Thank you. It's great to have someone "within ranks" saying what many have been saying for decades.
One of the problems in the field is summed here> "Why are certain long-term epidemiology/observation studies (EOS) continued in spite of the persistent publication of pseudoscience from these studies?"
Those type of studies are why they keep flipping on eggs. It's oxidized cholesterol (and saturated fat) which helps along heart disease, not the generic form. In fact, the body makes both if you don't eat enough. [1][2] Are our bodies trying to kill us?
"there is no convincing comparative outcome evidence (as I defined above) that common foodstuffs, e.g., saturated fats like butter, rapidly absorbed carbohydrates like white rice and potatoes, or animal proteins, are especially helpful or harmful."
The body prefers saturated fat as a fuel source. Body fat is mostly saturated. When you burn fat your running on "artery clogging" saturated fat. Secondly it likes glucose. It converts all carbs sources to glucose then glycogen. But when you overload calories (from say, rice), the body trans-saturates it to palmitic acid, a saturated fat. [3]
Hi-GI foods, like rice and potatoes, turn to glycogen quicker. Supposedly high-GI = bad. But I think the better theory is high-GI = bad, given qualifiers x and y.
I'm glad to see someone put some thought to what is obvious- that nutritional research (or at least the recommendation that people create from it) are broken.
What is one to do?
"BMI between 20-25"
OK advice, but others have pointed out that BMI is a misleading number.
"only follow nutritional advice if proven to be safe and effective."
Unfortunately the advice that meets that criteria is extremely limited.
"Practice moderation in nutritional matters"
This statement is meaningless, as people will define moderation to fit what they want to do.
"ingest enough vitamins and minerals, especially vitamins B-12 and D"
Good, if vague advice.
Kudos for tearing down modern nutritional research. However, the author seems to end up making the case that there is nothing we should do to improve our diet- that we must sit and wait decades for things to be proven.
As much as I consider BMI to be generally useless, since weight is a numerator, that's a huge range. For a 5' tall person, that's 102-128 pounds. For someone 6'4" tall, that's 164-205 pounds.
A target window of 26-41 pounds doesn't seem terribly unreasonable, so long as one doesn't blindly assume that merely being within the range is healthy.
I'd certainly prefer a body fat target, if it's supported by the research. (Perhaps a BFI? I'm certainly curious as to which denominator is the most representative of biological function, if not health).
I'm happy to settle for Michael Pollan's advice:
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Although I admit I don't follow that as closely as a maybe should. Sure, it would be nice to have some better science in this area. But I think eating a wide variety of food in moderation is enough to keep us generally healthy (the flaw being that Americans are absolutely terrible at doing anything in moderation).
Again, I have to ask, what does moderation mean? In my experience, I have found that almost everyone believes they eat in moderation. The sole exception would be with respect to calories/weight gain. I can only conclude that it is meaningless except in the context where it means eat the amount of calories that you burn.
This is an incredibly tough question, both because it varies widely from person to person and because it's very hard to quantify in numbers.
We are in love with numbers, and we think that we can just count the calories that go into our bodies and that is the secret to becoming skinnier (replace "calories" with "carbs" or any other measurement for the latest diet trend). The BMI is another (albeit much saner) manifestation of this desire to have magic numbers.
We're also enamoured with single-focus solutions: eat less tortillas and get fit, eat a stalk of celery every two hours, chug a glass of water before a meal, whatever the magazine rack at the grocery store tells us.
I am of the opinion that this is all badly misguided, especially because it needn't be that complicated. Eat on a regular schedule, in portions that leave you full but not satiated. Try to buy more raw food products and less highly-processed stuff. Include different types of food in each meal. Exercise regularly (there really is no substitute for this). Set your goals with yardsticks like cardiovascular endurance (for the layman, "can I jog up a flight of stairs without gasping?") instead of trying to lose x number of pounds in a week.
So no, I can't give you an exact answer. It will probably be centuries before nutritional science can do so, if ever. But I firmly believe that we can make ourselves a lot healthier by taking some simple steps to compensate for the fact that our modern lives do not follow the patterns that our bodies evolved to cope with.
I haven't read Pollan's books, so maybe someone can clear this up for me- How is that we are supposed to marvel at Joel the grass farmer that raises animals, but then eat mostly plants? Does he provide any evidence that eating (grass-raised) animal (products) are bad for you?
You got me - I haven't read his books thoroughly either, just a few chapters.
I don't have references on hand, but I believe there's a fair amount of accepted research that shows that we eat far more meat (and probably dairy) than is good for us - some meat gives protein and other good things, but you go too far and your body starts processing all the fats and whatnot in unhealthy ways. The evolutionary standpoint certainly supports this - we evolved as primarily hunter-gatherers who would manage to kill an antelope once every two weeks or something. Agriculture changed our diets significantly, and not necessarily for the healthier (an interesting writer on this subject is Jared Diamond).
I've recently started an(other) effort to lose my excess weight. Since this time I am on the web I have been looking for more research. It appears there is very little useful information available. The biggest problem, it appears to me, is the lack of any financial incentive to run large controlled trials of diets as there is in drug trials. What we really, really need for nutritional science to advance much more, is for large-scale controlled experiments, but without the millions of dollars drug companies put into testing their products, in the hopes of making it back from sales on successful drugs, it is not going to happen.
One of the problems in the field is summed here> "Why are certain long-term epidemiology/observation studies (EOS) continued in spite of the persistent publication of pseudoscience from these studies?"
Those type of studies are why they keep flipping on eggs. It's oxidized cholesterol (and saturated fat) which helps along heart disease, not the generic form. In fact, the body makes both if you don't eat enough. [1][2] Are our bodies trying to kill us?
"there is no convincing comparative outcome evidence (as I defined above) that common foodstuffs, e.g., saturated fats like butter, rapidly absorbed carbohydrates like white rice and potatoes, or animal proteins, are especially helpful or harmful."
The body prefers saturated fat as a fuel source. Body fat is mostly saturated. When you burn fat your running on "artery clogging" saturated fat. Secondly it likes glucose. It converts all carbs sources to glucose then glycogen. But when you overload calories (from say, rice), the body trans-saturates it to palmitic acid, a saturated fat. [3]
Hi-GI foods, like rice and potatoes, turn to glycogen quicker. Supposedly high-GI = bad. But I think the better theory is high-GI = bad, given qualifiers x and y.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipogenesis
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid