22 thoughts on “Everything You Know About Diet Is Wrong”
The lard cancels out all the bad stuff from the sugar and carbs in the donuts. It does! Why are you looking at me like that!?!
Mmm… donuts…
No – donuts are bad. White flour and sugar are no good, and almost no donuts today are cooked in lard. They’re cooked in soybean oil, usually. That shit is poison.
(Making donuts the trifecta of awful-for-you.)
Here’s a quick way to figure this out – Did the food exist 500 years ago? Then it’s probably safe. Vegetable oils are an industrially produced chemical that not even mold will grow on. It’s not food.
Sorry, I should say “Did all of the ingredients exist 500 years ago?”
Rand,
As much as I hate to always be a contrarian about everything and as much as I would like this to be true (damn I miss doughnuts) the article does say the research is preliminary.
Brock… you do realize that I was joking, don’t you?
I read the study, but can’t for the life of me figure out how eating lard can improve the performance of my fireplace.
And I wish it would, cause I really don’t want to have a HEARTH attack. That sounds down right scary!
Vegetable oils are an industrially produced chemical that not even mold will grow on. It’s not food.
Is lard typically much more natural? The stuff I got at the supermarket was rendered and treated to the point that it’s lasted more than year on the shelf without refrigeration.
Nobody mentioned W.A. Sleeper yet?
Commercial lard is usually hydrogenated these days. About the only place you can find the real thing is in ethnic markets. Of course, it’s not exactly difficult to make your own, just time consuming.
Brock… you do realize that I was joking, don’t you?
I was responding to Rand.
Is lard typically much more natural? The stuff I got at the supermarket was rendered and treated to the point that it’s lasted more than year on the shelf without refrigeration.
Well, lard can be more natural. That doesn’t mean some factory somewhere can’t ruin it with over-processing. Same problem with ordinary high fructose corn syrup. In an ear of corn (its natural state) it’s perfectly healthy. Refine and process it enough however and pretty soon you’ve got a problem.
Buy your lard from a local farmer if you can. Lard (or tallow, which is even healthier (the Torah was right to discourage pork)) should just be rendered using heat and a collander, and not much more.
Again, the food problem rears one of many ugly hydra-like heads. Frak monkey chow! Nutritious well-balanced yet delicious sugary cinnamon rolls would solve all of the world’s problems. Really, would you rather commit genocide and war crimes, or have a warm, tasty donut for breakfast, lunch and dinner if you so chose? I know which one I’d pick, and I’m not the only one.
“Unfortunately, doctors stress that the research is still preliminary – and it is far too early to swap muesli topped with blueberries for a traditional English breakfast.”
Yeah, any time they have a ‘finding’ where something like this is GOOD for you, they suggest we wait for further study. But if they find a preliminary piece of information saying “X” might be bad for you, you should STOP eating or doing that TODAY!!!
It all just looks like control to me anymore.
Long ago, I gave up on listening to any of these so-called experts (ex-spurt: an “ex” is a has-been and a “spurt” is a drip under pressure). One pronouncement is soon followed by another one that says exactly the opposite thing. I get the impression that none of them know what the hell they’re talking about.
So, in the meantime, I eat what I want in moderation. Sooner or later, I’m going to die anyway so I might as well have some enjoyment out of life.
If experts say that plate of greasy food in the article is good for you, I guess I should also trust twhat he experts say about Global Warming. Neither passes the common sense test, but what the hell, they’re the experts.
Just about everything is bad for you if you fail to take it in moderation. So feel free to eat that donut, just not the other 11 in the package, and get out the ol exercise bike at the end of the day.
Remember, no calories in the hole in the middle 🙂
Brock: Yeah, namecalling them makes you right.
Vegetable oils are “a chemical”, all right. So are all the foods you think are healthy, because all foods are “chemicals”.
“Processed” oils are still food. The body can utilize the energy in their fats. It’s metabolized. It’s food.
(Do you have data for “old” vegetable oils and mold in comparison? I’d be shocked if they grew mold either, since molds like moisture, which is pretty much absent in vegetable oils, old or new.
And why should we care about “mold doesn’t grow on it”?
This reeks of the old hippie hysteria over “preservatives”, as if rotting was a sign of goodness.)
“Natural” means almost nothing, and it most assuredly does NOT mean that it’s “good for you”.
That fallacy is sadly nearly impossible to stamp out.
Sigivald – A lot of commercial frying oils contain trans-fats in quantity. Trans fats are found nowhere in nature except as a very minor impurity and have all the problematic qualities of unprocessed polyunsaturates (mainly susceptibility to oxidative damage) and none of the good ones.
