Eat a varied diet, leaning towards plant-based foods. Whole grains if you can. Don't unreasonably cut out whole categories of food. Being vegan is HARD, vegetarian (or mostly so), not so much. Watch the sugar, including the fake type. Eat your calories instead of drink them.
Also, get some activity. Walking for 15 minutes daily is better than nothing, but try to get more than that most days. IF you can have fun doing it, great! If you lack motivation, do something on the easy side as it is easier to talk yourself into. It is better to this half-assed than not at all, after all, because it still counts.
Keep an eye on stress as much as possible. If you smoke, try quitting (I suggest a vape or e-cig). Drink in moderation, but do have some coffee.
Once you get these general things done, you are well on your way.
Perhaps the topic is complex and nuanced but the advise in the comment seems fairly good in the general healthy spectrum.
Besides some opinion being thrown in, what do you disagree with?
Because HN is full of people who subscribe to fad diets like keto, carnivore, gluten-free, etc.
You also seem to believe that eating meat, not only fruits/veggies/vegan, is good.
Wouldn’t that make you in agreement with the current system of balanced intake?
Public health organisations are staffed by experts who have spent most of their lives studying the relevant subjects. How likely is it that you, or anyone who hasn't dedicated that much time and effort in studying those subjects, will know better than those who have?
I'm not saying it's impossible, mind. But just what are the chances that your opinion is right and that of thousands of experts is wrong?
There have been some successes, we are now very good at catching CVD early, and should you have a heart attack you are now much more likely to survive than before. But on the food front, what we’re talking about here, it has been a complete and unmitigated disaster.
Because of that, I don’t trust public health officials one iota when it comes to food and diet. That doesn’t mean I’m right, but I know that they have a track record of failure and unintended consequences.
Also, as far as I know, public vaccination programmes have greatly reduced, and almost eliminated many diseases like measles, tetanus and typhoid, not just in the US but the world over, although of course measles is making a comeback.
Are you perhaps drawing a conclusion about public health bodies in western countries in general, from an experience with health services in the US? The US seems to be very peculiar in how it treats public health. I live in the UK and I wouldn't say that the national health service (the NHS) has collapsed. It has its problems and it's being attacked constantly but for the time being, it's working fine. The same is true for most central European countries.
Americans have actually followed the recommendations of the USDA for years. They replaced saturated fat with “heart healthy” seed oils, and they diligently consumed low fat diets.
Keep in mind that official recommendations will affect what foods are available for sale too.
> My understanding is that processed foods and sugary drinks are consumed in great numbers, but that is certainly not in accordance with the recommendation of any public health organisations that I know of.
In the United States nutrition labels have a maximum daily amount of most nutrients, except sugar. The official line has been that saturated fat causes heart disease, and that replacing fat in packaged goods with sugar was ok. This is why we have candy in the United States proudly labeling itself as a “fat free food”, and we used to have marketing campaigns touting the weight loss benefit of sugar.
This is finally starting to turn around, but the public health agencies have been laggards when it comes to the realization of how bad sugar is, not at the forefront.
And that’s not even getting into the whole bailiwick about how they process foods, which has changed in accordance with public health recommendations. They used to at least use natural fats in the few processed foods we used to eat, such as lard, but all of those were changed years ago to seed oils that were nominally less bad.
> Also, as far as I know, public vaccination programmes have greatly reduced, and almost eliminated many diseases like measles, tetanus and typhoid, not just in the US but the world over, although of course measles is making a comeback.
As I clearly stated, all public health programs should be judged by their outcomes, and the results of public vaccination have been an unqualified success.
But just because the official recommendations on vaccinations have worked, it doesn’t follow that the official recommendations on diet will too.
> Are you perhaps drawing a conclusion about public health bodies in western countries in general, from an experience with health services in the US?
Yes, that’s a fair criticism.
> I live in the UK and I wouldn't say that the national health service (the NHS) has collapsed.
That’s not what I said. I said that our health has collapsed, i.e. we’re fat and sick.
Did US public health organisations actually recommend replacing fat with sugars? I find this very surprising, if it is the case. I wouldn't be surprised if that was instead a practice adopted by industry, despite and against official recommendations.
For example, Wikipedia tells me that diet Coke was first sold in 1982. That must mean that there was, already, a clear awareness of the detrimental effect of sugar, and sugary drinks in particular, on health. That awareness can't have come from the soft drinks industry itself so it must have come from public health officials.
In 2015 they finally released a recommendation that sugar make up no more than 10% of an American’s daily calories, which is insane.
Also at a practical level, a recommendation to remove fat from diets is a recommendation to add sugar. A wide variety of foods are just absolutely disgusting if you have neither fat nor sugar, and if you declare that the reduction of dietary fat is the main goal for Americans, the result will necessarily be more added sugar. The dietary guidelines still recommend that Americans eat leaner cuts of meat and switch to 1% milk, as if they haven’t already done that.
It's not, it's mildly tricky, and there's not much evidence that people following a vegan diet are nutritionally worse off than the people who don't think about their food at all, many of whom don't eat any fresh fruit or veg across a week.
I might be mostly vegetarian and eat eggs and cheese and fish once a week, but I usually tell folks to reduce their eat. Sometimes I say instead to make sure they eat enough fruit and veg and whole grain. I say this stuff because it is easier for most folks to concentrate on things like this to improve overall diet without feeling like they have to spend days figuring things out.
Also, it's worth noting that the difficulty of going vegan varies greatly with your location. For example, eating vegan in Japan is a legitimate pain in the ass.
There are lots of reasons a person can not have a period. Sure, you can be malnourished, but I'm guessing the more likely contributor was not having enough body fat. IF a woman's body fat is too low, she stops having periods. It happens in a broad cross section of people. A person with an eating disorder will do it as will a woman that works out a lot and eats healthily. Coincidentally, weighing too much can do it as well.
I'm guessing a nutrient deficiency can do it, but I'm unsure on that one. It can be a hormonal imbalance too!
And there are a bunch of other reasons as well. It isn't even necessarily harmful - after all, people quit having periods when they are on birth control with no ill effects.
If anyone wants to have a healthy life, I recommend you to read the book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration from Weston Price. Basically, eat animal products, the more local based, the best. Grass feed cattle will be the best food source for your body. Cut all carbs (sugar), fruits (man made).
There are 15 nutrients that you can only get from animal products. You can get all minerals and vitamins from animal products you don't need plants at all.
The worst offenders for weight gain are foods that don’t trigger a satiation response, like chips and dip or French fries. Foods where the fat to carbohydrate ratio is nearing 1:1 will cause people to overeat. Processed foods tend to have these ratios.
eg see https://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/2013-03-29-where-people-li...
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Doubly so if you aren't eating animal products.
I'll add that avoiding all animal products has its own perils, namely the sort that results in vitamin deficiencies. And while a diet filled with whole grains and mostly plant-based foods is considered healthy, we simply don't know enough about nutrition to have one way or another. Or even to get vitamin doses right. I say all this while eating mostly vegetarian myself. I eat fish about once a week. I don't like it so much, but it is healthy.
wheat contains Phytic acid for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytic_acid which can be reduced with the correct dough process.
The beta-carotene in carrots is fat soluble and the cells are pretty robust, so you get more out of them if you cook them in fat.
Champignons contain a mild poison, which is not deadly for humans but destroyed when heated, digestibility increases too.
Are you part of a proper subculture that engages with this? If so, where do you all hang out, what do you read?
There are even suggestions that it was cooking by opening untapped sources of calories that allowed for a bigger brain to evolve.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=MqmSMunAtss
Also, lose weight. The body induces some beneficial activity while fasting.