Eat Right to Live Longer ... and better....


syrakusos

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Discussing Herman Cain's business career in another topic, I said that the companies with which Cain found success - Burger King, Godfather's Pizza, and Nabisco - do not sell anything I would eat. MSK replied with a tout for Glenn Beck's double deep fried cherry pie. That brought me here to read about deep fried Twinkies.

Does anyone else here actually care about what they eat?

We could argue a lot, but there must be some basic understandings in order to provide valuable information. For instance, over on RoR in a healthfood thread, one of the regulars boasted of his nut butter sandwiches. But he makes them on wheat bread and wheat has serious downsides. My wife just gave it up and immediately shed ten pounds and the desire for a fourth meal each day. Wheat clearly agrees with some people, and also, not with everyone.

My point is that if you care about your health, you probably follow a regimen of some kind that you find best for yourself. The question is really whether that comes from reading informed and informative materials or just eating whatever you want. If you eat whatever you want - whim worshipping at the dinner table - you probably are not engaged in optimal behavior.

We are all living longer. Consider prostate problems. What problem? Historically, you would get eaten by a bear long before your prostate killed you. Now, lacking bears, you live long enough to have the problem... unless you eat this, avoid that ...

Woman and breast cancer is another consequence of the agricultural revolution. Time was, women breast fed their kids for three years, doing that several times a day. Now, they have huge boobs that they never use. Consequence: things go wrong... When you lived to 30 it was not a problem... Live to 60 and it is.

Myself, I am a big fan of Durk and Sandy. To me, food is just a way to faciitate the uptake of vitamins.

I eat meat, but not pork, and I eat tofu.

I eat mixed nuts, but minimal wheat bread - a loaf lasts a week to ten days.

I eat eggs, milk, etc., but the milk could be goat's milk as easily as cow's.

I avoid processed foods, hormones, and antibiotics.

I prefer grass fed, small lot animals.

I eat fruits alone, i.e, not with other foods within an hour.

I follow the maxim that the world could live well on bananas and fish. I know I do.

I eat wildcaught ocean fish only, nothing farm raised; nothing freshwater.

I do eat canned tuna, light not white because white has more mercury.

Also, have been big on other canned fish. At my age (62), I have gone through a lot of phases since I got hip on nutrition 40 years ago. It might not matter too much what you eat as much as what you avoid.

Objectivists know that there is no dichotomy between the moral and practical, the logical and empirical, the political and the economic. I point to this: Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization by Richard Manning. It is no accident that agricultural societies are slaveholders.

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Let's see if I get this straight.

When we humans used to eat right, we lived until 30.

Now that we are fed pure agricultural poison day in and day out. we live a helluva lot longer. But don't forget, that stuff is killing us.

Hmmmmmmm...

Maybe there should be a law or something.

At the very least, some kind of official condemnation of immorality from... from... from... well, you know what I mean...

Michael

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I gotta be fair.

I do eat healthily most of the time.

I just don't see any value in making a cult out of eating habits where people point the finger at each other and try to snob each other out over who eats the best.

I like junk food. I see nothing to gain in denying that, even if I don't eat it often. And I do eat it sometimes, loving every juicy morsel and every last bite.

I learned a hard lesson in fighting addiction: whenever I lied to myself and said I didn't like to use drugs, I would quit for a while, then, after some time passed, without knowing how it started, I would go on a terrible bender. It was like falling into a hole on the road that you don't see.

For people with simple views on life, the following formula might work:

Good for me = I like it

Bad for me = I don't like it

This doesn't work with me. I happen to like a lot of crap that isn't good for me. And making myself feel guilty over this doesn't do anything productive, either. I speak from experience.

I have learned a far more useful lesson to deal with this kind of situation than the "moral versus immoral" formula.

It's one word: balance.

Notice that balance starts with recognizing reality--not just of the thing, but also of the context--and making value judgements based on comparative relationships.

It's not like the moral versus immoral model, where you pick a standard, make a rule, and try to mold yourself to that in all cases.

I have found that if I want to control my mind, I must first acknowledge the reality of it as it is, then include that knowledge in the process. When I try to dominate my mind by making up a rule and enforcing it to myself by sheer willpower using as my frame a good/bad mental switch, I always fail over time.

