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 Originally Posted by bigred
Comparing vegetarians of the past (I think you said 10K years ago) to meat eaters of the past and how eating affected survival is pretty irrelevant to the argument I'm making about eating healthy. It does make cases for the evolution of what we can eat, etc but we're losing sight of the ultimate goal which is eating healthy. I'm not disagreeing that meat eaters were better survivors long ago.
The distinction you've made is an important one, but I was referencing history to help provide perspective on why certain foods are healthier than others.
However, I wouldn't completely agree that it's a nutrient issue so much as it's an access issue.
Well, you're sorta right. It is a nutrient issue, but also an access issue. The main access factor has more to do with density of nutrients and energy expenditure. We got more time on our hands when we started hunting for more meat, and then we got an astronomically higher amount of time on our hands when we began cultivating grains. The nutrition from the meat was both an increase in nutrition and access, while the nutrition from the grains was more a decrease in nutrition but an overwhelming increase in access. Ecological carrying capacity is improved by both, yet overall health is decreased by the latter.
To get your entire nutrient fill from vegetables, you do need a diverse and broad collection that wouldn't be available to an ancient gatherer. Your arguments are more valid in a world where you can only survive on your surroundings. I live in NYC and have access to thousands of different vegetables.
This isn't true. Vegetables provide crap for protein and no essential fats. Vegetables provide most vitamin and mineral needs, but not all
Here's an example that also exemplifies why I was going over evolution: Fish oils, EPA and DHA, are found nowhere else other than a couple different fish like salmon, and they are essential to human health. Can you get by without them? Yes. But can you achieve optimal health without them? Absolutely not. Our ancestry evolved on those fish, we evolved to work best on those particular fats, and as is with many things, they're not found elsewhere. This also applies to a host of different nutrients. We're pretty much always deficient in a bunch of different stuff. Like, the reason Europeans evolved white skin was because they needed the vitamin D from the sun that rarely shined because they couldn't get it elsewhere. I don't know exactly, but if you want to eat 'naturally', in order to get enough vitamin D from vegetables you'd have to consume something stupid like twenty pounds of green leaves daily. Other nutrients like vitamin b12 just cannot be absorbed through plants.
Also, while you guys are continuing to bash carbs, you're still lumping good and bad carbs into the same category. What Jyms is arguing above is our body trying to deal with dead calorie, low nutrient processed carbs. I'm still arguing that whole wheat, brown rice, etc are great for your nutrition.
The good vs bad carb thing is a myth. The reason that some carb sources are healthier than others has to do with packaging, structure, and other nutrients, not that some are worse than others. First off, they're all non-essential, not all of them are usable for energy, and the distinction between simple and complex carb hasn't shown any difference in health effects. People confuse this because they see that people who consume more simple carbs are less healthy than those who consume complex carbs, and it's true. But the reason isn't because of the carbs, but because of what else is going on. If you eat rice you're getting good fiber and some nutrition, if you drink soda you get shit. People have confused themselves by claiming an important difference between rice and soda is carb, but it's not, it's the fiber and nutrition of one and lack in other that's important.
Also, a lot of the 'health' from whole grains or brown rice or whatever is just lies. A lot of enrichment simply doesn't work (like vit b12 enrichment cannot be absorbed), or things like coloring grains or sugars so they can sell them as 'healthier'.
To make another point, let's look at different societies of the past, their food consumption, and their general healthiness. While your hunters and meat eaters were superior survivors in the sense of energy intake, this isn't what I would consider healthy. They probably still had a very low life expectancy (I realize this is from many other factors too).
The best of our science today has the healthiest known diets being extremely similar to that of our ancestry. With a few tweaks.
Life expectancy changes in history has little to do with diet, and more to do with sanitation and medicine and peacetime.
If you look at Asian cultures, very low meat intake, it's not uncommon to hear about people living very long lives thousands of years ago.
Most of this is myth, but some asian cultures (primarily Japanese) do have a wee bit higher life expectancy than average. We don't know exactly why, but very important reasons have to do with lack of pollution, higher fish consumption, and lower calorie consumption. Add in maybe something like lower body weight and a fraction of unknowns that provide a fraction of results, and you've got the solution. But no, if you ever hear about miraculous feats or results from thousands of years ago, it didn't happen. These kinds of myths are abundant everywhere.
They did have meat a few times a month...maybe. The soldiers ate meat because they needed it to grow strong quickly but that's not what I would consider healthy. We don't need to fight wars. Most of us have a 9-5 job with little to no physical activity. High protein diets don't make sense even in the case of going to the gym and lifting every day since you're only doing it for a few hours.
Well, too high of protein doesn't make sense, but adequate protein does. If you don't eat meat or low fat dairy, you're not getting nearly optimal protein unless you want to get fat and tired by eating a loads and loads of high carb sources. Protein has been stereotyped as the 'bodybuilding' food, but that's retarded. Protein is one of the most essential nutrients, it's important for so much, and most people consume notoriously low levels or percentages. If you eat the standard American diet or the 'healthy' hippie diet, you're getting way too low protein if you're lean, but maybe getting closer to enough if you're a fatass, but then again you're a fatass.
I'm only arguing these points because I've started to doubt my views on nutrition (very similar to what you posted above) and would like to see where this conversation goes playing devil's advocate.
That's good. Take my word for it, there's about as much myth in the diet world as in religion. Most of the industry runs on lies in order to make money. Not all, but most. The lies run really deep too
Here's an example: organic food? What, as opposed to inorganic food? Did nobody take a chemistry class, or perhaps know what the word 'redundancy' means? Food = organic. Not the stuff you buy at the hippie market. That stuff is just as organic as any other food, it's just more expensive because people think they're paying for better, sometimes they actually are paying for higher quality but still not 'higher organic-ness', there's usually more exotic stuff, more regional stuff (which is actually good), and people love tricking themselves into misplacing value. And they use 'organic pesticides'. More like they use pesticides, but sell their product by claiming it's better and people buy the hype.
If I want to eat organic I'll eat food, if I want to eat inorganic I'll eat a bucket of sand
Also, as for Atkins, my basic understanding is that you're shocking the body and mostly losing water weight. I can't remember exactly how the process goes but it has something to do with a lack of carbs that cause your body to begin to dump excess fluid. It's a temporary fix to a long term problem (eating healthy).
The diet works because of calorie reduction. When you don't eat carbs, you end up eating less but getting more. The reason the diet is highly problematic is because Americans are dumbfucks who think "durrrrr i can eat all da meat and fat i want." Then their fatasses pile it on, they remain oblivious to the fact that low carb != low vegetable/low fiber, and they end up pushing forward in their unhealthy choices.
But yeah, the diet works with losing weight pretty much because when people eat low carb high protein, they end up inadvertently consuming less. I don't know too much about ketosis for weight loss and that stuff, but I do know it's a rather small factor in the overall picture of calorie consumption
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