I'm waiting for the day that nutricionists find out that there are different kinds of people with different nutritional needs. Imposing rules on the population on a weak scientific basis harms the people, science and the government in the process.
Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest. Eat what you like and avoid what causes problems. Use salt to taste, most likely it won't kill you - else we would have found out already.
"Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest."
Allow me to suggest a further path forward that is superior to "trusting your gut":
Establish a regular, very high output exercise regime - incorporating both long duration aerobic/cardio and relatively intense resistance training.
Under such a regimen, you will notice what food does to you because you're pushing your physical state out to the edges. You will need to eat densely nutritious food and you will notice when you don't. It's quite striking.
An analogy: nobody notices a bad tank of gas, or slightly wrong octane in their toyota minivan. You do notice a bad tank of gas, or slightly wrong octane in a race car.
Become a racecar and you won't need to guess about food anymore.
So you accept that regular exercise is useful for understanding the physiological implications of the diet, but you question whether regular exercise is healthy?
No. I believe there is such a thing as excessive exercise, which I feel is what the post was describing. While under and excessive excessive your body will be stressed enough that it should be easy to see the effects of your diet, and so it would be relatively easy to optimize your diet for such a regime. But the diet that such a regime requires is not necessarily optimal (or good) for people with a more reasonable and healthy lifestyle.
Meh. When I was an athlete I had a horrible diet which consisted of mostly boxed pasta and I ate junk food every day. Didn't hurt my athletic ability noticeably.
This bogus study keeps getting cited and misrepresented:
> Gatorade, chewable energy cubes, organic peanut butter and power bars.
All of those are junk food. Drinking a large bottle of Gatorade is exactly equivalent in sugar content to drinking a can of pop, energy and power bars are also basically crap and sugar with some "vitamins" or "soy protein" added.
So yeah... this study found that eating one form of junk food is no different than eating another form of (cleverly marketed) junk food.
> Eleven males completed two experimental trials in a randomized, counterbalanced order. Each trial included a 90-min glycogen depletion ride followed by a 4-hr recovery period.
Wow, such thorough and newsworthy research: eleven males worked out twice for 90 minutes and ate two different types of crap.
This is just another example of the sorry state of modern clickbait research.
An alarming number of studies out there are nothing but noise, especially in the medical fields, where it does actual damage. Here's a good talk on this issue: https://youtu.be/GPYzY9I78CI "Reproducible Research: True or False?"
Wow, such thorough and newsworthy research: eleven males worked out twice for 90 minutes and ate two different types of crap.
This is just another example of the sorry state of modern clickbait research.
This is peer-reviewed research that appeared in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Perhaps, as an esteemed expert in sport nutrition yourself, you could approach the journal and offer your services as a reviewer, given how strongly you feel about this.
I linked to an hour long lecture from a domain expert who offers a thorough, evidence based critique of modern research practices in the health sciences. I hope you watch it, because it raises important problems in current research practices that many are not aware of (or not taking seriously enough).
Either way, I resent such an empty appeal to authority on your end. As intelligent, educated adults I'd like to think we're capable of arriving at our own conclusions. One can be critical of someone's methods without sharing their domain-specific expertise. Science is not meant to be an old boy's club, it's a communal activity; it belongs to everyone and it's up to everyone to scrutinize.
That's not how science works no matter who reviewed what. It doesn't matter if Francis Crick himself was brought back from the dead to review this paper: until this line of research is investigated further, experiments are reproduced, modified, and analyzed from every reasonable angle, the data is meaningless.
Perfect example, straight from the article:
> “We found that the published literature bears little imprint of an ongoing controversy, but rather contains two almost distinct and disparate lines of scholarship.”
> This finding arose from their review of ten "systematic reviews" of the evidence that have been conducted. In systematic reviews, scientists collect all of the primary research on a topic and, in effect, weight it on the whole. But there appears to have been widespread disagreement about what research papers ought to be included in a systematic review. If a research paper was selected for one systematic review, it was more than likely not selected for another, the researchers found.
Thd researchers choose a narrative and stick to it. i.e: Domain expertise is the problem. If it's not up to outsiders to point this out, then who?
The current trend of careerism and domain myopia, this pressure to churn out original research sausage factory style (again, presented in great detail in the talk I linked to) is not science, it's actively hurtful to science, and actively hurtful to people whose health, even lives, depends on this research.
I personally have gone through the medical system for reasons I won't go into, and have seen first hand the very real consequences of good and bad science, which is why I feel so passionate about these matters.
I also know a number of bright individuals who have left the world of academic research due to their disillusionment with the system. There is a very real brain drain going on, and God bless those who stick it out. But if more outsiders (and disgruntled insiders and ex-insiders) don't speak out more, people will continue to get hurt (many already have been -- it's not difficult to find articles and books on this subject). This isn't pure maths or theoretical physics, this is medicine; and we must hold it to the highest levels of scrutiny.
I started watching my diet in my 20s. I started doing so because I didn't want to harm myself long term and I started gaining weight. I still go back to my boxed pasta diet once in a while (I grew up on the stuff! I love it!) and it doesn't effect me in a noticeable way. I'm no longer an athlete though.
Actually that is not true, it does effect my poop. I strongly perfer pooping on a veggie rich diet!
Thankfully getting married has helped my diet. My spouse leaves for work for extended periods sometimes which is when my diet usually slips.
This is true and an angle I have not thought about before (though I have first hand experienced it).
As an example I don't think good quality non-factory-farmed red meat is bad for a person, despite a fair amount of research on both sides of the topic. But since switching from couch me to exercise-a-holic me.. My relationship with red meat has changed. Had a grass fed burger Monday for the first time in a while, was up all night. Did not agree with me so much.
On the other hand, 1 beer or whatever amount of salt I consume seems to have no impact on me the next morning - happy to hope out of bed at 7 and go run.
