Hey, total aside, but go look up Dr. Ho Man Kwok and the science and background on MSG. It's a fascinating story. You won't be mad you did.
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Actual healthy food pyramid
- Thread starter Aldarion
- Start date
Hey, total aside, but go look up Dr. Ho Man Kwok and the science and background on MSG. It's a fascinating story. You won't be mad you did.
- Thread starter
- #42
Aldarion
Archmage
That is true to an extent, but diet certainly plays a major role. And just the fact that diet isn't the only factor doesn't magically make high-grain vegan diet healthy. So while it may not be a "silver bullet", diet certainly matters. And not just because of the diet itself, but because it also affects other aspects of life: if you do not eat properly, you are also unlikely to have energy or willpower to e.g. exercise regularly or follow literally any other requirement for healthy life.
Also, it is a fact that all of the foods we eat today are inferior to what was available even just a hundred years ago. They are heavily depleted nutritionally, but more importantly perhaps, modern foods contain poisons. Modern meat has hormones, but while that is a common knowledge, less known fact is that hormones are not just in meat: hormones are used by farmers to plump up fruits and vegetables so being a vegetarian still won't let you run away from hormones in food. And then there are also pesticides and other poisons, which are heavily present in vegetables but also make their way up the food chain.
Modern society is inherently genocidal. And the only thing you can do is try and make the best of the bad situation.
Finchbearer
Istar
I watched the documentary series on Netflix Ugly Delicious, and the guy who presents that talked about MSG and some misconceptions. I’m not sure my opinion has changed. I don’t eat takeaway food because there’s always a ‘food hangover’.
^ Huh? Who said anything about veganism?
- Thread starter
- #45
Aldarion
Archmage
Eh, sorry. I was just using it as an example, because people who push vegan diets often (and falsely, as I explained) use Okinawa and Sardinia as an example.
Finchbearer
Istar
I watched a programme ages ago looking at healthy diets around the world, and interestingly Iceland came top of the list. There were the other obvious ones such as areas in Asia and the med.
Prince of Spires
Auror
I never mentioned anything about needing to eat meat or not. However, if having a lot of meat available, then the Netherlands should be one of the healthiest people around, and I don't think we are. We have about the same ratio of pigs to humans in the Netherlands as in Okinawa, and about 5 chickens per inhabitant, as well as about 1 cow per 4 inhabitants. Doesn't really add much.
All I pointed out was that those diets still contained grains in some form or another. And no matter how much pork they do or don't add in, they still eat grains. Even the links you shared on the Sardinians say that.
All I pointed out was that those diets still contained grains in some form or another. And no matter how much pork they do or don't add in, they still eat grains. Even the links you shared on the Sardinians say that.
Finchbearer
Istar
I think I mentioned Iceland as having one of the healthiest diets, which I would have thought has very little grains in it simply due to geographical location and the inability to grow arable grain crops. Fish and Skyr, a protein rich yoghurt probably make up much of the diet. Skyr is very popular here in the UK too and it’s delicious.
Oh, and rye bread, which while does contain grains is super good for you, and also delicious. My Austrian grandmother used to always eat ‘black bread’ often topped with rolmop herring, very tasty and very healthy.
Oh, and rye bread, which while does contain grains is super good for you, and also delicious. My Austrian grandmother used to always eat ‘black bread’ often topped with rolmop herring, very tasty and very healthy.
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^ Iceland is an outlier on a lot of different lists. It seems to hit the perfect blend of an exciting great outdoors with long evenings that forces you inside to do things like read.
Jackarandajam
Inkling
...Or sometimes, as in the case if the recent volcano, "exciting great outdoors that force you inside to do things like read."
- Thread starter
- #51
Aldarion
Archmage
And you would be wrong:
Netherlands named healthiest country in the world
Kebijakan Kesehatan Indonesia
The Netherlands ranked eighth-healthiest country in the world
A new ranking has named the Netherlands as the eighth healthiest country in the world, with Japan, South Korea and Finland nabbing the top three spots.
www.iamexpat.nl
As for meat, it also depends on how you eat it. Fried, smoked and highly processed meat is about as bad as sugar, which is one of reasons Croatia has high obesity rates - we love our ham, but more importantly, we love our bread as well. Put those two together, and it kills health.
