> There is so much wrong with your post that I don't even know where to begin.
There is so much going on in these posts that I don't even know where to begin.
Above poster makes claims. I'm like "I don't know nutrition, but this sounds good". You make counter-claims. "Those sound good too".
Crap. Now I can start digging into your respective sources...but of course those will just be people making claims too, they just get different sources of authority.
This happens everywhere anymore. Do guns improve safety? Are immigrants bad for the economy? Do immigrants commit more crime? Is climate change real?
With the Alabama abortion ban in the news I looked into rates, but couldn't find good numbers. (Superficially it looks like there are 10x the number of abortions than infant mortality, but good luck figuring out how many of those abortions were purely voluntary and not due to health reasons).
Trying not to be misled feels both futile and exhausting. Not ripping on your post at all, just reacting to the pent-up emotions it evoked.
Actually, one option is to consider the dietary trends common to blue zones-cultures of the world with the highest rates of centenarians. Their diets share plant based, whole foods as a commonality. Some of these diets include animals, but sparingly. A fun read for this was “how not to die.” But there are many sources of info on plant based whole food diets.
Edit-the conception that any animal food would be more economical than plants/whole foods is suspect in itself. I’m familiar with the societal meme of “eating beans and rice to save money.” Never heard similar for animal foods.
I've tried both ends of the spectrum (hard paleo/keto, and vegan) and find, that, n=1, for me, mostly plants, a small amount (10-20% roughly) super-nutrient dense, high quality animal, works the best long-term. There are benefits to going to the extremes temporarily but I think what Blue Zones highlights is that these are long-term sustainable diets and not fad diets designed to (detox | reduce weight | build muscle | etc).
The Blue Zones diets are also unique in that they're not "ancestral" but are currently working today.
Roughly opposite percentages for me. I eat about 80% animal (protein + fat). My plants come from liver and onions, and eat lentils (for molybdenum) and some tomatoes once a week. If I want a crunchy cracker for paté, I'll eat some was wasa flaxseed flatbreads.
I don't hold much stock in the Blue Zones. There are regional/genetic and lifestyle differences in different parts of the world, particularly in isolated places. On the other hand, if you look at Hong Kong, it has the highest per-capita meat consumption in the world and the highest longetivity. I'm not implying that meat is the reason for their longetivity-- just point out that longevity is more complicated than the food in your diet.
Your Blue Zones comment doesn’t account for Loma Linda, California. Not isolated, generic American suburbia. Low smoking, low drinking, high vegetarian.
You have a very odd diet. It may work for you. You may feel decent. But it’s not backed by the scientific at all. The American Heart Association, among others, have embraced a vegetarian/vegan (ideally full vegan) diet approach for optimal health.
What are your numbers? Blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI, etc?
I'm very fit and in excellent health. 50 year old male, a performance athlete, 6'4" 230 lbs, 14% body fat (i.e., lean and muscular). BP is 120/65, lipid panel is:
Total: 235
HDLC: 69
LDL: 154
TRIG: 58
I got a Coronary Calcium Scan (CAC) this year and my score was zero, i.e., no arterial calcification. This is a far superior indicator of heart/cv health than a lipid panel.
Nutrition is a backwater of poor science, mostly backed by epidemiological survey studies rather than randomized control trials. Eating meat is a proxy or associative marker for people with poor lifestyle habits eating a (terrible) standard american diet. The health orgs are usually political animals, esp the AHA who still believes that dietary cholesterol is a cause of heart disease, that polyunsaturated oils are good for heart health, etc. They look at nutrition as follows: "Let's see, you consume sugar soft drinks and beer, you eat hot dogs, bacon-cheeseburgers, pizza, cheesesteaks, french fries, wings, donuts, waffles and pancakes, eggs and sausage, candy bars and ice cream. You don't exercise, don't sleep well, you're obese, pre-diabetic and show signs of cardiovascular disease. THE PROBLEM HERE IS YOU NEED TO CUT ALL THAT UNHEALTHY MEAT OUT OF YOUR DIET!!"