Humans are not racecars so not sure I buy the analogy as given.. I wonder what the real reason for this is? Maybe a better broscience guess is that so much of your energy is devoted to repairing "damage" you did the to body during the day, your body has less spare energy to devote to processing crap.
> And there are studies that show walking is just as good,
I'm not sure I've ever actually seen one of these studies that show walking is as good for overall health as strenuous exercise. It's hard for me to believe, mostly because I do a ton of walking and find personally that the benefits are nowhere close. But also, "walking is just as good" seems mostly to be the rallying cry of out of shape people who don't want to exercise because it's hard.
> and it certainly wears down the body less than your alternative.
That's an odd way to put it. Exercise doesn't "wear down the body". It builds it up, quite literally if we're talking about resistance training. But even aerobic exercise builds up the cardiovascular system measurably.
That's an odd way to put it. Exercise doesn't "wear down the body".
Running puts tremendous stress on knees and feet. I've not been able to run since I was in my 30's due to my knees just not being able to take it anymore. (I'm not overweight.)
In fact, I walk 4+ miles a day, much up and down hills, and just that has pushed my feet pretty hard. About 5 years ago I had to switch to MBT's because I was essentially unable to walk in regular shoes. And it was a complete fluke that I found those shoes.
> Running puts tremendous stress on knees and feet.
Of course it does. That doesn't mean it "wears down" the body in a meaningful sense. The body heals. Bones get stronger with use. So do muscles. Even connective tissue gets stronger with use. Cartilage might not (I'm not sure) but heals. It doesn't just grind down from use, or professional runners would all have severe arthritis at 25. Sedentary people still get arthritis.
> About 5 years ago I had to switch to MBT's because I was essentially unable to walk in regular shoes
I'm not sure you're a representative sample. It's not normal to be unable to walk in regular shoes unless you're elderly.
"And there are studies that show walking is just as good, and it certainly wears down the body less than your alternative."
I have seen those studies and I tend to agree with them. My own personal experience supports the notion that walking is extremely healthful and provides almost all of the benefits you have in mind.
That is, if you're using measures like "do I feel good" "do I look good" "have I kept off those 20 pounds".
I however believe that there are more important measures: "can I run a few miles for help" "can I perform CPR for 10 minutes continuously" "can I lift and manipulate this charged hoseline".
I owe it to you and your family to be able to do these things. I measure your worth, to some degree, on your ability to do these things for me and my family. I don't care about what you look like or how many steps you did today.
Only in the context of being physically able to assist someone else. To name an extreme, I doubt he's saying that Stephen Hawking is 'worth less' than a given able bodied person.
I think in this case the charitable reading would be to not caveat it with ceteris paribus
I wouldn't emphasize on high output. But I'd bet 1000$ that regular physical activity will shift your diet back to healthy. After running I never crave sodas, I want raw food and water, lots of it.
> Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products
I assume by highly processed, you mean foods altered in such that they are now high in fats, salt, sugars or some combination thereof. I ask, because the term processed gets thrown around (in my experience) for highly preserved foods like canned meat to flash frozen frozen vegetables in the freezer aisle.
The former is obviously worse for you. Taking in high amounts of sugars, bad fats, and possibly salt is detrimental. However, referring to green beans that were grown, picked, flash frozen and delivered as a processed food is somewhat misleading. Flash freezing is altering the food from its natural state. Thus, a frozen vegetable is technically a processed food. The connotative definition, however, implies that more than freezing has happened.
Freezing is a form of processing, but it is a very light processing.
Take some Oats off the ground. Cool unprocessed. Mill it a tiny bit to help it cook more easily into steel cut oats. Minimally processed. Grind it down into instant oatmeal - Heavily processes. Add some chemicals and put in a test tube to turn into some weird kind of artificial sweetener? Highly processed.
I try to go as low on the chain as possible, without killing myself. I don't enjoy eating oats right off the ground, or boiled as is (unsure if we can even digest raw oats, never tried). Steel cut I do enjoy - so I stop there.
So back to fruit. If you can get fresh fruit great. If not, frozen is pretty close. If you have to revert to fruit rollups? Probably went too far.
* There is a debate that frozen fruits can actually be better than frush fruit, as fresh fruit is picked unripe and ripened in a truck - whereas frozen fruit can be picked when fully ripe. In this case, the slightly processed fruit may end up being better than the unprocessed fruit. Overall though this is the exception, for 99% of food - the more you do to it the more you lose.
This is falling prey to the naturalistic fallacy, which is the belief that because something is "natural" that is is therefore the best. Cooking food, for example makes it much easier to digest and more nutrient rich, but is cooking food natural? Remember that the most "natural" state involves dying to any number of diseases, malnutrition, or predation.
The heuristic of "the less natural the worse it is" is not a very good one.
This seems like a fairly extreme interpretation of 'processing' - I haven't seen anything that suggests there's a nutritional difference between steel cut, rolled, or quick oats. Human beings have 'processed' their foods along these lines for more than 10,000 years, as opposed to say, making Twinkies.
I think in the oats case not much happens nutritionally until it gets to the cheeri o's stage of processing. The only thing I could think of that steal cut might do is remove some of the fiber when the shell falls off.
> If you have to revert to fruit rollups? Probably went too far.
Potentially a misconception, as well. While modern Fruit Roll-ups are very processed, fruit leather is basically just ground up fruit paste that's been dried. Way more calories by weight than real fruit, but essentially no different.
This is a good observation. Yogurt for example is now something one buys packaged from a grocery store, after milk was pasteurized and deliberately (re)inoculated with the right mix of bacteria to induce lactic fermentation. This of course can occur naturally, but now we do it in a controlled and safe manner and thus is now a "processed food". Well, of course there are those that come with added "fruit" (not really). Same with Sauerkraut and even originally the curing of meats (Salami, Chorizo, de-hydrated meats, etc).
