My intuition is that there is a small delta in impact between a 'reasonable' diet and a 'perfect' diet, and so playing in that margin is pointless. But I've always felt it notable that you can consume a whole day's worth of calories in about 5 minutes with a super happy value meal, and then be hungry again a few hours later. I'd say avoid doing that.
A lot of nutritional studies have a common flaw:<p>1. Various health outcomes and indicators are caused by a food or combination of foods that you regularly eat.<p>2. A diet is studied where these foods get removed from your diet, to be replaced with whatever the diet under study is.<p>3. The participants in the diet study have poorer than average health outcomes and indicators (otherwise, why would they try changing their diet?)<p>4. Regression to the mean happens, and all sorts of dietary changes appear to be good for your health.<p>Basically, if you're fatter than average, and it's caused by the foods you eat, you can fix that by making a list of everything you eat and not eating those foods. "Whatever you don't eat" is a more average diet than what you're currently eating, so you'll get more average results.<p>(This idea shamelessly stolen from HN user jimrandomh. Hopefully I didn't butcher the details too badly.)
There's a BBC Horizon episodes with two identical twins, one goes for the low fat diet and the other for low carb diet to test which one is worse.<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03t8r4h" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03t8r4h</a>
<a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1amh2t_bbc-horizon-sugar-v-fat-h264-1280x720-aac-rmac_lifestyle" rel="nofollow">http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1amh2t_bbc-horizon-sugar-v...</a>
The author lost me when it left out the mention of Ancel Keys cherry picking data to support his hypothesis that fat is bad, and then noting off-hand that he lived to be 100 (somehow validating his hypothesis?)<p>Poorly written article that felt more like a defensive hit piece (e.g., dedicating eight paragraphs to destroying the credibility of Sylvia Tara) than something that sought to answer the question posed by its title.
I think that it's a deadly combination of both. We tend to consume way to much sugar, and usually sugar without the associated natural fiber. The fats typically consumed are cheap, low quality fats and oils.<p>Following a paleo-keto diet has been working wonders for me, I never felt or looked better in my 30+ years. So I think fats, when they are high quality, are the best source of fuel for the body.
Neither by themselves, but when combined...<p>I read somewhere that when they want to fatten up lab mice they feed them a mixture of 70% sugar and 30% fat or something similar. When you make something much more delicious and available than what appears in nature, it screws with an animal's energy balance signals.
At this point I am quite cynical about any claim that you can get healthier with a specific diet. I can guarantee you that my cyanide and toxic metal diet will make you less healthy but knowing that one thing is true does not automatically mean that you know that another thing is true.<p>Exercise will make most people healthier in general, particularly stuff associated with your cardiovascular system. We know that. That doesn't mean exercise will make you anything else associated with good health. It might not make you thinner, it might not change any sort of index based on medical tests normally done on inactive people. It might not even make you better looking or hotter in any way. We don't actually know any of that other stuff for sure.<p>This all simplifies things a lot. The advice should be: "get some exercise every once in a while. Don't worry so much about stuff that we don't actually know."
I think I am misunderstanding the 30% claim. Is it over time or is it just that 4.4 is ~30% greater than 3.4? I think the latter makes sense without "the complex statistical way that the study’s results were projected over time" but then again I haven't read the actual study.
<i>It’s one of many cautionary tales about assessing dietary data. Everyone wants to be healthy, and most of us like eating, so we’re easily swayed by any new finding, no matter how dubious.</i><p>That's why I ignore the headlines and read the paper of any study that I'm interested in.
Yes.<p>For me, probably most is the highly sedentary office lifestyle.<p>Compounding this problem, I more or less live alone and thus 'community food' (eating out) is my best access to non-frozen pre-prepared meals. I refuse to do leftovers (this is not negotiable).<p>The main problem with eating out is the portion size. Everything is insanely large.
It is neither and both. The problem is overconsumption. People eat too much and the food they eat has far too much energy for their daily demands. People just need to eat smaller portions, less energy dense refined foods and eat less often.
DUPE of <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13980272" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13980272</a>
all things in moderation.<p>not too much sugar.<p>not too much fat.<p>not too much food.<p>eat more green veges.<p>not too much carbon/charcoal.<p>avoid processed stuff.<p>but most important: don't tell anyone else.
If everybody does it then the food industry will insidiously alter itself to pull people back in while finding a way to make good things bad.
I see a lot of suggestions for diets in the comments here, but not a lot of citations. It's good that others have recommendations to share, but at least back it up from something.
After years reading about what is right or not for me. I just gave up and began eating what felt good to me.<p>After awhile, I begin to notice that my body's constantly telling me what feels good or not. Sometimes good health is nothing more than a bit of awareness and experimentation.
Fat is for survival, if you're don't spend the night outdoors you wont burn it.<p>Sugar is for energy to use immediately, if you don't use it it's turns into fat, 30% of it is wasted in that process though.<p>Overeating carbs is better than overeating fat.
Kind of crazy that you guys don't understand this yet. I may not know how to hack, but I know how the body operates. Most people would do well to read Volek & Phinney, both 'the art and science of low carbohydrate living' and 'the art and science of low carbohydrate performance'