The whole world is developing an anti-meat bias, and it's going to come at the cost of our collective health. About 60% of Western diet is plant-based already, in the form of sugar, flour, seed-oils and processed foods. Continuing to push plant-based food means that the obesity/T2 diabetes epidmic is going to explode even further over the next 15-20 years. If the meat industry hadn't f*ed up so royally with factory farming and mad cow disease, I wonder if meat would be less demonized today.
It's usually best to start out with your goals. What is your primary goal? Weight loss, fitness, longetivity?
If it's weight loss, there are generally three (successful) ways to go about it:
1. Change nothing in your diet, but eat fewer (but larger) meals per day while maintaining a calorie deficit for your age/gender/weight. This is known as intermittent fasting. It may or may not work for you.
2. Eat mostly plants and/or low-fat meats such as chicken (and low fat fish). Plants are carby, so you'll need to keep your total calories from fat under 10% or the plant carbs will block fat burning. This diet tends to be a difficult adjustment for many, since it is a bit like eating like a rabbit.
3. Eat as few carbs as possible, and get your calories from predominantly meat (aka carnivore diet) or fat (keto diet) or a mix. Aim for > 65% calories from fat (while still keeping under daily calorie expenditure). Both carnivor or keto lend themselves well to lipolysis aka fat burning, especially if you also layer in intermittent fasting from item #1 in this list. If you don't like meat/dairy or fat, this option is pretty much dead-in-the-water.
There are a ton of sources for all of the above approaches and their various rules, tips and pitfalls. I recommend trying each for 6-8 weeks and seeing which diets feel like something you could see yourself living with for the next 12-18 months.
Do whatever feels good and keeps your energy up and mind sharp. You may experience a significant positive shift with a new diet but when you feel like it's not helping, or even hurting, don't blindly stick to it - re-evaluate and change things up.
I personally don't have the microbiome for beans (not to mention the high phytate [antinutrient] concentration), but I do eat macadamia nuts because they have a good omega 6:3 ratio (ideally close to 1:1 for Americans because our diet is generally very high in omega 6 from vegetable oils).
It is certainly possible to do keto completely plant based but you'll be eating a lot of macadamias, avocados and coconut oil, and a lot of leafy greens with maybe some low-sugar citrus like lime and lemon mixed in for flavor. Don't think that's sustainable for very long but could be a good cleanse. Not a plant keto expert (or any expert, or a doctor, or nutritionist, or lawyer, or your lawyer....so do your research.)
I agree with QuantumAphid's suggestions for you, especially around intermittent fasting. IF is like your body's garbage collection process - stop eating long enough (ideally 16 hours) and your body starts to divert metabolic processes towards cleanup and restoration [1] in addition to burning fat for weight loss [2]. A combination of this and choosing a relatively low carb diet with high quality (organic) plant foods is great. For animal foods, go with pasture raised/grass fed - you want your food eating the food it naturally eats, not some processed, bastardized grain byproduct out of a freight car shipped from ADM or Cargill.
For now and the foreseeable future, minimize fish. If you really want fish, go with wild-caught Alaskan salmon or small fish like another poster said. Sardines are great. Stay at the bottom of the food chain... but monitor mercury levels over time. Seems like Pacific ocean mercury is on the rise from Chinese/Indian coal burning and Atlantic is finally on the decline from coal plants in the US closing down.
I will have to strongly caution against going long term carnivore or keto, however. Regardless of the quality of your meat products, animals still have metabolic processes that concentrate toxins, especially higher in the food chain. You need to set your body up for success by giving it a varied diet with nutrients from different kinds of food. This is anecdata on my part, but a combination of plants, which tend to detoxify and animals, which tend to nourish is my preferred long-term diet. It's not a popular stance out there because only extremes sell these days, but I am in favor of a balanced diet, a little of everything, mostly plants, and high-quality animal organ meats. Ruthlessly eliminate processed/fast and most packaged foods. My wife says this: is it food that your great grandmother would recognize as food? If not, don't eat it.
