~~~~~nutrition nazis 2012~~~~~

Sometimes, even

I've been feeling an urge to go back to meat again lately, but over the weekend I took my daughter to a petting zoo and got up close to some chickens and cows. It threw me for a loop.

Yeah, I don't think I could actually do it but I wonder. I've definitely relaxed a lot. The other night the thai food delivered basil rice with chicken instead of tofu but I was too hungry and lazy to wait for them to correct the order so I picked out the chicken. Years ago I wouldn't have done that because OMG IT TOUCHED.

I think the thing that bugs me is that I think I would do a better job constructing a healthy as a meat-eater than a vegetarian. I make an effort to eat food that's not processed all to shit, but it's pretty half-hearted.

Personally, I have more energy than when I carried a couple days meat/dairy slowly rotting at 98.6 °F. But just a reminder, B12 supplementation is an absolute must, there are no reliable vegetable sources (unless like cows you eat soil too), and the consequences of low B12 are too severe.

sorry I lol'ed at 'unless like cows you eat soil too'

I know this must already be on this thread somewhere, but Sanpaku, can you defend the need for supplementation in a healthy diet? I have the vaguest arguments about evolution swirling around in my head that are telling me the rotting meat/dairy must still have the edge over a diet that needs supplementation, but there are probably easy ways to knock them down.

i have both rotting meat and rotting vegetables inside of me

Our paleolithic ancestors lived 33 years, on average. A high animal protein diet that increased IGF-1 and hence stature was likely beneficial for hunting and mating success, as the downsides of excess animal protein causing osteoporosis, or the IGF-1 promoting late life cancer simply don't matter for Darwinian fitness. The chronic diseases of affluence don't matter to those who don't live long enough to develop them.

I spent 30 years of my life caring for relatives with progressive multiple sclerosis or post-stroke dementia, so that definitely influences my preferences. Diet for me isn't about being buff, but avoiding chronic disease which may not be symptomatic for decades. Modern weightlifters are aiming at something rather different than I am, which is a long, disease free lifespan. A low-fat whole foods vegan diet is a pretty easy way to achieve this, as it can practically eliminate heart disease, stroke and diabetes, and radically reduce cancer and kidney disease incidence (which together account for most deaths in the US). Ideally, I'd like to die after a 1 week bout of pneumonia after an expected 83 years of disease free life (like the vegan Adventists in the largest US cohort study of vegetarianism). If I had more willpower I'd do the CRON diet, which might yield 120 years if started at birth, with the downside of constant hunger.

Michael Greger (who's a hero of sorts to me) does a nice rundown on diet and the leading causes of death:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30gEiweaAVQ

my main goals are
(1) not feeling like shit every evening
(2) not feeling hungry all the time
(3) getting sw0le
(4) not living for 120 years, i did vote yes on the death button thread after all

ljubljana, to your question there's nothing particularly "natural" about human dairy consumption, or grain-fed modern animal agriculture, either.

I think the naturalistic fallacy applies to health as well as ethics, I'd eat handfuls of vitamin pills if they offered better health. Most demonstrably don't, and several in fact seem to increase disease incidence/progression. Only two supplements (vitamin B12 for vegans, and vitamin D for those living outside the tropics) seem to offer significant benefits vs. cost for those otherwise eating a varied whole foods diet. No animal makes B12, our ancestors lost that metabolic pathway over a billion years ago, and rely on bacterial synthesis. Cows get it from not being picky about dirt (where the bacteria reside) in their food, as did vegans among our ancestral species. As for vitamin D, we spent most of our evolutionary history wearing loin cloths or less under the tropical sun, and now live indoors at latitudes where vitamin D synthesis from UV striking our skin is difficult much of the year. D certainly benefits bone health, immune function, inflammatory response, and (related) multiple sclerosis incidence, and perhaps helps cardiovascular disease and life expectancy.

