
Eating food from plants that have struggled to survive toughens us up as well - yasp
http://nautil.us/issue/15/turbulence/fruits-and-vegetables-are-trying-to-kill-you
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SllX
It’s worth noting that one of the more successful ways to evolve is to be so
appealing to humans that we cultivate the species and farm it.

Incidentally, we are the only species on the planet that will sit there with
our mouth burning from a jalapeño and wonder, “how can we make this hotter?”

~~~
tracker1
Not so sure... considering we tend to eventually isolate a few characteristics
and bread widely for them, practically eliminating most variety and creating
huge mono-crop environments.

Regarding another thread, if plants could chose their characteristics I would
imagine we'd see anti-veg memes much like we see anti-meat memes. While there
are carnivores out there as a lifestyle, it's nothing compared to what over a
century of SDA has brought to veganism.

~~~
SllX
I agree with you insofar as what you said properly applies to industrial scale
agriculture. Mono cultures are easier to scale with fewer people, and only
about 1% of the workforce in the US, maybe less, is a farmer in any meaningful
capacity despite the sheer quantity of food that we grow and even export.

We have only been doing industrial scale agriculture for about two hundred
years though, and we’ve been farming for at least eleven thousand years.

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jnty
I get this for vegetables, but surely the 'strategy' for a lot of fruit is
that they are tasty when ripe and get eaten so that the seed is spread?

~~~
jrkatz
Some animals are better than others for eating and spreading seeds. If a plant
could choose it might prefer birds eat its fruit, especially over animals with
molars that crack the seeds. Not coincidentally, the active ingredient in hot
peppers, capsaicin, impacts mammals but not birds.

~~~
purple_ducks
> Not coincidentally, the active ingredient in hot peppers, capsaicin, impacts
> mammals but not birds.

It is coincidental. Evolution doesn't plan.

~~~
DennisP
Saying it's not coincidental does not mean it's planned. The whole point is
that random variations that are advantageous are the ones that survive; that's
not coincidence, it's consequence.

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hirundo
Low levels of stress are health-inducing on the individual organism in the
form of hormesis. Similarly, low levels of stress can benefit a population,
e.g. predation on a herd of ungulates results in a healthier herd. So too
little of bad things is also a bad thing, including toxicity and even death
itself.

When too little evil is evil, it makes ethics complicated.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> When too little evil is evil, it makes ethics complicated.

I have considered the same thought, but I always dismiss it as possible true,
but too unlikely to occur to be worth including in ethical calculus.

Do you think it actually happens in real life? Such profoundly little evil
happening that things start to suck?

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raintrees
This information seems to combine well with information offered by Mark
Sissons of "Primal Lifestyle" fame. I am currently exploring that specific
avenue, I have lost over 10 pounds in 2 weeks, and it does not seem to be all
based on water retention.

I am awaiting blood work lab results to make sure I do not have anything out
of whack, and if I get a green light, I'll continue.

Insulin response is quite a weighty subject to study, and the Standard
American Diet (I bet some love the initials of that) appears to aggravate that
system within us.

YMMV, consult with your health partner expert.

~~~
leshow
All that's telling you is that you're in a caloric deficit, which is probably
a result of restricting the food groups you are eating. You often see this
with people who do a low carb diet. They lose a bunch of weight initially, and
think it was because carbohydrates were making them fat. The reality is they
just eliminated one of the 3 big macronutrients, and as a result their caloric
intake went down.

~~~
kareemm
I’m not sure this is true. As you ramp down eg carbs you ramp up protein and
fat, sometimes significantly. It’s not clear that a caloric deficit is the
reason you’re losing weight.

~~~
phkahler
There are a lot of people, especially on HN, that think delta_weight =
calories_in - calories_burned is all there is to it. There is a lot of truth
in that, but it seems to not be the whole story. Some eating habits cause us
to eat more or less, while others seem to change our metabolism. What you eat
and when you eat it seem to make a difference beyond just that simple
equation.

~~~
fredophile
It really is just calories_in - calories_burned. If you change your eating
habits and now eat less you have reduced calories_in. If you changed your
eating habits and it boosted your metabolism you've increased calories_burned.

~~~
jjeaff
Calories in minus calories burned minus calories passed through without
metabolizing at all.

~~~
snazz
How significant is that unmetabolized calorie count in an average 2,000
calorie diet?

