USDA Dietary Guidelines Worse Than Ever

[Snowflake]

It is a far better source of nutrients than fish oil.

Why

Dr Price’s book shows studies of when he used that to treat rickets, etc. These supplements have been forumated to match the nutrient density of dairy and cod liver oil found in primitive tribes.

Why is that optimal? The tribes just ate “whatever” was around. Why is “whatever” better than the clinically validated doses I’m talking about?

Why do people in controlled studies get the wrong answer? DUrrrrrp

but does not by-pass my need to have a balance between omega 3 and 6 in the rest of my diet,

Why the hell not?

This is the kind of diet that has satisfied people for millenia.

No. People did not take cod liver oil. At best, they ate cod. Also people did not drink milk every day. Milk is kind of a new thing.

The question is why, and understanding that could allow us to better what our ancestors achieved, but we would be silly to ignore their collective wisdom and simply do what the government tells us to do, by adopting a low fat diet and shunning the foods our grandparents ate.

Because the government is not the only thing pushing low fat diets. There are also piles and piles of research validating the efficacy of low fat diets. You ignore them because you’re biased and illiterate. Nuff said.

[Phil_Ridley]

Fermented cod liver oil, which is produced without heat extraction, has a far higher concentration of vitamin’s A, D, E and K2. It is our hypothesis that these are the key thing lacking in modern diets. Dr Price found on average 10x more of these vitamins in the diet of primitives than in the diets of the then western diet, and the amount of these vitamins have reduced in our diet as foods have become more processed and as factory farming has become more prevalent.

And Dr Price’s study was randomized, taking samples of food from people’s in numerous countries. He was the founder and head of the American Dental Association’s research program and had his own laboratory to analyse the food samples, so we are not messing around with heresay. His book was required reading for dental and anthropology students till about the mid 20th Century and Dr Price wrote textbooks for the US Navy dentists.

[Phil_Ridley]

“Because the government is not the only thing pushing low fat diets. There are also piles and piles of research validating the efficacy of low fat diets. You ignore them because you’re biased and illiterate. Nuff said.”

Most Austrian economists will be aware that much of research nowadays involves government grants and, a lot is carried out by corporations which have a vested interest in replacing traditional foods with modern, processed alternatives.

You surely cannot dismiss that we have become sicker as a nation, and more obese the more we have followed the low fat strictures? That is documented.

[Snowflake]

Fermented cod liver oil, which is produced without heat extraction, has a far higher concentration of vitamin’s A, D, E and K2

So is everyone deficient in those minerals? SOURCE? Why is cod oil the best place to get them? Its called taking a multivitamin with food. And inb4 you say “but they’re fat soluble”. Food has fat in it. Easy.

And cavemen didn’t ingest fermented cod oil. I guess the wisdom of your ancestors only counts against your opponents. Lol.

Dr Price found on average 10x more of these vitamins in the diet of primitives than in the diets of the then western diet, and the amount of these vitamins have reduced in our diet as foods have become more processed and as factory farming has become more prevalent.

So what if they got 10x more? Who says 10% isn’t sufficient? I get 50x more vitamin C than my ancestors. Are they wrong or am I wrong or does it not matter?

And Dr Price’s study was randomized, taking samples of food from people’s in numerous countries. He was the founder and head of the American Dental Association’s research program and had his own laboratory to analyse the food samples, so we are not messing around with heresay. His book was required reading for dental and anthropology students till about the mid 20th Century and Dr Price wrote textbooks for the US Navy dentists.

Yes we are. Becuase our ancestors just ate “whatever”. “Whatever” is not scientifically validated. You need controlled studies bro.

[Snowflake]

Most Austrian economists will be aware that much of research nowadays involves government grants and, a lot is carried out by corporations which have a vested interest in replacing traditional foods with modern, processed alternatives.

Sure. If the government funds a study it might be biased. But it also might be true. You could, oh, I don’t know, look at the study? Or you could just ignore all the government studies and focus on studies done by the private sector. Hint - the private sector is pushing omega 3 fish oil caps and that’s about it. Most private diets (weight watchers) push calorie counting and low fat. Market failure much?

You surely cannot dismiss that we have become sicker as a nation, and more obese the more we have followed the low fat strictures? That is documented.

