The poisonous parts tend to be the leaves, not the fruit.
My understanding is that there are plenty of poisonous fruits / berries, many in the same family as human-cultivated varieties that we now eat. But I don't really know the distribution. Also, not all poisonous leaves taste bad or bitter (e.g. hemlock), but I do believe those are the exception to the rule.
Humans, and primates generally, don't often graze on random leaves.
Well, I don't know about gorillas, but humans have plenty of leaves in our diet and they had to have gotten there somehow--lots of trial and error, I'm guessing. Why can't the same be applied toward creepy crawlies? (Again, I'm guessing it did, given the prevalnce of bugs in some cuisines.) So I don't see "there are some poisonous ones" as being a unique feature. Maybe there are more poisonous / unsanitary bugs overall so that made it not worth the effort? Maybe there are more look-alikes that made it harder to catalog (though if you've ever tried to use a mushroom key that factor doesn't seem to have dissuaded us either).
From your wikipedia link:
The first reliable evidence of mushroom consumption dates to several hundred years BC in China.
The Chinese value mushrooms for MEDICINAL PROPERTIES
Also from the link (the following two sentences in fact): "Ancient Romans and Greeks, particularly the upper classes, used mushrooms for culinary purposes. Food tasters were employed by Roman Emperors to ensure that mushrooms were safe to eat." There's nothing modern about eating mushrooms, we can just learn a lot more about the toxins with modern techniques.
Mushrooms are neither sweet, nor salty, nor slightly sour. Those are hallmarks of "food".
I just don't know why that necessarily means it's an acquired taste. Why is umami, whether in its own right or in combination, not equivalently "naturally attractive" as any other taste sensation? Glutemate is found in meats and veggies too. Conversely, plenty of things may not be perceived as pleasant upon first try; a hypothesis I've read regarding this is that kids have higher sensitivity to different tastes so many common foods for adults are overwhelming and therefore somewhat aversive (e.g., here but that's just a random link I found on this topic). I just don't see where you're basing some of your statements from.
Umami (glutamate) is debated as to whether it's a basic taste
I thought it was pretty accepted at this point that it was a basic taste in its own right. Wikipedia points to several references claiming so at least. Maybe it doesn't elicit a specific perceptual response on its own (I don't know), is that what you mean?
Lastly, non-mushroom fungus we eat includes blue-cheese cultures and cuitlacoche
On the other hand, one could make the case for the antimicrobial effects of additives outside the body. F.i.: adding a lot of pepper to a dish helps kill off a plethora of bacteria before you eat the dish, but it will also kill friendly gut bacteria after having been ingested. Considering that the distribution of different bacteria strains in the food is very probably skewed towards unfriendly bacteria and the distribution of gut bacteria towards friendly bacteria, the net effect of the killing would be positive.
Good argument for eating fermented foods. Harmless or possibly beneficial bacteria do the job of keeping other pathogens and toxin-producers at bay, skewing the distribution heavily in our favor. I have a jar of homemade kimchi in my fridge right now, and another continuing to ferment in my pantry.
True, though a question that rises is: how much training material does it need and how good is it at linking (back-propagating) feelings of (dis)comfort to the input signals?
Definitely a good question. Part of me believes / wants to believe that I've become a little more sensitive to these sources of sensory interpretation. Another part of me thinks I'm bullshitting myself.
I stopped drinking it altogether (except as an additive) due to the effect it has on insulin levels
Interesting. I'll have to look into this more. But, oddly, I just started testing myself due to some developing symptoms over the last few months, and I actually think I'm just now starting to develop lactose intolerance...ugh
my inability to drink it in quantities smaller than 500ml at a time
Sipping on slightly-warmed milk, savoring the fatty flavor, makes this easier IMHO
I'm sure Kikko-man would agree with you
Show me, shoyu... I see what they did there...
Ok, one last thing you might be interested by. This conversation directly prompted me to do two things to this dish I cooked just a couple nights ago. 1. Deglaze the pan: I do sometimes do this, but often don't bother. 2. Add sugar to the degalze. Because it was just calling for it. I was going to add rice-wine vinegar, but then figured it was really just the sweetness I was after.
Well it used to be Western cultures were less squeamish about eating all parts of the animal as well.
We aren't really. In fact we're probably eat more parts of the animal than any other society in history.
That we eat it doesn't mean we're not squeamish about it. Go ahead and ask the guests at your next cookout how they like the pig-brain-stuffed hot dogs you're serving and see the reactions you get. I still know far too many people who insist on not seeing any part of a cut of meat that makes it look like it came from an animal.
Also, we eat mammals, not creepy-crawlies, because mammals aren't poisonous.
How does the variety of toxic plants fit into this narrative? I don't see the process of learning what insects to eat as being any different from the process of learning what plants to eat. That other cultures do eat insects I think supports my point.
Mushrooms are an acquired taste, not something that most people enjoy immediately, but with modern practices we can separate the edible fungus from the poisonous.
Why do you say they are an acquired taste compared to anything else we eat? And, like insects and plants, far-less-than-modern practices led humans to separate the poisonous mushrooms from the edible ones.
Heh, and look how dutifully our governments and corporations are responding to that knowledge of physics and chemistry.
Science is not stupid. However, science doesn't know a lot, and claiming otherwise is the work of first-years and undergrads. Do you really think we have anything close to a complete understanding of our digestive systems? (Not that I am arguing any ill-effect of GM foods, but my question stands as stated)
I guess all the evidence points to using copious amounts of herbs is a good idea, health-wise. On the other hand it doesn't really make a case for avoiding synthetic preservatives.
Nope, the only case for that is fear of the unknown. Or, stated another way, the devil you know...except that in this case the devil you know happens to be rather good for you
In fact, if we focus on the anti-microbial properties of herbs and spices, synthetic (anti-microbial) preservatives should also sound like a good idea. If on the other hand herbs and spices are beneficial due to vitamin and mineral content, synthetic preservatives lose out completely.