~~~
gamblor956
Depends on your diet. For example, fiber is an un-digestible carb (to a
human).

If you eat a lot of veggies, wheat, or whole grains, you get a lot of fiber.

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leshow
This sounds like a gross exaggeration:

> Volunteers who took large doses of vitamins C and E before training failed
> to benefit from the workout.

I find it hard to believe that they didn't benefit at all from a workout
because they took vitamin C or E. I'd like to see the methodology of this
study if that's really the conclusion they came to.

~~~
refurb
Here is the study if you want to dig into it![1] We know exercise improve
insulin resistance and glucose uptake, so that's the benefit of exercise they
measured.

It's actually not that surprising. Vitamin C and E have anti-oxidant
properties. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are generated during metabolism.
Generally we think of them as being bad since they can damage molecules in the
body, but it appears that ROS are actually _a signal_ to the body that causes
it to improve cardiovascular fitness. Take too much vitamin C and E and you're
blocking that signal.

Derek Lowe has a nice blog post on it.[2]

It's a good lesson in Chesterson's Fence. Before you tear down the fence
(ROS), you may want to double check why it's there in the first place.

[1][https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/05/11/0903485106.sho...](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/05/11/0903485106.short?rss=1)
[2][https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2009/05/13/ex...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2009/05/13/exercise_and_vitamins_now_wait_a_minute_)

~~~
leshow
Thanks for the link. IMO that's a pretty narrow definition of what constitutes
"benefit". You could say that about what they call a workout too I guess.

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ljcn
Very interesting. Will add it to the (already large) "eat lots of (and a good
variety of) fruit and veg and do enough exercise" pile of life advice.

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a0-prw
Strange how I instinctively knew this as a kid ;)

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nikofeyn
the headline remains me of the short film by adam curtis how we are all
becoming richard nixon:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxV3_bG1EHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxV3_bG1EHA)

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Nasrudith
I can't help but think this line of claims has an eerie resemblance to
homeopathy, naturalism, and assorted fallacies mixed within. Not hard disproof
but enough to raise alarm bells and frustrating to try to pick through truth
from the dubious.

Oxidation both being damaging in too much and having a purpose? Perfectly
consistent with prior health experience and toxicology that adding something
everywhere like a toddler doesn't generally help. Communication with
herbivores? That is assuming too many mechanisms and ascribing agency which
doesn't exist.

Self-propagation can look remarkably like agency but it isn't it. If a plant
puts energy into making its fruits delicious to an animal and gets its seeds
distribuited far and wide that plant will spread more than the one whose fruit
is horrifyingly toxic. Never did a plant decide "lets be tasty".

~~~
Yeehaw789
Homeopathy and something that is scientifically verifiable is already at odds
with each other.

Also 'a plant putting energy' into anything specific other than existing
implies agency, doesn't it?

Evolution is hard to understand and I distrust anyone who claims to have
figured it out fully.

Being tasty and toxic doesn't exclude itself simply because we like to think
that.

I think the whole point of the article is that we don't understand things
nearly as much as we think we do.

Especially the part about caffeine is fascinating.

It'll probably require a paradigm shift to make sense of it all. I have a
hunch but I can't articulate it right now.

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chrismeller
I knew Kale didn’t taste like something man was meant to eat...

~~~
HarryHirsch
Only Yankees eat it raw. The rest of the world knows to cook it to death to
deactivate the thioisocyanate and give it the proper sweet flavour.

~~~
hombre_fatal
What's up with the casual, snooty condescension?

Pretty much every time I've had kale in the USA, it's been cooked or baked
like other plants in the brassica oleracea family. Okay, some people eat it
raw like in smoothies or salads and have decided that the taste doesn't bother
them. Why assume they couldn't make that decision for themselves or that
they're missing out on some sort of ancient wisdom?

~~~
HarryHirsch
It's that in the US it's a fashion vegetable that is too coarse to be eaten
raw. If you want fresh greens on your sandwich you are better advised with
watercress, arugula or spinach.

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noetic_techy
I hate to say it and know I'm going to get a lot of flack especially from
vegans, which I have a lot of respect for from an ethical standpoint. Realize
that my critic comes purely from a scientific and evolutionary standpoint. So
here goes:

The growing body of evidence is that humans are not evolutionary cut out to
eat plants to the level we do today. This article somewhat reinforces that
point. The reason we stand out from other apes is likely the fact that we
diverged to become a carnivorous ape roughly 3 million years ago, leading to
our massive brain size as well as other abilities.

