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Low-Protein Diet May Extend Lifespan
sciencehabit writes "A new theory about the foods that can extend life is taking shape, and it's sure to be a controversial one. Two studies out this week, one in mice (PDF) and another primarily in people (PDF), suggest that eating relatively little protein and lots of carbohydrates — the opposite of what's urged by many human diet plans, including the popular Atkins Diet — extends life and fortifies health."
Fixed that for you....
Low Carb, High Fat...great...
...myself...I lived on just about everything most of my life, including crappy processed food like cheetos, chocolates, refined sugars and whatnot...and it made me obese for over 40 years, then I changed. I decided to drop ALL processed foods...and I lost like 40 Pounds over 4 months...to weight levels I've never seen before ever...
Low Fat, High Carb...okay...
Low Fat, Low Carb...oooh...hardcore...(thats what I did)...nearly died from that one...
Whatever diet you're on...make sure your body is ready for it, I
Yeah. It does work, but you need to be disciplined. Low protein? Nah...make sure you get enough B12...and You'll be fine.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
If this gets around to my girlfriends I'll sue...
Ron, an elderly man in Florida, owned a large farm for several years. He had a large pond in the back.
It was properly shaped for swimming, so he fixed it up nice with picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some orange and
lime trees.
One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond, as he hadn't been there for a while, and look it over.
He grabbed a five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit. As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee.
As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond.
He made the women aware of his presence, and they all went to the deep end.
One of the women shouted to him, "We're not coming out until you leave!"
Ron frowned, "I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the pond naked."
Holding the bucket up Ron said, "I'm here to feed the alligator."
"lots of carbohydrates" doesn't mean "lots of bread, grains and pasta" - fruits and vegetables are a source of carbohydrates.
Basically, this is just confirming what we have already known for many years, but some of us refuse to admit: the best diet is one that is high in fruits and vegetables, and meat should be eaten in small portions (if at all).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_diet
So, sort of, maybe, but not.
Let's ignore the mouse study as that has little interest to human nutrition. From the second pdf: "our results show that among those
ages 50 and above, the level of protein intake is associated with
increased risk of diabetes mortality, but not associated with dif-
ferencesinall-cause, cancer,orCVDmortality."
Clearly people dying of diabetes are not on a low carb diet, so I dunno is this a desperate attempt from the corn farmers?
I'm pretty sure the Atkin's diet was ruled out by anyone with any knowledge of actual human health. The man died a fat, bloated fuck and doomed many of his blind followers to live the same.
Um, I'm not an Atkins proponent (been vegetarian since the seventies) but part of that was marketing by Atkins detractors. He slipped on ice and suffered a severe blow to the head. In the hospital, he contracted another condition (which escapes me at the moment) which caused bloating. There is an urban legend that militant vegetarians (which always struck me as an oxymoron, but never mind...) snuck in and got photos of Atkins on his deathbed as rather disingenious "proof" that his diet killed him.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
as a complement, sucrose is the same a HFCS, and is recognized as such by the industry. Sucrose is just one glucose and one fructose bonded, and HFCS is 45% glucose and 55% fructose.
Exactly
It's silly science. A very small sample set and a snapshot of their diet via a one time questionnaire. It's on one day what the participants surveyed think their diet is which is probably a bit off from reality (quick what percentage of calories did you eat from protein last week?).
You have to wonder what the point is?
" 6381 adults over 50 years old who were interviewed once about their diet as part of NHANES, a national survey of health and nutrition"
Riiight. Because the 150-175 calories from the bun is the tipping point on having a burger not the 300+ calories from just the fat from the beef (assuming 1/2lb. Of 85/15 beef). As the saying goes, that's being pennywise and pound foolish.
In the late 80's and early 90's, fat was the energy source of the devil that needed to be avoided at all costs. Then in the early 2000's, carbs were the new nutrient to avoid. And now, another decade later, they're telling us to avoid protein. I'll stick to eating a variety of foods in moderate portions supplemented by exercise, thank you very much.
What good is it to live a long time if you can't eat what you like to eat?
The four basic food groups are good enough for me - caffeine, nicotine, bacon, and pussy. Without those, life has very little meaning.
Any reasonable recommendations can only come from large, longitudinal studies, over multiple generations. You know, those that shape the food pyramid / WHO guidelines. And they do exist, and give pretty clear ideas. Such as that halving your meat intake is a good idea.