And that is different from most packaged, canned, boxed, foods which are clearly manufactured as they just wouldn't happen otherwise, in the way that ingredients are mixed and put together with the primary goals of making a product hyper-palatable (it sells), at lower cost and with a long shelf-life (minimizes risks), and only incidentally if at all, with any care for its nutritional value, in which case they throw in whatever fortifications will allow the vendor to claim certain nutritional benefit while not affecting negatively their ability to sell. These tend, as you mention, to just add sugar, fats and salt, in a way that one simply does not find in non-manufactured foods.
As they say, context matters. For example there are many who believe that salt intake by itself is not the problem, instead the optimal ratio of Sodium to Potassium is what becomes problematic. In latter years with all those added salts, Sodium intake has increased, while the lower share of natural foods has also meant a reduced intake of Potassium, throwing us off-balance from what a "normal" body needs.
I realized how meaningless the term 'processed food' is when I started trying to eat a more natural diet and every source of information I could find on the topic recommended I start by buying a food processor.
Good luck finding anything high in fats and processed in a modern supermarket. If anything, everything is low fat nowadays. With added fructose of course.
> Good luck finding anything high in fats and processed in a modern supermarket.
Er, there's quite a lot of high fat, processed foods in modern supermarkets. Now, they don't put "high fat" on the label, because "high fat" isn't a selling point. but that doesn't change the fact that they are high in fat.
Well said. The size relations of inner organs for example vary betweeen people as far as i know. That is a big hint, althought it's not a proof in itself.
I want to add to that the nutritional needs within each person vary drastically during different times of year (or times of stress, even down to times of day). Athletes know this, for example, it is common to exhibit significant drops in performance during a year of training (recurring every year).
Now combine these simple observations with the way nutritional studies are done and you know why it looks as if we have no clue.
I've observed that a lot of diets tend to have similar effects on the populations that adopt them. People speak about feeling better on Paleo. Body builders/lifters optimize macronutrient intakes for muscle gain with similar results. There's also wide consensus on how certain micronutrient deficiencies cause certain conditions. e.g. Vitamin C deficiency leads to Scurvy. Vitamin A deficiency leads to night-time blindness, etc.
I would hypothesize that most arguments about nutrition revolve around observational discrepancies between the micro & macro levels. At the micro (individual) perspective, it feels like everyone has custom nutritional needs (which in a sense, they do), but when looking at larger trends, generally, consistent patterns emerge.
One of salient points that are made about nutrition by Dr. Terry Wahls is that it is fundamentally chemistry. If an individual hits some type of limiting reagent, the body will adapt in the absence of it until it can not and certain ailments occur.
The problem with a lot of nutritional studies is similar to the problems in a company faces. There is some type of prescription to adhere to at the micro-level without taking into context the larger picture. CxO's, if you get at least 5000IUs of DevOps per day, you'll get better performance! Consuming 100mg of Agile development makes you more agile! 1 gram of purpose/mission-driven team-building per week helps with the bad customer service ailment. While there may some truth to those statements, they are also absurd without properly being incorporated into a larger context.
Anyway, one of the interesting tidbits I read was the recommendation to increase salt & potassium intake when adopting a ketogenic (high-fat) diet, to prevent/alleviate headaches & fatigue during the ketosis transitional period. One can see that the advice is probably rooted in some chemistry.
Nutritional studies would probably have much better results if the populations could be subjected to a strict meal plan to control for other factors.
You really have to watch selection bias problem here, as (different) people speak of feeling better on pretty much every popular diet ever.
Anecdotal and self reporting data for things like diet/exercise & health are notoriously poor sources (and also often suffer from a host of generalization issues).
My suspicion is that most of the population does not react too strongly or fast to a suboptimal diet, hence the general softness of this topic. But maybe a certain percentage does, and i consider myself one of them. It could well be that those who do are on the brink of a deficiency, but i'm not sure about that.
My experience, and there was i time i was really into this, doing interviews with mostly young people. The results fit the assumptions of William L. Wolcott very well, that most people basically fall into 2 groups, fast and slow metabolizers. They differ significantly when it comes to digestion. One group needing more of certain minerals then the other when eating the same foods (potassium making the biggest difference as far as i remember).
I remember often guessing correctly what type of water brand people would prefer based on this (chosing between 2 favourite sources, one with high potassium content. the sample size was small, but i'm really sure you can replicate this).
If this is due to genetics or due to gut microbes or both at the same time - i really don't know.
So, i think that the macro level does differ between people. That every person needs an individual mixture of nutrients to keep the metabolism in balance.
Btw, you can modify your metabolism bye eating differently and the body can adapt for a long time before any clinical symptoms show.
Wolcott explains the differences between those 2 groups in the following way: either the sympathetic nervous system or the parasympathetic nervous system is stronger and determines your metabolic type. And those systems can again be influenced by the environment (climate, food availability etc.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomic_nervous_system
As i could use his theory to predict food preferences, i never questioned the basic premise. Would be interesting to do some more digging again.
I tried to inform myself about nutrition but at this point I have still no idea what is best. Right now I'm following your advice, avoid highly processed food and otherwise listen to my body.
Same here. I recently cut sugar and bread products and I experienced random dizziness. I was eating plenty of fruit and I was eating natural sugars. I decided to experiment one day; had 4 donuts, bread and butter, and my body felt better.
Now the plan is to avoid processed, avoid preservatives, and move towards more natural and organic. I went to the doctor and they said don't wait more than 3-4 hours between meals.
> I went to the doctor and they said don't wait more than 3-4 hours between meals.
This is utterly crazy. If you couldn't go more than 3-4 hours between meals without experiencing dizziness, something about your diet was seriously wrong.
If you felt better after experimentally eating something different, then eating that was almost certainly healthier. Yes, even if it was donuts. Don't let cultural beliefs about food override your direct observations!
