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

not a wino wrote:

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

Gozzo Malbec is great. Not the cheapest... I think around $17 per bottle. But you can get a bottle of "Our Daily Red," which is a blend, for less than $10, and it's not bad...

Sagarin wrote:

not a wino wrote:

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

Gozzo Malbec is great. Not the cheapest... I think around $17 per bottle. But you can get a bottle of "Our Daily Red," which is a blend, for less than $10, and it's not bad...

Thanks. I'll try those.

red meat causes cancer. end of story

Maybe corn-fed beef, cows infused with recombinant hormones. I've been told buffalo don't get cancer, and refutations, while existing, are sparse.

http://www.mobisonassoc.org/bisonhealthy.htm

Sagarin, do you know anything about the heme iron theories (that heme iron itself causes oxidative damage and thus cancer and heart disease)? I see some interesting studies linking it to cancer, but it seems like it would be tough to separate heme iron specifically from red meat in general.

If this is the case, then it wouldn't matter whether the cow was fed grass or grain or cotton candy (well it would matter, but...you know what I'm saying)

Here's one study, but it was on rats:

http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/medicine/2000/a.l.a.sesink/h2.pdf

I am not familiar with this theory, though would think high amounts of red meat and iron would generally be ill-advised, especially grilled, charred meat. I would be more impressed by a study done on macaques or something more similar to humans, but this was an interesting paper.

Something yet to be mentioned here is that people should be focused on activating pathways like NrF2-Keap-1 transcription, which elevates the body's own production of the strongest antioxidants like catalase, SOD, and glutathione peroxidase, rather than merely "supplement" with antioxidants like vitamin C, etc. Lots of substances like green tea, resveratrol, ginger, garlic, milk thistle, turmeric, and other bioflavanols found in healthy food promotes this pathway, among others.

Cordain wrote:

What is so radical about fruits, vegetables, nuts, fish, grass-fed meat, and tubers? This is all "real food". Kraft dinners and cows that eat corn are not.

Are any cows real food? They weren't around prior to the advent of human agriculture/animal husbandry either

testing

testing

J.R. wrote:

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.

aswellthat wrote:

is there any reason to believe the elite East Africans who abstain from adding salt to their food run better because of said abstention? Is there reason to believe once they start adding salt their running performance declines?

Open your mind. Learn to educate yourself, think for yourself, look into these things for yourself.

Don't be stupid, especially not purposely so, or because you've been taught to be that way.

Make your own decisions. Come to your own conclusions. Decide your own way of life for yourself.

Wow...the irony here is delicious...you're telling other people not to be stupid and at the same time you don't think humans need to consume SALT. What a colossal moron.

Salads made from 4-leaf clovers and sprinkled with cheese made from chipmunk milk.

I guess it's likely we still have just one poster, but there are two "Cordains":- the "Cordain" posting here is just using a pseudonym, as a sign of admiration and respect for another "real" Cordain- he was referring to arguing with Loren Cordain, who wrote the book on paleo:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_CordainOf course I could be wrong -- heck, I thought a sweet potato was a yam. Dumb Yank.

teekenbaken wrote:

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

Cliff Clavin wrote:

Wow...the irony here is delicious...you're telling other people not to be stupid and at the same time you don't think humans need to consume SALT. What a colossal moron.

The irony indeed!

"Not so! not so!" kettle said to the pot; "Tis your own dirty image you see; For I am so clean -without blemish or blot- It is your own image that you see in reflection!"

Sir Lance-alot, you are literally my favorite letsrun poster by far and we have agreed (us against the world!) on tons of other threads when I post under other names, but your really are not up to your normal nuanced speed here.

"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."

I will say, for like the zillionth time. If all you are going to eat is corn fed meat, then yes, don't eat very much of it. No studies on meat differentiate because grass fed meat is something you have to go out of your way to get - it isn't on the .99 menu at Wendys.

And I never said grains and carbs are evil. Mischaracterizing a person's points is not something you usually do. I said that runners don't need 70% of their diet to be carbs, and that people vary greatly in their insulin response and if you are eating carbs that are turned to fat anyway at the cost of insulin and the issues around it, why not eat the fat directly in mono/poly unsaturated form? I think that too many natural mesomorphs look at us skinny runners scarfing down pasta and bagels and struggle on such a diet despite having good willpower and an active lifestyle. And I also think sub-clinical sensitivity to gluten is more common than you think. I am talking about optimal health, not that whole grains are unhealthy for everyone or even most people.

