
Why almost everything you've been told about unhealthy foods is wrong - chestnut-tree
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/23/everything-you-know-about-unhealthy-foods-is-wrong
======
jcampbell1
The factors we analyze in nutrition is calories, macro nutrient content, and
micro nutrient content. In terms of obesity, what we really care about is
satiation and satiety. These are words that no one talks about, and but get to
the core of the issue. If I eat this food, how many calories will I consume
before feeling full?(satiation). After eating this food, how long until I feel
the need to eat again? (sateity).

Unfortunately the research and measurements of these values is thin. We need
to fix that. We already know things like whole milk better provides satiation
and sateity than skim milk, and children that drink whole milk actually have
less obesity than skim milk drinkers.

If we just measured and labeled foods with a sateity/satiation index (what we
really care about), then people would actually have a chance to pick better
foods. Right now it is damn near impossible to determine if eating eggs and
bacon for breakfast is more likely to drive over eating vs cereal. It can be
measured, but we just don't do it.

~~~
sekm
If you want a good measure then look at the carbs. More carbs approximates to
less satiety.

It's all based on where the food sits in terms of its Glycemic Index. High GI
foods trigger an insulin release and insulin effectively tells your cells to
lower your blood sure levels. Lower blood sugar reduces the feeling of
satiety, aka makes you hungry.

By avoiding insulin releases in the first place (sweet/grainy/starchy shit)
you'll come out a far healthier person.

~~~
Tarrosion
From personal experience, I believe that it's not always so simple. When I eat
a steak for dinner (rare), I notice that even right after the meal I feel
incomplete, and I'm hungry within an hour or two. When I eat a muffin for
lunch, I feel content for several hours. (And the muffin has about 2/3 the
calories of the steak.)

~~~
adventured
It's a very interesting contrast of experiences. When I eat a steak I'm not
hungry for a long time afterward (whereas a muffin doesn't sate nearly as
well). It makes me wonder what causes such a variance between people with
regards to how they experience food.

------
TrainedMonkey
"Yes, Pearson conceded, "there is not enough evidence to be firm about
[healthy eating] guidelines", but no, the findings "did not change the advice
that eating too much fat is harmful for the heart". Saturated fat reduction,
he said, was just one factor we should consider as part of a balanced diet and
a healthy lifestyle."

So, pretty much get a balanced diet and do not overeat.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

~~~
EC1
You mean mostly meat and some plants.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Health aside, for reasons of sustainability, I think that's a bad idea.

~~~
gress
Once health is aside, so is sustainability.

~~~
garrettgrimsley
No, while the length of the human lifespan consuming a certain product might
be reduced the environmental impact that the person's diet had remains. Meat
production has very real environmental impacts.[1]

Switching to a vegetarian diet, or even to a meat that consumes less resources
to produce[3], drastically reduces one's environmental impact.[2]

Meat consumption also has direct fiscal impacts by way of the increased cost
of treatment for those that consume meat.

If the price of grain increases because of an increased demand for meat then
the world's poor will be the ones most negatively impacted.[4]

Disclaimer: I currently consume all forms of meat, including beef.

[1] [https://woods.stanford.edu/environmental-venture-
projects/co...](https://woods.stanford.edu/environmental-venture-
projects/consequences-increased-global-meat-consumption-global-environment)

[2]
[http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS09-05.pdf](http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS09-05.pdf)

[3] [http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-
feed-80...](http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-
feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat)

[4]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
gress
I see that you are convinced that meat consumption is detrimental to health.

