I am confident that I'm in good company when I say that I hit this sort of paragraph like a brick wall:
> Do not drink any calories (no soda, no alcohol, no juices, avoid milk). Avoid sugar like the plague, including carbohydrate-heavy foods that immediately break down to sugar (bread, rice, pasta, potatoes), including to a lesser extent natural sugar (apples, bananas, pears, etc - we’ve “weaponized” these fruits in the last few hundred years via strong artificial selection into actual candy bars), berries are ~okay. Avoid processed food.
Look, I have nothing but respect for people who can read that and think, oh, cool, I hate everything that tastes good, is easy to access and leaves me feeling satisfied.
For those of us who are still yoked in service to evil things like rice, this paragraph just makes us feel like we're fucked.
Also: even introverts who love cooking at home occasionally have to go for dinner with clients, relatives or friends. While it's true that you can just order some naked bitter greens, this often doesn't feel like a socially normal thing to do (even though norms are changing, especially in large and progressive cities).
The thing I find odd about many of these biohacking/longevity experts is that they don’t seem to look at real people that live a long time in Spain, Italy, Japan, etc. and instead just default to an over-optimized “scientific” diet that insists that over-analyzing everything is equivalent to being effective. If there isn’t a name for this fallacy, there ought to be one: analysis and results are not always correlated.
Edit: reading the linked post again, I realized what it is: an obsession with data and a total disregard for cultural practices. French people, for example, eat all kinds of things considered forbidden, and yet obesity isn’t much of an issue there compared to other Western nations. One reason why is the strong cultural rule against snacking.
>they don’t seem to look at real people that live a long time in Spain, Italy, Japan, etc
I think you're referring to 'Blue zones'[0] here. I'm certainly not an expert in longevity, but was also intrigued by these areas and their apparently above-average lifespan, and how it goes against a lot of conventional longevity advice re: diet.
One explanation I've heard is that they're simply the results of poor record keeping, and that there isn't much strong evidence to suggest people in those regions do statistically live longer than average.
It doesn’t need to be strictly based on the blue zones idea, but the basic fact that in some places, people live longer than others. That Wikipedia article criticized the Okinawa narrative but doesn’t mention that Japan still has one of the longest lifespans in the first place.
My criticism is basically this: there are places where people live longer than others, and they certainly aren’t eating bowls of green goop and 200 pills every morning. If your goal is to maximize longevity, it seems logical to imitate whatever they’re doing. Or at least investigate it.
Japanese people generally don't skip breakfast and eat rice with every meal. So they aren't doing intermittent fasting and they are constantly eating one of the foods TFA says not to eat.
I am pretty sure the benefits of intermittent fasting beyond calorie restriction are not really supported by the latest science.
I am not saying it's bad; eating fewer calories has its benefits. However, the effectiveness of intermittent fasting, especially as portrayed in the media, has been quite overblown, IMHO.
I think one of the main sources of this is from a study that suggested longevity improvements in lab mice. Unfortunately, studies involving lab mice, especially those concerning metabolism, translate poorly to humans.
That is a made up term that means nothing and everything. Washing vegetables is a process. “Cooking” is a process. Cutting is a process. Chilling is a process.
My friend who is really into these things describe "processed food" as anything that has the ingredients printed on the label when you buy it from a grocery store.
Veggies, fruits, meats, and "natural" starches (like potatoes and rice) don't have ingredient labels, so they count as "unprocessed" or "natural."
> it much different than them processing it in a factory or bakery for you.
The difference is that bakeries etc. tend to add a lot of sugars and preservatives.
> Per that definition, items like white vinegar and corn syrup are not processed foods?
Yeah, so not a perfect definition, but a good rule of thumb.
The general idea is that you don't want some big corporate to prepare the food for you, it is better to prepare it yourself. If you prepare the food yourself, you have more control over how healthy it is. This approach serves my friend quite well, he reports that he feels more energetic when he avoids "processed" foods as per his definition.
> The general idea is that you don't want some big corporate to prepare the food for you, it is better to prepare it yourself
I understand that. But my body doesn’t care who prepared the food. If a big corp prepares the food the same way I prepare it at home (or vice versa), then this advice is useless.
