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Biohacking Lite

karpathy.github.io

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Re: Biohacking Lite

#161

Post by timvdalen »

mettamage wrote: post #147
ricardobeat wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also becoming increasingly difficult to find "plain bread" in Dutch supermarkets. The majority of them now have additives like soy lethicin, 15 kinds of leftover flours/powders from some other industrial process, even the 'artisan' labeled ones.

That saddens me. I must confess that I'm used to my brands, so I don't look around that much at the Albert Heijn (the supermarket I go to, for reference: an upscale-ish supermarket that tries to be normal and sort of is? Looking at fellow Dutchies here to see what they think ).

Seconded!

Re: Biohacking Lite

#162

Post by fudged71 »

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…

The problem with restaurants (globally!) is they have zero responsibility or incentive to serve food that fits the nutritional needs of their customers.

• Restaurants don't sell food, they sell satiation, taste, brand, ambiance, customer experience.

• You rarely can ask for an ingredient list, you often can't see who made your food, it is a black box in a black box.

• All we really care about are omissions: the list of chemicals, macronutrients, hormones, and ingredients that are excluded from our menu items.

Not only does this disconnect us from the ingredients in our food... I think this is a huge problem that compounds toward multiple health crises such as obesity and diabetes. Chefs are seen as food experts, yet the nutrition aspect of restaurant food is entirely ignored. We expect individuals themselves to be their own nutrition experts (curating meals and ingredients for their own health).

I don't know what the solution is. But at the very least I think every restaurant owes its customers the macros and ingredients for every product they serve, in accessible formats. It should be easier to get that information onto your phone than a tweet. Food receipts should list macro and calorie breakdowns. Tools for nutrition analysis should be free, standard, integrated, and widespread. etc

Re: Biohacking Lite

#163

Post by thechao »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #141
thechao wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back pain is almost always an indicator of posterior chain weakness. Do daily squats (just up & down), and do toe-touch-stretches (legs about 2x shoulder width, right-hand-to-left-toe, stand up with arms in the air, left-hand-to-right-toe). Personally, I just do weighted squats & heavy deadlift, but if your knees are bad, that's a bad idea. You can chat with a PT for 50–80$ and they can tell you exactly what's wrong…

"You can chat with a PT for 50–80$ and they can tell you exactly what's wrong & how to fix it in less than an hour." That's a complete lie. Most PTs don't know anything about anything and will try to milk you for "motivating" you in your workout and keeping a notebook for you on a regular basis. Usually for at least $300-500 a month, even at horrible gyms. By no means will they be able to tell you remotely, let alone…

Someone replied to you, already; I meant “physical therapist”, not “personal trainer”. I don’t have any experience with personal trainers. Sorry for the confusion.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#164

Post by labelbias »

karpathy wrote: post #94
abnry wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP meant natural sugar, not added! And sadly, many jams and pies have extra sugar added, I much prefer the no/low sugar versions.

Yes natural sugar is just barely better than added sugar (due to the fiber it's typically mixed in with). The apples we eat today are candy bars, they just happen to grow on trees. Trees shaped extensively via artificial selection for thousands of years to pack in more glucose, trees that are nowhere near to what our ancestors have encountered for millions of years.

Fortunately, apples are not candy bar. The metabolic effects of eating 1kg of apples is completely different from eating glucose and fructose extracted from those 1kg of apples.

Natural sugar is magnitudes times better than processed/added sugar.

Fructose consumed through fruits has never had a similar metabolic effect as high-fructose corn syrup.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#165

Post by metrokoi »

GordonS wrote: post #151
mettamage wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's expensive to make good bread. Not in terms of raw materials, but in terms of labor. A machine cannot make a quality loaf of bread, you must gently knead it and let it ride with human hands. There is also a large cost in the right-on-time delivery of "good" bread. There is still quality bread sold at my grocery store, but that kind of bread isn't a staple because people don't want to go to the grocery store every other day when their non-stabilized bread gets eaten, goes stale, or goes moldy.

I am defending "bad" bread because no one ever does, and it's really not comparable to "real" bread because the uses are different. It's cheaper, last much longer, and is better suited for sandwiches and toast because of the square shape.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#166

Post by metrokoi »

ricardobeat wrote: post #146
mettamage wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is also becoming increasingly difficult to find "plain bread" in Dutch supermarkets. The majority of them now have additives like soy lethicin, 15 kinds of leftover flours/powders from some other industrial process, even the 'artisan' labeled ones.

The additives are there for a reason. More bread with more additives is sold because people prefer that type of bread, whether for convenience, price, or they simply prefer the flavor and texture.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#167

Post by jwilliams »

I read “Molecular Biology of the Cell” when dabbling in bioinformatics (one of the books mentioned in the article).

It’s an excellent textbook. You’ll need a base level of chemistry and biology - not two of my best subjects, But despite that I still got a lot of it.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#168

Post by fudged71 »

thechao wrote: post #11

If anyone else wants to get into this, there are a few really strong measures that correlate fairly well to the DEXA scans. My favorite (because its easy): measure your waist just above your belly button. This area has virtually no "bulky" muscle and is one of the principle deposits of "internal" body fat. The two measures I take everyday are: 1. Body weight; and, 2. Waist size. I use the following routine for weight…

The problem with daily measurements is it can lead to frustration. The daily number may change constantly but it's the moving average that matters. Few people can track a number without asking themselves what that number means for them.

I want a scale without a screen and a measuring tape without numbers. Track often but only see the trend when you ask for it.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#169

Post by fudged71 »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #137
dnhz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that eating rice isn't even that old of a tradition, and neither is eating it in polished, white form. White rice only became ubiquitous when milling technology improved, and spoilage of the oils in brown rice became a concern for storage. > Despite its long history in Japan rice was, for a long time, a food reserved for the warriors and the nobility. It was consumed by the majority of the populati…

I currently work for a company that makes glucose monitors for people with diabetes, but we (non-diabetic) employees sometimes get to try the products out. As far as I'm aware, all the current medical literature states to avoid simple carbs (like white rice) to prevent insulin spikes, and to eat things like whole grain breads instead. But, we noticed that this seems to only be true for people of European descent - my…

Genetic nutrition optimization is a really interesting topic related to this. There are many other differences related to our genetics that impact how we process food.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#170

Post by dialamac »

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…

> We did not evolved to eat processed sugar, which is not easily found naturally in the environment

The flour you make French bread with is not found any more or less naturally in the environment than the sugar you get from cane or beet.

This whole thing about evolution and nutrition is entirely pseudoscientific woo.

If humans had to eat the same way as our ancestors (ie actual paleo, not some hipster fad diet) humanity would have died out long time ago.

The French thing makes this all the more ironic... I can’t imagine much more triumph in modern processing than the five mother sauces.

Clearly the American diet has a crazy oversupply of sugar... fructose, glucose, sucrose... at the amounts we’re talking about in the average American diet it doesn’t fucking matter (making the whole HFCS controversy always a joke).

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