My problem has been that if I stand up to quickly, I have a moment of dizziness. There are many variables; blood pressure, blood sugar, nervous system, altitude etc.
The more aware I am of my diet and how nutrition affects my body, I find the more sensitive I become to changes.
I cut coffee, bread, sugar, and beef/pork. I would eat very nutritious meals, and my energy levels and body felt amazing, but the stand up and be dizzy became more common.
Was I going through withdrawal? Is my body to accustomed to eating these foods? Should my theory be, "sugar and bread is ok as long as I eat other nutritious meals?"
I'm not sure, I'm still experimenting, and I'm utilizing the final month of my insurance with my parents to figure this out.
The safest technique might be to slowly titrate to lower doses of sugar and caffeine instead of going cold turkey, particularly if you have a long history of sugar and caffeine use. You will probably also need to wait a few weeks from your original baseline before assessing the impact of your new diet. Synapses and more will need to adjust to their new environment.
What you are describing is orthostatic hypotension and is somewhat common in otherwise healthy people. Though it can be a sign of some medical coditions so getting it checked out is advisable, perhaps get a second opinion?
(If your blood pressure is on the low side raising it will likely help, but obviously consult with a doctor)
My wife and I have this very problem. Prior to my diabetes assessment, things like NoodleTown and pasta places would fill her right up. Me? I'd be gnawing my hand off if I went there, because I'd be hungrier 20 mins later than had I not gone there at all.
But now with diagnosed T2 diabetes, that makes sense. I process carbs very badly, and spirals into a "process carbs into fat quickly, and get hungrier, all the while jack blood sugar". Of course, high fat and high protein diet has went very well for me. I'm not hungry like I used to be, I've lost 40 lbs since the start, and I just feel better.
>I went to the doctor and they said don't wait more than 3-4 hours between meals.
Do you have a medical condition that requires you to continously eat? If not this advice is suspect at best. Do the people who advise this wake up in the middle of the night to eat?
Of course everyone is different so experement and listen to your body. Mine strongly prefers going long periods of time between meals.
No medical condition found yet and the doctors so far say I'm healthy and overthinking. My theory is that my central nervous system is weak, but I haven't proven this and I haven't found a doctor who believes me.
Could be a medical condition, a diet issue, could be a mind issue - anxiety/depression, or it could be that from training as an endurance athlete, and now that I've stopped running my body is having trouble adapting. I read some research with 4 groups: male endurance trained, female endurance trained, male not trained, female no trained. After tests , male endurance trained had a heart pattern change and the other 3 subjects didn't have the same change. From 14-23 I trained at higher levels for distance running and now I do light walking.
I consider myself to be an active thinker, meaning that my mind is always contemplating some topic. Does my brain burn more calories than Expected and does it need certain nutrition to maintain health?
The diZiness is a miscommunication between the heart and the brain.
I don't know..I've had dark chocolate and granola trail mix near me between meals the last 2 days and I've had no dizziness.
"Use salt to taste, most likely it won't kill you" - but salt has been used for centuries right. Has there been a change? As an Indian not adding salt is unthinkable.
I think the change has been in volume. In the US at least much of the food you take off the shelves (especially of the "microwave dinner" variety) have large amounts of sodium. I know this is an extreme example, but take a look at the sodium content in those popular "ramen noodle bowls" (styrofoam cup, not in a bag). That's more than 100% of your RDA of sodium right there. They do not taste overly salty IMHO.
> I'm waiting for the day that nutricionists find out that there are different kinds of people with different nutritional needs.
The nutritionist side of public health evolved to deal with questions where this isn't true. Everyone needs vitamin A to avoid beriberi and vitamin C to avoid scurvy; no one benefits from polluted milk or polluted water; that sort of thing. Now, the big problems have been solved, and nutritionists are trying to treat semi-ideopathic diseases of affluence as if they were the immense, obvious dietary scourges of a hundred years ago...
This is true of the whole field of public health, to an extent. Cholera and yellow fever are under control, smallpox is all but extinct, polio is on its last legs, and now we're trying to use the tools that defeated those diseases to fight drug addiction, lifestyle-induced diseases, diseases of aging, and STDs.
At least things aren't as bad now as they were. Traditional public-health approaches look nonsensical when used against 20th-century issues, but they did a wonderful job against 19th-century ones.
Nutritionists will never find out that, because it's not their job. They simply recite memorized mantra.
However, some scientists have been creating a mathematical model that should be able to predict the best diet for a particular person, given that the microbes in said person's guts are analysed first.
I would have never thought when reading about this over ten years ago [1], that the striking argument hasn't had bigger effects on the way these topics are discussed. And i'm sure the basics have been known for ages.
One more thing: it's also true for many types of medicine.
I'm waiting for the day that nutricionists find out that there are different kinds of people with different nutritional needs.
I wish more people were so wise.
I have a salt wasting condition. Lack of salt was very much killing me -- though the answer was not merely more salt, but better quality salt, a detail that routinely gets me the deer-in-the-headlights look from people who respond with "But isn't salt just salt??"
Came here to mention that. Additionally these findings are easily explained if we assume that salt has some positive and some negative effects occurring in different parts of the body. Say salt has some positive effects for the liver and negative effects for the heart, then a paper on liver disease will mostly cite positive studies about salt, that is it cites studies on the liver, and a paper on heart diseases will cite mostly negative.
I think a huge problem, is that some of the guidelines are insanely low and difficult to hit without serious diet modifications. A couple of years ago, I tried to stick to the Canadian RDA for salt and found it near impossible even on a whole food diet. If you engage in strenuous exercise or in manual labour, they are dangerously low.
So studies that compare people at or near the RDA with people who are over the RDA are essentially comparing vegans, vegetarians and other people are very closely monitoring their diet to the general population.
