What is the healthiest diet you could possibly eat? (as a general consensus)

It is a pretty radical idea considering the history of salt (wars have been fought for it, people were paid in it, cities established because of it, etc.).

One argument against salt is it does cause food to be more attractive which could lead to overeating.

Is there any evidence that the elite East African runners do not eat "salt"? It is pretty available worldwide these days so it would not be because they don't have access to it. Western elites certainly do not appear to be abstaining.

There is no "perfect diet." Borrowing the best parts of the Mediterranean, Indian, and Japanese diets is probably optimal and very anti-inflammatory. I don't see a problem with aged cheeses in moderation or non-gluten grains (I've seen arthritis and psoriasis, among other conditions disappear in non-Celiacs who eliminate gluten alone. Eat bison instead of red meat. Maximize vegetables and raw foods. Minimize sugar, especially bad sugar. Eat to live, don't live to eat. Pretty simple.

Ironically, with the American population at 67% overweight and growing, we push legislation called the "Affordable" Care Act, without any consequences for a lack of personal accountability or price transparency tied in.

Primal, I'm curious, what was your chronic medical condition?

Hats too bee shed wrote:

Best Five Food Diet:

Oatmeal

Spinach

Avocados

Salmon

Sweet Potatoes

I would sub buckwheat for oatmeal and kale/broccoli for spinach. For flavor and spice, add olive oil, curry, and garlic. If dessert and drink are to be included, blueberries and/or dark chocolate and a glass of organic red wine (some are very cheap). Alkaline water or black water mostly though throughout the day.

During WWII, the Germans stole all the meat and dairy from Norway (either Norway or Sweden). During the war, cancer rates plummeted in Norway. As soon as the war was over and people went back to eating meat and dairy, cancer rates returned to what they had been.

http://www.celestialhealing.net/physicalveg3.htm

this link shows why humans are not meant to eat meat or dairy.

but if you are going to eat meat and dairy, make sure it's from a local, organic, non-gmo, ethical, non-monoculture grass-fed producer.

electron1661 wrote: During the war, cancer rates plummeted in Norway. As soon as the war was over and people went back to eating meat and dairy, cancer rates returned to what they had been.

Be a little discerning, will 'ya? Did you ever consider that cancer rates may have plummeted during the war due to cancer being less diagnosed/treated b/c of a drop in living standards and/or worse medical care?

Cancer is usually a long-term thing. It's not likely that eliminating milk for a few years would instantly lower the cancer rate, even if dairy did cause cancer.

Man. 6'1" 160... maybe 10% body fat. I'm more tone than most skinny runner types... haha. Again, the importance of animal protein for athletes is severely overrated. There are vegan bodybuilders who have no problem building muscle.

Did Cordain just refer to himself in the 3rd person? - or do we have multiple posters under that name here?Instead of hanging out on PubMed all day why don't you read an actual book with long term studies. "The China Study."You'll never want to eat meat or dairy again. Protien is overrated and carbs rule along with a plant-based diet. And I see you are not trying to defend your comment about how our brains would be the same size of chimps if it wasn't for eating meat.

Cordain wrote:

Yes, the whole acid/base food stuff I used to think was quack nonsense (a year ago, I would have been arguing against Cordain), but I looked it up and it is quite well supported in high impact journals in PubMed.

I don't need to defend the idea that our large brains are due to meat-eating - this is well understood. We don't have the intestinal tracts of herbivores and can't extract enough calories from plants - this ain't from anti-vegetarian sites - this is peer reviewed stuff:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/04/eating-meat-led-to-smaller-stomachs-bigger-brains/

http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/watching-the-detectives/human_brain_evolution_and_creatine

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128849908

In short, animals that grow large brains (and bodies) on a plant diet have a huge intestinal tract.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=human+brain+size+meat+evolution&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=4gZ-T8PHNung2AXd_-H5DQ&sqi=2&ved=0CCYQgQMwAA

All these studies that talk about meat don't take into any account the fact that modern meat isn't proper natural meat. Show me a study that finds meat associated with any negative health outcomes that aren't:

A)exclusively looking at corn fed meat OR

B)Actually selecting for diets that have other bad things (sugar, etc.) because heavy meat eaters are more likely to also eat those things. Spurious correlations bedevil epidemiological research that seeks causation.

For the millionth time, grass fed meat bears little resemblance to corn fed meat - it has far, far less fat and the fat it does have is healthier.