Also health and lifespan are not the same thing.

~~~
garrettgrimsley
My post was addressed at your claim that "Once health is aside, so is
sustainability."

I believe that I it made clear that this is not the case. Your view is myopic
and selfish, as it ignores the very real effects that a meat-eater diet has on
other humans and the environment.

I did not imply that health and lifespan are the same, and I even addressed
them separately.

My beliefs are based in well-documented evidence. Eating meat has a strong
positive correlation with increased healthcare costs.[1] Whether or not meat
has a negative impact on health only has a bearing on the costs of healthcare
for meat-eaters, which is a minor point that I mentioned as an aside. It does
not have a bearing on the environmental impacts of a meat-eater diet.

You are nitpicking minor details of my post. Perhaps instead of vaguely
implying that I'm mistaken you should produce evidence that contradicts me.

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2012/03/12/bad-
news-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2012/03/12/bad-news-for-red-
meat-lovers/)

~~~
gress
Where would you rank eating meat in the order of negative effects humans have
on one another and the environment?

Is it above or below overpopulation?

------
beat
A great piece of advice... "If it has a nutritional label, you probably
shouldn't eat it."

------
WalterSear
This is everything that is wrong with science journalism.

The meta analysis made no control for dietary alternatives, and it is hard to
argue that, given the sociological factors involved (ie - middle americans),
that the participants in the studies didn't simply replace their saturated
fats with carbs. In other words, they just replaced an excess of one bad thing
with an excess of another.

There was an in depth article about this, that I can't seem to find now. If
you know what I'm talking about, please post it.

------
Buonaparte
Up until just over a year ago I was eating well and exercising regularly. In
response to acquaintances continually preaching about how bad carbs were, and
because I thought differently (and looked forward to being a bit lazy), I
spent last year doing minimal exercise (pretty much none), and eating whatever
I liked (excluding fast food chains).

This was a primarily carbohydrate focused diet. I ate pasta several times a
week, cereal or its equivalent for breakfast. The only thing I kept my eye on
was my fat intake, especially saturated fat. For that whole year, I went from
about 80kg to a whopping 80kg, fluctuating up and down a only few kg
throughout the year. The only time I noticed that I was putting on weight was
after a trip overseas where I was eating significant amounts every two to
three hours. Even then I only put on 3kg.

Correct portion size is pretty much what I swear by for my unchanging weight.

~~~
buckbova
I haven't exercised in a year for various reasons. I've lost 15 lbs. Since I
don't exercise I'm not as hungry and I probably lost some muscle mass as well.

------
alrs
I've lost 50 pounds since October by following a ketogenic diet.

I start each day with coffee mixed with butter and MCT oil. I eat meat for
lunch. I eat meat for dinner.

I feel better than I have for years.

[http://reddit.com/r/keto](http://reddit.com/r/keto) is a reasonable place to
get started.

~~~
batiudrami
I'll say this up front - I know very little about nutrition and diet science.
But, your comment makes me think:

-You start with caffeine, a known hunger suppressant

-Meat is high protein, which is (I think) fairly confidently known to be what stops your brain thinking that it is hungry.

These two factors, along with internal knowledge that you're attempting to
lose weight and may therefore conciously attempt to eat less, should result in
you eating less than you otherwise would.

Yet you purposely eat high fat and low nutrition foods such as butter - if you
replaced those with other options - vegetables and starchy carbs - and
attempted to eat protein-dense but low fat meats such as chicken breast -
would you be still losing as much weight and also overall having a healthier
body (which is less likely to lead to problems later in life?).

Obviously this article throws some of those assumptions into question, but I
think few people would argue that replacing some fat in a (relatively) high
fat diet with vegetables would be a negative for your weight loss or future
health.

~~~
IgorPartola
Seconded. From what I have seen in terms of research and experienced, eating
vegetables is pretty much the only thing we know for sure is a safe bet. There
are tons of controversial things that can be debated, but I have never seen
any credible source say "eat less veggies".

------
Nursie
Oooh, oooh, I know!

Is it because the field is rife with pseudoscience anyway, and that by the
time this has been filtered through a layer of ignorant* journalists, the
advice we get left with is mostly nonsense?

*I don't mean that in an insulting way, I'm ignorant about a lot of stuff outside my field

------
pbreit
In case you don't read to the bottom, this is pretty good advice: "avoid
processed food".

I don't really understand why in the year 2014 there is still so much
conflicting thought around diet. You'd think we'd have a better handle on it
by now.

I don't find statement like this very compelling: "there is no convincing
evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease". Does that leave open the
door for "there is evidence that saturated fats contribute to heart disease"?

~~~
vixen99
This is an interesting question. If you look at the literature the word
'evidence' really means 'observations purported to lead one to the conclusion
that ....'. Definitely confusing for the casual reader - and it seems also for
the health professionals (as they like to call themselves) specifically those
who have egg on their faces over this volte face. Fact is there is nothing new
about all this.

As an example it's been noted that countries with a high saturated fat
consumption have higher cholesterol levels and high death rates from heart
disease. Is this evidence that saturated fats contribute to heart disease? The
2005 Malmo study of 28,000 men and women showed no relationship with
cardiovascular disease in men and a statistically insignificant <downward>
trend for women.

If you use WHO public data and compare the seven countries with the lowest
consumption of saturated fat with the seven countries with the highest
consumption you get an interesting result. Every country with the lowest
saturated fat consumption has higher rates of heart disease than every country
in the group with the highest saturated fat consumption.

Wherever you go from there it's not leading to the conclusion that saturated
fat is a major culprit (any biochemical can be linked to a dysfunction if you
try hard enough) in heart disease.

------
sjtrny
The irony of the headline is that even the article itself is wrong.

"A 2004 review of the evidence said that while CLA seemed to benefit animals,
there was a lack of good evidence of human health benefits, despite the many
claims made for it."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid)

~~~
taeric
That seems to say more that we need more studies. That is, lack of good
evidence is not necessarily bad evidence. Right?

~~~
jaggederest
Damned by faint praise - when a review says 'more studies are needed', they
mean 'you haven't proved a damn thing yet'.

That's essentially the default conclusion of a review study, lack of good
evidence means any claim at all is bogus. CLA could be a stone cold killer, or
it could be Lazarus juice, but there's no way to tell from the current state
of affairs.

As such, the article _is_ incorrect when it says CLA does X, where X is
anything.

~~~
taeric
Fair enough. I can understand the article's bend, though. Basically, that
beats a lot of what has passed as official health advice; where not only were
the claims unproven, the evidence was usually contrary.

------
taeric
I'm not sure I actually saw an answer to a "why" question in this article. Did
I just miss it?

------
tormeh
It's not news that official recommendations lag behind scientific discovery,
mostly, I suspect, because changing the recommendations too often would be
confusing.

This article's advice that we should disregard official recommendations and
eat as low-tech as possible without any kind of scientific inquiry is complete
horseshit. Classic Luddite homeopathy conspiracy theory horseshit.

On the other hand, there's absolutely no excuse for the amount of sugar and
salt in products that absolutely don't need them. Why can't we have healthy
frozen and microwave ready food? Because the marketing execs say there's no
overlap between the demographics that want healthy and the ones that want fast
food. Well, at least we'll soon have Soylent.

~~~
crusso
_It 's not news that official recommendations lag behind scientific discovery_

Calling nutrition research "scientific" is kind of generous. But not as
generous as calling the onerous government guidelines that reshaped the food
production industry and drove obesity to epidemic proportions in the USA
"recommendations".

------
csallen
I'm skeptical of general and unscientific labels like "processed". What does
that even mean? We as humans can understand it, yes, but it's too high-level a
descriptor to be something our bodies differentiate on.

------
yetanotherphd
The article criticizes the standard of evidence provided for mainstream diet
advice, and yet they provide absolutely no evidence for their claim that the
really important factor is eating natural, unprocessed food.

------
Delmania
I don't honestly think this is all that surprising. All the information on
food seems to be on caloric content and the makeup of the food. These studies
never seem to account for the fact that genetics, lifestyle, mental health,
and emotional well being all play a role in a person's condition. Given the
complex nature of the human body, I seriously think we need to take a more
holistic approach to these studies; meaning, we need to look at the complete
picture in order to understand all the factors that contribute to a person's
well being.