Actually increasing calories has tracked much better with obesity. Total fat intake is about the same (proportion of fat has decreased, but only because proportions of other nutrients has increased. Its still about the same >TOTAL< fat intake. I know I know, proportion vs absolutes is lost on you).

[thelion]

I will contribute only one thing to this thread:

TheLion’s Diet (1.5 years):

I eat filet mignon, 1 or 2 small steaks, every day. With homeade peach salsa. I alternate with chilean sea bass to mix things up, also with peach salsa.

I eat cucumber or carrot or seaweed salad.

I eat lots of rice, with miso soup: I have top rice cooker–go buy one. Japan should replace current flag with flag of rice cooker! Just best thing ever for quick eating.

I eat soba noodles topped with omelet, sunny side up, every other day.

I eat sushi of seaweed, cucumber, vinegar rice: eal + capelin roe, or salmon roe, or bluefin, or sea urchin roe. I make myself, or buy if lazy and same ingredients are available, or if crab fried is availabe. This, every other day, or every two days, according to whether I feel like it.

I like osetrina fish, but its not always available where I live, so I eat it much less often than above. I highly recommend visting Russian stores to get it, and eat it every other day, if possible.

(Then again, I’ve also eaten spam + rice + cucumber + seaweed roll, but only 5 times in whole life. That because spam, delicious and cheaper, however feels like I swallowed a cement brick.)

I drink hot green tea (matcha), and sometime nice black tea (chefir): This, or plain cold water held in fridge. Nothing else: no coke or pepsi or sweet drinks!

If I want sugar, no deal. No snacks, nor anything sweet, unless its small piece of dark chocolate.

I found this gives best results in terms of work productivity. I’ve eaten nothing else, except if I visit restaurents, which usually feels disappointing in comparison to what I usually eat.

It is quick to produce diet, but marginally more expensive for one person. It also takes cooking skills, and requires 1 hour daily to produce, plus 1 hour daily all three meals to consume.

1. Not too much fat, not too little fat. Too little fat or meat means calories must come from more bulky or less calorie dense source, grains, so that digestion problems occur, because too much energy is required to digest (what we learn from controvery about George Stigler’s “optimal cheap diet” of bulk grain + spinach + condensed milk).

2. Never eat food which is not tasty. Tasty food is more easily digested, because of nervous and reflex connections. (Go figure! Pavlov won his nobel prize for this point, that tasty food is better digested than less tasty food, all other things equal, in his late-1800’s book.) Pay more, but eat tasty food which is not made of sand plus glue when it enters your stomach.

3. Don’t eat anything else. As far as ice cream: Blue Bell if available, just about nothing else if no available, unless you want to pay for fedex plus dry ice. I don’t, but local restaurent offers it.

[Phil_Ridley]

Regarding sugar, that is an interesting one. The problem with sugar is that it is refined today. It takes about 20 molecules of magnesium to metabolize one molecule of glucose. Raw cane sugar actually has all the magnesium the body needs to megabolize the glucose but, that is taken out when the mollasses is removed, with refined sugar being a toxic by-product of mollasses production. So, dehydrated cane sugar (rapadura) or, mollasses is suitable. The same is true with refined flour, white bread, etc.

Other whole sweeteners are fine, like honey and maple syrup because they contain the minerals required to metabolize the glucose.

So, refined white flour and sugar deplete the body of minerals. Incidentally, it is our hypothesis that this mineral depletion is what actually causes tooth decay, because when mineral depleted, the tooth enamel can no-longer re-mineralize, which is achieved via the saliva. This demineralization then makes the tooth vulnerable to fermentation. Rami Nagel explains how this knowledge can be used to treat tooth decay via diet: curetoothdecay.com

[Phil_Ridley]

Incidentally, regarding tasty food, salt helps activate digestive enzmes. Again, refined table salt can cause problems because it lacks the proper mineral balance, but unrefined sea and rock salt does not and we hypothesize that it actually helps normalize blood pressure. It has all the minerals the body requires in the correct proportions, in easy to absorb electrolyte form. Yet government tells us to simply cut out salt, but excess salt is simply exreted via sweat glands. Incidentally, I believe body odor to be a salt deficiency because if enough salt is excreted in sweat, pathogens which cause body odor could not survive.

We had vastly more salt in our traditional diets because we used it to ferment vegetables for winter (saeurkraut) and, to cure meats. Traditionally, peas were stacked on layers of salt to keep the peas fresh right up until Christmas.

