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Comment by amanaplanacanal | Hacker News Reader

I think part of the problem is we don't really know what a healthy diet looks like. We can point to what is probably unhealthy: eating tons of sugar filled items is probably bad, eating a lot of fried food is at least questionable, but beyond that we really don't know. The research is either poorly done, impossible to do, or you can find studies that go both ways.

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Pretty sure the verdict is in - natural foods over processed.

That's not very useful. There are many healthy processed foods. It's better if we actually define what types of processing are unhealthy.

I mean a healthy diet is a variety of fruits and vegetables, with a decent supplement of whole grains and occasional lean meats and eggs. Minimally processed as much as possible - whole ingredients should be the majority of calories.

The details don’t matter so much, as long as you get a variety and generally stick to the above guidelines.

I think you can judge how healthy a diet is by how many people get diseases, malnutrition or premature death as a result of a diet, and almost nobody is going to suffer because of that diet plan above.

This seems like good and standard advice does not seem to be controversial at all. I think the question is which practical foods are healthy.

I agree, it’s a trick question because no food is healthy by itself, foods are only healthy as part of a whole. And as long as your foods usually fit with the basic standard advice, then you’re eating healthy foods.

If you have cheese as a large component of almost every meal, then you’re deviating a lot from the basic advice, so it’s not healthy. If you have a bit of cheese on your breakfast of eggs and toast a couple times per week, then it’s healthy.

What's your protein intake with that diet though? A person with 80kg needs around 120-160g of protein a day (depending on activity etc), that seems tricky if the source of your protein is non-animal based.

Does he need that much? I'm pretty sure 5-6 generations ago the most muscular and the strongest man in my region ate turnips and grains with the occasional meat. The only other big source of meat were beans and realistically people at the time didn't eat more then 50-70 grams a day of them. Eating meat everyday is a very recent development. Why we suddenly need so much protein that we struggle to find it in a basic food that is more rich and varied then a few hundred years ago?

The current recommendation is in this region, yes. The bare minimum is 0.8g per kg. But that is survival mode.

I am generally not a huge fan of the historical line of thinking. 6 generations ago you died significantly earlier with not a great health along the way. It is a very recent development to live to (avg) 83. Would the strongest man in your region perform at a high level if he wasn't doing manual labour and died at 95?

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