But I guess that's not exciting, news needs to either repackage (MyPlate) or go after highly fluctuating results from microstudies which is the latest research, but in the stage of formation (all these diet fads, X is bad for you, Y heals cancer, drink a glass of red wine a day [because a encyme in a petri dish did something], etc. ).
By the way, why does there need to be one right way of nutrition? Why can't we accept that multiple ways to obtain the basic building blocks are possible.
In the end, we can't be so off by so much: We have so many people living with such a big variety of foods, and they are doing pretty similarly well (i.e. get older than, and are healthy at, 65). The need to prove that everyones diet is completely wrong is ridiculous.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
The cows?
Have gnu, will travel.
In North Korea all people do low protein diet.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
As others, the study was done on mice, who are herbivores in the wild. They say what happens to them will also happen to us, but we have been eating meat a long while now.
I wonder if also applies to my cat? <scarcasm>I know cat's are predominately carnivores, but that shouldn't matter, right?</scarcasm>
It doesn't work for older people in the first place, and we're only talking IGF-1 cancer.
Look, want some useful science?
Vitamin supplements are mostly a waste of time, if you're not about to get pregnant or participate in that, and you're far better off eating a varied diet low in meat with more fruits and vegetables, and getting mild to moderate exercise.
There, free of charge.
Most of the rest is just noise.
Now, go get enough sleep and stop doing binge diets and binge drunks and stuff that stresses you out. If you want to fast for a week or two every ten years (if you do this, take vitamins and fruit or vegetable juice), that also helps.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
as a complement, pork is the same as people. Some 65% water, 20% protein, 15% lipids, and various micronutrients.
The best diet is probably a balanced diet of about 1200 calories a day. The safest way to avoid getting hit by a car is not to walk across streets or drive a car. The safest way to avoid dying via plane is to not fly, etc...
Who the fuck wants to live like that?
But it is the calories. Eating 20,000 calories from protein is still going to make you gain weight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_diet
Unfortunately, if you stick to a Mediterranean Diet, you get stuck with a Mediterranean Economy . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The reason for different kinds of calories is that carbs and sugars spike insulin levels.
http://saveie6.com/
Pfft, and next thing we know, you'll be telling us to exercise too! My sedentary lifestyle has kept me out of the hospital while the active lifestyles kept by the rest of my immediate family have resulted in...
- Broken collarbone (ultimate frisbee collision)
- Broken nose (a different ultimate frisbee collision)
- Hairline fractures in both shins (playing too much ultimate frisbee)
- Blown out knees (too much jogging for one, carrying a couch for the other)
- Severed index finger tendon (landed wrong after tripping while jogging)
- Blown out achilles tendons (they said he'd never jog again, but he was back at it in 6 months)
And that's just off the top of my head in the last five years, none of which occurred at the same time, and none of which they've learned from, since they're all still engaged in those activities. Man, am I showing them!
*says the guy who would strongly advocate that others follow his family members' lifestyle choices rather than his own and is VERY aware of the fact that he's setting himself up for significant complications later in life if he doesn't succeed in following his own advice*
Onions are high sugar.
Anything you can order "caramelized" (like, say, onions) is bad.
So my caramel-coated caramels are safe.
If you come off a diet then it's not really the diet's fault, is it?
More important is exercise and vitamins.
The thing is that the body can and does create its own protein, fat, and sugar. If it has to convert it is less efficient. However, our problem is not a lack of protein or carbohydrates. Our problem is a sedentary population that doesn't move enough to stimulate their metabolisms.
What is more, there are a great many fat people that are also malnourished due to specific vitamin deficiencies. Much of that is due to not having enough fruit and vegetables in the diet.
The problem with including more fruits and veg is that they're expensive especially for urban dwellers that are both farther from food sources and unable to produce their own.
What is more the cost of these foods has gone up faster then inflation in recent years. This forces people to rely more and more on cheap staple carbohydrate food sources. These sources are FINE. I am not arguing against them at all. However, they are not sufficient without supplements or additional food sources.
If you wish to improve the health of people living in modern countries... improve exercise... outdoor activities of any kind... ideally during the day. And lower the cost and increase the availability of fruits and vegetables.
