Genetics vs how you treat your body.

[Gestopft]

It really isnt hard, listen to what your body tells you not some person you follow on twitter.

I agree, you shouldn't listen to people on Twitter.

But the problem with this statement is that we, as a species, evolved to deal with scarcity, not surplus. We also had considerably more active lifestyles throughout our evolutionary history than we do now. Having so much food available that you would consciously eat less to stay healthy is a very new development- our bodies simply aren't designed to deal with constant surplus, especially at the lower activity levels.

"Eat what you want" works fine for some people, especially those that remain active, but I wouldn't call it sound advice for the general public.

[Fascinate]

See, this is what happens when basic science literacy isn't addressed in school programs. I don't mean teaching kids that "the mitochondria is the power house of the cell", I'm talking about systematic education on what science is, and is not.

No scientist in their right mind, myself included, will actually tell you that we understand the complex interplay of genetics, environmental factors and microbiome factors that actually influence how an individual's body responds to the macronutrients they consume. Without difficult, in-depth and extremely costly testing on a person-by-person basis, it's impossible to really know. What the scientists engaged in the research have done have collected as much data as possible, and built a model that applies to the majority of all humans.

Two standard deviations (by any observable parameter) from the mean, you'll find that most dietary science models hold up really well. But it's the last 5-10% of the population that keep producing all the anecdotes that have people doubting the consensus. Yes, there are people who can wreak havoc with their body and not have it effect them. Yes, there are people who can treat their body as a temple and still die at 40 of a heart attack. But they are in the vast minority. The internet is an echo chamber for these sorts of anecdotes, leading people to indulge in confirmation biases.

At the end of the day, what matters is that calories in are less than, or equal to, calories out. On top of that, add in some basic observance of a balance of macronutrients (protein, fat, carbohydrate etc.) and make sure you get enough of you dietary vitamins. If that doesn't keep you generally healthy, consult a doctor ... because you've likely won the genetic lottery and have some sort of fucked up statistically rare interaction between the less well understood factors in the whole system.

TL : DR

Science is not an oracle. Science is not a religion. Learn how to interpret scientific findings. Learn how the law of very large numbers works. Eat what makes you healthy. If someone else feels like they need to do different, and isn't asking for your help, mind your own fucking business just this once.

I think your numbers are a bit off if i am honest. There are a whole lot of people that have intaked WAY more than the recommended daily amount of sodium for their entire lives and have lived a healthy long life. This isnt about salt tho, its about listening to your body and how you feel when you eat certain foods. If we are to take this discussion further, do you think the food pyramid is a good general guideline to follow?

[kamuimac]

Accepting that unless you go out of your way to destroy your body with excess food/drugs your DNA will dictate your lifespan is a bitter pill to swallow for most people.

for all we know when you are after 40-50 you already live on borrowed time thx to developement in medicin - 200 years ago you would be lucky to live up to 40 now were discussing hiting 100 ? thats anormal jump in lifespan one that most of our bodies simply cant handle because they werent geneticly designed to live so long.

[Deleted]

I am only suggesting to use your intuition, as i dont feel nutrition facts are actually facts it really depends on a persons individual genetic makeup.

Your intuition is flawed as shit. Lacks external verification apart from "Tastes bitter ; might be associated to bad".

[kamuimac]

I think your numbers are a bit off if i am honest. There are a whole lot of people that have intaked WAY more than the recommended daily amount of sodium for their entire lives and have lived a healthy long life. This isnt about salt tho, its about listening to your body and how you feel when you eat certain foods. If we are to take this discussion further, do you think the food pyramid is a good general guideline to follow?

hes probably speaking about one of most standard statistical distributions - Gauss or T-student used for analityc purposes.

[Fascinate]

I agree, you shouldn't listen to people on Twitter.

But the problem with this statement is that we, as a species, evolved to deal with scarcity, not surplus. We also had considerably more active lifestyles throughout our evolutionary history than we do now. Having so much food available that you would consciously eat less to stay healthy is a very new development- our bodies simply aren't designed to deal with constant surplus, especially at the lower activity levels.

"Eat what you want" works fine for some people, especially those that remain active, but I wouldn't call it sound advice for the general public.

