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My family has a history of all kinds of diet/exercise related issues. Diabetes, kidney issues, heart disease. It's sort of funny if you search up diets useful to avoiding and or living with these problems you'll generally find it's the diet we all know. Eat lots of vegetables, eat whole grains(Wilfred Brimley told me to eat my oatmeal, that SOB was right), if you eat meat do so in portioned moderation, eat fruits but not to excess.

I don't really know anyone personally who doesn't know what they're doing bad to themselves. When I order a salad and my buddy orders a butter seared steak and fully loaded baked potato (after he ate a whole pack of sour patch kids at the movie), and I don't say anything, but he says "You've got to enjoy your life!" I know he knows. Because I've done that, and I knew. I'm no Sporty Spice but if more salad than steak, and more water/tea than soda/beer, means I don't have to go to a regular dialysis appointment I'd consider that a tick under "enjoying life," personally. But if I could eat the steak and potato and candy and just offset it with more coffee - by god, that's the ticket.




> means I don't have to go to a regular dialysis appointment

I'm going to copy a comment I made regarding Type 1 Diabetes on another post about a year ago. It's relevant because what you're saying, though very true, comes down to immediate effort versus delayed impact. I think people who fail to control their diabetes largely do so for the same reason people fail to control their diets...

> I am going to make a weird, but IMHO apt, comparison to Type 1 Diabetes. T1D is an attritional disease caused by the pancreas's inability to produce enough/any insulin and the list of complications is long and deadly. As someone who has lived with the disease for decades what makes the disease particularly insidious is immediate effort versus delayed impact. The disease affects everything...every single part of every single day. Eating, sleeping, exercising, traveling, finances...everything. And to be on top of everything is extremely effortful. However the impact of not taking enough insulin, of not checking blood sugars frequently enough, or living with high blood sugars, is delayed. Today's transgressions may not be punished for decades. It is no shock to read about poor therapy adherence when the effort is immediate (and constant) and the effect is delayed (and therefore hypothetical). I see the same issue - immediate and constant effort coupled with long term hypothetical effect - with protecting one's privacy. Obviously one should do the right thing. But many won't.


Salad's funny because it can mean anything from "lean chicken breast on lettuce and tomato with a tiny bit of balsamic and oil, 200 cal at 60% protein/20% carbs/20% fat" to "mayonnaise potato and bacon, 1000 cal at 10% protein/20%carbs/70% fat," and pretty much everywhere in between.

Not to nitpick what you're saying, anyone on HN who orders a salad is probably thinking about what's in it, but it's worth pointing out that the category is so broad that it can be deceptive for anyone who doesn't read the fine print. I read an article the other day complaining that a 324 cal Subway 6-inch didn't taste as good and wasn't as filling as a 685 cal Sweetgreen salad bowl.


> to "mayonnaise potato and bacon, 1000 cal at 10% protein/20%carbs/70% fat,"

I never thought about something like that being considered salad... but maybe I'm the weird one? Also, whoever orders that knows that this is not healthy right?


As a Californian, I always have to remember that in other parts of the country salad dressing is applied much more liberally. Asking for light dressing in Chicago yields a similar result to asking for heavy dressing in LA.




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