For example... farmers in California are getting their water cut off. These same farmers produce a disproportionate amount of the nation's fruits and vegetables. Thus, any problem they run into will increase the cost and reduce the availability of those goods. Consider building the poor guys a dam or aqueduct so they can sustain production despite the golden state's continuing chronic mismanagement. Further, encourage people to grow their own gardens. There are backyards throughout the suburbs that are entirely sufficient to grow small gardens that can supplement their diets. That takes further pressure off the farms to provide produce to urban centers.
The idea is to just make produce cheaper and more readily available.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm not missing out on anything
Well aside from all kinds of delicious things you can do with meats.
You can't legitimately claim a vegetarian diet can be as varied as an omnivorous one can be. Your vegetarian diet is a strict subset of mine. Full stop.
Sure beet carpaccio is delicious, but its not beef carpaccio. You'll try one, I'll try both. And yes, you are missing out.
Know how to find out if someone is a vegetarian? Just wait, they'll tell you.
Focusing on diet for human lifespan is like focusing on gasoline for car lifespan.
Studies have been done of places where people tend to live longer. Some common threads are: genetics, happiness, close community ties, everyday physical labor, low stress, diet and maybe a few other things.
Yeah sure, diet is in there; but if your Daddy died at 40, you're pissed off all the time, you don't know your neighbors and you spend 60 hours a day stressing in a cube-farm then the quinoa salad you ate probably won't help much. Go ahead though. It probably won't hurt; just don't expect miracles. Look at *all* the factors.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Low carbohydrate diets have been misleadingly labeled "high protein" because they generally feature high amounts of meat. But really, total protein is flat from a 'normal' diet to a low carb one.
They should be actually renamed high fat diets, since carbohydrates are replaced with fat vs. protein. Excessive protein diets can lead to what's called rabbit starvation as a result of eating too little fat.
I have also lost weight this way and agree that eliminating sugary foods was easiest, followed by pastas and other starches. Beer was difficult to give up, I switched to bourbon exclusively for about 9 months but have gradually given in to the tune of about 2-4 cans of beer a week without ill effect. I dial it back in the winter and loosen in the summer.
I really haven't missed sugary stuff, I get a bit of sweet from homemade whipped cream made with Splenda over a small bowl of blueberries 1-2 times a week. In the last 2.5 years I've eaten about 6 desserts and I only really enjoyed the 2 ice cream cones, and the boutique ice cream place's cone about got my high there was so much sugar, everything else was just too sweet.
As a meat eater, you miss out on most veggie dishes because you aren't looking for them. Again, I am missing nothing but the health problems.
Stop thinking diet book and start thinking biology class. It is impossible to gain weight eating (nothing but) protein. Digestion and absorption do not work like that. You might deal with protein poisoning (look up "Rabbit Starvation"), but you won't get fat.
Your body needs protein, it needs fats and it needs ~SOME~ carbs.
In simple terms: In biology class we learned that the body releases insulin to do what? Reduce blood sugar... When you eat something with sugar in it (candy, soda, white rice, bread, pasta, etc) it raises your blood sugar level. Your body releases insulin to store that in your fat cells. You get fat.
If you eat 1,000 calories in a candy bar, you will get fatter.
If you eat 1,000 calories in white rice, you will get fatter.
If you eat 1,000 calories of salmon, prime rib, chicken, etc you will not gain weight. Your body has nothing to store in your fat cells.
Just eat a balanced mix of foods without (or with limited) simple carbs and you will never have to diet again.
Procrastination; I'll think of a sig tomorrow.
The brain interprets happiness/enjoyment as quite relative to previous life experiences. It's not a static relationship.
Whenever you try something new and find it's the "best thing ever" the brain recalibrates, and your previous "best thing ever" loses a little of it's enjoyment.
It's the same with enjoying food, the amount of enjoyment a vegetarian gets from their favorite vegetarian food is the same as a omnivore gets from their favorite meat-based food.
With the possible exception of someone who has just 'given up' meat, since they have the memory of enjoying things the can't have any more.
Please don't confuse your opinions with facts. It's clear the only science you know is 'bro'.
Your body doesn't make carbohydrates it makes glucose and glycogen, which fuel the brain and muscles. There is lots of literature about how this works. It's easy for the body to use dietary carbohydrates to supply all the energy needs of the body. It's also *very* easy to eat more than you need when you throw refined sugars into the mix. Your body can only store so much glycogen/glucose - in fact it is toxic in high concentrations. So thats where insulin kicks in an converts it to fat. Fat is an incredibly good energy storage mechanism. It's energy dense and you can carry loads of it around. Though I'm not sure that was the intention when it was 'invented'. Your body is of course wired up to be able to use these energy reserves when there is no dietary energy source. That never happens though really. Now if you take something that is designed to be hungry sometimes, and you make sure it is always fed, then of course stuff is going to start going wrong.