Today’s dietary guidelines would banish that tradition.

[thelion]

I’ve got plenty of salt in my diet, via sushi and sauces for salad or meat. It’s just heavy traditional russian diet with some things taken from japan.

I would order raw sugar, but good quality chocolate already has alot to counter fact that good chocolate is naturally bitter.

I find day-time productivity is much improved simply by dropping the cash and eating best your market offers: that means meat + fish.

Incidentally, people in Japan pre-industrialization did not eat any of this, nor did such food exist. Most survived according to books i’ve read on yams + brown rice! No freezer = no sushi. In russia, most fish was salted (e.g., herring or osetrina).

The high meat diet is product of modern industrialization and our capitalist market, for vast majority of people.

And people, just when this is possible, do not want to take advantage of it! They want to eat soy bars, because they think its good for them…

[Wheylous]

My family now only uses raw honey. No refined sugars whatsoever. Idk why I post this, but I do. So deal with it.

[Snowflake]

No sources? Its just religious mumbo jumbo. Evil gremlins living in food waiting to make you fat or destroy your teeth. Lol.

I mean people like to think that whatever they’re doing is optimal. So they just make up a bunch of reasons to try and objectify their behaviour. At best, it borders on pseudoscience. More often than not, ts akin to believing in magic. If you can’t find controlled studies backing up your claims, your claims are probably wrong.

It doesn’t matter if paleo man ate 58291x more unrefined sodium. Paleo man ate “whatever”. That doesn’t mean its optimal for your diet. Paleo man also went through frequent intermittent periods of starvation. Do you do that too? Its ALL NATURAL. No you don’t. Because you don’t take your own logic seriously. This is the biggest giveaway. Alternating periods of starvation have profound health effects (read up on calorie restriction), but for some reason they don’t apply to you. “Natural” is good whenever it validates something you already want to do. “Natural” is ignored whenever it tells you to do something you don’t want to do.

Again, controlled studies or gtfo. Everything else is just self flattering masturbation. It is literally a religion that you have personally created to validate your personal hangups and superstitions.

[Phil_Ridley]

Wheylous replied on Wed, Sep 14 2011 4:42 PM My family now only uses raw honey. No refined sugars whatsoever. Idk why I post this, but I do. So deal with it.

Apparently we must have randomized studies before we introduce things like natural honey into our diets and before we stop consuming refined sugar. And apparently we are morons to believe that whole foods and grass fed animals are better than refined foods and factory farmed animals. Welcome to 1984, where 2+2=anything but 4.

[Snowflake]

There’s a difference between consuming “organic” vs saying “organic is the healthiest thing ever”.

If you say “I consume organic because there’s a 5% chance it is better than processed, and a 95% that its equal”, then that is more reasonable. This is actually my stance on aspartame - I don’t think there’s good evidence that it has negative effects, but because of my personal risk preferences and lack of mitigating payoffs, I avoid aspartame.

Not religious though.

[thelion]

For me, main point is that eating naturally also happens to be tastier!

Look at my diet and spot anything highly processed. As the old russian joke goes: if you have guests, go to your basement and take the wine + paddlefish. Can’t do better than that.

This is mostly because tastiest stuff is all natural, e.g., bluefin or chilean sea-bass.

I’m a grad student. I’m not exactly wealthy. But even I can afford it thanks to our market! That’s capitalism.

[Phil_Ridley]

Actually Sieben, it is a myth that the anarchy of Paleo times meant chaos. Infact, in the family unit, with elders there to teach children wise traditions, there would have been strict dietary traditions. For example, Dr Price observed hunter gatherers in USA living in the 1930’s as they had for thousands of years. They preferred the organ meat and fats, shunning lean meat during times of plenty, feeding it to their dogs. They didn’t eat vegetables but knew that they could avoid scurvey by consuming raw adrenal glands, which Price discovered to have the highest concentration of vitamin C of any food known. The Indians would extract the adrenal gland as soon as they killed an animal.

Similar story with eskimo’s who would ferment their fish because they observed that they could work longer and didn’t get sick when they had fermented rather than cooked fish. They learned things and maintained strong traditions because they did not have hospitals to fall back on.