You're still leaving out details, though. What other effects could there be? (Bleach also has anti-microbial properties, and even ignoring the effect on taste I'd still prefer to add herbs to bleach.) How does either anti-microbial agent break down in the stomach, or, if they don't, affect our gut bacteria? (Could you pass the penicillin?)
You seem to have mentioned the 'one' exception [...]
Alrighty then.
This argument would work if we would experience rewards from eating things with certain other nutrients (vitamins, minerals and such), which I believe is not or hardly the case. I.e.: I'm not so sure those other signals even exist.
It does look like I have to acquiesce that I'm standing on shaky ground on this general idea. However, I have found some evidence that some vitamin or mineral deficiencies can affect dietary preference for supplemented feed in rats,
sheep, and hens.
While this behavior may not represent a "craving" as addressed by the above articles you linked to, it does support the idea that food selection can be driven by nutritional need. Now, all I need to do is ask those researchers to repeat the experiments when sugar was added to all of the tested feeds. I'll get back to you on that one...
The following is a purely subjective, personal anecdote, but it has likely contributed to my belief that our nervous systems might develop interesting interpretations of whatever signals may be triggered by the various stages of digestion. There are certain foods that I will suddenly experience what I'll call an "anti-craving" for--that is, something in my brain/body just makes me not want to eat it for at least a couple days. This has happened to me with beef heart and chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms. I have no idea what was behind that feeling, but I can tell you it was pretty strong, and pretty food-specific (it's not like I wasn't hungry for the next couple days or anything).
Other than the above, my general impression from having studied perception and neuroscience is to never underestimate what types of signals our brains can learn to work with. For instance, did you know that trained radiologists can detect the presence of lesions in an x-ray image with better-than-chance ability when the image is only displayed for 1/5 of a second without even consciously knowing what it was that they detected? (The latter part of that statement comes from having spoken to the PI of that study). I'm not saying that there are perceptual nutrient receptors (there are, however, sweet receptors in the gut), just that there are perceptual differences that can occur due to a sufficiency or deficiency of various nutrients via their action in all systems in the body, and that if there's a signal, the brain will learn to use it.
I'm pretty sure that's not true. Mainly from experience, but a little googling also seems to indicate that there is ei
Well, if you're from European descent, things like pepper haven't been part of your family line's diet for too long. 2000 years, max. I'm not sure to what extent other herbs and spices (with perhaps similar properties) were ever part of European (or going further back: our primate ancestors') diets.
Sounds like we need a nutritional anthropologist to help us out. I think you're right that it's a little tenuous to claim we, across the board of human genetic lines, evolved to cope with the diversity of herbs and spices in use today. Many early cultures, though, may have had several thousand years to discover, select, and breed these plants to be more beneficial to our food--in a sense, each culture is one instance of a random process fed to a system designed, in part, to optimize the nutritive goodness of available foods, and existing herbs and spices are the outputs of several of those instances. Some summary sources suggest that spicec and herbs have been in use since early hunter times, with documented uses as early as roughly 2000 BCE ([1], [2]; and I'm half of Chinese descent). Still, if we're talking about more subtle influences, like modest inhibition of nutrient absorption that can easily be overcome with a varied diet, I have to admit it's hard to argue that there was any strong pressure on plant breeding to this end.
I'm not debating whether consuming certain compounds together influences what effect they have on the body, just suggesting that for some (maybe many?) combinations buffers allow for separate ingestion.
I certainly believe that. Off the top of my head there are a couple things that that may commonly occur in prepared foods that might violate the buffer rule: (1) timing of digestion of sugars, as in provided in a sauce where it's readily available vs. distributed in plant cells which I believe take more time for your digestive system to work on, (2) deficiency of certain minor chemicals (i.e. trace phytonutrients) that may still play a role in nutrition. That would pretty much have to be chemicals not usually listed on nutrition labels for this argument to have any weight regarding one's ability to plan a balanced diet, and I don't know what those chemicals might be or even they even exist. I'm basing this off of my understanding that we have historically miscategorized and entirely missed important nutrients in the vitamin and mineral categories, and have no strong reason to believe we've got it all correct now.
I suspect that relying too consistently on the taste of sugar to make food taste "good" may interfere with our body's regulatory mechanisms for seeking out other nutrients (cravings?)
I don't know about that. If I'm not mistaken, sugar consumption and cravings is more a matter of blood sugar/insulin levels and to what extent things that slow down digestion have been consumed together with the (large) amount of sugar. Let's be honest, for a lot of essential stuff such as vitamin C, we never have cravings.
I don't really know either. I've heard about things like red-meat cravings for people with mild anemia (apparently it can get pretty pathological, expressing as pica, which is a craving for various substances such as clay and dirt). Ultimately I have to believe that we, mammals, and animals in general evolved methods of seeking out nutrients that we were lacking. Maybe, though, that was accomplished through sensory-specific satiety, as described in the junk-food article, or that, for the most part, seeking out foods that satisfy our five basic tastes provided enough variety that we would get what we needed. Still, I wonder why it is that one day some fresh fruit sounds like th
The thing is, this being Halliburton, it's virtually guaranteedthat the person that gave the order to destroy evidence has already gotten away with much more heinous crimes and effectively has immunity from prosecution for anything he does.
"-1: troll" right. Slashdot should really up the frequency of meta-moderation specifically for -1 mods and strip assholes who abuse it too much of any future mod points.
Not sure I agree with sam_vilain's claim that it's "worth reading" (seems more like a string of poorly-reasoned ad-hominem to me), but here you go:
Following his request for asylum in Russia, it's become pretty clear that Edward Snowden is officially the most naïveperson in the room.
Not only is he surrounded by members of Russia's Foreign Security Service (FSB) — the successor to the KGB — but he's loudly trumpeting the moral superiority of the Putin government, one of the most repressive, cutthroat regimes in modern history.