My wife and I have tried the extremes and have harmed ourselves, and had to recover from deficits. Each camp has their "just stick to it" reasons; there are many well-meaning people on the internet that are pro-vegan or pro-keto/paleo/carnivore and you have to assume that there is a need to continue getting clicks. There also may be a strong survivorship bias out there... however, the vegan survivorship bias is starting to show cracks (google "Rawvana" for details).
"I will have to strongly caution against going long term carnivore or keto, however."
I tend to agree here. Again it gets back to your goals. (Strict) Carnivore and (strict) keto are great tools to achieve your diet/fitness goals, but I don't really consider these diets in their strict form to be "maintenance" diets. Once you achieve your goals I would relax things and reintroduce more diversity of foods. On the other hand, if keto/carnivore is the only thing that seems to work for you, I'd keep doing it and just listen carefully to your body.
"Regardless of the quality of your meat products, animals still have metabolic processes that concentrate toxins, especially higher in the food chain."
I recommend eating primarily ruminants (cattle, bison, sheep, goats, deer, moose, etc.) and small fish / shellfish. With regard to ruminants, these animals are plant-eating herbivores and are on the bottom of the food-chain-- they are "predators" of only plants. Biomagnification of toxins is more of an issue for consumption of omnivores (e.g., pig, chicken, dunno... bear meat?) and predators (e.g., tuna, shark, swordfish)-- the animals which eat other animals.
"You need to set your body up for success by giving it a varied diet with nutrients from different kinds of food. ... I am in favor of a balanced diet, a little of everything, mostly plants, and high-quality animal organ meats."
I like this advice very much. I'm not much of a detoxification proponent, I don't think there's much science to support a lot of the kooky practices out there. I think your body is surprisingly good at sequestering and eliminating toxins from your system. If you eat a natural, whole-food and simple/unprocessed diet which is varied (including plant and animal sources), this is going to give you great odds of being metabolically fit and free of toxins. Once you get that down, I'd also be sure to try to address other lifestyle factors such as sleep, stress, exercise, personal connections, etc.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, I was asking as a “proof of existence”. Is it possible and what would a plant based keto diet look like. As a curiosity.
I have zero inclination and no interest in meat and/or keto. Thank you though.
Specifically for diet, I feel exactly like this every time I try to get nutrition advice, online or elsewhere. It seems like everyone disagrees, but in the end I don't have a concrete answer to "how do I not die" and have to choose something as eating is an obligation. Eventually I decided to stick to simple foods like lentils on a daily basis and to stay away from processed things. I feel hungrier on average, but I guess it's a tradeoff for not dying too early. I tend to remember Michael Pollan's mantra: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
> I don't have a concrete answer to "how do I not die"
Michael Greger, MD does: How Not to Die [0]. Basically, to save you from reading the book, go vegan. He has a great cookbook too based on the advice in the book [1]. His nutritionfacts.org site in general is an excellent, science/fact-based resource.
Not so. A person can get a complete range of essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals by eating a balanced and varied diet (which includes plants and animal foods).
Some diets, including a standard american diet but especially exclusionary diets like vegan, vegetarian, keto, carnivore/paleo diets can have major nutrient gaps. Those types of diets require careful planning of meals and/or supplementation to address gaps.
Magnesium isn't hard to get. Vitamin D and EPA/DHA are easy to get if you eat animal foods (esp fatty fish, liver, cheese and eggs).
Probiotics is a vague category and hasn't been shown to be necessary in a diet. Medical science understands so little about the gut-biome that you should be extremely suspicious of anyone claiming to be an expert. The advice usually boils down to general platitudes like,"Fermented foods and fiber feed our gut bacteria and is good for overall gut health." without defining what any of that means or how it works. I guess other animals/omnivores that don't eat fermented foods or fiber must really be undercutting their lifespan potential.