------
Aloha
The conclusion I came to years ago was that I should care about how much I eat
more than what, so long as I'm filling my core nutritional requirements -
doing so I lost 120 lbs.

~~~
pcurve
Even though I know large portion is bad for me, I still get annoyed when I go
to a restaurant and get unexpectedly small portion.

So I think the trick is to eat out less, because portion control is much
harder, restaurant food is much more caloric. And when you eat dinner at home,
eat early, and light.

------
newman314
So basically, still no good information in general about what a "good" diet
is.

------
hitekker
Do any of the guys working on Noom want to comment on this? So far the diet
suggestions of their app have been pretty helpful for me.

------
icameron
The annoyed tone of the article makes it sound like the author is hungry.
HAngry even...

~~~
asciimo
Yes, and irritated by an ineffective fad diet.

------
Noxchi
For those that are skeptical about all this,

Look into Nitric Oxide.

Your veins / arteries produce it as a signaling molecule. When it is produced,
your veins (I will use vein to reference both veins and arteries) expand. If
you've ever exercised and seen your veins become larger, that is nitric oxide
at work.

It also clears out the plaque "pockets" or "cysts" that form in your veins.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2050816/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2050816/)

If those pockets break open (the very thin inner lining of the vein breaks)
and the plaque content gets into your bloodstream, it causes a heart attack
because that plaque liquid causes your blood to clot, essentially make a big
scab ball in your vein that blood can't get through, effectively depleting all
the cells that rely on the blood from getting any oxygen or nutrients, killing
the effected cells in minutes / hours if blood flow is not restored.

The problem with fat is that is really slows down nitric oxide production.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21903940](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21903940)

Because to produce nitric oxide, your veins need a couple ingredients. Lets
call them A, B, and C.

A + B + C = Nitric Oxide

A B and C fit together like a puzzle. Well, fat has a molecule, lets call it
D. That can ALSO combine with A and B to produce something else.

So picture this:

AAAAAA BBBBBBB CCCCCCCCCC DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

If those can randomly form to their produce ABC, or ABD, looking at the
quantities above, which are you more likely to have, ABC or ABD?

ABD... Which is not nitric oxide... Which is not what we want!

This is why eating too much fat is not good. It really harms your arteries
because you can't produce the stuff that's needed to clean them out and help
them expand properly.

Unfortunately, "too much" is a relative term. Considering in this age that 1
table spoon of olive oil is all the oil found in 50 olives... The fat
quantities we evolved for are waaaaay too low for what is so readily available
now. This is why the MAJORITY of people have atherosclerosis. That is the
condition of plaque built up in your veins, which leads to heart attacks,
strokes, and your dick not working.

P.S. vegetables increase nitric oxide production (because they contain the "C"
molecule)

P.P.S. you should buy L-Arginine (the "C" molecule) from Amazon
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013OVX3U/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013OVX3U/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0013OVX3U&linkCode=as2&tag=k003f-20)
(affiliate link, I am thinking of selling it and this post is my MVP sales
pitch).

------
narrator
From what I've seen, I think diet science is affected by lobbying by
environmentalists and ideological vegetarians. Anything that proves meat is
bad for you seems to get the benefit of the doubt.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Is PubMed considered neutral?

"Nucleotide excision repair gene polymorphisms, meat intake and colon cancer
risk."
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24607854](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24607854)

~~~
frozenport
It should be considered controversial and a source for discussion, by people
who know what they are talking about.

~~~
toomuchtodo
[https://www.google.com/search?q=red+meat+cancer+%2Bsite:www....](https://www.google.com/search?q=red+meat+cancer+%2Bsite:www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

~6600 results; I checked the first three pages of papers. All came to the
conclusion that red meat causes a higher incidence of cancer.

------
Falling3
I skimmed and landed on this: >The first generation margarine-type spreads
turned out to be heart-stoppers, which makes it hard to trust anything the
marge industry says.

Well, that's good science. I'm sure there were some more worthwhile ideas in
there, but that one made me wonder.

