
Should people be eating more fat? - arch_stanton
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29616418
======
owenmarshall
One other recent study that jumped out at me was one on salt: apparently new
studies are showing that CDC guidelines on sodium intake are far too low(1)
and should be _increased_ for health.

I wonder if much of the problem with the seemingly contradictory nature of
studies like this the wide variance you see with us humans. I know good
experimental design is about controlling for these variables, but it seems to
be extremely difficult. Are the Danes in the above study eating something else
that provides a benefit? Are they, on aggregate, more physically active than
Americans? Is there a genetic variation present that means if I ate that much
salt I'd have problems?

At the end of the day, I'll always take the guideline oft-attributed to Oscar
Wilde: "Everything in moderation, including moderation."

[1] [http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20140402/cdc-salt-
gui...](http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20140402/cdc-salt-guidelines-
too-low-for-good-health-study-suggests)

~~~
jp555
here's another great one from Alan Aragon: "Avoid food avoidance."

I think the salt thing is somewhat a problem of causation vs. correlation. If
you have hypertension it can be a good idea to limit salt intake; but salt
intake does not cause hypertension.

I'm wary of any health advice that stems solely from epidemiological study.
I'm not sure why we so easily take a hypothesis as a conclusion, and
epidemiological study, while valuable, can only produce a hypothesis that
requires a controlled experiment to test. Yet it seems 90% of the "red meat
causes diabetes!" articles we see are usually framing a hypothesis as the
result of an experiment.

~~~
axotty
I have an anecdote I feel like sharing. Please take it with a grain of... you
know.

I've had hypertension since I was 17, but I never got on medication. I
recently made the decision to completely give up added salt. I only ate my own
salt-free cooking for about 6 months and I ate a diet high in meat, fish and
vegetables. I did not pick up exercise. My BP dropped from 145/90 to 125/80
within the first month. I check my BP weekly and my average BP is 120/75.

My parents cook with a lot of salt, I notice this now when I eat at their
place. I am confident that the high salt diet they "gave" me for so many
years, combined with restaurant food, was the direct cause of my 5 year
strugle with high blood pressure.

I could be wrong, but I am nonetheless very happy with the results of my diet
based solution.

~~~
jp555
I think you'd agree that having hypertension at 17 is not typical, but being
17 and consuming a LOT of salt (junk food) is very typical.

So which is more likely; you're genetically predisposed to hypertension, which
your high-salt diet exposed in your teens, or that your high-salt diet caused
your hypertension?

I doubt your conclusion, but it does make me happy that you've found a
solution that works for you!

~~~
axotty
Thanks. I see what you're saying and I think you're right. The point you were
originally making about causation vs correlation is more clear to me now. I
guess I'm guilty of letting myself get too excited over what worked for me.

------
rickdale
I lost over 50 pounds about 3 years ago now. And since then I have been
relearning to eat and doing a good job at it.

One of the tricks of the eating healthy trade that I learned and has helped me
tremendously, is to put fatty stuff into drinks; mostly teas and coffees. Like
bulletproof coffee[0]. Often you hear don't drink empty calories, but as
someone that has never counted a calorie I can attest that it is more
important to avoid sugary drinks.

For anyone interested, I started with the Four Hour Body by Tim Ferris and
then migrated over to fatburningman[2] podcast after the slow carb diet. The
only supplement company that I trust is Onnit[3], but I don't take a lot of
supplements so I don't spend time researching them.

0.[https://www.bulletproofexec.com/bulletproof-coffee-
recipe/](https://www.bulletproofexec.com/bulletproof-coffee-recipe/)

1.[http://fourhourbody.com/](http://fourhourbody.com/)

2\. [http://fatburningman.com/](http://fatburningman.com/)

3\. [https://www.onnit.com/](https://www.onnit.com/)

also, if you are struggling with weight loss, I will motivate you with the
power of email. dlooeps2 [at] gmail, drop me a line .. I consider myself a fat
guy that got skinny to eat more food. if that makes any sense.

~~~
publicfig
What was your experience and opinion of Four Hour Body? I've heard
recommendations for it, but its marketing speak of "AN UNCOMMON GUIDE TO RAPID
FAT-LOSS, INCREDIBLE SEX, AND BECOMING SUPERHUMAN" has always turned me off to
it before I started.

