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Science of healthy eating

Thomas savage

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Wow, I simply can not believe you have not never heard of marine protein allergies (aka shellfish and seafood allergies)... they are quite prevalent and in some cases can be quite lethal. I myself am severely allergic to shellfish which manifested during puberty and unfortunately covers both groups: crustaceans and mollusks. I can't even be near where it is being cooked/prepared without suffering consequences.



Though I agree and concur with many things you said in your first post (most especially about the need for exercise) wouldn't you have to agree that portion size; number of meals; eating-in-moderation; and making healthier food choices is probably a bigger factor of concern to one's health than worrying about and or avoiding that single banana one may have their eye on... or anything on that list of yours?

Humans simply overeat and gluttonously so and you are actually encouraging people to go ahead and eat lots of animal! Respectfully, that is horrible health/dietary advice.
Nut allergies and seafood allergies are the ones I’m more aware of though suffer from neither.
 
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hvbias

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Taking the lords name in vain, I see....

I meant it more in the way the yoots are using savage


Tons of people that claim they have allergies is manifested in their minds. Like a placebo in an RCT showing a third of people's condition improved using one.
 

dallasjustice

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Humans simply tend to overeat, gluttonously so
I agree. But you have to ask the next question:

Why do people eat too much? Are humans just wired to eat until they die from metabolic diseases? Does this make any sense from an evolutionary perspective?

A high protein/fat and low carb diet WILL be far more satiating and nutrient dense than the typical vegan diet. This is how our ancestors ate. Consequently, an ancestral diet also means eating much less often. The less often one eats, the lower the insulin response. The macro composition of the diet doesn’t matter that much. As long as eating frequency is reduced, human longevity is increased. There’s lots of science on this stuff. Check out Valter Longo who is a professor at USC. He uses something called a “fasting mimicking diet.” This is basically a ketogenic diet. He’s greatly increased longevity in mice. There’s more data that shows this also applies to humans.

There’s also a ton a research which demonstrates that calorie cutting diets are ineffective. The research shows what everyone who has “yo-yo” dieted knows: the more one reduces calories, the lower the base metabolic rate. IOW, human biology is amazing at adjusting to its environment. When the lo-cal diet is over, the weight gain is much greater than before the diet. So just telling people to eat less is actually very counterproductive advice.

Animal proteins and fats are what humans were most evolved to eat. Of course, some humans have genetics which have somewhat adapted to grains. So there’s some variation in what people can eat and stay healthy. For most people, it’s much easier to reduce caloric intake and maintain that for a lifetime eating very satiating and nutrient dense foods. IMO, a vegan diet doesn’t contain enough of these foods.
 
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Thomas savage

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I went vegan recently, I just found myself eating loads more and really not enjoying food anymore..

Give me a little meat, fish and veg and I’m happy. If I’m working really hard I will supplement my meals by combining the Veg with basmati rice .

Following that way of eating I tend to not crave crap and make bad choices , eat less bulk and really enjoy what I eat. So I will keep doing that next year and see how it goes.
 

WoodyLuvr

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For most people, it’s much easier to reduce caloric intake and maintain that for a lifetime eating very satiating and nutrient dense foods.
A very good sentence. Concur, making smart food choices is the key factor. If a proper is food selected which is highly nutrient dense people tend to eat less. Japanese cuisine is an excellent example of very small portions packing a huge stomach satiating punch.
 

dallasjustice

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I went vegan recently, I just found myself eating loads more and really not enjoying food anymore..
I’ve always wondered why Vegans are so desperate to eat synthetic meats. Why not just eat the real thing? Maybe you should have stuck with it and just eaten more fake meats.
3C7D0416-A88D-427E-BB10-6508863B4348.jpeg
 

tomelex

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I went vegan recently, I just found myself eating loads more and really not enjoying food anymore..

Give me a little meat, fish and veg and I’m happy. If I’m working really hard I will supplement my meals by combining the Veg with basmati rice .

Following that way of eating I tend to not crave crap and make bad choices , eat less bulk and really enjoy what I eat. So I will keep doing that next year and see how it goes.


Years ago when I was in England for a few years, I found the customary fare when we went out to eat as three veg and one meat, all about equal proportions, I thought that was very sensible, very satisfying. But then a cheese ploughmans was too. I have tried to adopt that style of portions and it always satisifies me.
 

Thomas savage

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hvbias

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Years ago when I was in England for a few years, I found the customary fare when we went out to eat as three veg and one meat, all about equal proportions, I thought that was very sensible, very satisfying. But then a cheese ploughmans was too. I have tried to adopt that style of portions and it always satisifies me.

Sorry for the OT, but which issue of Glass Audio is that in your avatar and what was interesting in that issue? I have a big stack of them here.
 

bigx5murf

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I meant it more in the way the yoots are using savage


Tons of people that claim they have allergies is manifested in their minds. Like a placebo in an RCT showing a third of people's condition improved using one.

I have IGD blood work that shows allergies to foods such as olives. My blood work didn't list every food I have reactions to. But it does give me a guideline to trying to figure out my own specific elimination diet.
 

