Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

This is what makes the internet so great. It's trivially easy to find an article that affirms whatever you want to believe about nutrition.

Want to drink soy sludge and live forever? Have I got a site for you! Looking to skip breakfast and lunch in the name of science, here you go! Eat no meat? Eat all meat? Both work!



my personal favorite is this paper. The reason you can always find evidence for your favorite is not just internet tribalism, it's that the problem is under defined and has many valid answers. dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182351

> The weight of evidence strongly supports a theme of healthful eating while allowing for variations on that theme. A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention and is consistent with the salient components of seemingly distinct dietary approaches. Efforts to improve public health through diet are forestalled not for want of knowledge about the optimal feeding of Homo sapiens but for distractions associated with exaggerated claims, and our failure to convert what we reliably know into what we routinely do. Knowledge in this case is not, as of yet, power; would that it were so.


I suppose the error lies in statements like

"Everybody should eat X."

"Y is making you Z."

where the whole of the population is treated as one.

Yet, we are different. Our metabolic balances differ. Some persons lack certain genes needed to process certain substances. Other persons are super efficient at that and need more of some substances.

"One size fits all." does not work in nutrition!


What's even better is that it's trivially easy to find rubrics for assessing the quality of information available to you. That there is a site that espouses your beliefs doesn't equate to all beliefs being equally valid.


As someone who eats mainly keto/paleo as a prefrence/habit, and has vegan friends, the huge variaty of acceptable diet for humans is amazing. I even know people who eat food from bags and boxes, where the source caloric material is indecipherable, even with an ingredient list. Yet we all live well.


An awfully large % of the genetic difference between us and our nearest relatives are genes that relate to the gut. Being a true omnivore has its advantages!




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: