This definitely requires one of my long essay posts (sorry!).
Firstly, the evidence against tobacco IS certain, so don't start having doubts about THAT.
As for nutrition, some things are established, and some are definitely not, especially in the latter case for eating recommendations.
What can we rely on?
All food groups have their usefulness. So much is undoubtable. I've said this once before, there is cholesterol in our bodies because it is essential to our bodily metabolism, mostly as a cell membrane stabilizer. And since the nervous white matter, myelin, is made of specially wrapped cell membranes, a lack in cholesterol would be catastrophic to the brains of growing infants. So, where's the problem? Basically, in food, it's all about balance. With the exception of ARTIFICIAL substances, created by industrial modern food, and which are often harmful. They're intruders in our milleniae-old natural chemistry. Common sense, really! Among such intruders are TRANS-insaturated fatty acids, or "(partially) hydrogenated vegetable fat", which are quite widespread these days.
Another thing I explained, is how balance is something relative. Populations historically faced with famins and episodes of starvation have adapted to insufficient food intake. They've become genetically designed to maintain high blood glucose levels, and to retain fat, in order to survive to periods of caloric scarcity and hypoglycaemia. The downside consequence, however, is that if their lifestyle shifts towards abundance, which is the opposite extreme, they become extremely prone to obesity and diabetes, both shortening their life expectancy by causing and/or increasing heart disease and other problems. It's been an constant observation in all third-world countries which underwent a rapid socio-economic shift. These problems are markedly less prevalent in the "Western World", simply because the Industrial Revolution happened much less abruptly, over a period of 2 to 300 years, and partial retro-adaptation occured over those 10 to 15 generations.
Eskimos have been known for decades for their "fat paradox": they eat very fatty food, often raw blubber, and yet, they have no excess blood cholesterol. But how many eskimoes have you seen being obese while living a traditional lifestyle? I thought so. They burn most of these calories because of several factors: - Periods of food scarcity in their inhospitable land. - The intense cold, causing a higher energy strain on their metabolism. "It takes up lots of calories to stay warm." - And finally, as I've explained (again), because the fat they consume is very high in insaturated fatty acids, which increase the "good" HDL blood cholesterol and lower the "bad" LDL type. (Respectively, High and Low Density Lipids, it's technical stuff.) Remember that frying tends to turn the insaturated into saturated fatty acids. This makes potato chips very bad in large quantities.
Cholesterol harms the body when the ratio of HDL and LDL becomes imbalanced, usually with a markedly high LDL, but often associated with unduly low HDL. (Think of that ratio as the cholesterol's unemployment rate.) The result, as precisely demonstrated by studies, is deposit of blood cholesterol, originating from the LDL form, in the arterial inner wall, causing clogging of said arteries, and the various vascular diseases: heart attacks, brain strokes, and several lesser-known but very unpleasant incidents. Among those are arterial hypertension, which is both a risk factor of its own, and sometimes the consequence of atheroma (fat deposit) in the arteries of the kidneys. High blood pressure is multifactorial, it can happen for no known cause (a.k.a. "idiopathic" or "essential"), but the risk factors are also well known usually: male gender (this can't be helped, alas), age (dittoo), smoking, excess alcoholism (you know what I mean by excess!), hypercholesterolaemia, diabetes...
So, basically, you'll want to have a normal balanced diet, adapted to your genetic profile (in case you have some genetic risks, see above), as free as possible from chemical additives and pollutants (this is a tough struggle, I know), and maintain a good level of physical activity, for a great number of reasons. I suspect vegans are usually healthier because they avoid both excess dietary saturated fatty acids (much more prominent in animal products), and the many unnatural chemicals often massively used in today's industrial meat production. Although they need to beware of some vitamin deficiencies, prevented by eating dairy products and eggs. A purely vegetal diet is not good for us humans.
What you'll want to avoid, is excess and all its visible consequences. Too much sugar increases the risk of diabetes and obesity, especially associated with age but also seen in some very poorly fed pre-teens. Too much fat, along with insufficient exercise, will also cause obesity, which helps getting type 2 diabetes among other things (it's a risk factor, not a guaranteed black-or-white situation in either way). It is widely suspected that some "modern" food additives, especially cattle breeding hormones and some pesticides, throw off the metabolic balance and cause many problems, among which cancer. This issue is hugely tied to big financial interests, so expect it to be forcibly denied by many "authority" figures.