I didnt say "eat what you want" i said listen to what your body tells you. There is a big difference between those two things. For example i like the taste of mini donuts from the state fair, but my body KNOWS that is not good for me. On the other hand i can eat a hamburger every day for the rest of my life and my body wouldnt complain one bit. This is what i am trying to get across, there could be someone out there that could eat mini donuts their whole life and feel fine.

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Your intuition is flawed as shit. Lacks external verification apart from "Tastes bitter ; might be associated to bad".

I never said anything about taste. If you can eat a food regularly and feel good but it goes against what science or the media tells you to be healthy, feel free to eat that food...

On a side note, you popup in a lot of threads i make claiming i am an idiot or something. Would you like to have a skype call, your topic of choice?

[llandrywyn]

I think your numbers are a bit off if i am honest. There are a whole lot of people that have intaked WAY more than the recommended daily amount of sodium for their entire lives and have lived a healthy long life. This isnt about salt tho, its about listening to your body and how you feel when you eat certain foods. If we are to take this discussion further, do you think the food pyramid is a good general guideline to follow?

The good thing about science, is that the numbers don't care about your feelings. Salt balance is hugely complicated, but it is one of those examples where interpreting the scientific literacy is important. If you look at the sources most nutritional guidelines use, it comes from pretty rudimentary science that's 40 years old. I won't derail to talking about salt more, but it's one of those examples where the actual science is really not in solid consensus at all.

To quote an old mentor of mine;

"Fuck the food pyramid".

Let's look at this logically for a minute - the first thing that happens when you chew and swallow something is that your salivary enzymes begin to break it down, and then it gets dumped into a vat of acid and bile. More enzymes, some mechanical mixing, so by the time it actually crosses the endothelial barrier lining your stomach and can actually chemically interact with your body, we're not talking about foods any more. We're talking about simple lipids and glycerol based small molecules (from fats), short peptides and amino acids (from protein), and small n-value carbohydrates (from your sugars).

Food is a delivery vehicle for macronutrients. The reason that some foods are "bad", is because they contain inappropriately high levels of some nutrients. Take corn-derived fructose syrups, for example: the sugar in it isn't really good or bad. The problem is you're performing the dietary equivalent of a napalm strike on the glucose transporters in the cells of your stomach. Too much sugar, too quickly, and the biochemical pathways that regulate sugar absorption are overcome. Doing that once in a while is fine - your body will cope. Do it every day for 30 years, and you end up with insulin insensitivity and diabetes.

The reason people got the idea that the food pyramid was a good idea is because it gave a simple idea for people to follow to make sure they were eating something close to a balanced diet. If you don't want to obsess over how and what you eat, it's still probably better than most other simple dietary structures out there. But people treat it like it's some holy scripture ... and that's just outright stupid.

[Christan]

My body says to eat sweets, probably a geneti survival trait from way back when calories werent so abundant,
Following the op's advice i should be eatting ice cream and candy bars all day long.

Ofc i dont, the southerner helisted who lived to 105 eatting fried foods, likely fried them himself not with store bought trans-fats bs mixtures. And maybe worked on a farm/ranch, so worked offf his 5k calorie daily diet by, well hard work.

Working that hard isnt something most can say these days but it would keep his body toned (imagine spending 12+ hours working hard enough to sweat in a gym each day)

Yeah not something most people will find possible in this technology assisted world.


So do i follow the op's advice and eat liters/gallons of ice cream a day, or eat healthily?

(As far as how your body reacts to food, yes genetics play a role, but lifestyle more of a role. If you're burning 5k calories a day it doesnt matter if you "have a slow metabolism" you will NOT get fat.

[Fascinate]

The good thing about science, is that the numbers don't care about your feelings. Salt balance is hugely complicated, but it is one of those examples where interpreting the scientific literacy is important. If you look at the sources most nutritional guidelines use, it comes from pretty rudimentary science that's 40 years old. I won't derail to talking about salt more, but it's one of those examples where the actual science is really not in solid consensus at all.

To quote an old mentor of mine;

"Fuck the food pyramid".

Let's look at this logically for a minute - the first thing that happens when you chew and swallow something is that your salivary enzymes begin to break it down, and then it gets dumped into a vat of acid and bile. More enzymes, some mechanical mixing, so by the time it actually crosses the endothelial barrier lining your stomach and can actually chemically interact with your body, we're not talking about foods any more. We're talking about simple lipids and glycerol based small molecules (from fats), short peptides and amino acids (from protein), and small n-value carbohydrates (from your sugars).