One of the many reasons for not putting polyunsaturated oils in a deep fat fryer. From a health point of view the best type of fat is probably beef dripping. (Reason? Unsaturated bonds in natural fats are in the cis configuration, which is unfortunately the less stable one – and temperatures of 150-200 deg C are sufficient to make them flip.)
High-carb foods – particularly those with easily available carbs, which tend to be the most processed ones – can lead to unstable blood sugar levels, and beyond a certain level glucose damages various structural and working proteins directly and irreversibly. Which is why poorly-controlled type I diabetics tend to die young, of heart and circulatory disease.
We all ought to be eating the food we are evolved for. Which does not include processed sugar, white flour and the witches’ brew of chemicals found in processed food.
So where is my mastodon steak? Wasn’t that what our ancestors were chowing down on fifty thousand years ago? You know, those ancestors with their average lifespans of twenty-five. Let’s eat like them.
Andrea,
PLEASE don’t cotinue to use the lifespan averages as a point of comparison. Average life expectancy is not a great correlation for overall health. Our life expectancy is up because we have things like antibiotics and blood transfusions; not because our food is better.
Further, avergage for the population is not life expectancy for the individual. The average is low because of high child-mortality and death from diseases and accidents we have cures to now. A better comparison is the health of any two individuals in any two age categories. If you compared the average 60-year-old hunter gatherer (and many of them did live that long), he’s far healthier and stronger than many Americans of the same age.
The worse thing for you is grain. The only animals on the planet which have evolved to consume large amounts of grain with few adverse effects are birds. Grains make you fat, give you diabetes and inflame your intestinal tract. Whole grains are actually worse for your intestine than refined grains.
The only things humans should eat are meat, nuts, fruits, veggies and some roots. That’s what our bodies have evolved to handle with few adverse effects over the last couple hundred thousand years. Humans only began eating cereal grains about seven thousand years ago. Eating meat implies a fair amount of saturated fats. Some cultures like eskimoes consume nothing but meat high in saturated fats. You need saturated fats for brain and muscle function. Your heart is pure muscle.
I agree with Brock about what is responsible for increasing lifespans. I would add to that sanitary sewers and clean drinking water, great innovations both.
Note to self: do not respond to Brock ever again. The resulting boredom is deadlier than a tofu-and-bulgur veggie burger on a whole grain kaiser roll.
If you compared the average 60-year-old hunter gatherer (and many of them did live that long), he’s far healthier and stronger than many Americans of the same age.
I suspect that’s more a function of genetics than diet.
The lard cancels out all the bad stuff from the sugar and carbs in the donuts. It does! Why are you looking at me like that!?!
Mmm… donuts…
No – donuts are bad. White flour and sugar are no good, and almost no donuts today are cooked in lard. They’re cooked in soybean oil, usually. That shit is poison.
(Making donuts the trifecta of awful-for-you.)
Here’s a quick way to figure this out – Did the food exist 500 years ago? Then it’s probably safe. Vegetable oils are an industrially produced chemical that not even mold will grow on. It’s not food.
Sorry, I should say “Did all of the ingredients exist 500 years ago?”
Rand,
As much as I hate to always be a contrarian about everything and as much as I would like this to be true (damn I miss doughnuts) the article does say the research is preliminary.
Brock… you do realize that I was joking, don’t you?
I read the study, but can’t for the life of me figure out how eating lard can improve the performance of my fireplace.
And I wish it would, cause I really don’t want to have a HEARTH attack. That sounds down right scary!
Is lard typically much more natural? The stuff I got at the supermarket was rendered and treated to the point that it’s lasted more than year on the shelf without refrigeration.
Nobody mentioned W.A. Sleeper yet?
Commercial lard is usually hydrogenated these days. About the only place you can find the real thing is in ethnic markets. Of course, it’s not exactly difficult to make your own, just time consuming.
I was responding to Rand.
Well, lard can be more natural. That doesn’t mean some factory somewhere can’t ruin it with over-processing. Same problem with ordinary high fructose corn syrup. In an ear of corn (its natural state) it’s perfectly healthy. Refine and process it enough however and pretty soon you’ve got a problem.
Buy your lard from a local farmer if you can. Lard (or tallow, which is even healthier (the Torah was right to discourage pork)) should just be rendered using heat and a collander, and not much more.
Again, the food problem rears one of many ugly hydra-like heads. Frak monkey chow! Nutritious well-balanced yet delicious sugary cinnamon rolls would solve all of the world’s problems. Really, would you rather commit genocide and war crimes, or have a warm, tasty donut for breakfast, lunch and dinner if you so chose? I know which one I’d pick, and I’m not the only one.
