They seem simple on the surface but hard part is execution for most people, due to life circumstances and other factors. Unhealthy choices persist because society isn't built around healthy lifestyles.
So while the comment seems helpful on the surface, it misses the forest for the trees.
I think that there needs to be a bigger discussion here, regarding why have we engineered a society that inflicts suffering and illness on so many?
Some stuff is BIO, cream or coconut milk are lower fat version, or carrots are are without residual pesticides. Less salt since we use less salt, and taste buds quickly adjust so its still adequately salty, a better mix of herbs and spices so taste is.. simply better, more refined. We use with much less sugar, the same as for salt above (if you eat sweet stuff sparingly then even mildly sweet stuff tastes amazingly, just don't go from one extreme to another).
Actually they are not. "Practically" is carrying a lot of weight there. The factory baked cake will have a lot more extraneous ingredients and usually has a larger quantity of sugar and fat. Similar to how restaurant food generally has a lot more salt and fat than home cooked food.
The direct impact of those extra ingredients alone or in combination is not entirely clear at this point, aside from building evidence that people whose diets include more of that seem to be less healthy.
But that loaf you buy at the store? It'll generally be covered in mold before it gets hard, and that's quite the achievement since it also tends to be more resistant to mold as well! Bread should get hard. This is where a ton of old recipes come from. The Ancient Greeks would dip it in wine for breakfast, Euroland has bread soup/puddings, and even stuff in the US like Thanksgiving stuffings or croutons.
If you stepped inside a food factory you would see how false that statement is
> If you only read one thing here, make it the “How to not die of heart disease” section.
Which itself is still quite long but it emphasizes:
> Every lipidologist I’ve spoken with has stressed the importance of measuring and managing ApoB above all else – it’s a far better predictor of cardiovascular disease than LDL-C (which is what physicians are most familiar with). Every standard deviation increase of ApoB raises the risk of myocardial infarction by 38%. Yet because guidelines regularly lag science, the AHA still recommends LDL-C over ApoB. Test for it regularly (ideally twice a year) and work to get it as low as possible (longevity doctor Peter Attia recommends 30-40mg per deciliter). Many lipidologists will say to focus on this above all else.
And:
> I asked several leading lipidologists to stack rank what they believe are the most important biomarkers for people to measure and manage. […], and will likely cost anywhere between $80-$120 out of pocket.
That’s a pretty interesting and relevant part of TFA. Omitting that is not a fair “long story short”, but rather just “different story”.
This is wrong. Our bodies evolved to rend flesh and eat meat. They are optimized by millions of years of evolution to process and run on meat.
The biochemical pathways of carb-heavy diets put more oxidative stress on the body.
is that why we have flat molars? for eating meat?
(spoilers: no, the flat molars are not for eating meat)
My genes gave me pretty big ones.
>They are optimized by millions of years of evolution to process and run on meat.
We are omnivores, we are optimized to eat everything
Humans have eaten complex carbs only for the last 10k years since agricultural revolution. Before that, outside of a small part of Africa, there physically wasn't enough carbs available to say that they made any substantial amount of our diet.
Most ancenstral carbs were uber high in fiber, and very low in glucose (starch) and fructose.
Also lots of roots are edible with cooking, and it looks like we've been cooking for about a million years. Then there's wild rice, cattails, beans, berries, all sorts of stuff.
I agree that most wild plants are high in fiber and low in sugar, but there are are a lot of complex carbs to be had, if you have fire.
Also how much must you eat of these to get enough in order to get enough digestable carbs due to the high fiber content?
> Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist who studies modern-day hunter-gatherers, says traditional diets vary widely, and the vast majority of them include a high percentage of carbohydrates.
> For instance, the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer group in northeast Tanzania that Pontzer has studied for the past ten years, spend their days walking eight to 12 kilometers, climbing trees and digging for root vegetables. Their diet consists of various meats, vegetables and fruits, as well as a significant amount of honey. In fact, they get 15 to 20 percent of their calories from honey, a simple carbohydrate.
> The Hadza tend to maintain the same healthy weight, body mass index and walking speed throughout their entire adult lives. They commonly live into their 60s or 70s, and sometimes 80s, with very little to no cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure or diabetes—conditions that are rapidly growing in prevalence in nearly every corner of the world.
https://globalhealth.duke.edu/news/what-can-hunter-gatherers...
And from another source:
> Because humans initially evolved in Africa, where wild animals generally lack appreciable fat stores (2), it seems clear that they consumed a mixed diet of animal and plant foods, given the apparent limitations of human digestive physiology to secure adequate daily energy from protein sources alone (4).
> Hunter-gatherer societies in other environments were doubtless eating very different diets, depending on the season and types of resources available. Hayden (3) stated that hunter-gatherers such as the !Kung might live in conditions close to the “ideal” hunting and gathering environment. What do the !Kung eat? Animal foods are estimated to contribute 33% and plant foods 67% of their daily energy intakes (1). Fifty percent (by wt) of their plant-based diet comes from the mongongo nut, which is available throughout the year in massive quantities (1). Similarly, the hunter-gatherer Hazda of Tanzania consume “the bulk of their diet” as wild plants, although they live in an area with an exceptional abundance of game animals and refer to themselves as hunters (18). In the average collecting area of an Aka Pygmy group in the African rain forest, the permanent wild tuber biomass is >4545 kg (>5 tons) (19).
> Australian aborigines in some locales are known to have relied seasonally on seeds of native millet (2) or a few wild fruit and seed species (20) to satisfy daily energy demands. Some hunter-gatherer societies in Papua New Guinea relied heavily on starch from wild sago palms as an important source of energy (21), whereas most hunter-gatherer societies in California depended heavily on acorn foods from wild oaks (22).
> In nature, any dependable source of digestible energy is generally rare and when discovered is likely to assume great importance in the diet. Animal foods typically are hard to capture but food such as tree fruits and grass seeds are relatively reliable, predictable dietary elements.
https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)07053-3/ful...
Evolved to eats omnivorous diets yes no doubts, but to thrive on omnivorous diets, perhaps no. Most people I know thrive on meats and do worse otherwise.
What you put into your body: no processed food, cook yourself, lots of variety of veggies and fruits, little meat, little alcohol.
What you do with your body: regular exercise, low stress, enough sleep.
What you do with your mind: good social environment, good relationships.
And an apple a day keeps the doctor away!