Sixty Fiver

How about this then...

A lot of people have deficient diets, vegans and vegetarians face extra challenges as they have made a choice to limit or eliminate animal products from their diet and may not be aware of what they are missing.

Simply knowing that vitamins and minerals are fat soluable should encourage people to add fats to their vegetables and include a healthy amount in their diet and they don't have to be animal based.

I prefer butter myself.

Carbonfiberboy 

The Mediterranean diets which have been studied run about 40% fat. There are many "vegetarian" diets which do not eliminate all animal products (that would be vegan) and thus contain plenty of everything. Vegan diets are problematic, particularly w/r to vitamin B12, though they normally have enough fat to make use of the fat soluble vitamins.

Starving people have deficient diets. In developed countries, deficiency diseases are relatively unknown. The problem is not deficiency, it's the extreme of sufficiency.

wolfchild

+1 Me too...If only more people were smart enough to realize that butter is the good fat and margarine is the bad fat.

Sixty Fiver

Butter and lard are both healthy fats, lard is actually better for you as long as you source it well , but that also applies to butter.

Commercial lard is nasty stuff with lots of additives, we get pure lard from our Hungarian deli.

Sixty Fiver

The mediterranean diet is well studied and proven.

Vegans do not use any animal products, strict vegetarians share the same kind of diet without the extra restrictions on non food items.

Vegetarians who eat dairy and eggs still have a much higher likelihood of developing a B12 deficiency and I do not consider them to be vegetarians... only vegans have a higher risk factor.

Some folks have such an aversion to fat and a failure to understand it's benefits that they avoid it and / or subscribe to those who promote extremely low fat diets (ie. Ornish) despite having no scientific ground to stand on.

Machka 

Just a quick comment on the health side of things ...

I visited my Dr last week and she was delighted to discover I had dropped some weight ... and really excited about sending me for bloodwork to check my cholesterol level.

Yesterday I dropped by the lab, and today when I returned from uni there was a message that my Dr had called. Usually that's not a good thing. She rang me again a couple hours later all excited to tell me that my cholesterol level had dropped one full point. 5.2 down to 4.2. She is thrilled with the results.


Must be doing something right.

Machka 

And just to recap ...

... my diet is similar to the new Australia pyramid while following good ol' CI<CO.

wolfchild

There is a "good cholesterol" and "bad cholesterol", so which one dropped ??...A drop in "overall" cholesterol level doesn't mean much. Cholesterol is essential for health and your body will produce it regardless of what type of diet you follow.

Machka 

I knew someone would ask that question. So predictable.


My overall cholesterol dropped from 5.2 to 4.2.
My LDL ... that's the "bad cholesterol" dropped as well.
My HDL ... that's the "good cholesterol" went up.

Does that make you feel better.

wolfchild

Well, congratulations and keep up the good work, it looks like you're doing something right.

Machka 

Mr Dr attributes it to losing weight.

Carbonfiberboy 

Two things everyone can do to get healthier: quit smoking and lose weight. Everything else is comparatively minor. Whatever you eat, however you exercise, your blood markers will improve if your lose weight. Proven by endless studies as well as anecdotally.

OldTryGuy

OK, I've got to chuckle here because I've know people who smoked like a steam locomotive, drank alcohol after gargling, ate enough red meat to keep WM happy, never exercised other than their elbows, excuse me----some golfing with cart and died happy in their 80's

WHILE-----myself at 64, 5' 8.5", 136lbs

I just emptied my catheter bag and sat down on some frozen beans to help ease the swelling and pain from my Gleason 10 prostate cancer surgery on Tuesday.

Never smoked, occasional drink, fish and fowl not much meat, veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds, healthy oils, lots of exercise, resting HR at recent EKG of 34, 5K to marathons walking due to BAD knees, swim to 2.4 miles with difficulties due to need for total shoulder joint replacement, hard time shifting front derailleur due to need for left wrist total replacement, great cholesterol numbers but anemic, good results from micro-nutrient test......

Do what you feel is right for you and hope for the best.

Carbonfiberboy 

That's the reason that anecdotal results are viewed somewhat scornfully here. It's about improving your odds, no guarantees. I started running at 12, been active all my life, took up a natural foods, mostly vegetarian diet in 1970. But my genes apparently were good. At 70 (in a couple weeks), I don't see any reason why I can't ride until 90.

OldTryGuy

Sometimes we're the windshield and sometimes we're the bug.

tmac100

Yup. Good news is that we are healthy for now. Bad news is that no matter what we do, we are all terminal cases.

Life is a sexually transmitted disease process. One of it's side effects will kill every one of us. We just don't know which side effect nor when.

I have been a Type 1 diabetic since 1964 and have been close to death 5 times (accidents and medical misadventure).