So, the truth is, absent a government, the family unit and community grouping actually tends to provide a stronger set of rules and traditions. It is a myth that anarchy breeds chaos. That only happens when people dependent on the State are suddenly cast aside via hyperinflation or similar such breakdown of the social security net, with no culture remaining for independence, and society breaks down.

Dr Price’s chapter on Indians is here: Primitive and Modernized North American Indians

His chapter on Eskimo’s is here: Isolated and Modernized Eskimos

You can read these and see that Primitive societies were very organized with strong rules and traditions. When asked why they did these things, they would always say that it was to ensure that they had healthy babies.

[Phil_Ridley]

Aspartame is toxic because it breaks down in the gut into formaldehyde and wood alcohol. It is a product of genetically modified e-coli bacteria. The FDA refused to approve it twice before Rumsfeld rammed it through when he was in Office. He had major shares in the company. The illness it causes is often called Rumsfeld’s disease.

[Phil_Ridley]

Is Lew Rockwell watching this thread?

His most recent podcast is all about how the USDA’s Food Pyramid is a fraud: - http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2011/09/13/223-government-hates-good-health/

The only thing the Weston A Price Foundation disagrees with about the standard Paleo diet is that it often promotes lean meat, when infact the body requires fat soluble vitamins to metabolize protein. But regardless, in this podcast, Lew Rockwell comes out against the USDA’s Food Pyramid.

[Phil_Ridley]

Oh, and another major way the Weston A Price Foundation differs from Paleo is that we explain how traditional tribes incorporated grains into their diet, through soaking and fermenting it. Listening to the above podcast, the lady is infact pro-fats, and that is a trend in Paleo of recent years.

[Snowflake]

@Phil Ridley

Actually Sieben, it is a myth that the anarchy of Paleo times meant chaos.

Actually, I didn’t say Paleo times were chaotic. I said they had periods of intermittent starvation.

@Phil Ridley

Infact, in the family unit, with elders there to teach children wise traditions, there would have been strict dietary traditions.

I didn’t say anything to the contrary. Its just, if there’s no food, it doesn’t matter what your dietary tradition is. You don’t eat.

@Phil Ridley

For example, Dr Price observed hunter gatherers in USA living in the 1930’s as they had for thousands of years. They preferred the organ meat and fats, shunning lean meat during times of plenty, feeding it to their dogs. They didn’t eat vegetables but knew that they could avoid scurvey by consuming raw adrenal glands, which Price discovered to have the highest concentration of vitamin C of any food known. The Indians would extract the adrenal gland as soon as they killed an animal.

Sounds superstitious. Again, controlled studies or bust. And again, these people had laughable life expectancies.

@Phil Ridley

Similar story with eskimo’s who would ferment their fish because they observed that they could work longer and didn’t get sick when they had fermented rather than cooked fish. They learned things and maintained strong traditions because they did not have hospitals to fall back on.

Here’s a hint - Paleo man ate as much fat as he could because calories were SCARCE. Its either you eat all the fat you can, or you die. This is no longer the case.

@Phil Ridley

So, the truth is, absent a government, the family unit and community grouping actually tends to provide a stronger set of rules and traditions. It is a myth that anarchy breeds chaos. That only happens when people dependent on the State are suddenly cast aside via hyperinflation or similar such breakdown of the social security net, with no culture remaining for independence, and society breaks down.

Thanks for the lesson. I really did not know anything about anarchy. I mean, I thought that government was the only reason we don’t have SEASONAL famines anymore.

/sarcasm

You can read these and see that Primitive societies were very organized with strong rules and traditions. When asked why they did these things, they would always say that it was to ensure that they had healthy babies.

Well its not a controlled study, so again, no one cares. These kinds of studies are not even apliccable to us because we have different genetics and different lifestyles. Again, do you do heavy labor outside and go through months of total starvation? No? Because that’s what they did.

You just cherry pick whatever you already want to do and ignore the stuff you don’t want to do. Again, it is a religion that you are inventing that validates your personal (arbitrary, irrational) preferences. Its just a cultural thing. Plz don’t pretend there is any grain of truth to it.

Man I just made a mistake. I asked a religious fanatic to be honest

[Snowflake]

@Phil Ridley

Oh, and another major way the Weston A Price Foundation differs from Paleo is that we explain how traditional tribes incorporated grains into their diet,

This is EXACTLY what Paleo does.