Honestly given that due to health reasons I have to stick to ~500mg of sodium a day, and have been for years with no adverse effects, I don't consider the 1,500mg Canadian guidelines that low. I do find it funny though that, for example, the Canadian guidelines are 1,500mg while the Italian ones are at 2,400 (and if you look at packaged foods sometimes the percentages seem to be based on 4,000mg)
The only way for me to do it is to be completely whole foods (the only "packaged" food I eat is canned crushed tomatoes, and only a very specific brand with absolutely no sodium added). It is obviously annoying not to be able to eat bread anymore, or to eat out, or to be able to do air travel without starving (unfortunately airlines nowadays seem to not serve full fruit meals, so I have to make do with just the little square box of salad and the one of fruit, which on an 8 hour flight is not fun) but what can you do.
This said having to severely limit your sodium makes you realize just how much of our industry relationships seem to be predicated on eating out, from interviews, to work get togethers and so on, this makes me think that likely any future job I will have will have to be fully remote because flying somewhere for an all day interview would be quite difficult to figure out food-wise.
thanks! I've never seen this particular one at my local stores but I'll keep an eye out. Theoretically "Tuscan Bread" should also be made with no added salt, but it's also not easy to find, and I wouldn't trust it anyways unless I knew the baker personally
I guess I'm the general population. I eat my daily salt on each French fry at lunch. I like them salted so they turn white! Vegetables are edible, if salted enough. And buttered. Or oiled I guess.
And I am fine. No health issues to speak of. Of course I exercise as well - I ride 20 miles at a time all summer. It's the whole picture that matters I think. Picking out 'salt' and trying to make a rule for everyone is hopeless.
The article kindly submitted here is interesting. Like more and more recent articles about science in the popular press, this article, which reports on a large analysis of previously published papers on salt in the human diet, digs into the process of science to look at how (or even whether) scientists learn from one another by citing the previously published papers on the same topic. The article's key point, just below a graphic that is criticized in several previous comments here, is "Overall the papers they reviewed were 50 percent more likely to cite reports that drew a similar conclusion than to cite papers drawing a different conclusion." In other words, scientists working on the issue of how much salt in the human diet is too much are largely talking past one another, and not collaboratively seeking truth. The article further reports, "Trinquart and his colleagues also turned up another factor that might pose even more profound problems in the salt research. It appears scientists could not even agree on what ought to be counted as evidence."
Human nutrition studies are notoriously difficult because it is very hard to measure exactly what a study subject eats, especially a nutrient like salt that occurs as a hidden ingredient in wildly varying doses in many foods. So correct measurement of the initial study data is hard to get right in studies about salt. But if scientists are still not in consensus about what to look at as endpoints to tell if salt is helpful or harmful in different doses, it will be a long time before we can individualize the research or do anything else suggested in the comments already posted in this thread.
I was recently prescribed beta blockers by my doctor, due to ongoing heart and blood pressure issues brought on by severe stress anxiety.
I also have asthma. It's a mild case, and I don't need an inhaler or any medication for it, just get pretty short on breath under heavy exercise.
Now, accumulated medical wisdom is that beta blockers are bad for asthmatics. They supposedly shorten air intake, and can even be fatal, especially in severe cases. NHS guidelines in the UK recommend against prescribing them to asthmatics and other similar lung conditions.
But ... see it turns out this wisdom basically goes back to some case reviews from back in the 70s, of patients having reactions to proplanolol, the first beta blocker released to market.
But recent reviews of the research shows that's pretty much all there's ever been: case studies. The only actual experimental trials done on this had significant methodological issues (one of them didn't even have a control group!), leaving little more than just a pile of what amounts to anecdotal evidence, involving two conditions (heart and lung) that have significant chance of comorbidity anyway.
On top of that, even most of that research is all based on the original "nonselective" kind of beta blockers, while initial research with the modern "selective" variety indicates they may even help. Even more fun is that the beta-agonists sometimes prescribed as an alternative to blockers, may themselves have a reaction with asthma ...
The end result is that in nearly 50 years of beta blockers being on market, no one medical professional actually seems to have any idea whether they're good or bad for asthma, but the "wisdom" gets passed down all the same ...
And meanwhile I've got a bottle of them on my desk. I'm not a doctor, or a pharmaceutical scientist, and if they don't know if it's safe for me to take them or not, how in fuck am I supposed to make that choice?
The problem is that salt (and other minerals) is required to live. But we eat too much of everything (including salt).
It's not the salt that's killing us, it's the shitty diet, too-large portions, and lack of exercise. If we ate reasonable portions of well-prepared meals the salt wouldn't be a big deal. But no, instead we eat extra large portions of everything, way too much meat, starch, fat and salt, so all these food items get a bad rap because we can't simply moderate ourselves...
Since the answer is basically either A: "no good reason" or B: "I believe I have science on my side", this really isn't a good response to an article about how controversial the science is. Which science do you think you have? Why is it better than the other half of the science?
This is a generic reply to everybody jumping up to explain what the truth really is.
I agree that it's not a response that is constructive to the science at hand, but it's a fine response for an individual. Unless you want to obsess over having the perfect diet, you can have a diet that is 80% healthy with 20% of the focus if you just diversify your diet across many different sources. The only thing we really know about scientific knowledge is that it will continue to evolve.
Would "people ate less and suffered less heart diseases time ago?" qualify as C?
Of course this point has the same problem of lacking details. But recognizing "modern food" as a culprit is actually less overeaching than putting the blame on a single substance that has been used for centuries.
"Would "people ate less and suffered less heart diseases time ago?" qualify as C?"
No; that would fall under "no good reason". Are you sure people "ate less"? Given that we (think we) know that people of the past were also more active (although history is definitely on your side for that one), and how much more active people need to eat to sustain their activity, I would be completely unsurprised to learn that people in the past consumed more calories than the average American. You'd need to do quite a bit of science to nail this down.