After studying marketing for a few years, now, I can say that this is the case with just about everybody. Think about the success rate of New Year's Resolutions.

Learning balance to control my urges works far, far better than oversimplified black-and-white moral judgments. At least it does for me.

Michael

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Let's see if I get this straight. When we humans used to eat right, we lived until 30. Now that we are fed pure agricultural poison day in and day out. we live a helluva lot longer. But don't forget, that stuff is killing us.

Right, I bought a whole book of New Yorker cartoons just to get a few including that one: The two cave men: "Let me get this straight: Our air and water are pure. We eat only organic food. And no one lives past 30." So, yes, there is that.

And more. I did not get into GMO - genetically modified organisms. They are not a problem for me. I see that as a leftwing political issue, part of their anti-industrial agenda. If you consider just about any cultivated foods, you see genetic manipulation by nature-loving pre-industrial naturalists in harmony with non-European nature. When electricity was first offered for homes, some people, knowing only lightening, feared that electricity would leap from the wall sockets. Same thing with GMO... but neither am I upset or angry about people who avoid GMOs. It's their choice.

Mostly, we live past 30 because of soap and hot water. Even as the germ theory of disease was still being debated, people cleaned up. The Saturday night bath (before Sunday go-to-meeting) did a lot for our general health.

I saw a chimpanzee documentary once, and this old male got sick from some natural germ or organic virus, and he couldn't take care of himself, and would have died, but the scientist studing the tribe gave him medicine pills in bananas.

Mostly, hunter-gatherers died "young" because of the statistics of infant mortality. Mostly, once you got slow, something ate you. Mostly, if you lived past some danger point, your tribe valued your wisdom and kept you alive into old age. Mostly, hunter-gatherers are violent and kill each other. It is dangerous to extrapolate backwards in time because the h-gs we know were marginalized hundreds of years ago. (Our h-g ancestors lived in the best places,which became cities and farms.) But, h-g males have horrific homicide rates. So, there is all of that: soap and hot water; antibiotics; infant mortality; predators; homicide.

What did not happen was that they lived long enough to die of the things that kill us today: cancers, tumors, aneurisms, diabetes ... Those things kill us because we live long enough to get them. We get them from eating mush.

Also, quality of life is important as well. Are you alert? Can you run up a flight of stairs? Are you happy? ... and will you be that way when you are 80... or 120... ? There was a 100-year old guy in a Toronto marathon last week. He did not credit that to Godfather's pizza, Burger King, and Nabisco.

I gotta be fair. I do eat healthily most of the time. I just don't see any value in making a cult out of eating habits where people point the finger at each other and try to snob each other out over who eats the best.

Agreed. But this is not about "other people" in that sense. Everyone makes their own choices. I was just curious about the choices other people who post here have made and why. Learning, gaining new knowledge, helps me improve my life.

I learned a hard lesson in fighting addiction ...

Addiction is complicated. The chemical aspect is the easiest to deal with. Barbara Branden said a few things about quitting smoking. For her, it was the psychological aspect and that is harder to work with.

As you said, "... without knowing how it started, I would go on a terrible bender. ..." Thus, the occasional craving for junk food, clearly rooted in the psychology of the cognitive evasion of an emotional suppression.

For people with simple views on life, the following formula might work:

Good for me = I like it

Bad for me = I don't like it

I will grant that people with more psychological problems are more complicated psychologically. Seems almost a tautology. So, you get artists and writers with their tortured souls and horrible addictions and messed up lives. But, please spare us the holier-than-thou, as you did indeed say that you are not interested in groupified finger-pointing. For me, simply, good for me equals I like it and bad for me equals I don't like it. Not that I don't have vices. I smoked cigarettes off and on for years. But it never bothered me and I had no problem quitting. Finally, toward the end, over the last five years, even as I had three smokes over a weekend every couple of months or so, at my age, I could not walk the distances in the times while talking to myself, without stopping to catch my breath. So I quit. Simply.