Jorj

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My rules for healthy eating are similar to @dallasjustice, but different in a few key ways.
  • Avoid refined sugars and flours.
  • Avoid things that cause leaky-gut syndrome (dairy, gluten, etc.)
  • Minimize animal-based proteins and fats (but don't eliminate them unless you're trying to recover from food-related cognitive decline)
  • Eat all the fruits, vegetables you want in their whole states.
  • Avoid oils as much as possible.
Don't forget that your digestive biome is much more critical to long-term health than most people realize. The science comes in almost daily now, showing strong correlation between properly fed and balanced intestinal fauna and general health. Everything from mood to arterial plaques are related to what you eat, and the bacteria we have evolved in symbiosis with depend on a variety of healthy whole foods to provide precursors to hormones, brain chemicals and vital cellular building blocks. The SAD (Standard America Diet) is filled with crap that promote certain detrimental kinds of gut fauna over others, effectively disabling a system that contains 10-100x more living organisms than all the cells that contain your DNA.

I used to hold with the thinking that our large, expensive brains were only evolutionarily sustainable through the inclusion of meat in our diets. I no longer think that is entirely true, although it may have had some smaller effect. The latest research seems to indicate that our ancestors diet was dramatically changed by something we take for granted...fire. Archaeology has pointed strongly to the fact that even our hominid ancestors had full control of fire and were able to use it to turn a great many indigestible or low-value foods into something that would provide considerably more energy and nutrition than they would provide in their raw states.

Many of our ways of thinking about food are rooted in our often incorrect assumptions about our evolution. Another prime example is agriculture, which has often been correlated to the value of bread as a food source, which is most likely wrong. It was BEER. If you have not seen How Beer Saved The World, I recommend it.
 

Thomas savage

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Beer was the only drinkable fluid on long trips at sea years ago , running out was catastrophic. If not for beer we would not be here now. As I understand it our brains evolved when we released the potential of our food by cooking it.
 

dallasjustice

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As far as longevity is concerned, there seems to be two distinct camps about how we can extend human life. If you compare experimental evolutionary biologist Michael R. Rose’s approach with someone like Aubrey De grey, there’s a big difference. Here’s a nice summary of the problem:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/04/michael-rose-recipe-for-extreme.html

The De grey approach is more focused on discrete medical interventions to sort of repair and maintain the human body. I think this approach is very limited and probably will not be the initial leap in life extension. De grey is more of a futurist. He doesn’t do any experimental science.

OTOH, Michael Rose is probably the most successful life extension experimental scientist. He works with fruit flies. Many years ago, he developed a delayed breeding strategy which resulted in genetic mutations that caused fruit flies to live 4 times their normal life span. These experiments were designed to leverage natural selection to better understand how natural evolutionary processes would manipulate the genome to extend life. Rose has mapped the fruit fly genome and has discovered a huge part of the life extension genetic mutations relate to fruit fly metabolism. I think this type of research is the most promising because natural selection is the most powerful force in the animal kingdom.

The goal is to reverse map the fruit fly genome back onto the human genome to determine how we can manipulate our genetics to live a very long time. Rose doesn’t think that will be fully realized during his lifetime. However, he does believe the aging process can be delayed and eventually stopped. Because metabolism is so important to chronic diseases and overall aging, his recommendation is to adopt an evolutionary appropriate diet as much as possible.

In the world of longevity and even nutrition, there are no definitive controlled trials that can last long enough to prove anything. We can only look at certain markers and draw inferences.

No scientific conclusions can be drawn from epidemiology studies. Diet epidemiology is a deeply flawed area of research. And even DBCT diet intervention studies can only tell us so much.

The bottom line is that nobody really knows what the optimal human diet is. It is also likely that what is optimal may change over the course of one’s life. Michael Rose does an excellent job explaining how evolutionary adaptation can take place much faster than we originally thought. But that adaptation (eg. grains/dairy in the last 10,000 years) are only built to last long enough for adapted humans to reproduce and raise living offspring. IOW, natural selection does not care about humans living forever. In addition, there are genetic variations from person to person.

All one can do is draw up a compelling hypothesis and test it out to determine if one’s health gets better or worse.
 

tomelex

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Sorry for the OT, but which issue of Glass Audio is that in your avatar and what was interesting in that issue? I have a big stack of them here.

I have quite a few of the issues, not all though, had a break overseas and missed some, but they are in general technical and some well known designers did contribute, back in the day kind of before internet, one of the few ways we could keep up with the hobby from a technical perspective and really looked forward to those issues and learned quite a bit too.
 

dallasjustice

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I agree that sucrose is a big problem. But fructose is even more pernicious. Other sweeteners can boost insulin even tho they may be 0 calories. That’s why I stay with a no sweet foods policy.

It’s also helpful to know which fuel sources the body will use first. Ethanol will get processed first by the liver and converted into energy, just like fructose. So excess alcohol consumption isn’t a great stategy, IMO.

Ethanol, Frcutose, glucose (what carbs turn into) all get used for energy before fat can be used. The body and brain can use fat in the form of BHB (ketone). IMO, fat is the best and most efficient fuel source. Even very low body fat folks have plenty of body fat available for energy. The problem is that most folks aren’t able to access their adipose tissue for energy. It can take some time just eating a healthy diet to become metabolically flexible enough to be able to switch between glucose and fat for energy. Because the liver can make enough glucose for muscle energy on its own, there’s really no need to consume fuel sources other than fats and protein. Carbs are not essential to life.
 
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