David Francis' Fiscal Times write-updigs into Snowden for his "mind boggling naiveté":
He is asking for asylum in a country that continues to openly squash dissent, often using violent tactics. Putin runs the country with an iron fist, has jailed people who oppose him, and has chased others out of the country. Opponents have been known to meet early deaths, often under suspicious circumstances.
Francis notes theuntimely,often gruesomedeathsof several political opponents to Putin over the years.
Snowden's statements about Russia's sterling Human Rights image come within days of the imprisonment of high-profile political opposition leader Alexei Navalny,on what some call trumped-up embezzlement charges.
Snowden himself acknowledged his potential for naivetyto Bart Gellman of the Washington Post: “Perhaps I am naïve, but I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.”
To make matters worse, the person seemingly speaking for Snowden now —Russian attorney Anatoly Kucherena — also happens to be the head of public relations for the FSB.
Freelance reporter and intelligence expert Joshua Foust writes:"The involvement of known FSB operatives at his asylum acceptance... suggests this was a textbook intelligence operation, andnota brave plea for asylum from political persecution."
"The Russians are very good at what they do," wrote Foust, referring to their simultaneous control of the "principal" — Snowden — and the public message.
Putin — a former lieutenantcolonelin the KGB — drew laughs from Finland students when he said regarding Snowden, "If you want to stay, please, but you have to stop your political activities. We have a certain relationship with the U.S., and we don’t want you with your political activities damaging our relationship with the U.S."
The Russian president just as deftly shifted the blame to the U.S., a foreseeable consequence of the State Department's decision to revoke Snowden's passport.
It seems in all of this, Snowden is not the super-intelligent super spy he makes himself out to be, but just an analyst who is in over his head.
Looking at his statement that he could be "petting a phoenix, in a palace" in China, indicates that he expected to be gree
I understand how making food taste very good can make it harder not to overeat
I forgot to disagree with this point. I think it may be true for some foods, especially as in the engineered foods of the article you linked. But since switching from a calorie-counting strategy to a sort-of real-foodie philosophy some 2+ years ago, I have found my food to be much more self-limiting and have had no problems managing my portions and weight. Now I stop eating because I feel done, whereas, previously, I stopped eating often because I knew I had to limit my caloric intake. This (subjective) experience is a large part of what drives my belief that, at least with foods we evolved with, our bodies can potentially be our best source of information on what we should and shouldn't be eating at any given time.
isn't eating random herbs (natural 'additives') from all over the planet equally unwise? [...] What evidence is there that the natural preservatives aren't ten times as 'dangerous' as synthetically produced preservatives?
Certainly I have none, other than the not-too-convincing argument that we've been eating pepper and cumin for millenia. Plus they taste good:-). To me, there's something to the idea that human societies co-developed with and around these sources of food that makes me more prone to use them over synthetic additives that were explicitly engineered to diminish the food's nutritional availability for some organisms. Just my own preference, and not one that I stick to strictly either.
I'm going to go out of order here because this is related:
I am aware that during pretty much all our evolution we did not live past the age of 40. That could mean that our primal diet and digestive system were tuned for a live hard, die young existence.
Well, that's not necessarily true, and I believe infant mortality make up for the largest difference in mean lifespan. I don't think you can make the argument about how our digestive systems evolved based on an average that includes infant mortality. However even without that, I'm pretty sure adult life spans were, on average, shorter due to several factors including diseases, so there's definitely at least some credence to your hypothesis.
Talking about trust, that link is to a PDF trying to sell some kind of supplement.
Touche. I suppose it was a bad idea to just quickly go scouring for links, and it might have been better to just say "I have read somewhere". The point, though, was just that nutrient absorption is not a linear system, and the response to a sum of inputs (nutrients) is different from the sum of the responses to those isolated inputs. So I take any biochemical nutritional analysis with a grain of salt, just as we should all take our calcium with a dose of vitamin D
If your taste or distaste for something is mainly driven by some memory, feeling or state of mind, it is almost certainly less stable than a taste or distaste originating in your biological make-up. The latter is also something you can use when preparing food for others (as opposed to the other factors).
Agreed as stated. To the original point (i.e. not about Scotch), though, the taste receptors on the tongue are only one biological mechanism we developed for finding nutritious food. Sure, they're probably the most important, at least when energy was scarce and poisonous foods could commonly kill us. The contribution of smell to taste must play a pretty large role, though, and I don't think smell has much to do with why sugary food tastes "good". Nor do I think we can say that my stated preferences aren't due to inherent perceptions of smell and taste. But it goes further; there are learned preferences that can still be pretty universal. For example, there is a proposed mechanism by which we learn the association between certain foods and their nutritive (or at least caloric) content. I suspect that relying too consistently on the taste of sugar to make food taste "good" may interfere with our body's regulatory mechanisms for seeking out other nutrients (cravings?)
So I don't consider it some Victorian doctrine of "thou shalt not have fun" (you should see how much lard I cook with and how much butter I put on my bread). Instead, assuming any of the above is even correct, I consider it as not using to their fullest extent the body's several pathways of deriving pleasure and satisfaction from food. Dosing everything with sugar to make it all taste good may also mask our body's other
I was referring to how PR departments and the media in general spin pretty much every nutritional study into what amount to either flat out lies or terribly misleading statements.
re: unl presentation: very interesting, thanks for that link. I knew spices such as pepper and cumin were effective preservatives, but really didn't think the same could be said about herbs like oregano and thyme. I guess it makes sense that those flavors are related to plant defense mechanisms, which could apply equally to seeds as leaves, so I suppose that does make sense.
Still, a question I have is, not considering severe digestive issues, are there detrimental effects of the types and levels of artificial preservatives on nutrient absorption? I'm not familiar with any data on that, and would like to, eventually, try to digest (no pun intended) some of the available literature (the link as one example, but I'm not experienced enough in this field to make much sense of such studies without spending more time that I can afford at the moment). And I certainly don't trust Kraft Foods to prioritize a thorough understanding of these issues over an extra dose of additives to ensure foods don't discolor and turn sour on the shelf. In the meantime, while i have little basis for telling others that they are "bad", I'm just as happy avoiding these additives when i can do so without too much hassle.