I am sure that he placebo could improve his energy. Also, I’m sure there are ingredients that “big corp” uses that we wouldn’t normally use in the kitchen that could hurt our health. So then instead of saying avoid “processed foods” (which means nothing and everything), name the ingredients and the processes that are bad.
> So then instead of saying avoid “processed foods” (which means nothing and everything), name the ingredients and the processes that are bad.
Yeah sure, but that is quite a lot of effort. And you are going to end up avoiding most processed foods anyway. Especially if you are the sort who distrusts artificial sweeteners and preservatives. So then it is just easier to say "avoid processed foods" than to say "avoid foods that contain [...insert a long list of ingredients here]"
Meals that you only need to heat in a pot/oven and that are stuffed with preservatives and other stuff.
Some people include more in that "processed food" category, some less, but practically everyone agrees that preparing meals yourself using raw ingredients is a good idea.
The point is salting that soup and frying the chicken yourself, which avoids a lot of substances with often still uncertain long-term effects or potentially harmful effects on the environment.
Of course it's more a rule of thumb, I thought that goes without saying.
The way I see it, it's processing that you wouldn't or cannot do (in a daily basis) at home, is generally likely to either introduce stuff or break down / transform nutriments unneeded for your body that is likely to have undesirable effects.
My rule when I buy stuff all things that count as raw ingredient is ok, then to quickly imagine is there any reason that adding things
or altering the most basic way to produce it can give economical advantage, all this with a quick ingredient check.
Given that, as examples flour is ok, rice and pasta, even pre-cooked is mostly ok, basic canned food is not a no-go anymore.
Look at the ingredients list. This is such a weird hill engineers always want to die on. "Processed" is very clear on what it means to anyone that isn't being pedantic
What makes something industrial processed? The geolocation of where the food was made?
The amount of food created together? Making 1 pizza dough at home is fine, but creating 10,000 in a geolocation that isn’t in the same building where you sleep is not fine?
It’s not just engineers. Scientists are also confused what processed means.
>Making 1 pizza dough at home is fine, but creating 10,000 in a geolocation that isn’t in the same building where you sleep is not fine?
Right, because it's not just 10000x my home experience. At that scale, entirely new methodologies, ingredients, industrial chemicals, etc. all start to be used. This is very simple stuff, I have trouble believing you truly don't see a distinction
You will never produce factory food in your home. Not unless you can prepare 10,000 servings an hour of something for far cheaper than you can buy it for in a grocery store and ensure that it has a 3-12 month shelf life in the process.
You're stuck on the word "processed" as if it means anything that has been changed from its natural form, whereas it is meant to relay that a food has been industrially bulk processed and then packaged.
By your definition, cutting an apple is processing it, which is (hopefully) obvious that we're not talking about that.
The idea is to make your own food from as close to scratch as you can, to not eat pre-packaged "processed" foods like frozen pizzas and hot pockets and hamburger helper all the time.
We should name specific processes (like frying in cooking oil) and ingredients (like corn syrup) and not leave it to the consumer to define their own definitions of words.
Should we drink raw milk or should we drink pasteurized milk?
Processed food refers to items that have been altered from their natural state for safety reasons or convenience. This can range from simple processes like freezing or drying to preserve nutrients and prevent spoilage, to more complex changes such as adding preservatives, flavors, and other additives to enhance taste, texture, and shelf life. Canning, baking, and pasteurizing are also common methods of processing. While processing can make food more accessible and longer-lasting, some argue it can also reduce nutritional value and introduce less healthy elements like added sugar and sodium.
I agree this sucks and I personally struggle to follow anything this strict because I love cooking AND I love eating (the perfect storm for obesity, sadly). However I found a good middle ground is to focus on "Avoid processed food" and sticking to whole foods. Try buy things that don't have bar codes, or stick to the outside of the supermarket (where they tend to put the fresh produce), or whatever.
This is my strategy also. Do your shopping in the produce, butcher, and dairy sections. Stay away from the boxed crap in the middle, and at least for me the bakery section will likely be my eventual downfall.
Of course this requires that you learn to cook, and have the time to do it. If you are going to restaurants all the time it’s a lot harder.