Unless, of course, you've seen the relevant science, in which case it falls under B.
It's hard to escape from needing to have done science to really know what the problem is, and it's also hard to escape from the fact that all the science is really a great deal less clear than we've been led to believe by our government and public health organizations. It's clear we have problems; it's way less clear what the cause truly is. It also is reasonable to observe that you can "eat better" with less processed food, etc., and exercise is reasonably well established as helping, but why, exactly? We may speak in English of that as being one or two changes, but it's not; it's hundreds, thousands, perhaps even more changes, all at once. Which of them are relevant, and exactly how? Those questions are much less well answered. It also doesn't necessarily matter to you personally in the end. But it does mean that confident declarations about what is "really" the cause are poorly supported right now on all fronts.
I've been looking at this for many years too, and just about the only conclusions I've come to are A: less processed does seem better B: exercise does seem to be important but it's surprising how much debate about which types of exercise are good for what is still happening, again, despite what we've been led to believe and C: the consensus I was taught growing up in the 1980s is dead wrong in almost (but not quite) every detail, but that doesn't mean I know what is right.
There are still entire massive dimensions poorly explored by science; for instance, go look up the science on "intermittent fasting". One of the first things you ram into is that while there have been several studies on it, they all use the exact same schedule, which happens to be fairly unrealistic. No exploration of the space as a whole, just this one point, sampled over and over again. Does the schedule of your food intake matter? What's the best one? Science very nearly just shrugs at this question. Who knows what else we're missing?
Although not a perfect proxy, the USDA has tracked data for "food available for consumption" (an inventory based statistic) per capita per day since 1909. This makes it good for this question simply due to duration.
Charts with the data from 1909-2010 can be found here:
The kilocalorie availability per capita per day was pretty consistently in the 3100-3400 range until about 1976 or so. After 1976, the kilocalorie available per capita per day slowly creeps up until it reaches about 4000-4200 calories a day.
This metric is not perfect by any means, but I would say there's a high probability that this correlates to the United States consuming more food, for what it's worth.
It's honestly the one food metric with this particular dataset that stands out. The percentage of calories from sugars and sweeteners, sodium levels, and grain consumption seems consistent with the 1950s.
The only other data metric that stands out with to me (if this dataset can be inferred as a proxy of changes in the food industry) is a large rise in the percentage calories consisting of fat. Specifically, the "salad / cooking oils" rises from being 0.5% of calories available in 1909 to a whopping 15.1% of calories available in 2010.
Unless, of course, you've seen the relevant science, in which case it falls under B.
My point was that, even if not exactly science, basic facts are known. Yes, I'm sure people ate less in the past. I've seen the numbers and, to a certain extent, I've seen people changing their habits in my lifetime.
This is like a tide, while many studies are focusing in a few waves. That's what my point anyway.
I do see the connection between that and the ongoing discussion, but it's subtle and mostly caused by my careless use of terms. Let me fix it a little: the diet of our ancestors was mostly "slow" carbs and a modest amount of proteins, except if you have rich ancestors, that's it. Now there are cheap proteins and a lot of refined carbs that are the equivalent to a nuke for metabolism. So I should have said that heart diseases have raised while much has changed in diet but salt intake has probably decreased because of medical recomendations.
Yes - modern Western diet is much closer to what pharaohs with all their deceases have eaten, rather than what a typical person experienced, say, 100 years ago.
You mean millenia. There's evidence of people harvesting salt dating back as far as archaeology takes us. Salt mines dating over 8000 years ago. Ancient observers writing about the salt trade 2500 years ago. And so on.
The later seems tongue in cheek, isn't it? But the former is actually true. I guess cancer is now a bigger cause of mortality just because we live longer and so we have more time to get it, instead of dying earlier of another, now tractable, illness. I don't think raise in heart diseases can be explained just by that effect.
Salt is a problem for people with hypertension or related blood pressure conditions. And there's a strong correlation between cutting down salt and reducing your BP in those cases. Especially since it's safer than just increasing some BP medication doses.
Also, your exercise and diet suggestions effectively reduce salt in your body. Less food, less salt. More exercise and more water means salt gets removed from your body faster.
I'm not trying to say salt is universally bad, but I'm pretty sure no one should literally swallow spoonfuls of the stuff either.
On cannot eat too much starch. Try to eat only potatoes or rice prepared without any oil/butter for couple of weeks with perhaps few vegetables or fruits in addition with any amount of salt or herbs for taste. You learn that it is impossible to overeat as normal appetite controlling signals kicks in and limit the consumed amount. One does not gain weight on such diet and likely even loose some.
Similarly with sugar. Try to drink plain water with sugar (not tee/coffee or anything else that bring own taste). It is just impossible to drink too much of it. In fact for many people such plain water with sugar is a useful trick to limit appetite and loose weight.
So it is not the amount of what is eaten but rather something in food or food composition that makes people overweight.
As regarding exercising consider that doing high-intensity strength training for 15 minutes once per week is often enough to get into shape. So again, it is not the amount but rather the details of the exercise that are important.
> So it is not the amount of what is eaten but rather something in food or food composition that makes people overweight.
> As regarding exercising consider that doing high-intensity strength training for 15 minutes once per week is often enough to get into shape. So again, it is not the amount but rather the details of the exercise that are important.
You make some wild claims here. Do you have anything to back that up, or are you just hypothesizing?
For the starch just search for effects of starch diet. For sugar water, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shangri-La_Diet. For high-intensity training, see www.bodybyscience.net - the blog there links quite a few medical studies about high intensity training. My personal experience or experience of my relatives confirms this.
Sugar water tastes horrible. I'd have to be literally starving before I'd choose sugar water over plain water. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to overconsume. It just means that no one wants to consume this.
I'd probably lose weight drinking sugar water because it would kill my appetite by inducing nausea.
