Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?

eatingacademy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 189 posts

Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?

#91

Post by manmal »

niels_olson wrote: post #49
blueSky1989 wrote: post #13

Twelve 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…

Non-correlation between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol would most likely be due to the fact that blood cholesterol, and blood lipids generally, are more strongly related to total caloric intake. The correlation with testosterone is equally invalid. Low-hanging fruit: it is not the simplest steroid (1). But lets go a bit further: by this logic, men with hypercholesterolemia should be bulls among men. Clinic…

You rant about non-correlations and such, and then end your post by jumping to a conclusion of your choice ("The problem is..."). Either you allow arguments by others (you are no biochemist either I guess?), or you stick to it, and leave it where it is - there is no scientific consensus about what "is the problem in our society". We can only argue about that, without facts.

I can't find the paper, but I read that high insulin levels are the new devil. If that's true, then bread (remember, mass production started only during the industrial revolution), corn, and especially sugar, are to be restricted as much as possible. Alas, you in the US have a massive corn lobby (real sugar became scarce during the Cuba crisis), so it would be difficult to do away only with corn.

IMHO the root of the problem is not that there's too much food, but the industrialization of the food processing industry. Everything has both advantages and disadvantages - we can choose from 1000 bread sorts, but many of them are heavily processed and freed from all micronutrients. And like every system, the food industry can go haywire, and I think it already has. E.g., look at what kind of chickens KFC breeds for use in their products. Food has therefore become a comodity, and people treat it like that. We are just not used to paying large parts of our income for food anymore, but we really should be - it's an essential part of life, just like housing. They key is quality, and being nice to both animals and environment is important.

Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?

#92

Post by geon »

scythe wrote: post #63
latch wrote: post #36

While 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 so…

So, because your body doesn't have the tendency to put on weight, you eat what you like. Your friends who tend to get fat easily watch what the y eat, but it's not helping them that much.

This really sounds to me like there are great differences in metabolism person to person.

I have always been skinny, and I eat a lot of whatever. I don't exercise much. I know people who are "big", but eat less than I do.

Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?

#93

Post by jawr »

analog wrote: post #79
scythe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so…

...healthiest potato chips on the shelf... ...bread, there is soybean oil mayonnaise... All of these are fairly high calorie foods, even if you buy them in a health food shop. You'd need to have a fast metabolism and be pretty active to get through all these. If you eat more calories than you burn you will put on fat.

I think metabolism is a huge factor when considering the above examples; the guy that eats only healthy foods might not have an efficient metabolism and be doing enough exercise to burn off the calories he is taking in.

Also, the big guy that takes loads of pills (e's) and eats what he wants... I don't think this is a good example at all and it sounds like you also take them too (perhaps an explanation for you and your skinny jeans?).

On a side note, the link is throwing a 403 :(

Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?

#94

Post by geon »

spitx wrote: post #70
bad_user wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Every observation is anecdotal until there are a lot of them.

Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?

#95

Post by progrock »

latch wrote: post #33
headShrinker wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the food we eat is derived from potatoes and corn. Actually, either directly or indirectly, mostly corn. source: Most meat is corn http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=that-burger... most everything we eat is from corn http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/we-are-what-we-eat

I'm aware that corn plays a huge part of North American diet (less so elsewhere since corn-fed beef isn't nearly as common), but I've never heard it said about potatoes..and while you mention it, you only provide links about corn. Don't mean to be flippant, but it kinda sounds like you lumped potatoes in with corn for the sake of it.

And a lot of US corn and soy is GM. I'm guessing the majority of which is animal feed.

See Jeremy Rifkin's: Beef, if you want to read up on a fascinating piece of North American history. Nice fatty corn fed beef was (and probably still is) highly prized.

Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?

#97

Post by tluyben2 »

bad_user wrote: post #65
latch wrote: post #36

While 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…

Same here; my grandparents died around 95 years old (other two are still alive closing in on 100); they ate butter in the pan with bread an eggs for breakfast, tons of meat, potatoes, frieds, eggs, etc. All fresh from the farm (they made most of what ate themselves). My grandfather smoked heavy tabacco rolled in a sigarette all day through since he was 12 (I have never seen him without a fag in his hand) and started at 11 in the morning with 2 jenevers, at 4 beer and after that red wine. He was always overweight and the doctor kept warning him for it. Has never seen a hospital (and i'm not kidding here) from the inside until the week he died. He died of a family heart disease which was only then caught (but too late) and his son was operated for that immediately as he had the same thing.

And to make the story even more crazy; my grandfather used jigsaw to saw asbestos for all his life, even far after it was forbidden. Real men don't care about that kind of stuff :)

Anecdotal 'evidence' is wonderful he :)

But now we have 2 cases (actually more; my grandfathers brother + sister are the same age and do the same things; no problem); maybe smoking (I know bad_user his grandfather didn't), drinking and eating fat actually prolongs life if you manage not to have stress and eat from the land. Because that's at least one major difference I saw; my grandparents didn't have stress. Things just happened to them and they didn't think twice about it.

Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?

#98

Post by julianz »

scythe wrote: post #63
latch wrote: post #36

While 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 so…

Yep, after more than 10 years of eating "healthy whole grains", reduced fat, loads of fruit and veg and doing various different kinds of exercise -- all without seeing huge results -- I, my wife and several friends started eating in a much more primal/paleo style a year ago. All of us have seen major, effortless weight loss, muscle gain and all feel dramatically better. It's a no brainer.

Re: How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?

#100

Post by shakesbeard »

At my former company we had free access to beverages (sodas, water, energy drinks, ... even beer). I gained a lot of weight while working there. After I quit I stopped drinking sodas altogether, while mainly keeping my diet (vegetarian, one "big" meal per day + snacking) and level of physical activity. I lost about 18kg (40 pounds) in about 2 months. Went from 103kg to 85kg. I'm 1.84m so that's an ok weight I guess.

So that worked for me ... drinking water.

Post reply on HN