~~~
wastedhours
I did 5 weeks on 4HB (only 5 weeks due to my schedule, it's not easy when you
have all 3 meals a day out of the house...), and felt fantastic. Circulation
in my legs seemed to improve, more energy and lost about a stone in that time.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Regarding circulation in your legs, make sure to walk ~5 minutes for every
hour you're sitting. It reverses the negative effects of sitting all day:

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140908083748.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140908083748.htm)

------
acconrad
There is perhaps no other topic of human health we intentionally complicate
more than nutrition and supplementation. Every year there is a new study
contradicting what we believed to be a solid truth about what we eat, and for
every study that says you should eat fat/red meat/salt/alcohol, there is
another study that says you shouldn't. This extends to even the most seemingly
defensible advice, like taking vitamin D for fair-skinned individuals in cold
climates. I had spoken with a medical school professor on how he was now
redacting that advice upon new research that came out of a highly regarded,
peer-reviewed journal. It seems nothing is safe when it comes to what we
ingest.

Fundamentally, it comes down to eating whole, unprocessed foods in sensible
amounts and moving around in a manner that provides enough stimulus to fend
off disease and atrophy. Everything else is majoring in the minor and varies
wildly by individual. There are plenty of lean, healthy individuals on high
carb, low fat diets; same with high fat, low carb. If you stick to those
fundamentals and experiment with a diet and exercise regimen that is
sustainable for you, you will have success. It astounds me that we
continuously need to drill into our brains that a diet of salads and the fresh
catch of the day is healthier than TV dinners and the drive-through.

------
TheCapn
A slight tangent to the parent topic, but should HackerNews be about nutrition
as much as it has been in the last few days? The comments are frequently
woefully ignorant of any current nutritional science and often anecdotes of
how one trend diet or broscience factoid helped them achieve their goals.

As much as the discussion _can_ be interesting its not really on topic for
what this site is for no? What gets worse is when a group of people uneducated
on the topic begin an echo chamber of poor advice and "it worked for me!"
mantras we get a pretty sickening discussion that would be frowned upon if it
was regarding an actual technology topic.

~~~
joshontheweb
I see what you mean. I think the reason why it may be appropriate here is that
poor health and being overweight are big risks in the field of programming. If
you are not actively managing your health as a full-time programmer your
health will likely degrade. More solid data is needed, that is true.
Unfortunately the accepted facts on this issue are turning out to be suspect.

~~~
gretful
I see what you mean. I think the reason why it may be appropriate here is that
poor health and being overweight are big risks in the field of sedentary
occupations.

ftfy

------
pajaroide
Lately I've been on a diet of vegetable fats and proteins, almost no carbs
(only fiber). Lots of avocados and seeds (chia, flaxseed, sunflower, sesame)
which have approximately 50% fat content 45% protein 5% fiber. I lost body fat
while eating as much as I wanted of that, along with yoghurt, eggs, cheese and
veggies, the only thing off the table is bread, although I eat some once in a
while.

People eat too many carbs in their daily life and don't even notice and they
carry lots of long term health risks.

~~~
jp555
The macronutrient content of your diet has nothing to do with how much you
gain/lose. The only way you are losing weight is that you are in a caloric
deficit. Whether that's from increased activity, decreased energy intake, or a
combination of these, there is no other way (besides liposuction).

The low-carb thing is just a trick to get you to eat fewer calories. Not to
say it's not valuable - whatever works for you - but low-carb is much more
about limiting calories through food avoidance than anything about carbs.

Although you did say "lately", and moving to low-carb will lead to a lot of
initial weight loss. But this is due to water-loss as your glycogen stores are
depleted (every gram of stored carb energy gets stored with 3-4 grams of
water). Again, do whatever works for you, but it grinds my gears to see all
this unfounded carb-hate these days.

~~~
dmm
What if the macronutrient content of your diet affects your metabolic rate? I
mean I see the value of the "bucket with a hole in it" model of human
weightloss but the body is a complex biological machine full of feedback
mechanisms so maybe that model isn't always sufficient.

~~~
jp555
Macros do not significantly affect metabolic rate. Exercise does though.

Glycogen (carbs) is the preferred fuel for almost every cell in our bodies.
All the fat & protein we eat that ends up used as metabolic fuel will first be
converted into carbs. Now granted the thermal effect of these macros are
different (it takes more energy to turn protein into fuel than it does to
convert table sugar) but the idea that "you need to eat fat to burn fat" is a
myth.