The same applies to your starch comment. Yeah, it's hard to overconsume plain rice if you eat it with no sauce and no salt. Not because it's better for you, but because it's unpleasant. It'd also be hard to overconsume pure lard if that were all you could eat. It'd get old immediately and you'd eat enough to survive and not much more because it's so unpleasant.
With no negative impacts on health one can eat just rice or potatoes with salt or herbs as one please for months with no weight gain unless one is rather lean. That shows that there is food where body feedback loop works nicely preventing over-consumption without any conscious limits on the amount of food.
"No negative impacts on health" is a bold claim. If you eat nothing but rice (with salt[1] and herbs) for months, you'll end up with a number of vitamin deficiencies. You'll also end up critically deficient in certain amino acids eventually, because rice does not provide a complete protein profile. Weight is not the only factor in overall health.
I'll point out that Atkins makes similar claims for a fat-heavy diet. In essence, they claim that if you cut carbs entirely, you can eat as much as you want. In reality, people on Atkins tend to just eat less because the diet gets so monotonous.
[1] I misread initially and thought you said no salt. Sorry about the confusion there.
Rice is amino-deficient only for rats, it has all 8 essential for human amino-acids. But I should wrote "brown unpolished rice" as that contains much more minerals.
> Rice is a good source of protein and a staple food in many parts of the world, but it is not a complete protein: it does not contain all of the essential amino acids in sufficient amounts for good health, and should be combined with other sources of protein, such as nuts, seeds, beans, fish, or meat.
I wrote that too quickly. Brown rice has sufficient variety of protein so a person can survive on diet of rice and juices for many months, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_diet
Every time you add another comment you modify the proposed diet....
But anyway, key points on the rice diet:
> patients were hospitalized for several weeks at the beginning of treatment.
This was a diet specifically created for people who were otherwise going to die. It was never promoted as a healthy diet for normal individuals.
> white rice, sugar, fruit, fruit juices, vitamins and iron
So not just rice. Not just rice and fruit juice. But also whole fruit plus vitamins and iron to account for the fact that just eating rice will kill you.
Also, not brown rice at all. You're just pulling in random stuff to try to support your wild claims.
> Kempner described his diet as "a monotonous and tasteless diet which would never become popular.... Kempner's only defense of its use was the fact that “it works,” and that the diet was preferable to the alternative of certain death"
Sounds like a great endorsement of the diet from its creator.
I do not propose a diet (and I should not diverged into the health - that was a mistake indeed). What is important is that with potato, rice and other starchy food without added oil one does not need to consciously limit the amount consumed while staying on normal weight despite apparently excessive calories.
So the comment that started this thread proposing that people consume too much is not true. It is just that people consume too much of wrong stuff. The solution is to limit bad items so normal body feedback loops work, not the amount of food.
This is not true. If you only eat potatoes, you will wind up deficient in B vitamins. It doesn't take much to make potatoes a good basis for a diet. This is why the Irish Potato Famine was a big deal: Large families with small farms were mostly growing potatoes to keep everyone fed. But, no, you cannot live on potatoes alone with just salt or herbs without ending up deficient.
All likely true but that's not what this is about. I think it is a concern that in many issues of public interest, some scientists are much too ready to adopt strongly polarized views and thereby operate with an aggressive agenda which precludes a cool appraisal of data which fails to reinforce their 'party line'.
So science is biased? Of course it is, any observer who pays attention for more than a few years knows it is.
When you're looking for a specific phenomenon, you're more likely to find supporting evidence. For example, if my hypothesis is that a crow can use a television remote, I'm going to stick a crow in a room with a television remote, and the crow will likely mash enough buttons that I can convince you it's true. And then of course there's statistics, and the famous saying which goes with it.
Maybe the real problem is that humans are biased, we're not really looking for the truth, we're looking for confirmation of beliefs we develop for whatever reason.
We've always been far better at beating the natural world into submission than observing it anyway...
It seems to me that in otherwise healthy people, they are able to deal with excess salt by getting rid of it, but when people have issues they are unable to do so as efficiently and that's when salt is bad.
There was one recent study that seemed to indicate exactly this, but I can't find it right now. As I recall they found that salt exacerbated inflammation related to hypertension, but found no difference in healthy individuals.
If you consciously reduce your salt, it is probably good for your health. This is not necessarily because of the salt, but because reducing your salt intake pretty much requires preparing your own food from unprocessed ingredients, rather than eating out or consuming processed food (whose sodium levels tend to be high, and not controllable by you).
A high sodium intake is widely believed to be unhealthy. Whether that is actually true or not, those who prepare high sodium food basically show that they don't give a shit about health.
I think Dr Michael Greger's short video summary of salt research argues pretty convincingly that if you reduce your salt intake to very low levels (what he calls "normal-for-our-species salt intake"), you will not suffer from hypertension.
I think the core issue is that biology doesn't know as much as the media likes to claim it does. I mean read this: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/uovh-mlf05291.... If true, this effectively invalidates nearly all previous research regarding the safety of anything we inject into our blood stream because they may in fact impact the brain.
Many people have a choice to make. Although the scientific community may make a consistently supported claim about something does not mean that something will turn out to be true. Creating a near-perfect predictive model of the human body for doctors to use is about as complex a task as reverse engineering a UFO (actually reverse engineering an alien space craft is still probably more simple). They are going to make mistakes along the way.
So you are faced with a choice. Either take a risk with incomplete knowledge that something man made will not be harmful in the long term or keep doing most of the same stuff that we've been doing for centuries that has a known, if imperfect, outcome. Yes there are a lot of things can will probably kill you first, but does that mean you should continue to assume more risk on the claim that a predictive model that the scientific community generally endorses is correct enough to avoid harm?
Then again "organic" can mean a lot of things and the lack of regulation and quality control can and has made things worse on the other end. Just because it has the label "USDA Organic" doesn't mean that the USDA or FDA has done the job you think it does. There is risk and uncertainty either way.