Mmm, fecal transplant therapy...my girlfriend has already talked my ear off about this one as she used to study C. difficile, for which this therapy is sometimes used. From one (only half-serious) perspective, it's another neat reminder of what we can and can't engineer with current biotechnology: "we can't really culture the same flora needed to repopulate your digestive system, but we can shove someone else's poop up your butt!"
If I'm not mistaken, oxidization requires being exposed to oxygen. There's a reason why some stuff can be stored for weeks in a closed package and mere days when the packaging is opened. There's still oxygen exposure, but it is greatly reduced and fairly predictable.
Are there other mechanisms of nutrient loss beyond simple oxidation that are harder to control? For example, does cellular metabolism in plant material, which i believe continues long past harvest, lead to breakdown of nutrients even in the packaging, either directly or as a result of byproducts created in the process? This is, of course, all speculation at this point. Still, I intuitively believe that the blueberries I'm adding to my breakfast might be more nutritionally valuable than the freeze-dried ones in a box of cereal. I enjoy them more, at the very least.
In addition to that, 'non-packaged food' may also have been or be exposed to significant amounts of oxygen and other deteriorating influences.
This is an excellent point, and is probably a pretty significant factor in judging the value of items like pre-cut, plastic-wrapped fruit available in many stores (polyethylene, used in many commercial food wraps, is oxygen-permeable). I also intuitively think the nutritional value of unadulterated produce is correlated to some measure of its fragrance and taste (this at least makes sense from an evolutionary point of view), and, on the flip-side, have seen some pretty depressing-looking produce offerings at several different markets. But, again, I have nothing to back up up that claim of a meaningful difference, or the implicit follow-up claim that I have been better-than-random at picking the "good stuff". I'm ok with that.
With regard to supplements and fortification, it's true that I'm lumping the two together with
I find too many people are quick to know that there understanding encompasses "the right answer" for all dogs. After the first year+ of trying hard and working with trainers to use redirection and positive reinforcement without and positive punishment, I have to say that the e-collar has been an indispensable tool for my dog. And yeah, I put it on myself to see what it feels like at various levels. It goes from 0 to 127, and I typically use it on him at 20. I've given myself a 60, and am very hesitant to go above that on him or me.
I haven't used it for chewing because he rarely does that, and I only find out about it when it's far far too late for the e collar to do anything. But, I could potentially see it being an effective strategy to deliver the stimulus exactly as he puts his mouth on the shoes. Please note, if you don't already know, that I'm not talking about painful (ok, yeah, that's subjective), yelp-inducing shocks, but instead an irritating stimulus that you've first trained him how to stop. This training is the first thing that the last trainer I've used did with me when I asked him about the merits of using one. We first found the lowest level that he showed any sign of noticing (to me, this level feels like an irritating tickle), then spent some time using negative reinforcement by taking away the shocks the moment he obeyed a well-known command.
I have, and occasionally still do, however, use it to direct his attention when outdoors. See, the reason I was having so much difficulty is that he simply didn't care about food, happy rewarding praise, or most anything else I was able to offer, when there was another dog in nose-shot. I had limited success using a command that meant he could sniff around and pee on things for a while as a reward for not pulling on the leash, but I simply wasn't making enough progress. Now that's I've gone e-collar, I have been much more successful at getting him to be able to behave and recall off-leash and on, which means I now get to let him run around whereas I simply could not before (mind you, he's a pit bull, and not being able to recall your pit bull when he's running towards a stranger's dog or child is unacceptable of the owner). It also stresses me out far less now that I can reliably get his attention, and that's improved my relationship with him. So as I see it, the e-collar has greatly improved his (and my) quality of life.
One last little point, I think such studies are often overstated but not necessarily deliberately so--rather, with the genuine belief that the assumptions and generalizations being made are valid. I can't back that up, of course, but it's the feeling i get from reading recommendations and interpretations, and it mirrors the kind of thinking I see more often than I'd like in scientists in my own field (auditory neuroscience)
Ok, so I can get into some of the half-formed reasons I have for avoiding the elusive category of "processed foods". Mostly, I eat the way I do because I enjoy it. I love food: growing it, buying it, cooking it, and eating it. But I have this idea that eating foods prepared from fresh ingredients that will go bad within a week is generally a healthier choice too. To put these ideas into words, you'll have to then permit me some unverified ideas and a lot of hand waving as I try to figure this out even for myself right here. "Processed foods", here, is simply a perhaps lazy attempt at a plain-english, loose-fitting label that tends to encompass the foods I would consider part of this group. In general, they are packaged foods with oddly long shelf lives and mostly sugar or salt for flavor. I tend to believe that the reason that this is necessary to make these things palatable is related to my fundamental objection: that, despite what the "nutrition facts" labels says, my body recognizes that I'm eating filler. Not two years ago, I based my entire diet off of reading the nutrition label. Now, I mostly ignore it, read the ingredients list instead, and have found that easier and more successful than my previous strategy for staying fit & healthy. I suppose I do sort of subscribe to the idea that if it's similar to how we've been eating throughout human history, it's probably a good way to sustain ourselves, and that this can't necessarily be said of food chemistry developed in the last century or so. Specific objections might include:
(1): Foods that are uncannily shelf-stable cannot necessarily be said to be as healthy as the picture on the box implies. For example, hydrogenated fats are used to replace the unsaturated fats that would typically go rancid over time. Ok, we've covered the trans fat thing. But then there are ideas like:
(1a) Preservatives are added to make the food inhospitable to microbes. Now, I don't know that there's necessarily a difference between using, say, sodium benzoate vs sodium chloride, which I don't generally object to as much, e.g., in salt cured meats. I'd still only eat the latter in moderation, and would just as soon assume, for my own purposes and as a very loose generalization, that the less easily a food can be broken down by bacteria or fungus in the environment, the more trouble my digestive system (including my gut bacteria) may have in breaking down and properly absorbing the nutrients. Maybe that's complete bollocks.
