eli5 why we have such complex dietary requirements. Did our ancestors thousands of years ago have extremely well balanced diets?
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This girl, as of 2016, had only eaten chicken nuggets and some french fries for 15 of her 17 years of life.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2092071/Stacey-Irvine-17-collapses-eating-McDonalds-chicken-nuggets-age-2.html
She collapsed from anemia (low iron); which to me means that if she ate an occasional cheeseburger she would be fine.
It challenged what I thought about needing a varied diet ever since.
Now there are people doing the Lion Diet who just eat beef and water, and say they are the healthiest they have ever been in their life (free from chronic illness that they used to suffer from)
This girl, as of 2016, had only eaten chicken nuggets and some french fries for 15 of her 17 years of life.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2092071/Stacey-Irvine-17-collapses-eating-McDonalds-chicken-nuggets-age-2.html
She collapsed from anemia (low iron); which to me means that if she ate an occasional cheeseburger she would be fine.
It challenged what I thought about needing a varied diet ever since.
Now there are people doing the Lion Diet who just eat beef and water, and say they are the healthiest they have ever been in their life (free from chronic illness that they used to suffer from)
This girl, as of 2016, had only eaten chicken nuggets and some french fries for 15 of her 17 years of life.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2092071/Stacey-Irvine-17-collapses-eating-McDonalds-chicken-nuggets-age-2.html
She collapsed from anemia (low iron); which to me means that if she ate an occasional cheeseburger she would be fine.
It challenged what I thought about needing a varied diet ever since.
Now there are people doing the Lion Diet who just eat beef and water, and say they are the healthiest they have ever been in their life (free from chronic illness that they used to suffer from)
The term ‘balanced diet’ is not well understood. Many real requirements are not necessary on a daily basis. Add to this the fact that the most important dietary mistakes made in the northern hemisphere are eating too much of everything and complicating our task by following the legions of so called experts on dietary matters. Animals in the wild and therefore early humans did little harm to themselves when living in circumstances of food abundance. Obesity is a medical condition brought on by psychological factors in modern society.
Neolithic people often ate “more balanced” diets. Their diets were usually “better” in that there was no processed sugars, and they tended to eat more plants but they ate what they could find and that was not always good.
But it didn’t matter much because they lived short brutal lives. Many died of violence or starvation.
The term ‘balanced diet’ is not well understood. Many real requirements are not necessary on a daily basis. Add to this the fact that the most important dietary mistakes made in the northern hemisphere are eating too much of everything and complicating our task by following the legions of so called experts on dietary matters. Animals in the wild and therefore early humans did little harm to themselves when living in circumstances of food abundance. Obesity is a medical condition brought on by psychological factors in modern society.
Neolithic people often ate “more balanced” diets. Their diets were usually “better” in that there was no processed sugars, and they tended to eat more plants but they ate what they could find and that was not always good.
But it didn’t matter much because they lived short brutal lives. Many died of violence or starvation.
The term ‘balanced diet’ is not well understood. Many real requirements are not necessary on a daily basis. Add to this the fact that the most important dietary mistakes made in the northern hemisphere are eating too much of everything and complicating our task by following the legions of so called experts on dietary matters. Animals in the wild and therefore early humans did little harm to themselves when living in circumstances of food abundance. Obesity is a medical condition brought on by psychological factors in modern society.
Neolithic people often ate “more balanced” diets. Their diets were usually “better” in that there was no processed sugars, and they tended to eat more plants but they ate what they could find and that was not always good.
But it didn’t matter much because they lived short brutal lives. Many died of violence or starvation.
We can survive pretty well on a very wide range of diets. Our dietary requirements aren’t actually that complicated. We do need particular nutrients, which you can get from lots of different food combinations. In modern days, you see a lot of people trying to optimize their diet to achieve “ideal/perfect” health. A lot of this is still quite pseudosciencey, so watch out for gurus/instagramers/nutritionists/bloggers trying to sell you some particular diet/tonic that will help make you healthy and energized and live a long time. It’s usually BS.
**The best current science is**: Minimize processed sugars, get lots of fiber, don’t eat too much red meat. Eat what you enjoy while trying to stick mostly to whole grains and fruits and veggies and lean proteins. Have a cookie once in a while, it’s fine.
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