As you can see, it's all intricated, and therefore complicated to single out. I'd say, beware of processed foods, eat as natural as possible, maintain a healthy body, and there are very good chances your lab check-ups will be far better that those of the average self-indulging couch potato, granting you a good number of added life years, both in quantity and in QUALITY. Many elders I know don't feel the least bit tired of living, simply because they're healthy. The mind is also important. You'll live markedly longer if you have a serene, peaceful and optimistic attitude. Sex with a sensible behavior (avoid the typical drug-enhanced collective drunken orgies, of course) is very good; you can also do without if you find your happiness elsewhere.
In a nutshell, don't remain in the hell of nuts, break your social arbitrary shell of conformism to the current ephemeral fads, and use your sense, that's why you were born with a brain.
You may legitimately ask yourselves (and me) what makes me any different from all those diet experts. Fair enough, let's face that music. I try to give you the conclusions of my own ANALYSIS of the mass of data that's available, and often contradictoty. And I advise you to use your sense and intelligence, more that to listen to "my perfect theories". *Hear* me, but *listen* to your smarts. It's your life, you're in charge, so deal with the fact. Anyway, I've realized many years ago that you can't force people to be intelligent, and shouldn't even waste your time trying to. One's sole duty (I use the term loosely) is to share advice aiming to be helpful rather than satisfactory for one's own ego.
Have a good life, y'all. If it's okay with you, that is! :-)
If my 93 year old Grandmother and 91 year old Grandfather, who have now been married for 69 years were commenting they would say:
"Good food and plenty of it."
"A little of what you fancy does you good."
"All things in moderation."
I too have stopped listening to these experts, mainly because every week one of them seems to say something that contradicts something another one said last week. I may not have the healthiest of diets, but I enjoy my food and the life that goes with it.
P.S.: I forgot to mention that iron in meat is in a form much better assimilated by the body. To be content with the iron of vegetables, you need to consume markedly more of it overall.
5 comments:
This definitely requires one of my long essay posts (sorry!).
Firstly, the evidence against tobacco IS certain, so don't start having doubts about THAT.
As for nutrition, some things are established, and some are definitely not, especially in the latter case for eating recommendations.
What can we rely on?
All food groups have their usefulness. So much is undoubtable. I've said this once before, there is cholesterol in our bodies because it is essential to our bodily metabolism, mostly as a cell membrane stabilizer. And since the nervous white matter, myelin, is made of specially wrapped cell membranes, a lack in cholesterol would be catastrophic to the brains of growing infants.
So, where's the problem? Basically, in food, it's all about balance. With the exception of ARTIFICIAL substances, created by industrial modern food, and which are often harmful. They're intruders in our milleniae-old natural chemistry. Common sense, really!
Among such intruders are TRANS-insaturated fatty acids, or "(partially) hydrogenated vegetable fat", which are quite widespread these days.
Another thing I explained, is how balance is something relative. Populations historically faced with famins and episodes of starvation have adapted to insufficient food intake. They've become genetically designed to maintain high blood glucose levels, and to retain fat, in order to survive to periods of caloric scarcity and hypoglycaemia. The downside consequence, however, is that if their lifestyle shifts towards abundance, which is the opposite extreme, they become extremely prone to obesity and diabetes, both shortening their life expectancy by causing and/or increasing heart disease and other problems. It's been an constant observation in all third-world countries which underwent a rapid socio-economic shift. These problems are markedly less prevalent in the "Western World", simply because the Industrial Revolution happened much less abruptly, over a period of 2 to 300 years, and partial retro-adaptation occured over those 10 to 15 generations.
Eskimos have been known for decades for their "fat paradox": they eat very fatty food, often raw blubber, and yet, they have no excess blood cholesterol. But how many eskimoes have you seen being obese while living a traditional lifestyle? I thought so. They burn most of these calories because of several factors:
- Periods of food scarcity in their inhospitable land.
- The intense cold, causing a higher energy strain on their metabolism. "It takes up lots of calories to stay warm."
- And finally, as I've explained (again), because the fat they consume is very high in insaturated fatty acids, which increase the "good" HDL blood cholesterol and lower the "bad" LDL type. (Respectively, High and Low Density Lipids, it's technical stuff.)