(1b) Other nutrient loss due to the food's life. For example, vitamins oxidize or otherwise break down with time. Also with heat, often applied to sterilize the food in order to get a longer shelf life. Allegedly this is sometimes known and countered by refortifying the foods with supplemented vitamins / minerals, but I also subscribe to the belief, fueled partly by studies like those mentioned in TFA and here (but yes, I know I'm generalizing without sufficient evidence), that this may be largely ineffective. Other components of the food, such as phytonutrients, may also not last just because the food isn't going "bad". Foods break down, and I little reason to believe that the nutrition label is a particularly meaningful descriptor of a food that for all I know has been months or more from factory to shelf to plate. This leads us nicely to:
(2): trust. I'm sure you know as well as I that labels such as "all natural" and "heart-healthy" are little more than marketing slogans. Many companies seem
I suppose I am begging the question a little in stating that avoiding those foods probably wasn't terrible advice, because I'm definitely thinking of more than just the trans-fat content. I consider it a good enough rule-of-thumb to guide my own decisions, but not really a cogent argument to advise others. I could elaborate if you cared to read, but it's probably just fodder for tl;dr otherwise.
But, while I agree that more time needs to be spent discovering and discussing the specific mechanisms that cause health problems (or benefits), I'm countering what I perceive to be your first argument: that it would be better to educate people on "the actual compounds that potentially have negative health effects". By many folks' definitions, that is exactly what studies on fats, or carbs, or saturated fats, or trans fats, etc, are doing. Yet, advice based on any of these may potentially be equally counter-productive as rule-of-thumbs such as "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." or "regular light excercise, moderation and variatoin". By and large, I think these rules of thumb, when their reasoning is understood at a basic level and followed thus, can be effective guidelines. But yes, there will always be the proverbial bakery-goers who don't bother to understand anything other than a sound bite and think they're following some catch-all guideline and may then get demoralized. I guess I just think that for the rest of us, rules of thumb might not actually be so bad.
Hell, I even consider "eat a different color of vegetable every day" an alright rule of thumb, although obviously it is hugely susceptible to misuse by consumers and trickery by producers. But so is yours: a friend's definition of "variation" was to order different toppings on his weekly order of domino's pizza (which he kept in the fridge and ate throughout the week).
A friend of mine literally didn't trust food that was grown at home, based on a self-admitted irrational fear of the unknown but trust in supermarket food. Sadly, I don't think that sentiment is too uncommon. I'm not trying to be all "good ol' days" or anything, but I really wonder how we got here.
I cooked for someone who claimed to be extremely sensitive to MSG. I used a sauce once that I didn't realize at the time had MSG in it. Thing is, when she ate it, neither did she.
How we got it in the first place could be something as simple as a coincidental sickness or unwell feeling (that will happen, of course, at some base level by chance alone), and it being falsely attributed to a Chinese restaurant. Looking retrospectively, MSG gets fingered, and thus a myth is born. It could also be an interaction, but if it is I (with all of my completely unrelated qualifications) highly doubt it's something as simple as MSG + some other specific ingredient.
Assuming that is the case (which I agree with enough to affect my personal decisions but not strongly enough to tell others it is so), it should also be clarified that the distinction isn't specifically RoundUp-ready vs. not. Most people will be buying those same bred-for-shipping-and-storage varieties even if they avoid the GMO versions.
Lastly, crops that have GMO varieties typically don't make up the bulk of a varied diet anyway, at least as of now (I'm sure that statement will require yearly review). I think it's mostly soy, corn, rice, along with a few specific fruits like papaya and zucchini. So the raw nutrition content of a varied diet shouldn't be too largely affected by GMO vs. non-GMO (the ability to absorb nutrition is a separate question however)
If the trans fats are the problem, then why not say 'things that contain significant amounts of trans fats' instead of 'processed food'? That is my main gripe with the generic nutritional advice. Instead of educating people on the actual compounds that potentially have negative health effects, we end up with a plethora of bullshit advice like 'processed food is bad', 'things in cans are bad', 'eat a different color of vegetable every day' or 'brown bread is healthy' (which has lead producers to add dye to their whitebread).
One arguable reason is that it could be more effective at getting people to eat more healthily than the approach of "avoid X and Y unless Z" etc. Now I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here, I personally prefer to get at the more detailed science; however, I also recognize that sometimes the more detailed science approach is going to be bad at quickly developing a complete understanding of the entire nutritional system and all of its interactions. This leads us to shun butter but slather on the margarine, put 7-11 servings of grains on the bottom of our (US; now obselete) food pyramid, and so on. That is, of course, the beautiful progress of science, but it's led to decades of what many now call bad nutritional advice. On the other hand, saying "avoid boxed pre-processed foods" is horrendously unscientific and vague, but, quite honestly, probably not terrible advice.
I don't doubt that there is, as you point out, the significant danger of a plethora of bullshit advice if we start blindly accepting advice of this nature. I just think there's an interesting balance between the two ends of nutritional advice.
Even trans fat research is mostly hard to control epidemiological research. What evidence there is still doesn't warrant saying things like "trans fats are deleterious to health", simply because that is such a broad statement. The risks for a lot of things can differ greatly varying with age, genetics, total diet composition, the average amount ingested over a longer period etc
Not to mention the type of trans fats, which may be an important but overlooked distinction
What do the hunting abilities of the modern person have to do with the nutritional benefit of the associated foods?
Same question with the current state of some large-scale industrialized slaughterhouses. I have not been to a slaughterhouse, but I have been involved in slaughter on occasion. I know people who kill animals routinely, either for a living or for their own sustenance, who are not sociopaths. So I really don't get your point.
... is exactly the generalization error that I start to find myself really confused by its frequency, particularly in nutritional recommendations. Saturated and mono / poly-unsaturated fats are one I've been looking into a lot, and can find very little reason why we've been so comfortable treating those three classes of fats as the only meaningful distinction. In case you're interested, there's also some interesting recent research into a division in trans fats and the corresponding effects on cardiovascular disease and even body weight.