So few people eat exclusively grass fed beef or seafood that they don't study them. Meat eating is defacto factory corn-finished meat. I would not eat corn fed beef with any regularity.

With books, you are getting one person's opinion on the matter, which is often biased. Looking at individual studies can give you a lot more information.

For example, I've read the China study. It makes you think that even a little bit of animal protein will be the death of you, and that by eating vegan, it will prevent you from ever developing cancer. However, if you look up the referenced research, low and behold, you may come to a different conclusion. His non-CASEIN (which he extrapolates to all animal proteins) do not get cancer because they are DYING of aflatoxin toxicity, probably because they are not getting a complete protein (their diet lacked the amino acid lysine), which was needed for detoxification of aflatoxin. If you want more information, google Denise Minger or Chris Masterjohn and read their blog posts on the subject.

As to a consensus about what a good diet consists of, I would go with two principles:

1) The less processed a food is, the better.

2) Fruits and vegetables are good for you.

Even those statements will probably meet with some criticism, but for the most part, I believe that >90% of the population would agree that this was true, whether you vegan, paleo, follow national guidelines, or anything else (the main exception being hard-core, ketosis-loving Atkin's diet followers). Moving past these two core principles, I think that you deviate further and further from ever reaching a consensus.

As to the poster who said, "If the furnace is hot enough..." I would strongly disagree. I think that higher levels of training puts higher amounts of strain on our body, and quality becomes even more important at the highest level of training. In my opinion, its like a bell curve: At the low end of the physically active spectrum (sedentary), nutrition is highly important because you are not doing anything else to aid your health. And at the high end of the spectrum, it becomes very important because you are breaking down your body, depleting your own endogenous antioxidants, and just putting a lot of stress on yourself. Its in the middle that nutrition matters the least; here, you are stimulating your body to produce its own antioxidants, but not depleting them and stressing your system beyond how your body can respond, so if you take in a less than healthy diet, your body has its own reserves that can handle the stress that this puts on it.

Just my two cents.

I've enjoyed this thread. It's interesting to see what everyone thinks is the "ideal diet," although I think that it is painfully obvious by now that there is not a general consensus as to what a healthy diet consists of. Keep posting! I'm loving this. :)

Cordain wrote:

I don't need to defend the idea that our large brains are due to meat-eating - this is well understood.

Perhaps this thread proves that you DO, however, need to defend the premise regarding "our large brains," unless of course, size does not matter, as these "large brains" sure do spout much nonsense.

Sagarin wrote:

a glass of organic red wine (some are very cheap).

But are any worth drinking? I've tried several and none of them are worth trying again...

Cordain wrote:

All these studies that talk about meat don't take into any account the fact that modern meat isn't proper natural meat. Show me a study that finds meat associated with any negative health outcomes that aren't:

A)exclusively looking at corn fed meat OR

B)Actually selecting for diets that have other bad things (sugar, etc.) because heavy meat eaters are more likely to also eat those things. Spurious correlations bedevil epidemiological research that seeks causation.

For the millionth time, grass fed meat bears little resemblance to corn fed meat - it has far, far less fat and the fat it does have is healthier.

So few people eat exclusively grass fed beef or seafood that they don't study them. Meat eating is defacto factory corn-finished meat. I would not eat corn fed beef with any regularity.

There's a theory that the heme iron in red meat causes heart disease and cancer. Look into it, it's pretty interesting. This would be a problem regardless of how the cow is fed.

teekenbaken wrote:

Did Cordain just refer to himself in the 3rd person? - or do we have multiple posters under that name here?

Instead of hanging out on PubMed all day why don't you read an actual book with long term studies. "The China Study."

You'll never want to eat meat or dairy again. Protein is overrated and carbs rule along with a plant-based diet.

QFE

Cordain appears to be having an ongoing discussion with himself. Since when did the medical idiots have any clue about health.

J.R. wrote:

The discussion is about adding NO SALT TO FOOD, not about sodium that is ALREADY CONTAINED IN THE FOODS I have listed.

Adding SALT, i.e. SODIUM CHLORIDE to food is a stupid idea.

I don't care what Bekele said, if he said that, or what any other rich people do. I said Kenyans and other Top Africans don't eat any SALT. All people make mistakes. The point is that in the regular Kenyan and African diets they DO NOT ADD ANY SALT to their food and they don't add any spices or condiments either.

