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Comment by nu11ptr | Hacker News Reader

For starters, they could stop encouraging unhealthy eating (cough food pyramid cough). We should be be eating like our grandparent's grandparents (or as I call it: 'A real food' diet) but instead they tell us to shun meat but feel free to eat all the heavily processed carbs with HFCS and canola oil foods you want. Don't eat red meat, but pizza and fries are just fine!

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My two of my great-grandparents lived in the house where I was growing up as a kid and teenager. They were both born in 1905, both much thinner than their descendants and both lived to their mid 90s.

Their diet was closer to the food pyramid than mine has ever been. Breakfast every morning was either Quaker oatmeal, Creme of Wheat or a similar cereal, one piece of fruit and coffee. Their lunch and supper was impossibly boring arrangements of sandwiches, meat and potatoes with a vegetable on the side, and the occasional dessert once a week or so.

They didn't "shun" meat per se, but they did live through the depression, WWII rationing, etc, and really weren't used to large quantities of it outside of big holiday dinners.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a nutritionist that recommends eating a lot of processed food. And red meat is a hazard, even though I agree that it tastes great. If you're not convinced, this YouTube channel does a good job of going over a lot of the science: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EtLNHvC4aUw

He also has a 2-parter on plant sourced fats: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qInpEKHdjXk

This is true. There are also, though, other environmental factors that make it harder to maintain healthy weight in postindustrial countries than it was in the past, even if you eat no processed foods, cap your calories and work out regularly. Pharmaceutical and industrial waste in the water supply, Roundup in the grain supply, pesticides, hormones in the meat. Personally I'm swayed by the argument that these are at the root of other issues too, like gluten intolerance.

I'm all for encouraging people to eat healthier but some of this is beyond what an average person can control unless you grow your own food and drink from your own well.

Agreed, my suspicion is our problems are 'multi-causal' which is why it makes it so difficult to pin it down to just one thing.

> unless you grow your own food and drink from your own well

there was a post a few days ago about Australia: home-farmed eggs have 40x more lead than the industrial ones, because of unchecked pollution in non-agricultural areas...

I was under the impression that that "40x" argument" largely speaks to pollution in cities and suburbs. Curious how the rural/urban breakdown relates to that number.

> eating like our grandparent's grandparents

Is there any science showcasing exactly what that was?

Michael Pollan advocates for this in his book, "In Defense of Food" [1], and to a lesser degree in "The Omnivore's Dilemma". The big take-away for me was (paraphrased) that ethnic cuisines worldwide built and supported civilizations over many generations. It's only been over the past couple generations that we've been able to deviate from traditional cooking, with the globalization and industrialization of our food supply, and that's led to poor eating habits. It's especially pronounced in the US because we have a pretty short and heterogeneous cultural history and identity. He basically advocates choosing an ethnic cuisine and sticking with it.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/315425.In_Defense_of_Foo...

We can look at it from the source side, and assume that what gets produced gets eaten (not entirely accurate of course). How have food production, processing, preservation, and distribution changed?

An interpretation of the obesity epidemic and resulting health crisis is that we are now producing a toxic quantity of food.

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