Lifespan, shit, I knew it would be something I should have spotted straight off. Thanks for the vid; I'm not sure when I'll manage to get to it (still only half way through the sugar one) but I'll definitely take a look.

My problem is a bit like harbl's, though - hungry all the time. I've cut back on sugar a lot in the last 2 weeks, though, and that has helped a lot. I realised I'd been doing 'all or nothing' - either sugar plus other carbs or no sugar/very low carbs overall, and it's time to try (duh) not being a carb-nazi but also not having the sugar.

if it was just hungry i could probably deal with it but irritability and fatigue and stuff are the worst. again i can't say what caused what since i changed so many things at once. i definitely wasn't b-12 deficient because i was eating just enough meat for that.

i think it depends on what you have to do during the day though--when i was unemployed i was fine not eating any meat because i spent most of the day sitting around and didn't have to use my brain for anything. i didn't eat meat though all of college and law school though, i think. can't really remember.

i am not implying vegetarian diets are for sedentary, dumb people

so i shouldn't say "i was fine not eating any meat" i should say i was fine not paying too much attention to anything except cheapness

Yeah, hungry-all-the-time for me goes with fatigue and irritability too. Also, sugar-induced hunger is faster and way more intense.

again, not ruling out occasional indulgences, not about to wave away special occasion cake etc. But it's helpful to be out of an office that had a tradition of cake- or chocolate-bringing every damn day.

feel better than ever now that I am consciously returning back to small portion sizes

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html?_r=1

forget the studies, they live forever cos they don't work in offices or commute

article is not credible at all, makes no mention of sardines

refused to read that because the headline is so creepy

just had a gigantic tomato/rocket/lettuce/red pepper salad from marks and spencers and two tins of sardines for lunch. probably a placebo effect but i it's like i can palpably sense the goodness after eating it.

two tins

^ otm

i was having smaller salads and one tin before, only occurring to me how much more volume of healthy stuff you can eat.

The New York times did a nice takedown of the Meditterranean diet last year Does the Mediterranean Diet Even Exist?. The healthy communities were the impoverished ones, that could only afford to eat lentils, fruits, and vegggies, so they got healthy. It's not the olive oil:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfBKauKVi4M

I want to eat sardines but I'm still kind of afraid? I bought a nice tin of King Oscar. I just, I'm afraid I'll hate them? Or that the heads will skeev me out and I'll throw up, lol.

there are no heads

no way

really?

okay well that's a start

are they a weird thing for you? i used to have them as a kid on sunday evenings, sardines on toast.

do any of you guys buy them fresh much? i

I've never eaten them before, ever

vg: try the avacodo + sardine thing upthread. i mean it's still going to taste fishy, but the creaminess of the avacado + the vinegar takes the edge off it a lot.

i get them fresh literally every time i see them on the menu at a restaurant, but i don't have them fresh at home

i have bought them fresh quite a bit, really nice and you can do a bit more with them, they're great with chilli and lemon.

in anything, on anything, around anything. have lived a sardine free life.

but I'm down with fish in general, and fishyness so there's no real reason why I shouldn't try them. I just need a way to eat them.

xpost yeah I think the avocado method sounds like the best delivery vehicle for me

how do you all fit seeds into things? just putting through quinoa or brown rice dishes sounds a good way, or maybe in morning porridge?

any other tips or suggested seeds beyond the obvious?

Ground flax seeds and chia seeds mixed in smoothies. Sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds on salad. Sorry, nothing too exciting here.

You can get boneless and skinless sardines

1) Flax (despite being cheaper) is better than chia.
2) Both pretty much pass right through unless ground. But whole seeds have a much higher shelf-life.
