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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

The verbiage "balanced diet" is begging the question. What is a balanced diet? If it is just "one that works" than this is akin to knowing how to efficiently sort a large array from the definition of "elements are in in increasing order." Well, yes, but how do we get there?

That is, at best, claims of a balanced diet resort to existence statements, but never evidence ones. I am not going to claim I eat healthy, or that everyone should follow my diet (not many like whiskey nearly as much as I do), however, it is baffling to me the amount of stock people have placed on such things as "square meals", "food pyramids", and finally "balanced diets."

So, by all means, build strawmen to knock down against people asking questions. But realize you are likely not helping advance any actual knowledge unless you are presenting evidence.

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Balanced diet is the one based on current scientific knowledge as opposed to new age crap.

The human body have an amazing ability to adapt to the environment and we will survive as long as energy intake match energy expenditure. The only category that need some attention is protein where having too little or too much can lead to issues. An Inuit from Greenland is no more or less healthy than an American or farmer from Brazil because of what they eat.

> An Inuit from Greenland is no more or less healthy than an American or farmer from Brazil because of what they eat.

Is that really true though?

If everything else is controlled for then yes, they should be able to attain a similar level of health and quality of life despite dietary differences.

The only proven harm of sugar is that it ruins your teeth. Tooth decay is relatively rare in Europe until the introduction of refined sugar. A small number of people have a hereditary condition that causes a painful reaction to the fructose component of sucrose and they get conditioned from early life to avoid all sweet foods. They tend to have immaculate teeth but are not otherwise more healthy than the general population.

Thanks for the heads up, since you've told me that all food is equal I'm going to switch my diet to only include Soda, Doritos and Hotpockets. I'm sure my body will adapt amazingly.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...

They are equal, as anybody with rudimentary knowledge of biochemistry can tell. Modern processed food have the added benefit of micronutrient fortification so your need of vitamins should be met mostly in case you actually plan to follow that diet.

The appeal of a "balanced and natural" diet has a mostly puritan origin but its benefits are far from clear. The only proven method to delay the onset of aging is caloric restriction. Kale and supplements are mostly placebo.

You claim they are equal but also benefit from added nutrients, which hinges on them not being equal.

As I said in a sibling post, restricting calories works. But, so does restricting grams. The same way not writing code prevents bugs. It also prevents features, so is a somewhat worthless endeavor.

Unlike software, we don't need more nutrients than the baseline to function lest it is prescribed to treat an illness and eating more of the same thing don't magically makes you more healthy. For example, 10mg of vitamin C per day absolutely prevents scurvy, most dietary guidelines recommend much more but there is no proven benefit of a larger dose.

Now you've taught me that the Glycemic Index is an illusion and that Doritos are high in micronutrient fortification. This is so informative.

Indeed. Glycemic index is fairly idiosyncratic (varies from person to person) and generally a poor indicator of insulin response anyway, especially the overall amount of calories consumed ia not taken into account. It's just another pointless metric invented to sell quinoa.

What do you honestly think would happen if you did, assuming that your calories were limited to an amount that kept you at a consistent healthy weight for your size?

Restricting calories for weight control works as well as restricting lines of code for bug control. At a high level, it works. Especially if you have quality lines of code.

However, consider the trivial case of your calories coming from poison. Not shockingly, strict equivalence is out the door.

Which is not too say it is a worthless proxy. It is quite good, actually. But it is just a proxy.

Headaches from too much sodium, acne breakouts, blood sugar crashes, poor mood, high acidity in stomach, digestive problems, bloating, etc. Eating nutritionally-poor food has immediate consequences.

>Headaches from too much sodium

Not to say this is a myth like Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, but there is honestly a lot of evidence either way so we can't make establish a causative relationship for everyone. It is quite possible for people to have a short term reaction to salt because the hormones in charge of water and sodium balance can take several days to stablise, but again, we are unsure of long term consequences especially on an individual level.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2101015-does-eating-mor...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t...

The rest of your symptoms suggest that you are either eating too much like the guy from Supersize Me, or have more underlying health issues that require a better designed diet to heal. It's not food but how you eat.

I'm not sure I see where you were going. Which, check my history, is not too say you are wrong. Even odds I'm just missing it.

However, it seems you are assuming that we have adapted to our current diet. Possible? Surely. As an argument, though, this is appealing to the incredible nature of our bodies. I'd prefer evidence.

Your history suggest you are pretty well informed on this front so I will go straight to the point. First, adaptation != evolution. The ability to digest and use sugar has been with us for many millenia. There are ways where our body is not well equipped to deal with sugar (Such as dental hygiene, I touched on it briefly in another comment in this thread) but the other problems mentioned in the linked article have more to do with excessive energy intake, rather than the biochemical properties of sugar itself.

For years, medical biologists such as Robert Lustig predicted all sorts of havoc that happens when we eat sugar and promised all of our problem woulds go away if we cut sugar from our diet. A lot of it makes good theoretical sense but experimental support is sorely lacking. Seeing his name quoted in this thread again and again makes me sad in a way because we are far from sure whether he is right or wrong.

Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have undergone a similar shift in reputation: Before the 2000s it was thought to be beneficial, now you have people like Ray Peat who reckons it is literally worse than sugar and saturated fat. I have a PhD in biochemistry myself and still find it difficult to choose who to listen to and what to believe, but if Vilhjalmur Steffansson can live an entire year in apparent good health eating only meat then the human body has to be more forgiving than we assume.

I'll read up more on the PUFA debate. At a first Google, I can't say it is shocking. My first understanding is, "we were advised to replace one kind of fat in our diets with another based primarily on associations of that fat in our blood being favourable.". Basically the opposite of how we had been told to avoid eggs. Not shocking to see that logic is questionable. Actually glad to see it questioned.

On the sugar front, is the evidence really lacking? Taubes' book referenced tons of ancient studies that showed support. Anecdotally, I have yet to meet someone that was not benefited by halting soda.

I said that I am not interested in halting research in any direction. It is likely, to me, that there are interactions involved and this will require study. I have yet to see anything that vindicates sugar, though.

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