Azaleas wrote:Why do you think this? Have you ever actually eaten African food? Africans do use salt in their food, and of course they uses spices.

Because it's the truth. Yes of course I have.

I didn't say all Africans don't use salt.

I said the Kenyans and other top african runners DON'T ADD ANY SALT to their food, and they don't add any spices or condiments either. Once they become indoctrinated into Western hypocrisy, of course that changes, then they become like Americans and eat salt, or whatever, who knows. They are not eating the same way anymore.

I just bought some grass-fed beef tallow(lard).

I heard it's perfect for cooking with great omega 3:6 balance as well as fat being very stable in high heat.

Cordain wrote:

And I am again going to say "associated with lowered risk" isn't causation - it means people who tend to eat whole grains, in our society, are tending not to eat other things. This is the curse of epidemiological research in nutrition - constantly mistaking correlation for causation (see Gary Taubes multiple NYT pieces on diet and the bad research designs that led to "associated with" being taken for causation). In our fast food culture, if you are eating alot of whole grains, you are probably not getting too much sugar and saturated fat.

You are correct about some of what you wrote above, however:

1) researchers do try to control for the influences of those difference/other factors. Can they perfectly control for other factors? No. But again, they do take into consideration what you are stating, and still come out with, for the most part, results showing that those eating lots of cereal fiber (whole grains) to have lower rates of mortality across the board. Furthermore, in one of the more recent studies on this (possibly the one reference in this thread), those with higher cereal fiber (read: grains and whole grains) intakes had lower rates of mortality amongst virtually all groups (smokers and non-smokers, overweight and non-overweight, women and men, those that exercise and those that didn't, etc) meaning that even in people with less healthy habits, and when comparing people of similar lifestyle habits or characteristics, those with the higher whole grain consumption were less likely to die. This is a pretty convincing correlation, and has been found in many other similar large studies.

2) It's kind of funny when people state: "yeah, but those that eat whole grains are probably more likely to be the type of people that follow healthy lifestyle recommendations, i.e., do other healthy lifestyle things: like not smoke, or exercise a lot, or not eat a lot of fat or red meat, or......" whoops! They are basically admitting that not eating a lot of meat or fat might be, you know, healthy! And let's say it isn't the reduction in meat or fat that is helping these healthy lifestylers, maybe it is less calories total, or a little more exercise. Okay, sure, maybe. But if whole grains (and higher carb intake) were sooooooo bad as many seem to think (and maybe you are not going that far, but some CERTAINLY are, some think grains are the root of all evil), then wouldn't the high carb/whole grain eaters be suffering all sorts of ills no matter what other good things they were doing? Based on the over-the-tops rantings of some against carbs and grains specifically (Gary Taubes), then yes, they should. But they're not, they are living longer, healthier lives then those that don't eat grains. I guess at the very least one should conclude from the research that whole grains are not causing negative consequences in people's diets, and they seem to be part of many healthy societies' diets. Serious people need to stop demonizing them.

3) All people trying to make a point in a debate such as the one we are having will of course try and have it both ways with the "only shows correlation" argument. What I mean is: the anti-grain folks will dismiss a study for methodological concerns, or state that an Epi study "only shows correlation", however, in the next breath, will jump and down and champion a study showing the benefits of meat consumption, without quite mentioning the "only correlation" caveat or looking at the methods of the study with the same critical eye. Right? Both sides do this. You sort of did this with the "casein might cause cancer" reference. Yes, you said it unemphatically, but by even mentioning this lowly regarded concept, it shows your bias. People need to be consistent when being critical/cynical concerning the results of studies. The only well-done or convincing studies are not the only ones that produce results you like, and the only poorly done ones or unconvincing one are not just the ones that produce results you don't like.

4) Gary Taubes is a dumba$$. Seriously. I am not saying he doesn't have anything to add to the conversation, but he has had zero training or education or experience in the fields he is critiquing and considering himself an expert on, and now is 100% invested in, literally, making grains and carbs out to be evil. His livelihood depends on it, and is therefore not objective in the least. I would refrain from mentioning him in any serious discussion on nutrition.

Your entire post was a worthwhile one, but I think this needs emphasis. I think a lot of high-level athletes ignore nutrition at their peril. All of that oxidative stress will likely come back to haunt them some 30-40 years hence if they ate the pizza, ice cream, and beer diet while running 100+ miles per week. Just nicking the arteries and doing genetic damage.