> Of course this requires that you learn to cook, and have the time to do it.
True, although personally I think cooking is one of life's greatest joys! Making things from scratch that taste good and make people (i.e. your family) happy is worth the time, imo, and I try to do a couple good meals a week :)
Well, rice is also among the most environmentally damaging plants you can eat, so I suppose there's multiple arguments to be made in favor of avoiding it.
Cutting drinkable calories and all added sugars is the 20% of effort that gives you 80% of the effect here. As far as going to 100% goes, cutting carbohydrates altogether has also become enough of a trend ("no-carb") that you can find lots of information on how to do it, if you feel like you need to do it. However, those diets usually require you to eat a lot of meat, which is unhealthy for a host of other reasons, and if you're stringent about it, they would also require you to cut beneficial foods like nuts, which is likewise bad.
I appreciate this reply as thoughtful and reasonable, with the powerful exception being the inclusion of "all added sugars".
I think we all get that if you can cut drinkable calories, you should because you will be far better off.
However, ditching sugar (which is an addictive poison; we get it) is the most decisively non-trivial thing on the list. It's in freaking everything.
Trust me, I can give up apples and pears tomorrow if you promise to say nice things about me. But pursuing a completely sugar-free diet is a dramatic undertaking. It requires you to drastically alter everything you probably eat.
This may be different in the US, where, from my understand, people often eat sweetened breads and so on, but at least here in Europe, added sugars are really not that hard to avoid. (Well, at least to a 99% level. For me, cutting soy sauce, which does contain added sugar, would be very uncomfortable. Other than that, I honestly don't see the huge issue - of course it would be annoying when eating out, but that's about it.)
> those diets usually require you to eat a lot of meat
You can substitute meat for eggs, to a large extent. No more expensive, easy to prepare, arguably tasty, ethical (as far as OP's arguments), and a complete protein source that rivals meat.
Traditional diet advice would caution about cholesterol, but "those diets" pretty much disregard those concerns, with pretty good science behind it.
Chicken bred for laying eggs suffer immensely during their entire (short) lifetime. The effect of breeding these chickens for the sole purpose of laying as many eggs as possible results in practically every chicken having multiple broken bones.
This affects chickens regardless of them being free range, organic or whatever.
I'm sure that's true in many places, but not all. I know people who supply eggs that are sold in grocery stores. Their hens are regular hens that live normal hen lives. Regurlar hens are very prolific egg layers anyway. The producer is also part of a strict certification program that ensures that customers know what they get.
There are no regular hens anymore! That's kinda the point. Every supermarket supplying hen is producing far more eggs than their non purpose-bred ancestors would.
The broken bones are not even visible, their behavior change is very subtle. You'd have to x-ray the hens to see the damage.
Here [0] is a report from Switzerland (in German) saying that 97% of egg laying hens in Switzerland have on average 3 broken bones, some even as much as 11.
Ethical eg farming using current hen races is simply impossible.
That report seems very high, here's a similar study in England that looks at the bones of end-of-lay hens that are culled and 14% of free range chickens have fractures, some of which they cannot guarantee were not from the transport/handling as part of the study. Assume worst case, that's 14% of hens with fractures. Conventional cages have 31% fractures. Of those fractures, keel bone fractures from bumping into the hen house furniture is the most likely reason, but also badly designed perches injuring the knees. Interestingly the reason why fractures may be increasing is because moving from conventional cages to hen houses increase bumping into things and breaking bones (point 57).
> Every supermarket supplying hen is producing far more eggs than their non purpose-bred ancestors would
The fractures seem to be mostly unrelated to the number of eggs laid in this study.
> There are no regular hens anymore! That's kinda the point.
Either way, at least there's pressure on farming bodies to avoid all fractures so hopefully this isn't an issue for long.
Your 14% figure stems from a single study, precisely the oldest study mentioned on the report linked, while three paragraphs down it mentions the newest study, quote:
"The most recent results (University of Bristol; Defra project AW0234), from a
survey of 67 flocks (not including conventional cages) were similar but even worse,
particularly because only keel bone fractures were recorded. Thirty six per cent of
hens from enriched cages had fractures (of the keel bone) and the average
prevalence in other non-cage systems ranged from 45 to 86%. In the worst flocks,
95% of hens had fractured keel bones." (Emphasis mine.)