~~~
cschmidt
Many people think that ketones are the preferred fuel for every cell in our
bodies.

~~~
tomp
Do they? Everything I've read about keto diet is that it will make you less
"short-term energized" \- you're lacking glycogen, i.e. you won't be able to
sprint as much.

------
bane
Yes. Animal fats particularly. We know from the fossil record and studies of
traditional societies that even bone marrow (high and dense in fat and
calories) is prized. Science shows it to be unbelievably rich in all sorts of
good stuff.

There are some theories out there that modern human brain development was
strongly tied to the ability of early humans to make tools to successful
extract as much marrow out of an animal carcass as possible. It's basically
the raw building blocks brains are made out of. Plus it increases wound
regeneration and boosts your immune system.

The science of nutrition is so stunningly complex and difficult that lots of
notions about what to eat and not eat have been overturned time and time
again. The only thing that seems to have held out is to eat a wide variety of
foods from _all_ sources. Limit sugars and sweet things, eat lots of fiber,
protein and fats. Cook in butter if you need to use oil. It's better for you
and it tastes better.

Traditional societies actually do a _pretty_ god job on many of these fronts.
There's some things they screwed up on, nitrates aren't real good for you, but
limited amounts of alcohol is. Yogurt is great for you, but Bracken
(Fernbrake) turns out to not be so great an idea. Many traditional diets are
usually rich in variety, and many of the good things you should be eating, and
usually don't have too many of the things you shouldn't be eating. Don't
confuse traditional with customary. A customary full-English breakfast every
day is something north of 1,000 calories, but there's not much reason to
assume it's a good traditional foodstuff. It turns out oatmeal with some fruit
is probably better for you.

If in doubt, variety variety variety. As evolved opportunistic omnivores, our
bodies are superbly evolved to eat a little bit of just about everything, but
don't do so well on lots of one kind of thing. Humans are one of the few
species on the planet that can do what we do, and it turns out, just like with
any animal, that we kind of have to do what we do to live right.

~~~
applecore
Interesting theory regarding bone marrow consumption and early human brain
development... Can you recommend any articles or research on the topic to
learn more?

~~~
bane
In terms of modern science, we know marrow can have direct impact on neuron
development in adults.

[http://www.foh.dhhs.gov/NYCU/BoneMarrow.asp](http://www.foh.dhhs.gov/NYCU/BoneMarrow.asp)

 _Earlier scientific work has shown that bone marrow cells can enter the mouse
brain and produce new neurons. However, the new study is the first to show
that this phenomenon can occur in the human brain. The study appears in the
January 20, 2003, online early edition of the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences1._

[http://www.ninds.nih.gov/news_and_events/news_articles/press...](http://www.ninds.nih.gov/news_and_events/news_articles/pressrelease_bone_marrow_neurons.htm)

[http://www.pnas.org/content/100/4/2088.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/100/4/2088.full)

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140808110709.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140808110709.htm)

In terms of archaeological record and Early Man

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Homo](http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Homo)

 _Tooled up But around two million years ago, telltale cut marks on the
surface of animal bones reveal that early humans were using crude stone tools
to smash open the bones and extract the marrow. Stone tools allowed early Homo
to get at a food source that no other creature was able to obtain - bone
marrow. Bone marrow contains long chain fatty acids that are vital for brain
growth and development. This helped further fuel the increase in brain size,
allowing our ancestors to make more complex tools.

The tools made by habilis are called 'Oldowan tools'. The process used to make
these tools was incredibly simple. Hominids picked up one stone, known as a
core and broke it with another, known as a hammerstone or percussor. This gave
them a sharp cutting edge that could pass through an animal's hide._

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2YMfzhm8ao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2YMfzhm8ao)

Some of the oldest stone tool use we've discovered appears to be tied into
marrow extraction by pre-human species about 3.4 million years ago. Long
enough for evolutionary forces to have a major impact.

[http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v56/n12/full/1601646a.htm...](http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v56/n12/full/1601646a.html)

 _Another fruitful line of evidence for early hominid diets is from analogy
with modern humans, rather than other living primates. In a recent paper
Cordain et al, (2001) also argue that the observed increased brain size
through time in the Homo line requires the consumption of animal products.
They point out that there are two essential fatty acids, docsahexaenoic and
arachidonic, that are essential to brain development in modern humans, and the
best sources of these two fatty acids are bone marrow, and particularly
ruminant brains. Therefore, the consumption of these animal products would
have facilitated expansion in brain size and increased cranial capacity over
the long term. Similar arguments regarding omega-3 fatty acids are presented
by Chamberlain (1996, 1998)._

There's tons more. It's pretty well researched and the hypothesis is generally
accepted.

There's a documentary somewhere that demonstrates marrow extraction with
recreations of millions year old stone tools. There's some co-evolution
arguments about the orientation of our hands and the size and strength of
human triceps (designed to hold and smash), but I can't find the papers on
those right now.

~~~
smartial_arts
The bone marrow studies look at implanted, not orally consumed material.

Just in case anybody assumes "If I eat more bone marrow I'll get new brain
cells built from the cells I eat".

------
seivan
The Scandinavian country in question, might just be Sweden, though didn't look
into it.

High fat has grown in popularity because the actual effects it have. People
have started to feel much better and lose weight at the same time.

It's unfortunate the way the government treated Annika Dahlqvist when she
first started recommending her diabetes patients to avoid carbohydrates and
start with high fat instead. I think at some point she was shut down and
prosecuted, but I am not sure.

~~~
boothead
Didn't Sweden actually pass a law taxing fat at some point? Actually, now I
think about it, it was Denmark.