Regarding Finland, they too eat a lot of meat, diary and eggs:
What was eaten in Finland in 2022?
www.luke.fi
In raw numbers, you have "135 kilograms of liquid milk products, 77 kilograms of meat, 85 kilograms of cereals, nearly 15 kilograms of fish, 11 kilograms of eggs, 55 kilograms of fruit and 64 kilograms of vegetables".
If we combine numbers:
- 238 kg of animal products
-- 135 kg of dairy
-- 92 kg of meat
-- 11 kg of eggs
- 204 kg of plant products
-- 64 kg of vegetables
-- 55 kg of fruit
-- 85 kg of grains
So grains are only 19% of total food consumed, while animal products make up 54%; meat alone is 21% of food.
Same goes for Sweden:
True. And grains can be eaten so long as 1) you don't make them basis of your diet and 2) you're not a diabetic (I mean, if people can survive on McDonalds, little grains now and then won't kill you). But you can also do without them.
Thanks.
I found this:
Icelandic Food Culture: From the Middle Ages to Modern Cuisine - Ep. 28
Icelandic food culture is deeply rooted in Scandinavian cuisine. As I mentioned in the “Brief History of the Icelandic language” episode, Iceland was settled mostly by farmers from Norway along with Vikings and some Celtic people who were made slaves after being captured by those Vikings . These...
allthingsiceland.com
- Thread starter
- #52
Aldarion
Archmage
To expand on the above point, humans are omnivores. There are foods and combinations that are better and those that are worse for us, but we can survive on nearly anything. So if you eat an overall healthy diet, and are physically active, eating some grains now and then will not kill you and may - depending on the type of grain and what exactly it contains - even provide some benefits. But for most people, that is not really an option because:
1) overall environment has become poisonous
2) modern food (grains included) is of far lower quality than it used to be
3) people today are far more sedentary than we used to be.
You know there was a guy who went on a Twinkie diet. He ate nothing but twinkies, a protein shake, a daily vitamin, and just a handful of vegetables with his family dinner. On this diet, all the benchmarks for his health improved. When he started swapping other things back into his diet, things held steady until he got to red meat, which drove up his cholesterol.
Here's an article on it:
www.cnn.com
It's anecdotal, sure. But I mean: Even the friggin' Twinkie diet is effective. With that in mind, it seems absurd to point at any one thing like grains and say that's the culprit! Get rid of that and we'll be fine!
Here's an article on it:
Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds
Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.
www.cnn.com
It's anecdotal, sure. But I mean: Even the friggin' Twinkie diet is effective. With that in mind, it seems absurd to point at any one thing like grains and say that's the culprit! Get rid of that and we'll be fine!
If I know anything about nutritionists and their prescriptions, it's that they have a paradigm shift every decade or so. Pasta and beer have done right by me.
pmmg
Myth Weaver
Personally, I've never liked Twinkies...bacon though....
If a zombie apocalypse ever happens, I'll be on a quest for bacon. Twinkies can stay with Tallahassee.
If a zombie apocalypse ever happens, I'll be on a quest for bacon. Twinkies can stay with Tallahassee.
Jackarandajam
Inkling
Well this just in: things that are bad for you aren't! You can JUST eat bacon as long as you stay in a calorie deficit and you'll be in perfect health!
The bullet-proof logic goes like this:
1. Fact: If you eat less meat, you lose weight.
2. Fact: If you eat less cake, you lose weight.
3. Conclusion: Meat and cake are the same.
You probably won't even have to drink the daily protien shake the twinkie guy did.
Though I do recommend his daily servings of vegetables, daily multivitamin, and moderate exercise regimen.
- Thread starter
- #57
Aldarion
Archmage
Yeah, he ate nothing but twinkies... and then took a bunch of supplements and vegetables to fill in the gaps that Twinkies left.You know there was a guy who went on a Twinkie diet. He ate nothing but twinkies, a protein shake, a daily vitamin, and just a handful of vegetables with his family dinner. On this diet, all the benchmarks for his health improved. When he started swapping other things back into his diet, things held steady until he got to red meat, which drove up his cholesterol.
Here's an article on it:
Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds
Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.
It's anecdotal, sure. But I mean: Even the friggin' Twinkie diet is effective. With that in mind, it seems absurd to point at any one thing like grains and say that's the culprit! Get rid of that and we'll be fine!
You can also take arsenic daily, and so long as you don't take too much, it won't poison you. Doesn't make arsenic any less of a poison, though. Nor does it mean you can survive solely on arsenic... you need to eat actual food alongside it.
BTW, arsenic is used to treat cancer. Which just proves the old adage "everything can be a cure or a poison, only quantity matters".
