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Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

theguardian.com

141–150 of 231 posts

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#141

Whenever I hear discussion of whether we should defer to the judgement of scientists, I always want to ask, which field of science do you mean? In some, like physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, geology, there is still much to be learned but what we have so far is pretty solid. You don't hear about the basics (matter is made of atoms, species emerge from natural selection, plate tectonics) getting overturned. Th…

I'd love to read a book on the subject. What did it take for various scientific fields to become truly mature? Are their key ways to measure how far along we are?

Concrete, predictive theories would be great but I get that we're far from them in fields like nutrition short of, like, scurvy I guess? I wonder how much of this is due to the natural variation among individuals and how much is just because of ethical limits on scientific inquiry. Not that I'm advocating for human experiments but one has to wonder what we could discover.

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#142
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, butter is still worse then no butter (and more calories from whole plant foods instead). Margarine may or may not be worse than butter (I think it is worse). It is better to avoid/reduce all refined fats (oils), except maybe for a high DHA omega 3 supplement. If you want to eat for health, look into WFPB, they have a lot of science on their side.

America said cooking with lard was bad for us and all that resulted in was lard being substituted with sugar. Cos the moment you take the fat away everything is tasteless.

Unless you add salt!

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#143
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is opposite of the productive approach. The starting point should be "what diet can you eat that makes you feel satisfied after the appropriate amount of calories for your body/lifestyle". The proportion of carbs in the diet seems to have a huge effect on appetite for many people. For them, eating fewer carbs means they are satisfied after fewer calories, so they eat less and lose weight. If nutrition research w…

Veggies and fruit are carbs. I replaced pasta and white rice with oatmeal, cabbage and apples. All of above are all carbs. Not all carbs are equal. I feel fully satisfied with less calories now. I can eat 4 cups of rice in one sitting without realizing it, but not 4 apples. Saying replace pasta with eggs and bacon is not better than suggesting more veggies and fruits. Regarding the approach, I found it easiest to kno…

1) You seem to think you are disagreeing with me, but I never said everyone was the same. I said the point is to find a diet where you feel satisfied without consuming too many calories. Some people might love sugar too much and need to cut down on something else (eg fat) instead, or they simply need to exercise more via getting a different job, etc.

2) Pretty sure pasta and white rice will have a higher density of carbs than eg cabbage and apples. From a random site (feel free to find a better source) in grams of carbs per cup of food:

  oatmeal = 29.3 g
  cabbage = 5.2 g
  apples  = 17.3 g
  rice    = 44.5 g 
  pasta   = 42.8 g
3) "I can't imaging an effective public health policy based on subjective "do you feel full?". I don't see what the problem would be, but whatever. These nutritional public health policies have all been awful, no one should be listening to them anyway.

Refs:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/breakfast-cereals/1600/2

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable...

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/...

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/...

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/...

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#144

Whenever I hear discussion of whether we should defer to the judgement of scientists, I always want to ask, which field of science do you mean? In some, like physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, geology, there is still much to be learned but what we have so far is pretty solid. You don't hear about the basics (matter is made of atoms, species emerge from natural selection, plate tectonics) getting overturned. Th…

I'd love to read a book on the subject. What did it take for various scientific fields to become truly mature? Are their key ways to measure how far along we are? Concrete, predictive theories would be great but I get that we're far from them in fields like nutrition short of, like, scurvy I guess? I wonder how much of this is due to the natural variation among individuals and how much is just because of ethical limi…

Measurement. If you can’t measure it you can’t predict it.

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#145
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After doing endurance exercise 80km+ bike rides each weekend, sodium and other forms of electrolytes are incredibly important. Without them I lose fluids and I get crazy leg cramps. The issue is that salt tastes good, so people load it on their food to the point where it is unhealthy. It's the same with sugar, there is a huge industry bashing sugar at the moment, but sugar is essential for the human body. They are ba…

>"sugar is essential for the human body" Sugar is not essential to the diet, the body can make it from fat and protein. Ie, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis However, afaik, you cannot live without fat or protein in your diet. >"Try exercising without a healthy blood sugar level due to lack of complex sugars." You assume "healthy blood sugar level" must be related to "amount of sugar in diet". Not true, y…

Indeed.

My body can rearrange the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen to make simple sugars from fats and proteins.

Unless the body can do nuclear fusion, one cannot synthesize sodium. Last I checked, we humans (or any animals) cannot.

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#146

Whenever I hear discussion of whether we should defer to the judgement of scientists, I always want to ask, which field of science do you mean? In some, like physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, geology, there is still much to be learned but what we have so far is pretty solid. You don't hear about the basics (matter is made of atoms, species emerge from natural selection, plate tectonics) getting overturned. Th…

> Then, there are other fields, like economics and nutrition, where the basic fundamentals of the field are a pile of mud.

Practically all social sciences are suspect and really have no business calling themselves sciences.

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#147
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"sugar is essential for the human body" Sugar is not essential to the diet, the body can make it from fat and protein. Ie, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis However, afaik, you cannot live without fat or protein in your diet. >"Try exercising without a healthy blood sugar level due to lack of complex sugars." You assume "healthy blood sugar level" must be related to "amount of sugar in diet". Not true, y…

Indeed. My body can rearrange the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen to make simple sugars from fats and proteins. Unless the body can do nuclear fusion, one cannot synthesize sodium. Last I checked, we humans (or any animals) cannot.

Yes, humans cannot synthesize sodium but it also doesn't degrade, its only lost due to excretion. Regardless, it is an essential component of the diet, unlike sugar.

Plants (and every other known form of life) also cannot synthesize minerals.

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After doing endurance exercise 80km+ bike rides each weekend, sodium and other forms of electrolytes are incredibly important. Without them I lose fluids and I get crazy leg cramps. The issue is that salt tastes good, so people load it on their food to the point where it is unhealthy. It's the same with sugar, there is a huge industry bashing sugar at the moment, but sugar is essential for the human body. They are ba…

I do HIIT in a fasted state weekly. Am I at my peak performance in said state? Maybe not, but I'm not competing and get through my workout just fine, so...

Interesting! Did my first two day fasting this weekend and felt awesome the whole time. I broke the fast yesterday evening because I want to hit the gym today.

Do you continue the fast after HIIt or do you eat some protein after? How do you feel after such an intense workout in a fasted state?

Re: Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

#149
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computational model? No. As one of the other commenters in this thread has already said: model as in model organism.

In that case, wouldn't "a fully functional human body model" mean an artificial human, which is even harder to develop than a computational model? Or they do exist, already. All humans are a fully functional human body model.

> Or they do exist, already. All humans are a fully functional human body model.

Not quite, but you are catching on. The rest is mostly a matter of cloning, and providing a standardized nurturing to each clone to eliminate confounding differences. (Perhaps in the far future we will be able to raise one clone, scan its brain, and overwrite the brains of each of the rest of its identical siblings with the scan results.)

For some kinds of research, it even suffices to use a creature who has a hole where humans have a brain.

... ya know, biology sounds really exciting to laymen who don't know any better.

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