Do the best you can and try to make yourself happy in the process. As much as possible: exercise on a bicycle and not by excessively lifting a fork or a filled glass

Only 3 or 4 weeks until my next tour starts in the land of OZ... another workout and weight loss extravaganza

tmac100

Photosynthesis produces glucose and this is changed into starches etc in plants. By plants I refer to chlorophyll containing ones. Some plants also produce proteins/amino acids - peas, legumes, etc. Heck, cabbage even produces Vitamin C!

Sorry, but veggies are much more than fiber, minerals and water. Cattle gain weight by eating grass and humans can weight by eating vegetables - it just depends on which vegetables. Many aboriginal people (Hopi? for example) ate corn and beans and thrived without eating animals. They didn't eat nuts and seeds, tubers and fatty oil dressings in their native settings AFAIK. Lived for centuries as a nation, raising families etc - until the white man tried to "help" them...

OldTryGuy

BACK on the frozen beans after yesterday's 55.5 miler.

Sixty Fiver

Heart disease and diabetes rates have soared through the 20th century and continue to increase in the 21st.

We have tried the low fat model for 40 years and those numbers continued to rise and the difference between now and then could be pinned down to people eating more food, getting less exercise, and equally important is the breakdown of those higher calorie diets. Besides more sugar there are a lot more processed oils.

This is about the general population and not those of us that got dealt a good hand or who have stayed informed and have been practicing healthy diets for decades.

Those higher calorie diets contain a lot more sugar and not only is it more sugar, it is a lot more fructose based sweeteners... manufacturers know that our brains really like fructose and it's cheap which is really good for their bottom line.

Sugar is an inflammatory and it does not matter where it comes from, prolonged exposure to higher levels of sugars / carbs causes prolonged inflammation and increased triglyceride levels, this causes vascular damage.

There are no studies that can tie higher fat intakes to higher cardiovascular issues, as long as caloric demands are not being exceeded.

Machka 

Or in other words CI<CO.

Sixty Fiver

tmac100

There there....

BTW, how is Arvon enjoying his retirement? Are you picking up the frame-building vacuum?

Spld cyclist

I would argue that we haven't ever tried the low-fat model in the US. That's a major failing in high-fat and high-protein rhetoric. If you look at studies of average macros over time, we never reached a general state of people eating low-fat. (Obviously a small number of individuals did so, so you would need to specifically study those individuals if you want to really evaluate if it was a problem for them). Some data showed a modest reduction in fat as a percentage of calories and a modest increase in carbs. However, overall calories steadily increased, and level of activity steadily decreased over that time. We also saw the rise of processed "low-fat" crap that replaced fat with sugar, and often had more calories than the normal version of the product. I don't think anyone here would argue that such foods are healthy, although I believe a moderate consumption of them won't ruin your health provided your overall calorie balance leads to a healthy weight.

I'll also point out that the USDA and most other health authorities never promoted truly low-fat diets. The USDA recommended no more than 30% of calories from fat, which is not particularly low fat. At the same time, USDA said added sugar and fat should be used "sparingly." The drive for ultra low-fat diets, and replacing fat with excessive amounts of sugar, was a manufacturer- and mass-media driven thing. The USDA did advocate higher levels of complex carbs, but I think the data shows that such levels aren't a problem for most people, provided that overall calorie balance leads to a healthy weight. (I know you may not agree with me on the last statement).

I don't advocate low-fat diets, by the way. I think large variations between macro percentages are consistent with health, provided they are mostly from whole foods, one eats adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables, and overall calories aren't excessive. Anecdotally, different people are best suited to different macro ratios from the point of view of not eating excessively, and there's nothing wrong with experimenting on an individual basis to see what works.

jsk

Bottom line is there are lots of diet/nutritional approaches that can work. As long as you end up with the amount of calories and nutrients your body needs to thrive, it doesn't really matter how you get there. Humans are highly adaptive omnivores, if there was only one optimum diet, large populations around the world would be doomed if that diet were unavailable to them due to geographic or other limitations.

I read an article a while back that argued the most important element of an effective diet was confirmation bias. Basically if you think a diet will work and is well suited to you, chances for success are higher because the key factor to success is compliance. Compliance is easier for something you actually believe in. For some people it may be low-carb, gluten-free, low-fat, mediterranean, whatever.

Sixty Fiver

For my wife it has been a lower carb gluten free diet (celiac disease) that has yielded the greatest benefits to her health... many people who have thyroid issues experience metabolic issues and she had hers removed at 18 years old.

The post surgical weight she gained was because of steroids she had to take to prevent reactions to the stitches and even on what most would consider a near perfect diet she could not lose weight... it is only when she increased her calories and decreased her carbohydrates to very low levels was she able to shed 80 pounds.

The most significant changes are in her checkup numbers... everything is optimal and what was good has only gotten better and she no longer shows any markers for diabetes.