Regarding the article:
Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds
Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.
edition.cnn.com
In other words, he wasn't living exclusively on Twinkies, he took active steps to a) prevent overeating and b) fill in the gaps in nutrition that Twinkies left out. Lack of vegetables? Multivitamin pill. Lack of meat? Protein shake. But do you really think that average person has time to inform himself on the nutrients that Twinkies lack (everything) and take appropriate supplements?
Had he lived exclusively on Twinkies, no supplements and crap, he will have died very soon.
But even if you follow calorie restrictions and fill out gaps in nutrients with supplements... chances are, you will still get diabetes, fatty liver, heart disease, joint inflammation and a host of other diseases even if you manage to not gain weight. That however will take years. Sugar for example destroys brain, much like alcohol, heroin and cocaine do. But that is a slow process, and he will not have noticed these effects at all during his little experiment.
EDIT: Basically it is a difference between acute and chronic poisoning. Just because you don't have acute poisoning doesn't mean you don't have chronic poisoning. And his experiment only checked - only could have checked - for acute poisoning.
Frontiers | Lean nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and sarcopenia
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has become one of the most common chronic liver diseases in the world. The risk factor for NAFLD is often considered...
www.frontiersin.org
Oh, and regarding the professor:
Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds
Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.
edition.cnn.com
That is not really a healthy diet... and even with Twinkie diet, he didn't actually follow it as strictly as you imply:
And this:
Thing with cholesterol is that total values don't matter at all. What matters is the HDL/LDL ratio. Lower the HDL/LDL ratio, better the situation with cholesterol. That is why eating eggs is actually good for heart, despite eggs having a load of cholesterol:
In the end, the only thing he has proven is that occasional cookie is not going to kill you.
Trust me, I am well aware of that. I spent last ten years following various nutritionists' advices and the health pyramids (my family has a history of cancer risk and few other chronic diseases, so I figured getting obese would be bad). None of it worked. "Standard western diet", so-called "Mediterranean" diet (which in reality is anything but), "Japanese" diet, vegetarian diet, vegan diet... I either got sick on it (SWD), got even sicker than I used to be (vegetarian, vegan), or it simply didn't work (Med, Jap).
This is the only one which had shown any success with me, and just as importantly, it is a so-called "paleo" diet which means that it is basically how people are biologically meant to eat.
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If it works for you it works for you, that's the most important matter, but I would caution against aggrandizing the prehistoric past too much. Although it has been a relatively short period of time, humans haven't stopped evolving and phenotypes are of great, and as of yet not fully understood importance. Take for example dairy products. European populations have grown a resistance to their deleterious effects in mere milennia that aren't found in East Asia. I think we simplify nutrition by asserting the past as an ideal. Dietary adaptations seem to arrive rather fast.
^ That's a lot of time spent trying to prove that he took a multivitamin and protein shake and vegetables, when I clearly detailed all of that already. It constantly feels like we're having two different conversations here, like you're trying to argue with someone who isn't even here. So I'm done here.
- Thread starter
- #60
Aldarion
Archmage
That is true. Problem however is that modern world moves faster than what nature can adapt. You introduce a new food once in few thousand years, no problem. You introduce a myriad of different foods within a few centuries, and you get a load of problems.
And because we are talking basic chemistry here, things are far more difficult and complex than merely adapting to milk. When it comes to using dairy products, mammals are already adapted to using mothers' milk. And while milk of other mammalian species is somewhat different, it is in its basis the same thing. But these days, we have not only changed diet massively in order of decades (and are still changing it massively), but we have also introduced many elements to diet that have never before existed in nature. Artificial sweeteners being a very good example. And that stuff is something natural evolution simply cannot handle.
My point is that his experiment didn't prove anything we didn't know already. Calories matter, and what you take in matters. You have to have vitamins, you have to have proteins and you have to have fats. You can have sugars if you don't take them in excess. So I really don't understand what you were trying to prove with that example? Because as I said, most people have neither the training, knowledge nor time to do what he did, which means that they will eat based on instincts. And that means that they will end up in calorie surplus while at the same time being malnourished, potentially running protein, vitamin and fat deficit all at the same time. Which then means that modern diet very much is poisonous for most people.
If you have to take supplements with your diet, that is a bad diet. The end. Because everything that does not fit into normal metabolism (which is basically paleo diet) is going to upset organism in some way, eventually. The only question is when and how.
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