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I tried bear meat stew, and thought it was quite delicious. Both anecdotes, neither fully answers my question.
The poisonous parts tend to be the leaves, not the fruit.
My understanding is that there are plenty of poisonous fruits / berries, many in the same family as human-cultivated varieties that we now eat. But I don't really know the distribution. Also, not all poisonous leaves taste bad or bitter (e.g. hemlock), but I do believe those are the exception to the rule.
Humans, and primates generally, don't often graze on random leaves.
Well, I don't know about gorillas, but humans have plenty of leaves in our diet and they had to have gotten there somehow--lots of trial and error, I'm guessing. Why can't the same be applied toward creepy crawlies? (Again, I'm guessing it did, given the prevalnce of bugs in some cuisines.) So I don't see "there are some poisonous ones" as being a unique feature. Maybe there are more poisonous / unsanitary bugs overall so that made it not worth the effort? Maybe there are more look-alikes that made it harder to catalog (though if you've ever tried to use a mushroom key that factor doesn't seem to have dissuaded us either).
From your wikipedia link: The first reliable evidence of mushroom consumption dates to several hundred years BC in China. The Chinese value mushrooms for MEDICINAL PROPERTIES
Also from the link (the following two sentences in fact): "Ancient Romans and Greeks, particularly the upper classes, used mushrooms for culinary purposes. Food tasters were employed by Roman Emperors to ensure that mushrooms were safe to eat." There's nothing modern about eating mushrooms, we can just learn a lot more about the toxins with modern techniques.
Mushrooms are neither sweet, nor salty, nor slightly sour. Those are hallmarks of "food".
I just don't know why that necessarily means it's an acquired taste. Why is umami, whether in its own right or in combination, not equivalently "naturally attractive" as any other taste sensation? Glutemate is found in meats and veggies too. Conversely, plenty of things may not be perceived as pleasant upon first try; a hypothesis I've read regarding this is that kids have higher sensitivity to different tastes so many common foods for adults are overwhelming and therefore somewhat aversive (e.g., here but that's just a random link I found on this topic). I just don't see where you're basing some of your statements from.
Umami (glutamate) is debated as to whether it's a basic taste
I thought it was pretty accepted at this point that it was a basic taste in its own right. Wikipedia points to several references claiming so at least. Maybe it doesn't elicit a specific perceptual response on its own (I don't know), is that what you mean?
Lastly, non-mushroom fungus we eat includes blue-cheese cultures and cuitlacoche
On the other hand, one could make the case for the antimicrobial effects of additives outside the body. F.i.: adding a lot of pepper to a dish helps kill off a plethora of bacteria before you eat the dish, but it will also kill friendly gut bacteria after having been ingested. Considering that the distribution of different bacteria strains in the food is very probably skewed towards unfriendly bacteria and the distribution of gut bacteria towards friendly bacteria, the net effect of the killing would be positive.
Good argument for eating fermented foods. Harmless or possibly beneficial bacteria do the job of keeping other pathogens and toxin-producers at bay, skewing the distribution heavily in our favor. I have a jar of homemade kimchi in my fridge right now, and another continuing to ferment in my pantry.
True, though a question that rises is: how much training material does it need and how good is it at linking (back-propagating) feelings of (dis)comfort to the input signals?
Definitely a good question. Part of me believes / wants to believe that I've become a little more sensitive to these sources of sensory interpretation. Another part of me thinks I'm bullshitting myself.
I stopped drinking it altogether (except as an additive) due to the effect it has on insulin levels
Interesting. I'll have to look into this more. But, oddly, I just started testing myself due to some developing symptoms over the last few months, and I actually think I'm just now starting to develop lactose intolerance...ugh
my inability to drink it in quantities smaller than 500ml at a time
Sipping on slightly-warmed milk, savoring the fatty flavor, makes this easier IMHO
I'm sure Kikko-man would agree with you
Show me, shoyu ... I see what they did there ...
Ok, one last thing you might be interested by. This conversation directly prompted me to do two things to this dish I cooked just a couple nights ago. 1. Deglaze the pan: I do sometimes do this, but often don't bother. 2. Add sugar to the degalze. Because it was just calling for it. I was going to add rice-wine vinegar, but then figured it was really just the sweetness I was after.
Well it used to be Western cultures were less squeamish about eating all parts of the animal as well.
We aren't really. In fact we're probably eat more parts of the animal than any other society in history.
That we eat it doesn't mean we're not squeamish about it. Go ahead and ask the guests at your next cookout how they like the pig-brain-stuffed hot dogs you're serving and see the reactions you get. I still know far too many people who insist on not seeing any part of a cut of meat that makes it look like it came from an animal.
Is that because they're not tasty or because they're not easy to farm? Some folks will say that dog tastes amazing, though I've never tried it myself.
Also, we eat mammals, not creepy-crawlies, because mammals aren't poisonous.
How does the variety of toxic plants fit into this narrative? I don't see the process of learning what insects to eat as being any different from the process of learning what plants to eat. That other cultures do eat insects I think supports my point.
Mushrooms are an acquired taste, not something that most people enjoy immediately, but with modern practices we can separate the edible fungus from the poisonous.
Why do you say they are an acquired taste compared to anything else we eat? And, like insects and plants, far-less-than-modern practices led humans to separate the poisonous mushrooms from the edible ones.
Heh, and look how dutifully our governments and corporations are responding to that knowledge of physics and chemistry.
Science is not stupid. However, science doesn't know a lot, and claiming otherwise is the work of first-years and undergrads. Do you really think we have anything close to a complete understanding of our digestive systems? (Not that I am arguing any ill-effect of GM foods, but my question stands as stated)
I guess all the evidence points to using copious amounts of herbs is a good idea, health-wise. On the other hand it doesn't really make a case for avoiding synthetic preservatives.