One of the reasons we are constantly fed, is because we are constantly hungry. Our "am I hungry" sensor was invented before calorie dense refined foods. One of the things that sets it off is low blood sugar, and one of the things that eating lots of sugar does is make your body release insulin. The quicker that sugar gets in your blood, the more insulin your body makes, and because it can't afford to risk letting your blood sugar get too high, it will keep pumping out insulin until it gets blood sugar under control. As your blood sugar lowers, it will reduce insulin secretion but there is a lag in this feedback loop. Depending on how fast and how high you went (and how may times you have done this before), will depend on how hard you crash. Then your blood sugar will end up low, then you'll be hungry again. You can eat 1000 calories of ice cream, and go right back fro 1000 more after as little as half an hour. So clearly something isn't right.
Not eating refined sugar doesn't leave you 'malnourished'. On the contrary, you end up eating far more nutritious sources of carbohydrate such as fruit and vegetables. You do know that one of the main premises of atkins is eating vegetables?
Another fact is that Low carb != Zero carb. Once again I refer you to the fact that you are supposed to eat vegetables. You can eat fruit as well, just don't eat too much (although if its a choice between that and ice cream...)
One of the greatest benefits is regulation of appetite. All that veg makes you feel fuller for longer. I absolutely dare you to push through the withdrawal symptoms you will get coming off sugar and see what 'sobriety' is like.
I'm going to need you to cite a source that says the human body *requires* carbohydrates to survive. It doesn't, it hasn't been proven, it cannot be proven because it is patently false.
You are also confusing low carb with high protein, and thusly drawing invalid conclusions about what might be causing kidney problems. Yes, eating high protein has been proven to have negative effects. Thats not the same as eating low carb though.
You don't *eliminate* carbs, you stop eating junk food. Most of you don't eat that way because you don't want to. When you try to stop eating high sugar your body experiences withdrawal symptoms. That deep and aching hunger you feel. It isn't actual hunger, it's craving. If you could get off it then you would find out what *actual* hunger feels like. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't make you feel like you could consume your entire bodyweight in oreos. It's more like a gentle tap on the shoulder from a polite english gent, who is informing you that its probably meal time "but if you don't want to eat sir, then thats no problem, I can come back in an hour or two"
If you actually knew what 'atkins' was you would know all of this. Your second hand opinions prove that you know nothing of it.
"The ones that every doctor will tell you about. The ones that this very story is about."
Only if you over eat.
"Highly doubtful.":
neither you should should be talking about your person health. It's not good data, and it's irrelevant and you don't know what each other health is like.
"It doesn't have to be, but often it is and it will never be as healthy as a vegetarian diet."
Vegetarian can becomes over weight, and they can have there own set of health problems.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
In short: A properly planned vegetarian is fine. But so is a properly balance omnivore diet.
"Despite what someone might have told you, not everyone finds animal flesh appealing."
fair enough, but we aren't discussing personal taste. And yes the person who posted that shouldn't have, it's a weak attempt at an ad hom. Pointless to the topic.
"Pretentious? When? Where?"
here:
"As a meat eater, you miss out on most veggie dishes because you aren't looking for them. "
You act like you know something you don't actually no anything about, that person person dietary habits.
Just so you know, I eat a lot of vegetarian dishes and meat dishes. You are trying to create some sort of false dichotomy between you and meat eaters, stop it. What he said is true: You have restricted yourself to a subset of choice; therefore less varied.
IN NO WAY should this betaken as my implying you shouldn't be vegetarian, or you are wrong for being one.
"You're the one posturing and resorting to ad hominem."
He isn't posturing. He is using ad hominem, and he is wrong for doing so, just like you. See you do have something in common.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Twin doctors, one eats nothing but fats and the other eats nothing but carbs, for a month. They document it, they work out, they do tests.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...
The result (spoiler alert), either is not great. Eating only fat cannibalizes your muscles, and makes you not get any enjoyment out of food. Whereas eating only carbs makes you feel hungrier all the time.