Emotional titles grate me this not so much. I hate the You will be Amazed when ...
I think I highly prefer to read "Scientist can't decide" because that means there is an interesting story/data to look at normally. I also find it a lot more honest then saying "Scientist" when there is equal amount of doubt in an article.
In lieu of any conclusive evidence that has percolated down to the mainstream news media, I'm just going to operate under the entirely baseless hypothesis that the human body can tolerate any amount of sodium above its absolute minimum required for basic functioning, provided that it is consumed within a certain range of proportions with potassium, calcium, magnesium, and water.
I suspect that the mineral content of seawater diluted to 1.5% salinity (from 3.5%) would have a bit too much sodium, and not enough potassium, but would otherwise be safe to consume in any quantity.
Needless to say, testing this hypothesis on humans might raise a few ethical concerns. Finding enough people who already drink nothing but diluted seawater to claim significance might also prove difficult.
I wonder to what extent this can be explained by varying individual responses to salt. Maybe none- definitely possible. The recent study showing blood sugar response varied widely amongst individuals to the same foods, I wonder if scientists will arrive at that conclusion for salt.
Being an avid cook I have a hard time with believing that salt is the evil some claim it is. It has always been with us, it is in so many recipes and many don't work without it. It is the basis for brine solutions which produce make even some of the worst cuts of meat palatable and take good pieces and makes them better.
I am more of the idea that the sedentary lifestyle of many and lack of water as the go to drink for a lot of people combined with the excess of salt in snacks as a triple whammy that exaggerates salt's place on some people's lists of it being bad.
One thing to consider is pre-made processed food has tons of sodium in them to bring out taste due to the absorption of salt.
When I cook for myself, I use a fraction of the salt that a pre-made equivalent normally ships with.
I recall reading a blurb about how when processed foods don't do well in taste-testing research panels, they are instructed to dump in the sodium, with the result of positive results to follow up panels.
I eat low sodium, cycle 70 miles a week, run 30, and sweat buckets. I'm fine.
When I go traveling, I end up eating out a lot due to circumstances. The sodium intake bloats up the skin, yowzers! My wedding band gets stuck on my finger, when normally it slides off easily, and I lose a bit of definition. I hate how that looks and feels.
Body builders will maintain high sodium levels until just before a competition, whereupon they stop consuming sodium and their water retention decreases granting them extra temporary muscle definition.
In the image showing how polarized research has become, does the yellow or green category include "Inconclusive citing supportive and/or contradictory"? I would suspect as much, otherwise the image ends up being quite misleading, but I didn't see any confirmation in the article.
I think it's better to enjoy life than worry about nutritional guidelines, which might extend our time in some retirement home. Especially something that's been in our diet for a long time. Just don't overdo it.
My in-laws, who have always regularly exercised and eat healthy are 10 years older but have a much higher quality of life than my parents who have done neither.
It's about staying out of the retirement home for as long as possible not how long you're there before you die.
Looking after your health can be an important component of being able to enjoy life well before the retirement home. Plenty of people are having heart attacks and strokes before age 60, before age 50.
Even vitamins cause cancer[1]. My personal guess is that it is far more harmful to you to worry too much about what you eat, than eating a little bit too much of something "bad", see Nocebo-effect[2] and other psychosomatic factors.
The fact that you can eat a lot of salt, with out instant harm , always makes people think twice on reports like this . Same is true with sugar reports and fat as well . So what is this a vegan conspiracy to make us all go veg ! Unlikely , but consumers should Recognize that consumption not in moderation will lead to unwelcomed results . Try This rule as an example , many people like olive oil , many people say eating lots of olive oil is good for you . No one equates this as drinking a pint of olive oil as a good idea , nor eating 1/7 of that a day for a week . The bigger issue with this study is how pervasive doctored food has become . Yesterday Bloomberg news had a story how Parmesan and other grated hard Italian cheeses have become regularly doctored with wood pulp as a filler . Once wools pulp tastes like well , wood , one would expect salt to be added t this product to cover the wood content . A similar analogy can be made with regards to olive oils . Many providers filter and treat lower quality oil to make it appear as a higher quality product . It's not as bad as Chinese "Gutter Oil" but the fact that we have food health studies with out super strict food quality enforcement, in my humble opinion leads the biased reports or studies with flawed data .
> consumption not in moderation will lead to unwelcomed results
The whole point of these studies is to define the line between "too much", "in moderation", and "not enough". Saying "everything in moderation" is the equivalent of answering "when should I start worrying about my radiation dose" with "when it's too much". Technically correct, practically useless.
So say the question is alcohol consumption. Science knows the ld50 for alcohol . Science could say 1 drink a week is too much for you . However much of that logic deals with the "average man" not "you" . Your level of moderation could be calculated by direct observation of you, but I doubt anyone would stand for that sort of nonsense in today's science . So how much salt , sugar , or fat is to much ? It depends on many factors , much like how much alcohol you can consume before you "feel intoxicated" . There is a legal standard, in many countries,for how much alcohol you can have in your system before you are a burden on the state . Ie are you so dunk you will crash your car and cause harm to your self and to others or property... Back to my point you may not fit the legal parameters for being "too drunk to drive" because you can drink 10 beers before "you" feel drunk or the inverse one beer and you need a nap . Again this is based on averages as well as a social standard of acceptability on what we as a community governing the law feels is acceptable . So how does this relate to salt,fat, or sugar . It's quite simple it's too much salt in your diet does not make you potential harm your self or others in the short term like alcohol would . The same could be said about sugar , and fat . To be honest I should say something like I eat 2 lbs of sugar coated bacon each day with a fifth of bourbon and I am well over 85 . But in any case you will vote be down either way .
Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest. Eat what you like and avoid what causes problems. Use salt to taste, most likely it won't kill you - else we would have found out already.