Seattle Forrest

CNN article:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/22/healt...udy/index.html

JNCI Article:
https://academic.oup.com/jncics/adva...searchresult=1

What does "poor diet" mean exactly?

The order of risk was a little surprising to me, I would think a lack of vegetables and fruits would be #1 , but it's whole grains.

This suggests that low-carb is not healthy, except for people for whom it's medically necessary.

Cyclist0108

Fiber and other complex carbohydrates >> simple sugars

wolfchild

Part of the problem is that people are filling themselves up with empty calories without nutrients, Homan body is not designed to eat fast food.and large amounts of meat, fat, fast digesting carbs/sugars and all manner of artificial crap that food manufacturers put inside our food. You can't out-exercise a bad diet.

bruce19

I've spent a lot of time "researching" the whole diet/nutrition thing over the past several years. There's enough information out there to justify anything you want to believe. It boggles the mind. I've come back to where I started.....eat whole foods, eat less, exercise regularly. And, at 73 although I weigh 187-190 (pretty much what I weighed playing football in college) I am 2 1/2" shorter and about 1-2" thicker in the waist. Probably some of this is down to 3-4 oz of bourbon in the evening. Some of it is about aging. What this comes to, for me, is "Are you healthy? Are you enjoying life?" I am.

OBoile

Definitely surprising to me too. I've kind of leaned towards the idea of grains being somewhat unnecessary as long as you eat lots of fruits and vegetables (not that this is necessarily ideal for performance). This definitely casts some doubt on that belief.

Having said that, it's very tough to come to any firm conclusion from a single study. What are people replacing the whole grains with? Are there different correlations between lifestyle and limited whole grain consumption vs. lifestyle and limited vegetable consumption?

Finally, if I'm reading it correctly, diet is tied to ~5% of all cancer cases. That's not really a lot. A diet could cause a slight increase in cancer risk and still be healthy if it provides sufficient benefits to offset this risk, so low carb isn't necessarily bad overall.

willibrord

The problem is high carb starches and sugars and fruits which contain sugars especially fructose which is hard on your liver, worse than alcohol according to some experts. By sticking to whole grains you are eliminating the ultra processed carbs, but a better way is to eliminate carbs as much as possible

Seattle Forrest

Fruit is worse for you than alcohol?

joelcool

**This brought to you by the Beer, Wine and Spirit Association.

Hermes

My head just exploded as well.

Darth Lefty 

I guess once all the smokers die, you find the next problem

79pmooney

I don't see this as an indication of the benefit or not of carbs. I see it as an indication that grains stripped of their fiber (especially in the making of white flour) as being food we really shouldn't eat. Not a new concept. The book "Food For Fitness" , published in the early '70s, addressed at length the hazards of white flour. It described autopsy finds of the intestinal insides of whole-grain eaters and non-whole-grain eaters. Pretty gross but pretty enlightening. I find for myself, a diet of whole grains makes for big, healthy dumps. If I eat non-whole-grain foods, my dumps change quickly.

One passage from Food For Fitness that has always stayed with me - it was noted 100 years ago that silos of whole grain flours were impracticable because bugs quickly found their way in but silos of processed flour were entirely feasible because they did not attract insects and other pests. In other words, we humans are willing to eat foods that animals view as not supporting life. Food that is not fit for cockroaches. In that light, I find the concept that such foods might encourage cancers quite believable.

And another completely unscientific thought from me - were are composed completely of what we have eaten, drank, breathed and taken in through our skins save what is left of the original 8 pounds (of mostly water) we were born with. (Not completely true. In recent years, members of mankind have been placing physical objects and materials in their bodies surgically.) We can choose to compose ourselves of the materials humans were designed to be or we can chose otherwise. Non-whole-grain foods area very recent addition to the human diet and since eating them will not stop us from reproducing, there is no driver for genetic changes to adopt to these new foods.

Ben

willibrord

Well, fructose. .According to Dr Lustig.

canklecat

Based on my experiences -- decades of caring for elderly and infirm folks, and living among them -- I suspect that digging deeper into the study sample group and its references (notably one in particular*) would reveal that the at-risk demographic will have a few factors in common: poverty, age, other infirmities that hinder access to a good diet.

Typically people with those demographic commonalities will have limited access to good food, often living in food deserts where the nearest accessible place to buy food will be a convenience store, or as little as the nearest junk food vending machines.

They'll have limited mobility and transportation, limited access to health care and social services. Escalating illnesses, physical and mental disabilities, fatigue, chronic pain, etc., will conspire toward more reliance on worse and more expensive food sources -- mostly junk.

IOW, the title is misleading, putting the cart before the horse. The most significant contributing factor in cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc., is poverty, not "diet". Access to a healthy diet will reduce other medical costs.