I do not think whole grains are the devil or bad for people. I think if you have a strong insulin response (do you stay full for hours after a pasta dinner in proportion to calories consumed? Do you stay lean on a diet like this in proportion to your calorie intake/calorie use?) and you experience no allergy symptoms, you will probably be just fine eating all these whole grains.

I know that there are people reading this who eat just as little as their little ectomorph counterparts, run just as much, yet can't get rid of the little fat rolls and they feel hungry all the time despite a high calorie demand. These are the people who might find a paleodiet works for them. It isn't a religion - it is a set of guidelines that you tailor around.

So, please, respond to what I say, not a strawman of what you think I am saying.

Let me add, that while I really like Loren Cordain's book, I think he overstates the case a bit (as does Taubes, but his point about poor research design in epidemiology are correct). I think the value is following the guidelines, but not getting weird about it. And I think he understates that probably a great many people are fine on the somewhat higher carb, whole grain diet. Why would anyone shop for a new diet if they seem to be doing fine on what they do? If your blood chemistry is already good, you don't experience blood sugar or insulin issues, and don't have any inexplicable allergy things, why change in the first place? We all have different genes and are from different backgrounds (say maybe your ancestors were all herders until recently, so-called "fast evolution" and "multilevel selection" is a real science and there are clearly evolved differences between ethnic groups) and there just isn't going to be a one-size-fits-all formula. More Asians do fine on rice than perhaps !Kung tribesmen would because natural selection weeded out the ones who didn't centuries ago.

I watched a female friend, a natural ectomorph who can build muscle easily just watching people lift weights, lose 10 pounds quickly switching to a paleodiet after years of 50-60 mile weeks and nibbling bagels, rice and pasta, fearing meat and anything with fat in it apart from small measured quantities, and having to muster huge willpower because she was always hungry and always being heavier than her running peers. And I am really convinced that it can help some people and there is no harm in it. You don't need whole grains to live. If that were true, we wouldn't have made it this far.

There are downsides - it isn't as convenient as just boiling some pasta, you have to plan a little (alot of paleo food is perishable) and you spend a bit more time in prep (peeling and cutting fruit, for example), and grass fed meat is a bit more expensive (cheaper where I live than other places).

J.R. wrote:

Cliff Clavin wrote:

Wow...the irony here is delicious...you're telling other people not to be stupid and at the same time you don't think humans need to consume SALT. What a colossal moron.

The irony indeed!

"Not so! not so!" kettle said to the pot; "Tis your own dirty image you see; For I am so clean -without blemish or blot- It is your own image that you see in reflection!"

Isn't he merely saying that modern food has so much added salt that you don't neet to get any more? I mean, all packaged food has salt. It is hard to escape it.

J.R. wrote:

"Not so! not so!" kettle said to the pot; "Tis your own dirty image you see; For I am so clean -without blemish or blot- It is your own image that you see in reflection!"

So why do you think[i/] the East Africans don't use salt (although I am still not sure if that is true esp. give the Bekele quote above)?

Cordain wrote:

Isn't he merely saying that modern food has so much added salt that you don't neet to get any more? I mean, all packaged food has salt. It is hard to escape it.

No, he is saying the East Africans don't eat salt to begin with. We know they aren't eating modern incarnations of "food" (at least not the guys we are discussing). He is saying they don't even add it to their ugali.

Has anyone ever tried corn grits/polenta without salt?

And, I will also add, Taubes has an advanced degree in physics, and while it isn't in nutrition, his expertise is in experimental design and the soft sciences have notoriously bad design. No control groups, not good at controlling for spurious variables.

Paleo is not a high protein diet, or a high meat diet, nor does it claim meat, as a category, is healthy. It claims that grass fed game doesn't seem to cause the lifestyle diseases in hunter gatherers that we are plagued with and the key is in the fat profile of the meat. There are literally hundred of articles in PubMed detailing the fat differences in grass vs corn fed meat. You probably could eat around paleo guidelines without eating any meat, certainly with no beef.

Again, Taubes way overstates the case, but I can weed out his good points from the ideology he has built around them to oversell his books. His good points:

1. Fat isn't necessarily bad

2. Most sedentary people don't need tons of carbs

3. The byproducts of processing excessive amounts of fructose cause some of the problems attributed to the worst fats

4. Sugar is a bigger food-intake cause of obesity than fat

5. A given number of carb calories will cause far less satiety in many people than the same calories in healthy fat/protein

6. Even endurance athletes can only store a relatively small amount of glycogen compared to total calorie needs.

7.The fructose component of sugar adds calories without satiety for sound biochemical reasons