The only reason that that is germane here is because junk food is an addiction. Sugar (high fructose corn syrup) is a drug. Deep fried foods feel comforting, that "stick to your ribs" feeling of satisfaction... for people in whose lives deeper satisfactions are rarer. The poor are easy examples. Then, there are the tortured souls and troubled artists.

This doesn't work with me. I happen to like a lot of crap that isn't good for me. ...

Actually, I was more interested in the stuff that you found was good for you, like tofu, hummus, tahini, fresh vegetable juice, and three grams of vitamin C a day. But, if that's not you... then maybe someone else...

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BRAIN BOOSTERS -

These are all Durk & Sandy formulations from the Life Enhancement company. And these are just the significant ingredients.

Memory Upgrade:

Choline 1 gram

Glycine 150 mg

Taurine 200 mg

An array of B vitamins highlighted with

B12 100 mcg

Panthothenic Acid (B5) 500 mg

with Chromium, Copper, and Zinc.

Serving size 1 tablespoon or 12.9 grams)

Bacopa Vitality - 100 mg of extract of plant

DHEA - 100 mcg

5-HTP "Sero Tonic II"

5 Hydroxytryptophan 50 mg

Hyperforin 300 mcg

with Thiamine, Niacin, and B6 (pyridoxine)

And in other news....

The study of nearly 40,000 US women aged 55 to 69 found that those who used multivitamins and a range of other supplements were significantly likelier to be among the nearly 16,000 women who died during the 19-year period of follow-up, challenging beliefs the products are invariably benign.

Compared with other women in the study not using the products, women who used multivitamins regularly had a 2.4 percentage point increased risk of dying during the follow-up, while vitamin B6 increased the risk by 4.1 percentage points.

The Australian online here.

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Thus, the occasional craving for junk food, clearly rooted in the psychology of the cognitive evasion of an emotional suppression.

Michael,

Good Lord!

Clearly rooted?

Clear to whom?

You? And who else?

There's so much wrong with that statement it's hard to know where to begin.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of schlock served up as human nature within the Objectivist subcommunity. To me, it's no wonder the movement does not progress.

Generally, people identify with some great ideas in Objectivism (see Rand's book sales), but then here comes speculation vested as dogma on human nature, stuff that has nothing to do with the experience of anyone. And it is laid down as law with adjectives to reinforce it. It's not just you who does this kind of thing, either.

(In Hollywood, they call these kinds of adjectives on schlock "polishing the turd." That's a technical term, by the way. :smile: )

So people look, blink, and simply go on their merry ways.

As they should if that kind of stuff is the price of entry.

They have real lives to lead with real problems to solve and real happiness to seek, not make-believe.

(btw - As usual, you do have some interesting information in your post. It's one of the reasons I like reading them, even when I disagree with things in them.)

Michael

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snapback.pngMichael E. Marotta, on 26 October 2011 - 08:38 AM, said:

Thus, the occasional craving for junk food, clearly rooted in the psychology of the cognitive evasion of an emotional suppression.

Michael,

Good Lord!

Clearly rooted?

Clear to whom?

You? And who else?

There's so much wrong with that statement it's hard to know where to begin.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of schlock served up as human nature within the Objectivist subcommunity. To me, it's no wonder the movement does not progress.

My guess is that craving for so-called junk food is less rooted in "cognitive evasion and emotional suppression", but more in the fact that this food boosts the dopamine levels in the brain, which produces a feeling of pleasure.

Xray

enjoying my French fries without moral guilt. :smile:

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BRAIN BOOSTERS -

These are all Durk & Sandy formulations from the Life Enhancement company. And these are just the significant ingredients.

Memory Upgrade:

Choline 1 gram

Glycine 150 mg

Taurine 200 mg

An array of B vitamins highlighted with

B12 100 mcg

Panthothenic Acid (B5) 500 mg

with Chromium, Copper, and Zinc.

Serving size 1 tablespoon or 12.9 grams)

Bacopa Vitality - 100 mg of extract of plant

DHEA - 100 mcg

5-HTP "Sero Tonic II"

5 Hydroxytryptophan 50 mg

Hyperforin 300 mcg

with Thiamine, Niacin, and B6 (pyridoxine)

And in other news....