“Unfortunately, doctors stress that the research is still preliminary – and it is far too early to swap muesli topped with blueberries for a traditional English breakfast.”
Yeah, any time they have a ‘finding’ where something like this is GOOD for you, they suggest we wait for further study. But if they find a preliminary piece of information saying “X” might be bad for you, you should STOP eating or doing that TODAY!!!
It all just looks like control to me anymore.
Long ago, I gave up on listening to any of these so-called experts (ex-spurt: an “ex” is a has-been and a “spurt” is a drip under pressure). One pronouncement is soon followed by another one that says exactly the opposite thing. I get the impression that none of them know what the hell they’re talking about.
So, in the meantime, I eat what I want in moderation. Sooner or later, I’m going to die anyway so I might as well have some enjoyment out of life.
If experts say that plate of greasy food in the article is good for you, I guess I should also trust twhat he experts say about Global Warming. Neither passes the common sense test, but what the hell, they’re the experts.
Just about everything is bad for you if you fail to take it in moderation. So feel free to eat that donut, just not the other 11 in the package, and get out the ol exercise bike at the end of the day.
Remember, no calories in the hole in the middle 🙂
Brock: Yeah, namecalling them makes you right.
Vegetable oils are “a chemical”, all right. So are all the foods you think are healthy, because all foods are “chemicals”.
“Processed” oils are still food. The body can utilize the energy in their fats. It’s metabolized. It’s food.
(Do you have data for “old” vegetable oils and mold in comparison? I’d be shocked if they grew mold either, since molds like moisture, which is pretty much absent in vegetable oils, old or new.
And why should we care about “mold doesn’t grow on it”?
This reeks of the old hippie hysteria over “preservatives”, as if rotting was a sign of goodness.)
“Natural” means almost nothing, and it most assuredly does NOT mean that it’s “good for you”.
That fallacy is sadly nearly impossible to stamp out.
Sigivald – A lot of commercial frying oils contain trans-fats in quantity. Trans fats are found nowhere in nature except as a very minor impurity and have all the problematic qualities of unprocessed polyunsaturates (mainly susceptibility to oxidative damage) and none of the good ones.
One of the many reasons for not putting polyunsaturated oils in a deep fat fryer. From a health point of view the best type of fat is probably beef dripping. (Reason? Unsaturated bonds in natural fats are in the cis configuration, which is unfortunately the less stable one – and temperatures of 150-200 deg C are sufficient to make them flip.)
High-carb foods – particularly those with easily available carbs, which tend to be the most processed ones – can lead to unstable blood sugar levels, and beyond a certain level glucose damages various structural and working proteins directly and irreversibly. Which is why poorly-controlled type I diabetics tend to die young, of heart and circulatory disease.
We all ought to be eating the food we are evolved for. Which does not include processed sugar, white flour and the witches’ brew of chemicals found in processed food.
So where is my mastodon steak? Wasn’t that what our ancestors were chowing down on fifty thousand years ago? You know, those ancestors with their average lifespans of twenty-five. Let’s eat like them.
Andrea,
PLEASE don’t cotinue to use the lifespan averages as a point of comparison. Average life expectancy is not a great correlation for overall health. Our life expectancy is up because we have things like antibiotics and blood transfusions; not because our food is better.
Further, avergage for the population is not life expectancy for the individual. The average is low because of high child-mortality and death from diseases and accidents we have cures to now. A better comparison is the health of any two individuals in any two age categories. If you compared the average 60-year-old hunter gatherer (and many of them did live that long), he’s far healthier and stronger than many Americans of the same age.
The worse thing for you is grain. The only animals on the planet which have evolved to consume large amounts of grain with few adverse effects are birds. Grains make you fat, give you diabetes and inflame your intestinal tract. Whole grains are actually worse for your intestine than refined grains.
The only things humans should eat are meat, nuts, fruits, veggies and some roots. That’s what our bodies have evolved to handle with few adverse effects over the last couple hundred thousand years. Humans only began eating cereal grains about seven thousand years ago. Eating meat implies a fair amount of saturated fats. Some cultures like eskimoes consume nothing but meat high in saturated fats. You need saturated fats for brain and muscle function. Your heart is pure muscle.
I agree with Brock about what is responsible for increasing lifespans. I would add to that sanitary sewers and clean drinking water, great innovations both.
Note to self: do not respond to Brock ever again. The resulting boredom is deadlier than a tofu-and-bulgur veggie burger on a whole grain kaiser roll.
If you compared the average 60-year-old hunter gatherer (and many of them did live that long), he’s far healthier and stronger than many Americans of the same age.
I suspect that’s more a function of genetics than diet.