How about we all just eat real food? Stay in the perimeter of the super market -- with the exception of some canned fish -- and you should be okay. You can't go wrong with fruit, vegetables, meat, seafood, tubers, nuts, and seeds. As for wheat...come on, don't kid yourself. A refined white powder that is highly processed is not real food. Drink water, exercise a few times a week, and get some sun. If nothing else, living this way will make you healthier than most Americans.
How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
61–70 of 189 posts
Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
#62While it's really interesting to debate whether you should eat potatoes or beef, the real battle for the western world is that we stop eating processed foods. Wheat vs eggs seems like a silly debate when people are living off of Coke, Oreos and Capt'N Crunch. Whenever I hear these arguments, I feel like these scientists aren't living in the same world as me. "Eggs are ok, declare scientists" reads the headline while…
> people who favor fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes over beef, pork and fatty foods are healthier I have two eyes and that doesn't square at all. The fat people eat packaged food and restaurant food, which are very skimpy on meat and real animal fat. The main thing I notice about fat people is they eat very often. Thin people eat moderate meals and don't snack. Fat people continuously have handfuls of crap l…
> The main thing I notice about fat people is they eat very often
Probably because they're hungry a lot. The more weight you put on, the more food you need to eat.
The funny thing is that snacking can actually help you lose weight, and is actually recommended by many fitness gurus and bodybuilders. It helps keep your energy levels constant during the day, and also avoids hunger pangs, plus the associated over eating at appointed mealtimes. This will happen if you're working out a lot, since your body is processing your food faster because of the energy you burn in the gym/track/wherever
You just have to make sure you're eating the right stuff. nuts, protein shakes, fruits (minimize the ones with a lot of sugar for really strict definition).
Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
#63While it's really interesting to debate whether you should eat potatoes or beef, the real battle for the western world is that we stop eating processed foods. Wheat vs eggs seems like a silly debate when people are living off of Coke, Oreos and Capt'N Crunch. Whenever I hear these arguments, I feel like these scientists aren't living in the same world as me. "Eggs are ok, declare scientists" reads the headline while…
I've observed rather different things. The people I know who eat the most meat are the Crossfitters around me. They are, in almost all cases, healthy.
I have a roommate who drinks fat-free milk and eats lots of salad and pasta, who avoids meat like the plague. He's been struggling with his weight for as long as I've known him. I drink coconut milk -- which contains nothing but fat -- and a meal usually consists of some randomly selected fatty cut of meat and vegetables fried in the drippings. That, or cheap canned fish. I lost weight eating like this. I fit in skinny jeans. I may with luck convince my almost-girlfriend to peg me. :3
But the important thing -- I don't advertise. I am not a walking bulletin of the health benefits of coconut and sardines. How do you really know about the diets of the people around you? I would say there are maybe four or five people around me whose diets I actually know well enough to analyze in any reasonable way.
Case A is a twenty-two year old recent Caltech graduate who is obsessed with freerunning and eats nearly-strict paleo. He can do a backflip. No further comments. We grew up together.
Case B is my roommate. He follows all the conventional advice to a T -- chicken, fish, whole grain, salad. Lots of "health food" products. Y'know, healthiest potato chips on the shelf. There is bread, there is soybean oil mayonnaise. It... doesn't seem to be working.
Case C is another good friend of mine. Eats a lot of processed cheap stuff; he's the sort that'll buy three pounds of animal crackers. When I first met him he was rather obese and said he was try'na learn to eat vegetables. He lost a lot of weight after we introduced him to ecstasy... and he's been eating healthier too. He's sloowly coming around; one of his recent facebook statuses involved making hard-boiled eggs. He looks better and seems happy. Score 281,443 for MDMA.
Case D is me. I'm kind of a dick, judging people like this. People who I like. I don't really know any other way to be honest about how I make decisions, though.
When I was eleven my parents tried to force me to switch from whole milk to 2%. I responded by walking two miles to the gas station to buy milk. I'm the only kid in my family who never had weight problems growing up.
Eyes optional.
Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should read the book "Wheat Belly". That will bust that myth about grains and fruits for you.
This blog post presents some interesting criticisms of the book "Wheat Belly": http://noglutennoproblem.blogspot.com/2012/03/wheat-belly-bu... It sounds like the book often misrepresents the research that it cites.
It seems that the only real error made by Wheat Belly's author was bending the study by claiming its subjects were all obese with celiac disease. Apart from this, the comments contains many anecdotal responses from people who have dropped not only gluten, but all grain from their diet and had positive results. Moreover, take into account the blog's author who has published three books circulating around gluten-free foods -- something that Wheat Belly advises the reader to jettison altogether.
Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
#65While it's really interesting to debate whether you should eat potatoes or beef, the real battle for the western world is that we stop eating processed foods. Wheat vs eggs seems like a silly debate when people are living off of Coke, Oreos and Capt'N Crunch. Whenever I hear these arguments, I feel like these scientists aren't living in the same world as me. "Eggs are ok, declare scientists" reads the headline while…
Since we are talking anecdotes and make-beliefs, I'll add what I saw with my own two eyes ...
My grandfather was eating between 5 and 10 eggs per day, every day. He also drank at least 1 liter of home-made red whine per day, while being a big consumer of dairy products (also made in-house).
