Hacker News Reader

Yes, food is complex and we can't pretend to understand how it it used by our bodies. A whole food diet is still surely healther in ways we can't quantify. And if it was it would be very hard to prove affirmatively.

That said, almost no one eats a whole food diet these days. I imagine this would be a step up over 70% of the diets in modern America.

This was exactly my thought, and I don't know how you mitigate the risk effectively. The problem with missing nutrients is the effects are often subtle, may not show up for a long time, and may be catastrophic.

Of course, the rebuttal is "eat food occasionally", but that may just postpone the outcome, making it even harder to know if it is safe.

yeah but if we switch to that we will probably start noticing the holes quicker

One of the comments on his blog remarks about him being a one man experiment to discover new vitamins. He acknowledges that this is likely. :-P