3) As mentioned by cwkiii, ground flax & chia are great for thickening up smoothies. You can use 1 tbsp flax + 3 tbsp water (in blender) as an egg replacer in all sorts of recipes. Flax also works in salad dressings:

This is my salad dressing de jure, from Susan V.'s excellent recipe blog

Low-Fat Tahini-Chickpea Dressing
1 tablespoon flax or chia
Grind to a powder in blender, dry, then add
1/4 cup chickpeas, 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/2 cup water, 1 tbsp tahini, 1/2 tbsp tamari or soy sauce, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast, 2 cloves garlic, 2 tsp minced ginger
Puree. Black pepper to taste

what about say, hemp? do they need grinding? i've also been putting sunflower seeds into things.

Next to nothing is known about hempseed:

I was surprised to find so few articles published in the human medical literature on hempseeds, but maybe I shouldn’t be given the lack of much of an industry lobby and the stigma attached to the plant. Only 4 popped up in a pubmed search (excluding articles written by a “Dr. Ian D. Hempseed.”). The latest (available full-text) was a double-blind placebo-controlled comparison of fish, flax and hempseed oil supplementation that lasted 3 months and found no significant effects of any of them on lipid profile, LDL oxidation or measures of inflammation. This result is similar to what was found in my video Is Distilled Fish Oil Toxin-Free? Before that a study comparing daily tablespoons of flaxseed to hempseed oil similarly didn’t find much effect. The third was the study you cited, which found that 2 daily tablespoons of hempseed oil improved atopic dermatitis (an itchy skin rash) better than the same amount of olive oil. The researchers suggest it may be because of the gamma linoleic acid content of hempseeds, an omega 6 fatty acid that paradoxically appears to have an overall anti-inflammatory effect. Instead of downing the oil, as always I’d suggest eating the whole food–hempseeds–directly (same with flaxseeds, see my video Just the Flax Ma’am). And the final study, “Anaphylaxis to ingestion of hempseed” soundly debunks the wikipedia claim that “In fact, there are no known allergies to hemp foods.”

right. i've never bought them but kept reading (obviously bullshit) articles claiming them to be healthy.

BTW, that's from a reader Q&A page at Dr. Greger's site. He has 28 HSUSA interns to ferret out info, I'm sadly solo.

I bought some hempseed oil because I found flax oil pretty intolerable in salad dressings. Its better, a bit more nut like (rather than unripe/green) tasting.

Flax definitely has the better essential fatty acid profile assuming you're eating other fats in your diet (58%:14% ω−3:ω−6, vs 16%:57% in hemp). The western diet is overwhelmingly heavy in the ω−6 linoleic (LA), which is metabolized to pro-inflamatory eicosanoids like the prostaglandins. The main ω−3 fatty acid in plants, α-Linolenic acid (ALA), competes for the same enzymatic pathways to produce less effective or ineffective eicosanoid hormones, and so seems to reduce inflamation (and hence cancer, vascular disease, arthritis etc). A 1:3 ratio like in hemp is considered ideal, but since you're probably getting so much ω−6 fat from other sources (pretty much every other vegetable oil except canola, which is 1:2), the flax presumably would help to redress the imbalance.

I will note, that even though flax oil is a bit of an acquired taste that I didn't acquire, its the absolute best oil for seasoning your cast iron skillet.

This is probably the wrong thread, and please redirect me if there's a better one, but... I have a friend with breast cancer that is also in her lymphatic system. She's Taiwanese, and her European husband studies Chinese medicine. She says she's not going through surgery and chemo, but going to rely on acupuncture, exercise, diet and meditation. She directed me to a youtube that promotes a vegan diet called the R@ve Diet and attacks chemo and surgery as an 'industry'.

She's had a difficult life and she seems to feel that she's 'gone wrong' by not looking after herself properly, and that when she starts to do that, she will have a good chance of getting better. I am so worried for her, and she has a toddler son. I don't want to attack her decision directly and it would do no good to do so. She will look at research, however. Sanpaku, does anything spring to mind?

This youtube claims breast cancer prognoses haven't improved since the 30s. Doctors and doctors-in-training: that's not right, is it? Even cursory Googling suggests that it isn't.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-cancer-treatment-regrets/