If you want to see what the term "skinny fat" means, I invite you to look at the hard-core vegans, especially the fruitarians and others who look like their lifeforce is slowly draining away.
It's a shame from a nutrition standpoint, but veganism is NOT a diet for optimal nutrition. It is an interesting diet from an ethics standpoint, I grant them that. And despite the long-term wasting away effects, veganism is superior to a standard american diet loaded with sugar, heavily processed carbs and vegetable/seed oils.
I ended up having to go with something, because not eating isn't an option. But Pollan doesn't really specify exactly what to eat on a day to day basis. It's only a general principal. I guess having to plan everything out and decide for oneself is a challenge, but also a skill people should learn eventually to stay healthy.
Sometimes I kind of wish I knew someone who I know is healthy so I could ask about precisely what they eat for each meal, what kind of things they aim for buying at market, etc. Not to just copy, but to use as one source of info. I feel clueless when it comes to this kind of thing.
When you get right down to it, the only plausible
evidence to suggest that red meat might be risky to human
colon health is contained in two, that’s TWO, human
studies, both of which were very small and poorly
designed, and therefore unable to give us useful
information about the effects of red meat on cancer risk.
These studies are inconclusive at best, and worthless at
worst.
I know that HackerNews has a vegan/ vegetarian bias in the recent years if not all the way back to 2010[1], however fortunately that seems to be changing, as evidenced by the parent comment by QuantumAphid saying "Rice, lentils, beans, all are much less nutrient dense than most animal foods." still at the top of this thread.
> a “zero carb” pseudoscience follower
Laymen like you often use science and rhetoric to advance a dietary agenda. What's hilarious is that you are not actually interested in advancing scientific knowledge. Do you read studies in detail enough to critique them[2]? Find out its faults? Nope.
Nevermind that calling me a "pseudoscience follower" amounts to personal attack, and is prohibited in Hacker News - but you have no idea what lead me to this way of eating. And why don't you take out your anonymous mask?
> Your diet is accelerating your cancer risk.
This is nothing but fear mongering. If meat is so carcinogenic, why was cancer so uncommon until the last century or so? We are not eating any more meat now than we did a hundred years ago, yet cancer incidence is skyrocketing. So, why do we believe that meat causes cancer?
There have been numerous research studies claiming to tie red meat to cancer (particularly colon cancer), however, these were weak epidemiological studies, and are not representative of results in the field as a whole. The fact is that studies of meat and cancer yield very mixed results. Many studies show no connection at all between meat and cancer, and some studies even show a protective benefit. There is simply no solid scientific evidence to support the belief that red meat increases cancer risk.
This did not stop the World Health Organization (WHO) from proclaiming to the planet in October 2015 that red and processed meats cause cancer. Unfortunately, the WHO report is all smoke and mirrors[3].
> Please be aware of that.
I'm more than aware of people like with an anti-meat agenda arousing fear in public minds. It is no wonder that nutritional science is in the state that it currently is.
There is so much going on in these posts that I don't even know where to begin.
Above poster makes claims. I'm like "I don't know nutrition, but this sounds good". You make counter-claims. "Those sound good too".
Crap. Now I can start digging into your respective sources...but of course those will just be people making claims too, they just get different sources of authority.
This happens everywhere anymore. Do guns improve safety? Are immigrants bad for the economy? Do immigrants commit more crime? Is climate change real?
With the Alabama abortion ban in the news I looked into rates, but couldn't find good numbers. (Superficially it looks like there are 10x the number of abortions than infant mortality, but good luck figuring out how many of those abortions were purely voluntary and not due to health reasons).
Trying not to be misled feels both futile and exhausting. Not ripping on your post at all, just reacting to the pent-up emotions it evoked.