Unfortunately the CNN summary undermines its credibility with this sort of simplistic and misleading comment:

That may sound reassuring to the typical CNN audience who can afford to care about their diet. But it's unlikely to make a bit of difference to most folks. Having done organic gardening in my own family garden (my grandparents were way ahead of the game, back in the late 1960s-early '70s), I'd only say that those vegetables and fruits tasted better. There's little evidence or agreement among researchers that "organic" is better. Heck, the word doesn't even mean anything. "Organic" has no consensus and mostly serves as marketing fluff.



___
*Zhang FF, Liu J, Rehm CD, Wilde P, Mande JR, Mozaffarian D. Trends and Disparities in Diet Quality Among US Adults by Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation Status. JAMA Network Open. 2018;1(2):e180237

elcruxio

I currently live on a small farm. My father-in-law does the farming and I just live here. The way he farms would likely be considered organic but he just hasn't bothered with the certification. Thinks it's a bunch of nonsense. Which it is within the bigger picture.

But one thing I have learned from living on a farm and eating stuff straight from the ground etc. is that the flavor most likely is not in the organic vs non organic at all. The flavor differences are created in transport, storage and age of the produce.
Typically 'organic' produce bought from a farmers market or from nearby small producers doesn't see a refridgerator before it is eaten. Mass produced stuff however may be transported from relatively far away and needs to be refridgerated to avoid spoiling. Also with long transit times the fruit are plucked when still raw and they ripen within the transportation / storage period. These two factors have a pretty big effect on how for example a tomato tastes.

A freshly plucked ripe tomato is usually going to have a lot more flavor than a store bought one. Whether that matters is then another issue. Personally for me, it depends. When making a sandwich it doesn't matter which tomato I use. If i make a dish where one main component is uncooked tomato it matters more. But I NEVER make the mistake of making tomato sauce from bought tomatoes. It's a huge hassle and it's quite likely that the end result is going to actually be worse than a processed store bought tomato sauce (With that I mean the very simple ground up cooked sauce without spices, salt etc. Not sure what it's called in english but for us it's pasted tomato). The reason for this being that the processed stuff is made on site or nearby the plucking site. It's unlikely that the tomatoes used have been stored for very long if at all. However if I make the stuff myself it's just not going to have flavor because the tomatoes themselves have lost it in the aforementioned manner.

And also one thing too few people know about that every veggie, potato, strawberry, tomato etc. has varieties. The farm I live in farms 6 to seven different potato varieties, 4 different strawberry varieties, 3 onions, 2 beetroots, 3 carrots etc. Those will have MASSIVE effect on flavor and other qualities.

KraneXL

The sugar contained in fruit so same difference. Quack.

Trevtassie

The whole grain thing would be about fibre and bowel cancer mostly, there is a high correlation between low fibre and bowel cancer.

Processed meats are high in nitrites, a known carcinogen, some fun reading here: https://www.theguardian.com/news/201...rites-sausages

I reckon there is a whole correlation/causation thing going on with the organic food thing... if you are eating organic you probably care about your diet and aren't eating ultra-processed foods. Probably get the same thing eating unprocessed non organic foods.

wolfchild

Eating fruits is ok and healthy...Sugar only becomes harmful when it is removed and isolated from it's natural source...Remember that vitamins, minerals and antioxidant supplements are also harmful when taken in it's isolated form in a pill form and do absolutely nothing to prevent disease. It's best to eat whole food and get all the nutrients from food. When you eat real food your body knows exactly what to do with it and how to get all the nutrients that it needs. Carbs are not the enemy, you just need to choose the right type of carbs, not all carbs are equal.

mcours2006

Great discussion! Thanks for posting.

Like @bruce19 said, you can pretty much find research out there to justify anything. Just look at how many different kinds of diets are out there. No wonder the diet industry is a multi-billion industry.

But it doesn't have to be complicated. "Eat food. Not too much. And mostly plants" -- G. Taubes. Simple and elegant.

OBoile

That's not really giving your post any move validity.

OBoile

I agree, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Taubes who said that.
I've said this a few times on here, but a really good book is "The Gluten Lie" which is all about just how little we really know when it comes to nutrition, examining various times where we felt certain foods were either terrible or "super" and how wrong we were, and how easy it is to find "evidence" of just about any quack theory (the book even makes one up and grabs a lot of "supporting" evidence for it).
Ultimately, something like "Eat food. Not too much. And mostly plants" is as good advice as anything out there.

willibrord

Quote:

DR. ROBERT LUSTIG ON FRUCTOSE: “ALCOHOL WITHOUT THE BUZZ”

Dr Lustig video

OBoile

Again, quoting some quack isn't really helping you convince anyone.

willibrord

Its a common technique to characterize any expert you disagree with as a quack. I can see it having some validity with people like the Health Ranger. Dr. Lustig ,in contrast, is Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California. He is somebody who has come to his present point of view from years of research.

You shouldn't accept his points merely because of his credentials, but you should engage with his arguments and refute them on the basis of facts.

Carbonfiberboy 

Taubes. The quote is from Michael Pollan. Everything he writes is fun to read.

OBoile

When an argument is that fruit is the equivalent of alcohol, it's not worthy of the time necessary for a detailed rebuttal.