151–160 of 165 posts
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> The idea that "salt is bad" has just as shaky underpinnings as "lower blood pressure is good". Wait, "lower blood pressure is good" has shaky underpinnings? Is there a debate on that? I don't think there's a debate that high blood pressure results in worse (death/disease) outcomes.
Here, let me give you a tranquilizer a day. Lower blood pressure is always good, right?
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> He points out that the DASH study didn't conclude anything about death or cardiovascular disease. Yes, that's true. So sure, there's a chance that despite blood pressure reductions a low salt diet could cause problems. But it's not the obvious conclusion. That's the whole point, you say it yourself. The idea that "salt is bad" has just as shaky underpinnings as "lower blood pressure is good". The only thing we care…
Isn't blood pressure a symptom, or an indication of other processes going on? Why would you want to directly manipulate the measuring tool?
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> Fats and proteins are more filling and satisfying per gram than carbs. Again, that statement makes no sense. You don't eat carbs, fats and proteins. You eat foods. Is 100 calories of olive oil as filling as 100 calories of asparagus (about a pound)? If that's too extreme, I'd still gladly put up your 100 calories of olive oil (a few spoonfuls) against my 100 calories of white rice (a small bowl) for satiety and ful…
You seem to know what you're talking about. Is there a book, author, or website you'd recommend for getting a primer on nutrition? Many of my friends are doing paleo diets, juice diets, no-carb diets and all of them have pseudo scientific sounding explanations and bestselling books espousing them. I don't personally need to lose any weight (in fact I could stand to gain a few) but I am still curious about how the foo…
As a rule, the people whose work I lean on are those with both a deep knowledge of the underlying theory as well as clinical experience working with a range of athletes and non-athletes. Of course, you should never trust anyone unconditionally and always evaluate their reasoning on its own intrinsic merits. Someone like Charles Poliquin seemingly fits my description, but he makes most of his money from selling supplements and is always pushing his products--he recommends that you consume massive doses of his insanely overpriced fish oil, rub licorice cream on your abdomen for spot-reduction fat loss, etc--so everything he says must be taken with a truckload of salt.
People like Robb Wolf and Mathieu Lalonde from the paleo community also fit my desiderata. You can learn a lot from them, so long as you keep in mind that most of their clinical inferences are so far by necessity based mostly on anecdotal data rather than controlled studies. There are also some general issues to keep in mind with the ancestral dietary approach as generally preached and practiced. There's an underlying assumption that the ancestral diet was far more uniform across cultures than the evidence shows. They also tend to downplay the evidence that grain consumption has been around for much longer than 10,000 years, indeed closer to 100,000 years, giving plenty of time for many physiological adaptations to have taken place. Stuff like that. As with everyone with strong commitments to a specific point of view, their analysis is often subject to confirmation bias. A classic case would be Robb's analysis of the traditional Okinawan diet where he completely downplayed the very high levels of carbs consumption via rice by giving virtually all the credit for the health benefits to the fatty fish consumption.
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One way to look at MSG (the way I look at it) is that it has been shown to stimulate the appetite. As a result of this, people often eat MSG-infused food more than they should. My wife once said that MSG "makes me think this tastes better than it really does". So, MSG may or may not be bad by itself, but the highly processed empty calories that it hangs out with, definitely bad. Bet you can't eat just one? I don't ta…
I think that's exactly what I mean by "paranoia". It's certainly true that MSG makes food taste better than it "really does", and makes you want to eat more-- as do added salt, sugar, or any seasoning for that matter. For some reason only in MSG does this quality inspire distrust.
The same holds true for the difference between eating fruit and drinking HCFS soda or the difference between drinking beer and distilled spirits.