But their conclusion had a twist, the main problem is processed foods that have a 50/50 mix of fat and carbs. An excellent example is whipped cream. Your body would reject you drinking pure cream, and also pure sugar. But mix them together, and you cant stop eating it! Same with many of our favourite foods, ice cream, doughnuts. All have the 50/50 mix that vendors long ago realized was the most addictive mix. Your body basically never gets the signal to stop eating.
Anyone who is interested should check it out.
http://kickass.to/usearch/hori...
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Unfortunately there is a big selection bias with this, as the vegetarians that don't give a crap what you eat won't say anything. And of course, if someone never lets you know they are a vegetarian, you'll never hear of vegetarians that don't let you know. Then there are the types that think all vegetarians are preachy, because when they ask someone why they don't want to try some meat dish, they flip out and insist the vegetarian was getting preachy when all they said was, "No thank you," and, "I'm a vegetarian," in response to a direct question.
Any reasonable recommendations can only come from large, longitudinal studies, over multiple generations. You know, those that shape the food pyramid / WHO guidelines.
Bullshit. Look at the actual science. Endocrinologists can tell you how your body processes nutrients based on hormones. Hormones COMPLETELY control fat storage and use. Diet dramatically affects hormone secretion. As one put it: "Carbohydrate drives insulin drives fat storage"
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
You can eat a tasty and balanced and varied diet on 1900 calories a day.
So, would you rather have a tasty diet and live till 88, or eat the same tasty diet, just more of it, and die at 68?
This is not the answer you would like, but I'll take 68 over 88 any day of the week
My experience in my family and relatives has been that while we are really good at extending life, it's all on the wrong end of the lifespan. I've seen too many relatives who once would have made it to maybe 70, and now spend their last 15 years as demented zombies, kept alive by the miracles of modern medicine. They have low cholesterol, low blood pressure, and are having their savings, retirement ans SS checks going ot the nursing home, while they luxuriate in their Depends, catheters, and whatever experimental meds they give to Alzheimer's patients to keep them alive in order to extract those last pennies. Seriously undignified and unnaturally drawn out. THere are fates worse than dying.
People in America get portions far larger then they need. People get used to over eating, so when they get a properly portioned meal they feel hungry, even though rationally they have enough.
While I don't disagree with you that Americans overeat, the concept of getting people to eat less in times of plenty is going to be difficult to achieve. And the slovenly Americans are not the only people with an overeating problem.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"What health problems? My health is probably better than yours."
Is "Internet Healthy Guy" a new variation on "Internet Tough Guy"?
"My blood pressure could kick your blood pressure's ass!"
This idiot developed and sold some of the world's best respiratory monitoring equipment. One of our repeat customers was a big tobacco company - they paid well, and even sponsored some customization for their research. They never published anything, but they know quite a bit about the science of smoking. The investors and management of the tobacco companies did, indeed, diversify into food in the 1980s, and they have been driving the "improvements" found on grocery store shelves since then, using a similar systematic, scientific approach to selling profitable food products. I believe the consumer's health is at a similar priority for them in food as it was in the tobacco industry.
Yes, people should stop eating garbage, exercise regularly, save for retirement, etc. However, judging from past performance, they need a little encouragement in the right direction, and the available food choices, and pricing structure of those food choices in the U.S. today do not seem to be the encouragement that most people need to make healthy choices. Next, we can go down a whole health-care profit machine conspiracy hole, if you like.
Nobody is forcing you to buy pre-processed, packaged foods, you are absolutely free to go to the grocery and buy fresh produce, meats, dairy, and do all the cooking yourself. Look at the shelf space in your local grocery store and tell me where they are making the bulk of their profits. It's not in the produce aisle.
You can't legitimately claim a vegetarian diet can be as varied as an omnivorous one can be. Your vegetarian diet is a strict subset of mine. Full stop.
You can't legitimately claim a noncoprophagic diet can be as varied as a coprophagic diet can be. Your diet is a strict subset of a coprophage's diet. Full stop.
Hummm... nope. It is about a low-protein diet, not a vegetarian one.
Try to be more attentive and think before you speak.
I presume you only read the summary?
The actual study found that animal protein promotes mortality, while plant protein does not.
The study is linked up there at the top of the page, in case you want to read it.
"opposite of what's urged by many human diet plans, including the popular Atkins Diet"
Even Atkins followers seem to forget that it's not protein but FAT that is important in their diet. He clearly advised that excess protein will cause glucose to be created in your body and counteract the purpose of the diet.
...omphaloskepsis often...