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Biohacking Lite

karpathy.github.io

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Re: Biohacking Lite

#151

Post by GordonS »

mettamage wrote: post #80
gdebel wrote: post #51

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-add…

Ah, the Americans... ;-) As a Dutch person living in Amsterdam, I completely agree. I noticed when I visited SF a few times (and California in general) that: - Vegetables are more expensive - Bread is sweetened (there goes my breakdfast) - Bread sucks (yep, I said it, basic bread should be thrown into the thrash can) - Basic cheese in the US is a new species, and I am afraid of it I went around these 2 issues by buyi…

> Bread is sweetened > Bread sucks

I spent some months working in Houston a while back, and this drove me crazy! I mean, why on earth would you sweeten bread?!

Another thing that struck me was how many ingredients everything seemed to have - you could pick up just about any item in a grocery store, and it was pretty much guaranteed to contain 10-30 ingredients. Even the bread.

> Basic cheese in the US

This too - most cheese was of the horrible processed variety, with little flavour and an odd texture. And of course, dozens of ingredients. And of course, there was sugar in it.

Another thing - corn syrup. Not content with putting sugar in everything, corn syrup was added too.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#152

Post by JoeAltmaier »

gdebel wrote: post #51

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-add…

I live near a college town, with food from dozens of nations. I can have crepes for breakfast, Vietnamese for lunch, good Italian for dinner. Tomorrow: steak and eggs at a diner for breakfast, sushi for lunch then dinner at a nice Czech place with cabbage and sausage. All cooked by immigrants or descendants of those heritages.

But no, not typical. Most Americans buy all their food at the Dollar Store, and its everything you say.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#153

Post by heavyset_go »

gdebel wrote: post #51

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-add…

I imagine eating a spoonful of pure steviol would be unpleasant, the acceptable daily intake is at most 12mg per kg of body weight. It's fine for you otherwise, and at a reasonable dose makes a great sugar substitute.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#154

Post by borski »

agumonkey wrote: post #145
gdebel wrote: post #51

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-add…

Few years ago I had some eating disorder, I could only eat raw vegetables. My diet habit shifted 180deg in 48h, it's a weird realization: 1) eating raw vegetables tickles your brain differently (raw veggies make you feel full faster) 2) most probably because there's no fat nor sugar added (which makes you want to eat more I guess) 3) even dressing is bad, so raw is best to have a natural negative feedback system 4) e…

Fat actually satiates you more than almost anything else, so I suspect your culprit is sugar, not fat. If you cooked those veggies in some butter or olive oil, I would bet you’d get full faster.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#155

Post by antepodius »

andai wrote: post #118
shawxe wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Sure, but OP said ban all processed food. That's what I'm responding to, not "ban all ultra-processed food." That said, I do find your categorization…

So, this mean that McDonalds is as healthy as the burgers I make at home? I was under the impression that their food is loaded with sugar and strange additives.

And that's what makes them bad. I've always thought 'processed' was a pretty vague marketing term. A lot like people talking about 'chemicals'.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#156

Post by antepodius »

andai wrote: post #118
shawxe wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Sure, but OP said ban all processed food. That's what I'm responding to, not "ban all ultra-processed food." That said, I do find your categorization…

So, this mean that McDonalds is as healthy as the burgers I make at home? I was under the impression that their food is loaded with sugar and strange additives.

And that's what makes them bad. I've always thought 'processed' was a pretty vague marketing term. A lot like people talking about 'chemicals'.

Yeah, modern food is terrible.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#157

Post by fudged71 »

As a personal trainer I'm really impressed by the technical depth of this post, although it really only centers on the idea of caloric deficit, which is relatively basic compared to the other topics he mentioned.

It's so hard to visualize small long-term biological changes without moving averages. "Trust the process" is so important.

"Trust the algorithm" is even more apt:

• what/when to eat,

• what/when to train, and conversely

• what/when to rest.

If you haven't seen exercise/nutrition through an algorithmic lens, you might be surprised how straightforward it is to make progress day-to-day and how much progress you can really make in a short period of time. I wish strength training had more academics/coders and fewer 'meatheads' because the documentation around it is so anti-intellectual.

Even as a trainer it's taken time to find reliable resources to optimize this algorithm, but I've been using a solid combination of tools and methodologies that make this complete and quantitative. I have clients that have lost a lot of weight and are lifting serious weight in a short span of time.

It's great to see software engineers speak about health topics in general.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#158

Post by yutopia »

jodrellblank wrote: post #55
yutopia wrote: post #30

After years of experimentation, lately I’ve decided that eating like my grandparents (i.e., eating like a traditional Japanese) is the easiest way to keep myself lean and healthy. Traditional Japanese meals follow a standard format [1]: a bowl of rice, several small sides (which can change by the day), and an optional cup of miso soup. Sticking to this format every day can be boring, but it keeps my diet reasonably b…

As a practical matter, does 4 bowls and 2 plates per person, and preparing 4-5 different dishes, every day have a huge overhead in preparation, cooking and washing up?

Not really, I’m not cooking anything remotely fancy and we have all sorts of technology to help us nowadays.

For example, cooking rice is simply a matter of putting rice and water into the cooker and pressing a button [1]. In the past we needed to first rinse the rice by hand.

[1] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/04/16/reference/no-wa...

Re: Biohacking Lite

#159

Post by nexuist »

I must say I find it funny that the head of AI at Tesla used 1) computer memory 2) internal combustion engines as examples to relate to human biology :P

Re: Biohacking Lite

#160

Post by frosted-flakes »

andai wrote: post #118
shawxe wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Sure, but OP said ban all processed food. That's what I'm responding to, not "ban all ultra-processed food." That said, I do find your categorization…

So, this mean that McDonalds is as healthy as the burgers I make at home? I was under the impression that their food is loaded with sugar and strange additives.

> So, this mean that McDonalds is as healthy as the burgers I make at home?

Sure, as long as you use similar ingredients.

> I was under the impression that their food is loaded with sugar and strange additives.

It's not. The beef patty really is just beef. The bun is white bread, just like you can buy at the grocery store. And the condiments are self-evident. It's just that that they've nailed the production process so precisely that what you get tastes almost exactly the same, every time.

A lot of people have this warped, black and white view of "healthy" and "unhealthy", but the reality is that it's a spectrum, and you can get reasonably healthy food at McDonalds but eat like crap at home.

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