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> Fats and proteins are more filling and satisfying per gram than carbs. Again, that statement makes no sense. You don't eat carbs, fats and proteins. You eat foods. Is 100 calories of olive oil as filling as 100 calories of asparagus (about a pound)? If that's too extreme, I'd still gladly put up your 100 calories of olive oil (a few spoonfuls) against my 100 calories of white rice (a small bowl) for satiety and ful…
His statement was on a per-gram basis, which seems pretty much obviously true (since it basically says that fat is more energy-dense than carbs). Nonetheless, like jcheng I'm interested in what you've learned from your research. I've also been looking into low-carb/ketogenic diets, and a friend does intermittent fasting (IF), and there are a host of clashing opinions and studies of varying quality on everything. Taub…
Ah, I missed that. But that's not very a useful comparion. The useful thing to do is comparing calorically matched portions of fat-based and carb-based foods for satiety and fullness.
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I think that's exactly what I mean by "paranoia". It's certainly true that MSG makes food taste better than it "really does", and makes you want to eat more-- as do added salt, sugar, or any seasoning for that matter. For some reason only in MSG does this quality inspire distrust.
I think it's a distinction of scale. It's like the difference between chewing on a cocoa leaf and smoking crack cocaine. They both have an effect, just one is so much more refined in a way that our bodies haven't co-evolved with for thousands of years. The same holds true for the difference between eating fruit and drinking HCFS soda or the difference between drinking beer and distilled spirits.
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I think it's a distinction of scale. It's like the difference between chewing on a cocoa leaf and smoking crack cocaine. They both have an effect, just one is so much more refined in a way that our bodies haven't co-evolved with for thousands of years. The same holds true for the difference between eating fruit and drinking HCFS soda or the difference between drinking beer and distilled spirits.
One might even liken it the difference between gnawing on a stick of sugar cane and eating ice cream, or licking a rock and eating a salty potato chip :) I still haven't seen the thing that makes MSG especially sinister.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00319384909...
Indeed, the most important finding concerning MSG showed that motivation to eat recovered more rapidly following a lunchtime meal in which MSG-supplemented soup was served as the first course (compared both with the effect of unsupplemented soup and no preload)
Regardless, MSG is exactly the sort of "industrial edible food-like product" that I'm avoiding for aesthetic reasons, if nothing else.
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Salt is a very important part of a human's diet and was a major trade item for all of recorded history. Salt has been used as a preservative for meat for as long as I'm aware of. Animals often sit and lick natural salt deposits. There is a common belief that meat and especially fat are bad for you and cause heart disease, which is the particular idea that Fat Head makes fun of. He reduces his carb and sugar intake an…
" If you believe that there is good reason that evolution may be guiding you towards something unhealthy... " I don't think there's any doubt about this. Compared to evolutionary rates, the typical diet in the west has changed at lightning pace from just a few decades ago, meaning our bodies and taste buds are behind the curve. We need willpower and common sense to have a healthy diet, rather than raw survival instin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Salt is a very important part of a human's diet and was a major trade item for all of recorded history. Salt has been used as a preservative for meat for as long as I'm aware of. Animals often sit and lick natural salt deposits. There is a common belief that meat and especially fat are bad for you and cause heart disease, which is the particular idea that Fat Head makes fun of. He reduces his carb and sugar intake an…
" If you believe that there is good reason that evolution may be guiding you towards something unhealthy... " I don't think there's any doubt about this. Compared to evolutionary rates, the typical diet in the west has changed at lightning pace from just a few decades ago, meaning our bodies and taste buds are behind the curve. We need willpower and common sense to have a healthy diet, rather than raw survival instin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Salt is a very important part of a human's diet and was a major trade item for all of recorded history. Salt has been used as a preservative for meat for as long as I'm aware of. Animals often sit and lick natural salt deposits. There is a common belief that meat and especially fat are bad for you and cause heart disease, which is the particular idea that Fat Head makes fun of. He reduces his carb and sugar intake an…
" If you believe that there is good reason that evolution may be guiding you towards something unhealthy... " I don't think there's any doubt about this. Compared to evolutionary rates, the typical diet in the west has changed at lightning pace from just a few decades ago, meaning our bodies and taste buds are behind the curve. We need willpower and common sense to have a healthy diet, rather than raw survival instin…