Of course, because my grandparents lived on a farm and consumed what they produced or traded with neighbors, half of a normal week would go by without them consuming any meat. However my grandfather was also a big fan of raw and untreated pig bacon, the kind you never find in stores. It was one of his pleasures that he indulged whenever he could.
My grandfather died at 99 years old, 3 months before his 100 years anniversary. He died out of old age, never having any problems with his heart. He was able to work his land until 98 years old. And in his village, even though people live a really rough life, it's pretty common to see people past the age of 90 with no serious health problems.
So really, your own two eyes are biased by the culture you live in ;-)
Nowadays it's a common belief that living a healthy life means preferring fruits and vegetables ... however, be careful when sampling because it's possible that people taking more care of their health are healthy because they care more about their health, not necessarily because they consume less meat.
Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
#66Twelve years ago I had read too many peer-reviewed papers to know that low-cholesterol diets were a bad idea, and useless from the point of view of having a good blood-cholesterol profile. Useless because, for example, population study after population study showed that low-cholesterol diets did not improve blood-cholesterol. Furthermore, it was common to find populations with high-cholesterol diets that had an excel…
This kind of thinking is simply not medically correct. The idea that eating a will lead to increase in b and then improve all these functions has no basis in evidence. The body is way more complex and the relationships between different proteins etc. is very complex and not well understood, yes, even despite all the work on micro-arrays and rapid DNA sequencing. High blood cholesterol for example, has a large endogen…
>This kind of thinking is simply not medically correct. The idea that eating a will lead to increase in b and then improve all these functions has no basis in evidence.
Well, sometimes it does, and I don't think the parent post made any sort of general point asserting that this was a universal principle. So if A is a necessary precursor to B and cannot be manufactured from more base components, we have a situation where low levels of B can impair some performance metric, and up to a point an increase in A will increase that metric. The body will maintain endogenous control of the various systems so long as it has the base inputs it requires. As an aside, even if A can be manufactured by cells e.g. cholesterol, there is the whole issue of whether the cells have enough energy/capacity to produce this compound in sufficient quantities at a given time along with all the other demands of them.
>Trust me. I'm a doctor :-)
You basically oversimplified the parent's post and presented it as a straw man, noting generically that we have low understanding of many processes in the human body without refuting his specific argument. That is not a well structured enough of an argument for you to be asking anyone to trust you just based on some imagined superiority in rank. (Hint: being an MD, even a PHD is not a refutation of an argument)
Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
#67Why is this on Hacker News?
Is this not a valid question? Since when did food and health have anything to do with hacking? This belongs in /r/health
Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
#68While it's really interesting to debate whether you should eat potatoes or beef, the real battle for the western world is that we stop eating processed foods. Wheat vs eggs seems like a silly debate when people are living off of Coke, Oreos and Capt'N Crunch. Whenever I hear these arguments, I feel like these scientists aren't living in the same world as me. "Eggs are ok, declare scientists" reads the headline while…
Since we are talking anecdotes and make-beliefs, I'll add what I saw with my own two eyes ... My grandfather was eating between 5 and 10 eggs per day, every day. He also drank at least 1 liter of home-made red whine per day, while being a big consumer of dairy products (also made in-house). Of course, because my grandparents lived on a farm and consumed what they produced or traded with neighbors, half of a normal we…
Things like living on a village and having an stress free life can greatly improve your life expectancy.
In some rural areas on my country it's usual to live around 100 - 120 years. In some places, even having a pork farm based economy and eating all sorts of different pork derivatives on a daily base.
IMHO, what kills us on cities is just contamination and stress.
Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> people who favor fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes over beef, pork and fatty foods are healthier I have two eyes and that doesn't square at all. The fat people eat packaged food and restaurant food, which are very skimpy on meat and real animal fat. The main thing I notice about fat people is they eat very often. Thin people eat moderate meals and don't snack. Fat people continuously have handfuls of crap l…
> The main thing I notice about fat people is they eat very often Probably because they're hungry a lot. The more weight you put on, the more food you need to eat. The funny thing is that snacking can actually help you lose weight, and is actually recommended by many fitness gurus and bodybuilders. It helps keep your energy levels constant during the day, and also avoids hunger pangs, plus the associated over eating…
> protein shakes
Why not just eat meat?
Sure, protein shakes might be digested faster, but I'm against processed, I'm for natural. Who knows what essential nutrient is missing in these shakes that comes for free with meat.
Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
#70While it's really interesting to debate whether you should eat potatoes or beef, the real battle for the western world is that we stop eating processed foods. Wheat vs eggs seems like a silly debate when people are living off of Coke, Oreos and Capt'N Crunch. Whenever I hear these arguments, I feel like these scientists aren't living in the same world as me. "Eggs are ok, declare scientists" reads the headline while…
Since we are talking anecdotes and make-beliefs, I'll add what I saw with my own two eyes ... My grandfather was eating between 5 and 10 eggs per day, every day. He also drank at least 1 liter of home-made red whine per day, while being a big consumer of dairy products (also made in-house). Of course, because my grandparents lived on a farm and consumed what they produced or traded with neighbors, half of a normal we…
Please refrain from making these anecdotal observations.
Your observation is the equivalent of this from the movie "Get Him To The Greek":
"British mother fu##ers don’t die. You ever heard of a British rock and roll star dying? No. They don’t die. Mick Jagger. Keith Richard. Those Led Zeppelin. Themmotherfu##ers old as fuck! Fu##ing Ozzy Osbourne is gonna outlive Miley Cyrus"