Remember that frying tends to turn the insaturated into saturated fatty acids. This makes potato chips very bad in large quantities.
Cholesterol harms the body when the ratio of HDL and LDL becomes imbalanced, usually with a markedly high LDL, but often associated with unduly low HDL. (Think of that ratio as the cholesterol's unemployment rate.) The result, as precisely demonstrated by studies, is deposit of blood cholesterol, originating from the LDL form, in the arterial inner wall, causing clogging of said arteries, and the various vascular diseases: heart attacks, brain strokes, and several lesser-known but very unpleasant incidents.
Among those are arterial hypertension, which is both a risk factor of its own, and sometimes the consequence of atheroma (fat deposit) in the arteries of the kidneys. High blood pressure is multifactorial, it can happen for no known cause (a.k.a. "idiopathic" or "essential"), but the risk factors are also well known usually: male gender (this can't be helped, alas), age (dittoo), smoking, excess alcoholism (you know what I mean by excess!), hypercholesterolaemia, diabetes...
So, basically, you'll want to have a normal balanced diet, adapted to your genetic profile (in case you have some genetic risks, see above), as free as possible from chemical additives and pollutants (this is a tough struggle, I know), and maintain a good level of physical activity, for a great number of reasons.
I suspect vegans are usually healthier because they avoid both excess dietary saturated fatty acids (much more prominent in animal products), and the many unnatural chemicals often massively used in today's industrial meat production. Although they need to beware of some vitamin deficiencies, prevented by eating dairy products and eggs. A purely vegetal diet is not good for us humans.
What you'll want to avoid, is excess and all its visible consequences. Too much sugar increases the risk of diabetes and obesity, especially associated with age but also seen in some very poorly fed pre-teens. Too much fat, along with insufficient exercise, will also cause obesity, which helps getting type 2 diabetes among other things (it's a risk factor, not a guaranteed black-or-white situation in either way). It is widely suspected that some "modern" food additives, especially cattle breeding hormones and some pesticides, throw off the metabolic balance and cause many problems, among which cancer. This issue is hugely tied to big financial interests, so expect it to be forcibly denied by many "authority" figures.
As you can see, it's all intricated, and therefore complicated to single out. I'd say, beware of processed foods, eat as natural as possible, maintain a healthy body, and there are very good chances your lab check-ups will be far better that those of the average self-indulging couch potato, granting you a good number of added life years, both in quantity and in QUALITY. Many elders I know don't feel the least bit tired of living, simply because they're healthy.
The mind is also important. You'll live markedly longer if you have a serene, peaceful and optimistic attitude. Sex with a sensible behavior (avoid the typical drug-enhanced collective drunken orgies, of course) is very good; you can also do without if you find your happiness elsewhere.
In a nutshell, don't remain in the hell of nuts, break your social arbitrary shell of conformism to the current ephemeral fads, and use your sense, that's why you were born with a brain.
You may legitimately ask yourselves (and me) what makes me any different from all those diet experts. Fair enough, let's face that music.
I try to give you the conclusions of my own ANALYSIS of the mass of data that's available, and often contradictoty. And I advise you to use your sense and intelligence, more that to listen to "my perfect theories". *Hear* me, but *listen* to your smarts. It's your life, you're in charge, so deal with the fact. Anyway, I've realized many years ago that you can't force people to be intelligent, and shouldn't even waste your time trying to. One's sole duty (I use the term loosely) is to share advice aiming to be helpful rather than satisfactory for one's own ego.
Have a good life, y'all. If it's okay with you, that is! :-)
If my 93 year old Grandmother and 91 year old Grandfather, who have now been married for 69 years were commenting they would say:
"Good food and plenty of it."
"A little of what you fancy does you good."
"All things in moderation."
I too have stopped listening to these experts, mainly because every week one of them seems to say something that contradicts something another one said last week. I may not have the healthiest of diets, but I enjoy my food and the life that goes with it.
And more sex. Obviously.
F.I. said: "And more sex. Obviously."
Naah, two is enough.
P.S.: I forgot to mention that iron in meat is in a form much better assimilated by the body. To be content with the iron of vegetables, you need to consume markedly more of it overall.
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