Nope, the only case for that is fear of the unknown. Or, stated another way, the devil you know...except that in this case the devil you know happens to be rather good for you
In fact, if we focus on the anti-microbial properties of herbs and spices, synthetic (anti-microbial) preservatives should also sound like a good idea. If on the other hand herbs and spices are beneficial due to vitamin and mineral content, synthetic preservatives lose out completely.
You're still leaving out details, though. What other effects could there be? (Bleach also has anti-microbial properties, and even ignoring the effect on taste I'd still prefer to add herbs to bleach.) How does either anti-microbial agent break down in the stomach, or, if they don't, affect our gut bacteria? (Could you pass the penicillin?)
You seem to have mentioned the 'one' exception [...]
Alrighty then.
This argument would work if we would experience rewards from eating things with certain other nutrients (vitamins, minerals and such), which I believe is not or hardly the case. I.e.: I'm not so sure those other signals even exist.
It does look like I have to acquiesce that I'm standing on shaky ground on this general idea. However, I have found some evidence that some vitamin or mineral deficiencies can affect dietary preference for supplemented feed in rats, sheep, and hens. While this behavior may not represent a "craving" as addressed by the above articles you linked to, it does support the idea that food selection can be driven by nutritional need. Now, all I need to do is ask those researchers to repeat the experiments when sugar was added to all of the tested feeds. I'll get back to you on that one...
The following is a purely subjective, personal anecdote, but it has likely contributed to my belief that our nervous systems might develop interesting interpretations of whatever signals may be triggered by the various stages of digestion. There are certain foods that I will suddenly experience what I'll call an "anti-craving" for--that is, something in my brain/body just makes me not want to eat it for at least a couple days. This has happened to me with beef heart and chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms. I have no idea what was behind that feeling, but I can tell you it was pretty strong, and pretty food-specific (it's not like I wasn't hungry for the next couple days or anything).
Other than the above, my general impression from having studied perception and neuroscience is to never underestimate what types of signals our brains can learn to work with. For instance, did you know that trained radiologists can detect the presence of lesions in an x-ray image with better-than-chance ability when the image is only displayed for 1/5 of a second without even consciously knowing what it was that they detected? (The latter part of that statement comes from having spoken to the PI of that study). I'm not saying that there are perceptual nutrient receptors (there are, however, sweet receptors in the gut), just that there are perceptual differences that can occur due to a sufficiency or deficiency of various nutrients via their action in all systems in the body, and that if there's a signal, the brain will learn to use it.
I'm pretty sure that's not true. Mainly from experience, but a little googling also seems to indicate that there is ei
Well, if you're from European descent, things like pepper haven't been part of your family line's diet for too long. 2000 years, max. I'm not sure to what extent other herbs and spices (with perhaps similar properties) were ever part of European (or going further back: our primate ancestors') diets.
Sounds like we need a nutritional anthropologist to help us out. I think you're right that it's a little tenuous to claim we, across the board of human genetic lines, evolved to cope with the diversity of herbs and spices in use today. Many early cultures, though, may have had several thousand years to discover, select, and breed these plants to be more beneficial to our food--in a sense, each culture is one instance of a random process fed to a system designed, in part, to optimize the nutritive goodness of available foods, and existing herbs and spices are the outputs of several of those instances. Some summary sources suggest that spicec and herbs have been in use since early hunter times, with documented uses as early as roughly 2000 BCE ([1], [2]; and I'm half of Chinese descent). Still, if we're talking about more subtle influences, like modest inhibition of nutrient absorption that can easily be overcome with a varied diet, I have to admit it's hard to argue that there was any strong pressure on plant breeding to this end.
I'm not debating whether consuming certain compounds together influences what effect they have on the body, just suggesting that for some (maybe many?) combinations buffers allow for separate ingestion.
I certainly believe that. Off the top of my head there are a couple things that that may commonly occur in prepared foods that might violate the buffer rule: (1) timing of digestion of sugars, as in provided in a sauce where it's readily available vs. distributed in plant cells which I believe take more time for your digestive system to work on, (2) deficiency of certain minor chemicals (i.e. trace phytonutrients) that may still play a role in nutrition. That would pretty much have to be chemicals not usually listed on nutrition labels for this argument to have any weight regarding one's ability to plan a balanced diet, and I don't know what those chemicals might be or even they even exist. I'm basing this off of my understanding that we have historically miscategorized and entirely missed important nutrients in the vitamin and mineral categories, and have no strong reason to believe we've got it all correct now.
I suspect that relying too consistently on the taste of sugar to make food taste "good" may interfere with our body's regulatory mechanisms for seeking out other nutrients (cravings?)
I don't know about that. If I'm not mistaken, sugar consumption and cravings is more a matter of blood sugar/insulin levels and to what extent things that slow down digestion have been consumed together with the (large) amount of sugar. Let's be honest, for a lot of essential stuff such as vitamin C, we never have cravings.
I don't really know either. I've heard about things like red-meat cravings for people with mild anemia (apparently it can get pretty pathological, expressing as pica, which is a craving for various substances such as clay and dirt). Ultimately I have to believe that we, mammals, and animals in general evolved methods of seeking out nutrients that we were lacking. Maybe, though, that was accomplished through sensory-specific satiety, as described in the junk-food article, or that, for the most part, seeking out foods that satisfy our five basic tastes provided enough variety that we would get what we needed. Still, I wonder why it is that one day some fresh fruit sounds like th
The thing is, this being Halliburton, it's virtually guaranteed that the person that gave the order to destroy evidence has already gotten away with much more heinous crimes and effectively has immunity from prosecution for anything he does.
FTFY
"-1: troll" right. Slashdot should really up the frequency of meta-moderation specifically for -1 mods and strip assholes who abuse it too much of any future mod points.
Not sure I agree with sam_vilain's claim that it's "worth reading" (seems more like a string of poorly-reasoned ad-hominem to me), but here you go:
Following his request for asylum in Russia, it's become pretty clear that Edward Snowden is officially the most naïveperson in the room.