Food is a delivery vehicle for macronutrients. The reason that some foods are "bad", is because they contain inappropriately high levels of some nutrients. Take corn-derived fructose syrups, for example: the sugar in it isn't really good or bad. The problem is you're performing the dietary equivalent of a napalm strike on the glucose transporters in the cells of your stomach. Too much sugar, too quickly, and the biochemical pathways that regulate sugar absorption are overcome. Doing that once in a while is fine - your body will cope. Do it every day for 30 years, and you end up with insulin insensitivity and diabetes.

The reason people got the idea that the food pyramid was a good idea is because it gave a simple idea for people to follow to make sure they were eating something close to a balanced diet. If you don't want to obsess over how and what you eat, it's still probably better than most other simple dietary structures out there. But people treat it like it's some holy scripture ... and that's just outright stupid.

I am not sure you understand the food pyramid suggests you eat grains more than anything (at least it did when i was in school), that is why i believe it to be an outright farce. I am suggesting in this thread people simply listen to their bodies and not obsess over what the media or science tells them, because it is possible we are not at an intellectual level to have these things figured out. I think the food pyramid should read "eat what makes you feel good, and eat until you are comfortably full".

[llandrywyn]

"eat what makes you feel good, and eat until you are comfortably full".

And you would be demonstrably wrong. That is why there is an obesity epidemic in the first world. The human body evolved in a world where food was actually quite a scarce resource. If you found energy dense food, your body tells you to eat it, and to eat as much of it as you can because it might be days-weeks until you find more energy dense food. If you want a more concrete example; in the days before farming, the majority hominid and human populations were hunter-gatherer feeders. Which meant most days you ate roots that tasted awful and were hard to digest. Sometimes you found a good fruit tree, sometimes your hunters killed a few deer. But you couldn't store any of that food, so the human whose bodies told them to eat everything they possibly could ended up with some body fat to live off the next time the hunters failed for a few weeks.

Now translate that into the modern world. Evolution of ancient biochemical pathways doesn't happen in one generation. It doesn't happen in ten generations. It happens over hundred-thousands of years. So in evolutionary terms, we're still early agrarian subsistence farmers. Mostly our bodies have evolved to say that "energy dense food is fucking amazing, eat as much of it as you can". That's how you get 450lb dudes who can't even stand under their own weight, but are still filling themselves with the nutritional content of a small bull elephant. There are pleasure receptors directly connected to the nerves in your stomach that tell your brain that gorging yourself on bad food is great.

If you're not one of those people - awesome, gold star for you. Doesn't mean there's not a lot of people in the world that, if left to the whims of their pleasure receptors, will not eat an extremely unhealthy way.

But at this point, I'm out. Why?

I think

End of the day, you're saying your anecdotes and intuitions are more valid than millions of man-hours of study by some of the most intelligent people who have ever lived. And there's no reasoning/debating/arguing etc. with that sort of mindset.

P.S.

Google "food pyramid" and look at the image results. I just did, and found 4 different sets of priorities in the 20 seconds I glanced at it. You're arguing from a flawed position to begin with.

Peace!

[ItachiZaku]

I told one of my pretty friends the other day that she was the skinniest unhealthy person I know. She happily smiled and went on eating her fries. She doesn't work out AT ALL due to a knee injury when she was like 12, but she's the very basic 5'6", 105lb or whatever.

When that wall hits her, it'll hit her hard. I imagine when her BF impregnates her, but yeah...

[Fascinate]

Sigh, i thought you had a viewpoint at first but turns out you are just like the rest. What about "eat what you want and eat until you are comfortably full" translates into and obesity argument for you? This topic is about GENETICS, your GENETICS will tell you to stop eating when you are COMFORTABLY full unless you have a disorder.

And i did google the food pyramid, almost all of them STILL say humans should eat grains over all else which is an absolute absurdity likely engineered by a bunch of dbags trying to convince america we should eat a bunch of cereal so they can make the most money possible.

[LilSaihah]

Sigh, i thought you had a viewpoint at first but turns out you are just like the rest.

Report back with results on your special snowflake diet.

