources. Highly bio-available proteins? Simple or complex carbs, high or low GI? Saturated, mono-, or poly-unsaturated fats? No trans fat.

4. Vitamins and minerals. Where are the major gaps in my diet?

5. As little processed food as possible.

There's plenty of information out there on these things. Do your own research. Every week learn exactly what is in one particular food. See what works for you, then eat what you're knowledgeable about and what makes you feel right.

Re: Ask HN: What should we eat?

#99

Post by anguslong »

Mark Bittman, food writer at NYT strikes a balance between food hyperbole and science that appeals to me. (e.g. full appreciation of health, weight, environment, pleasure trade-offs)

His personal goal of "vegan until 6" is an example. Veggies & fruit during the day, then a balanced dinner with protein.

A bit more detail and links to his sources (books): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/article967801.ece

Re: Ask HN: What should we eat?

#100

Post by Gormo »

mbutson wrote: post #35

I have been in your situation on many occasions. I have gone vegetarian, vegan, omnivore, whatever you want to call it I have been there. It is a questions that can never be finitely answered. Everyone is different and the human body adapts to what it is given. (An eskimo community in Wales eats 90% fat) The most rewarding diet(I hate the term diet because it ensures only short-term gain) that I have found is the Pal…

Sorry for going offtopic, but: there are Eskimo communities in Wales? Or did you mean that they eat whales?
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