The study of nearly 40,000 US women aged 55 to 69 found that those who used multivitamins and a range of other supplements were significantly likelier to be among the nearly 16,000 women who died during the 19-year period of follow-up, challenging beliefs the products are invariably benign.

Compared with other women in the study not using the products, women who used multivitamins regularly had a 2.4 percentage point increased risk of dying during the follow-up, while vitamin B6 increased the risk by 4.1 percentage points.

The Australian online here.

Mike,

Have Durk and Sandy ever responded to these reports that large doses of multivitamins have not fared well in this and other studies?

Martin

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  • 2 years later...

Trying to eat "healthy" is only half the battle. Regular strength and cardio training are equally important.

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Tut tut.

At your command...

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I try to follow (in broad strokes) Tim Ferriss's "Slow Carb" diet. Mostly lean meats and vegetables, peanuts for snacks, and eggs of some sort for breakfast.

Sounds like my menu. I also drink at least 3 qts of filtered water daily.

If I need to cut a few lbs quickly then I only eat protein for a week or so.

I believe it was the Mayo clinic who reported (few months ago) that a low carb diet sheds the lbs quicker than a low fat diet.

Works for me.

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And don't forget to eat your kale. Kale is a superfood.

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Chia too. Seriously.

And don't forget to eat your kale. Kale is a superfood.

Chia too. Seriously.

Add to that: olives, almonds, onions, salmon, blueberries, garlic, pineapple.

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There are conflicting studies. A vegan diet can be good or bad. A nonvegan diet can be good or bad. One major point seems to be the ratio of omega-6 over omega-3.

There is evidence that humans are not well adapted to consume large quantities of animal-source foods but have difficulty getting adequate amounts of certain nutrients without eating some animal-source food.

Carnivorous animals such as dogs and cats have enzyme uricase, which helps to convert uric acid to urea, which is excreted thru the kidneys. Uric acid is a byproduct of meat eating. Humans don't have this enzyme and therefore must convert uric acid to urea without the benefit of uricase. Carnivorous animals also have larger kidneys than humans have, for their body size.

Body builders have a higher rate of kidney failure than the general population, probably because of the high protein intake which is usually meat. In one study, there was a 70% recovery rate from kidney failure merely by a low protein diet. Less protein, less burden on the kidneys, kidneys have a better chance of recovery.

But to go 100% vegan any great length of time is probably a mistake. There is long term risk of B12 deficiency and long-chain omega-3 deficiency.

The human mind likes to classify things in neat categories: this is a carnivore, that is a herbivore, here is a frugivore. But the human animal does not fit into any neat classification.

As everyone knows, humans are most closely related to the anthropoid apes: chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, gibbons. But one major difference between humans and the other anthropoid apes is that the nonhuman apes live in a tropical climate and humans live almost everywhere. Humans, unlike the other anthropoid apes, are adapted to nontropical climates. I will list a few ways.

1. Humans produce 4 times the amount of starch splitting enzymes that chimps produce. This means that humans are better adapted than chimps are to eating such things as potatoes and rice. And yes. this means cooked food, for those who think 100% raw is the way to go. Very nice if you live in a nontropical climate. Not needed if you live in a climate where you can have all the fruits and leaves you want all year round.

2. The human brain can burn ketones; the chimp brain cannot, at least according to Dr. Alan Goldhamer. This means humans can go several weeks without food (air, water, sleep, nothing else) without harm to health, and chimps cannot, at least according to Dr. Alan Goldhamer. If you live in a climate where food is abundant all year round, you don't need to be able to fast. If you live in a nontropical climate, food might be scarce part of the year and the ability to fast might help you survive.

3. Humans have superior intelligence. If you live in a nontropical climate, you might want to get into agriculture. That probably requires more intelligence than merely picking fruits and leaves off trees.

Humans are apes that adapted to nontropical climates.

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JTS,

I've spent significant time following medical "studies" since Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach, (by Durk Pearson & Sandy Shaw) came out in the early 80's.

I couldn't agree more. The conflicting studies on food/nutrients/exercise have appeared almost as often as most change their underwear.

The field is broad, the "professionals" many.

-Joe

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