[Cerunnir]

Low-Meat diets seems to be the way to go for a healthy and long life. Essentially the asian diet, where they eat alot of spices and vegetables with a little bit of meat mixed in for taste. Opposite of the western style with a huge slab of meat with a small side dish of vegetales and potatoes.

Im not talking vegetarian, but a heavily reduced meat intake.

Anyways, how old you end up is genetics certainly. But its also just a whole lot of luck. You roll the dice many many times during your life, and no matter how healthy you are the dice may hit "double zero". Living a healthy lifestyle just increase your margin of error on those rolls

[Fascinate]

Report back with results on your special snowflake diet.

I am not suggesting a diet, i guess some people just cant keep up with what i am saying in here.

Le sigh.

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Low-Meat diets seems to be the way to go for a healthy and long life. Essentially the asian diet, where they eat alot of spices and vegetables with a little bit of meat mixed in for taste. Opposite of the western style with a huge slab of meat with a small side dish of vegetales and potatoes.

Im not talking vegetarian, but a heavily reduced meat intake.

NO, that means that diet works for THOSE people. Why is it so hard for people to understand what i am suggesting here. Its not about a certain type of diet, its about how YOUR body reacts to each individual food that matters.

[Deleted]

Im eating what i want and how much i want and never had any health issues at all. I cant even gain weight even when im eating like a truck.

Dont normaly eat chocolate for example. But sometime i want to and im able to eat whole bar in 5 mins.

I eat what my body tells me to eat.

[willtron]

My body says to eat sweets, probably a geneti survival trait from way back when calories werent so abundant,
Following the op's advice i should be eatting ice cream and candy bars all day long.

Your body says that because (refined) sugar is addictive.

Ofc i dont, the southerner helisted who lived to 105 eatting fried foods, likely fried them himself not with store bought trans-fats bs mixtures. And maybe worked on a farm/ranch, so worked offf his 5k calorie daily diet by, well hard work.

Fat isn't bad per se, it's the type of fat. Working off the calories will always keeps you healthy. It always comes back to calories in and calories out.

Working that hard isnt something most can say these days but it would keep his body toned (imagine spending 12+ hours working hard enough to sweat in a gym each day)

Yeah not something most people will find possible in this technology assisted world.

I think like most things in the 20xxs, it's polarising. I think the extremes of obeseity and fitness have increased and spread further apart. I'm largely exposed to the fitness side of it, so my anecdotal evidence is heavily skewed, but it feels like more and more people are taking a keen interest in their body and exercise. While the levels of obesity are apparently increasing.

So do i follow the op's advice and eat liters/gallons of ice cream a day, or eat healthily?

(As far as how your body reacts to food, yes genetics play a role, but lifestyle more of a role. If you're burning 5k calories a day it doesnt matter if you "have a slow metabolism" you will NOT get fat.

You do the sensible thing and eat healthy and do the 'unhealthy' stuff in moderation. The instagram models you see with 22 inch arms and 8 packs - it's a facade, it's a snapshot. A lot of them don't live on a diet purely consisting of boiled chicken, brown rice and broccoli. They have cheat days and eat normal things too. Metabolism is pretty much a poor excuse at this point. Building muscle will naturally increase your metabolism. And actually people with poor metabolism generally build muscle a lot quicker than people like me with very quick metabolism, packing on mass is really difficult if you're naturally skinny.

If you work hard and do it right, then it'll work for you. It's like starting to raid with world quest gear - it doesn't matter if you start with Titanforged WQ gear or not, eventually it will all get replaced, it's just about when you start out.

[Torgent]

Fascinate....I think you need to pay more attention in school. Science definitely does know how food affects the body. You are not science. Eating bad foods doesn't mean you WILL die earlier. It means it increases your chance of dying earlier.

[willtron]

I am not sure you understand the food pyramid suggests you eat grains more than anything (at least it did when i was in school), that is why i believe it to be an outright farce. I am suggesting in this thread people simply listen to their bodies and not obsess over what the media or science tells them, because it is possible we are not at an intellectual level to have these things figured out. I think the food pyramid should read "eat what makes you feel good, and eat until you are comfortably full".

The food pyramid should show veg at the bottom, proteins in the middle, complex carbs and fats above and a small peak of simple carbs.

Eating what you want until your comfortably full is not sensible.

[Deleted]

Eating what you want until your comfortably full is not sensible.

I have to disagree