The report I linked even says that the old results massively under estimate bone fractures because they seldomly used x-rays to find them!
And not only that, your 14% figure are the new fractures, i.e. the ones that did not occur during laying! One newer study from 2006, mentioned in your report just two paragraphs after the one you got your figure from, estimates these old fractures of free range hens at 44%!
> The fractures seem to be mostly unrelated to the number of eggs laid in this study.
Even that is explicitly contradicted by your report, quote:
"Osteoporosis is further exacerbated by the great egg output of modern
hybrids. In 1930, a hen laid around 115 eggs in a laying cycle (from about 20 to 72
weeks of age) but nowadays a hen lays around 300 eggs, almost an egg per day for
a year. A hen’s need for calcium for eggs exceeds her body reserves by about 30
times."
Please, actually be honest on offering a counterpoint.
The problem is that rice is usually grown in wet rice agriculture, where the paddy is flooded to prevent weeds from growing. Microbes in the water will decompose decaying plant matter, producing methane, a potent greenhouse gas [1].
I think it's a very natural American reaction. Of course if your food supply is full of preservatives and fillers, you'll find it difficult to eat food that doesn't make you fat or feel like shit.
I've been living in the EU (Netherlands) for a few years now, and I've lost weight naturally through walking more, better food, and less access to fast food. My wife and I love cooking, and love eating too. It's legitimately hard to find quality produce in the US, and it's often substantially more expensive than produce in the EU.
I actually dread going back to the US to visit family or when I have to travel for work because the food really irritates my stomach...
I find rice to be a curious thing to put on the list. I understand that it is a carb, but it’s also a question of moderation, and portion size. Prior to the introduction of western franchises like McDonald’s, the Japanese diet led to some of the longest lifespan’s in the world. A small quantity of carbs like rice seems like a non-issue to me. It’s when you sit down to a massive plate of fried rice that you’re asking for trouble.
Not contradicting, but your brain is reprogrammable. If you cut things a bit, you won't feel the need to be satisfied. The amount of sugar we eat in modern societies is mostly useless. Now I was "lucky", I fell ill, so I just couldn't eat sugar, now I don't eat pastry, or carbs (maybe 3 times a month at worst). Veggies, tea, meat, fish, nuts, yogurt, can give you a lot.
For what it's worth, my personal experience has been that I crave less of the hyper-palatable foods when I'm regularly lifting or getting some other form of moderate to intense exercise. My appetite starts to swing back towards simple meals with meat and grains and vegetables, and plain water is refreshing again.
When I'm not getting enough exercise, I start to crave sugars and yummies more.
I've gotten almost no exercise for the last couple of months due to an injury and some other circumstances and Halloween could not have come at a worse time.
It is surprisingly easy from a "feeling" perspective. Once you stop eating those, your body will become more addicted to other food.
However, a single drop of sugar during your diet will make you starve for more sugar (That is what most people experience during their day and why they think avoiding soda is impossible)
I struggle with my weight, but it made a big difference to cut out "direct" sugar. It was hard for a month or two but after that, I don't really have a strong desire for sugar anymore, and a lot of more "normal" food tastes sweeter to me now.
> Do not drink any calories (no soda, no alcohol, no juices, avoid milk). Avoid sugar like the plague, including carbohydrate-heavy foods that immediately break down to sugar (bread, rice, pasta, potatoes), including to a lesser extent natural sugar (apples, bananas, pears, etc - we’ve “weaponized” these fruits in the last few hundred years via strong artificial selection into actual candy bars), berries are ~okay. Avoid processed food.
Look, I have nothing but respect for people who can read that and think, oh, cool, I hate everything that tastes good, is easy to access and leaves me feeling satisfied.
For those of us who are still yoked in service to evil things like rice, this paragraph just makes us feel like we're fucked.
Also: even introverts who love cooking at home occasionally have to go for dinner with clients, relatives or friends. While it's true that you can just order some naked bitter greens, this often doesn't feel like a socially normal thing to do (even though norms are changing, especially in large and progressive cities).