Evidence:

-Bone analysis of our ancestors indicates they were primarily carnivorous over the last 3 million years before the advent of agriculture. Probably only 10-15% of our food was plant based. That puts us in the same place as wolves and bears in the food chain.

-Humans require vitamin B12 to thrive, which can only come from animal sources or certain bacteria (vegans must supplement their diet).

-Your gut structure closely matches that of a carnivore, not a herbivore. Just because you can tolerate plants doesn't mean you should.

-Humans are the only living primate adapted for endurance running. This was likely to out last running prey.

-The healthiest populations on the planet are those that still maintain hunter gatherer lifestyles with no spill over of modern food. Plenty of anthropological field research pointing this out.

-Humans are among the few mammals that don't produce vitamin C naturally. A sign we primarily got this from eating animal organs since access to citrus fruit is seasonal.

-The prevailing theory is that our large brain capacity came along with the fact that we high and easy to access sources of Omega-3 fats. Fish or large game primarily. There is also a related theory that we were primarily aquatic apes, since we also have a lot of adaptations for water.

-Tapeworms: Without infecting a human host, at least four species of tapeworm would be unable to reproduce. Humans are a definitive host for them. The only other mammals to be definitive hosts for tapeworms are carnivores like lions and hyenas.

-Smaller canine teeth compared to great apes indicates they were less used for male to male conflict like we see in great apes, and more so used for meat eating. This falls in line with the time frame we see a switch to carnivore.

-Interestingly, we have very powerful livers for detoxification and a very strong ability to smell rot, decay and decomposition relative to other animals. This suggests we may have evolved first as scavengers then grew into hunting more.

-Egyptian mummies are the first times we see heart disease and tooth decay, as well as less robust skeletal features. In fact anthropologist recognize pre and post agricultural specimens pretty easily.

As I read this article I can only see another drop in the bucket that
reinforces the point: Humans are not meant eat this many plant. We keep
fooling ourselves with this notion that hormetic responses are "good for you"
and "toughen you up". Its like telling a wolf that eating a salad is "good for
you". Sure you can't feed the planet without agriculture nor can we feasibly
go back to being hunter gatherers, and the vegans do hold the ethical high
ground. However if the question is simply: "What are humans evolved to eat."
The answer is right in our face and our modern culture hates to accept it:
meat. Primarily nose to tail. Vegan diets tend to be healthy in the short term
especially when you switch from the Standard American Diet, and deleterious in
the long term without serious hacks to make up for nutrient deficiencies and
the accumulation of plant toxins. Look at the high rates of infertility in
vegan communities, the likely culprit is plant toxin accumulation and
malnutrition. Especially when you look at the research involving the long term
accumulation of plant oxylates.

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mig4ng
Everytime I read "resilience" I instantly remember "antifragility" concept
coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. His book Antifragile goes in more depth about
stress causing improvement in systems (therefore antifragility), both in human
body and other systems (economics, social, political, etc).

~~~
nradov
His whole "antifragility" concept is mostly just cherry picked examples with
little basis in science or true systems analysis. He has extremely high self
confidence which many people confuse with actual knowledge. Don't take it too
seriously, it's just entertainment.

~~~
jgalt212
> He has extremely high self confidence

Agreed, and I would add he's extremely combative with those of opposing view
points. So much so, that he spends large portions of his books (and social
media posts) not expounding upon his theories and why they are right, but why
his opposition is so stupid and wrong.

In any event, I do think many/most of the things Talib expounds upon are
correct/have merit. The best way to read his is probably through via second
hand accounts of his work.

~~~
chubot
He's following his own advice by describing his ideas "via negativa" :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile#Via_negativa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile#Via_negativa)

Lots of descriptions on the web:

[https://www.bing.com/search?q=taleb%20via%20negativa](https://www.bing.com/search?q=taleb%20via%20negativa)
(google seems to have mutilated its URL, so using bing)

In other words, positive knowledge and negative knowledge aren't symmetrical.
It helps to say why people are wrong (although if you want to say he's rude
and offputting about it, I won't disagree, although I've gotten past it)

There are also a lot more ways to be wrong than to be right. So describing why
people are wrong could take a lot of space in the book, and still be valuable.