~~~
thirsteh
Yes, Denmark. It was scrapped after about a year since the government found
out the Danes were buying fatty products in Germany and Sweden. Classic Danish
government.

------
dpeck
fyi, if you're interested in losing weight using this approach the /r/keto
subreddit is quite good and very encouraging.

I won't say its for everyone, but it certainly worked for me, and after
getting over the initial hump I felt better than I ever had. Huge amounts of
energy, feeling great after 4 hours of sleep, brain feeling like I was
grasping concepts and finding solutions quicker.

~~~
tomp
Anytime I read about keto diet, I read that there's much less of the "short-
term" energy, e.g. you can't sprint as much (but long runs are ok). Did you
experience that as well, or was it uniformly high-energy?

~~~
dpeck
I'd say thats probably true, but likely has more to do with training than
diet.

I would do intervals of walking/running while pushing my son in his stroller
and have no problem with it, even while quite overweight and never being a
runner. I shocked myself the first time I did 3 miles without really thinking
about it or feeling very winded.

------
calebm
I read that several years ago, some farmers figured they could fatten up their
cattle by feeding them more fat, so they fed them a bunch of coconut oil. But
instead of getting fat, they lost weight.

~~~
lingben
best way to fatten livestock is to feed them carbs (ie corn!)

grass fed cows grow much much leaner than those on corn

~~~
a_c_s
For cows grass is also predominantly carbs! Grass is mostly fiber, which is
converted into carbs by the intestinal flora of the cow.

So why does corn fatten them better? Is it the macronutrient makeup of
digested grass vs digested corn, or is it simply that corn is more calorie
dense than grass?

~~~
cstrahan
My understanding is that it's the difference in glycemic index. Corn has a GI
of 60, whereas spinach has a GI of 0 (couldn't find the GI for grass, so...).
The higher the GI, the more impact on blood sugar and insulin, and insulin
causes the body to use sugars over fat for fuel. So how does corn stack up
against, say, table sugar? Table sugar has a GI of 68, so cows (or people, for
that matter) that consume a lot of corn will have nearly identical effects on
their insulin and blood sugar if they were to instead eat an equivalent amount
(in terms of carbs) of table sugar.

Though I'm not a doctor, that's my understanding.

Edit: Also, there's the compounding effect of insulin resistance. The
chronically elevated insulin levels result in decreased insulin sensitivity,
which means that the body will require more insulin to move glucose out of the
bloodstream, while further preventing the use of fat for fuel.

~~~
a_c_s
You're still treating cows and people as equivalent: thanks to the
microorganisms in their guts, cows break down fiber, which is entirely
indigestible for humans.

Unless you know the glycemic load of both digested corn and digested grass for
cows you can't compare them with the figures for humans. And more importantly,
drawing nutritional wisdom from such a comparison is foolish at best.

~~~
cstrahan
"Unless you know the glycemic load of both digested corn and digested grass
for cows you can't compare them with the figures for humans. And more
importantly, drawing nutritional wisdom from such a comparison is foolish at
best."

I agree with what your saying. Given what I know about nutrition in humans,
I'm suggesting that maybe there's a similar effect in cows. Perhaps someone
can chime in regarding the GI for cows, and if similar, it might be something
worth further researching.

Definitely not suggesting that what applies to humans always applies to cows.

------
mark_l_watson
Eating fat the correct way is important. When possible I try to not cook with
fats (except for coconut and rice bran oils that are not badly damaged by
heat). Rather, after a meal is cooked and the heat is off, then I add a little
flax, olive, etc. oils.

Not too far off topic: I have a cooking web site
([http://cookingspace.com](http://cookingspace.com)) that provides useful
nutrition information on recipes: not just a breakdown of micronutrients, but
information of which food ingredients contribute how much to micronutrients.
Preparing and eating food is a major hobby :-)

------
geuis
I _highly_ recommend checking out this subreddit,
[http://reddit.com/r/keto](http://reddit.com/r/keto).

This article is pretty spot on. The general rule of thumb is eat lots of fats,
some protein, and almost no carbs.

------
Sourya
The only unhealthy fat is trans fat. All other forms of fat are good (provided
you count the calories). Also fats contain leptin, which helps reduce fat!
However, protein does a better job of giving that "full" feeling.

~~~
cschmidt
There are questions about polyunsaturated fats as well, i.e. vegetable oils.
The book "The Big Fat Surprise" [1] talks about this in some length if you're
interested.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Fat-Surprise-
Healthy/dp/145162...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Fat-Surprise-
Healthy/dp/1451624425)

------
thisjepisje
Should people eat nutrients? Perhaps they should!