Not only is he surrounded by members of Russia's Foreign Security Service (FSB) — the successor to the KGB — but he's loudly trumpeting the moral superiority of the Putin government, one of the most repressive, cutthroat regimes in modern history.
David Francis' Fiscal Times write-updigs into Snowden for his "mind boggling naiveté":
He is asking for asylum in a country that continues to openly squash dissent, often using violent tactics. Putin runs the country with an iron fist, has jailed people who oppose him, and has chased others out of the country. Opponents have been known to meet early deaths, often under suspicious circumstances.
Francis notes theuntimely,often gruesomedeathsof several political opponents to Putin over the years.
Snowden's statements about Russia's sterling Human Rights image come within days of the imprisonment of high-profile political opposition leader Alexei Navalny,on what some call trumped-up embezzlement charges.
Snowden himself acknowledged his potential for naivetyto Bart Gellman of the Washington Post: “Perhaps I am naïve, but I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.”
To make matters worse, the person seemingly speaking for Snowden now —Russian attorney Anatoly Kucherena — also happens to be the head of public relations for the FSB.
Freelance reporter and intelligence expert Joshua Foust writes:"The involvement of known FSB operatives at his asylum acceptance ... suggests this was a textbook intelligence operation, andnota brave plea for asylum from political persecution."
"The Russians are very good at what they do," wrote Foust, referring to their simultaneous control of the "principal" — Snowden — and the public message.
Putin — a former lieutenantcolonelin the KGB — drew laughs from Finland students when he said regarding Snowden, "If you want to stay, please, but you have to stop your political activities. We have a certain relationship with the U.S., and we don’t want you with your political activities damaging our relationship with the U.S."
The Russian president just as deftly shifted the blame to the U.S., a foreseeable consequence of the State Department's decision to revoke Snowden's passport.
It seems in all of this, Snowden is not the super-intelligent super spy he makes himself out to be, but just an analyst who is in over his head.
Looking at his statement that he could be "petting a phoenix, in a palace" in China, indicates that he expected to be gree
I understand how making food taste very good can make it harder not to overeat
I forgot to disagree with this point. I think it may be true for some foods, especially as in the engineered foods of the article you linked. But since switching from a calorie-counting strategy to a sort-of real-foodie philosophy some 2+ years ago, I have found my food to be much more self-limiting and have had no problems managing my portions and weight. Now I stop eating because I feel done, whereas, previously, I stopped eating often because I knew I had to limit my caloric intake. This (subjective) experience is a large part of what drives my belief that, at least with foods we evolved with, our bodies can potentially be our best source of information on what we should and shouldn't be eating at any given time.
isn't eating random herbs (natural 'additives') from all over the planet equally unwise? [...] What evidence is there that the natural preservatives aren't ten times as 'dangerous' as synthetically produced preservatives?
Certainly I have none, other than the not-too-convincing argument that we've been eating pepper and cumin for millenia. Plus they taste good :-). To me, there's something to the idea that human societies co-developed with and around these sources of food that makes me more prone to use them over synthetic additives that were explicitly engineered to diminish the food's nutritional availability for some organisms. Just my own preference, and not one that I stick to strictly either.
I'm going to go out of order here because this is related:
I am aware that during pretty much all our evolution we did not live past the age of 40. That could mean that our primal diet and digestive system were tuned for a live hard, die young existence.
Well, that's not necessarily true, and I believe infant mortality make up for the largest difference in mean lifespan. I don't think you can make the argument about how our digestive systems evolved based on an average that includes infant mortality. However even without that, I'm pretty sure adult life spans were, on average, shorter due to several factors including diseases, so there's definitely at least some credence to your hypothesis.
Talking about trust, that link is to a PDF trying to sell some kind of supplement.
Touche. I suppose it was a bad idea to just quickly go scouring for links, and it might have been better to just say "I have read somewhere". The point, though, was just that nutrient absorption is not a linear system, and the response to a sum of inputs (nutrients) is different from the sum of the responses to those isolated inputs. So I take any biochemical nutritional analysis with a grain of salt, just as we should all take our calcium with a dose of vitamin D
If your taste or distaste for something is mainly driven by some memory, feeling or state of mind, it is almost certainly less stable than a taste or distaste originating in your biological make-up. The latter is also something you can use when preparing food for others (as opposed to the other factors).
Agreed as stated. To the original point (i.e. not about Scotch), though, the taste receptors on the tongue are only one biological mechanism we developed for finding nutritious food. Sure, they're probably the most important, at least when energy was scarce and poisonous foods could commonly kill us. The contribution of smell to taste must play a pretty large role, though, and I don't think smell has much to do with why sugary food tastes "good". Nor do I think we can say that my stated preferences aren't due to inherent perceptions of smell and taste. But it goes further; there are learned preferences that can still be pretty universal. For example, there is a proposed mechanism by which we learn the association between certain foods and their nutritive (or at least caloric) content. I suspect that relying too consistently on the taste of sugar to make food taste "good" may interfere with our body's regulatory mechanisms for seeking out other nutrients (cravings?)
So I don't consider it some Victorian doctrine of "thou shalt not have fun" (you should see how much lard I cook with and how much butter I put on my bread). Instead, assuming any of the above is even correct, I consider it as not using to their fullest extent the body's several pathways of deriving pleasure and satisfaction from food. Dosing everything with sugar to make it all taste good may also mask our body's other
Just came back to this. I'm curious, do you know of anyone who's published such tests? I'd be really interested to see something like that.
I was referring to how PR departments and the media in general spin pretty much every nutritional study into what amount to either flat out lies or terribly misleading statements.
I assume you're familiar with this?
re: unl presentation: very interesting, thanks for that link. I knew spices such as pepper and cumin were effective preservatives, but really didn't think the same could be said about herbs like oregano and thyme. I guess it makes sense that those flavors are related to plant defense mechanisms, which could apply equally to seeds as leaves, so I suppose that does make sense.
Still, a question I have is, not considering severe digestive issues, are there detrimental effects of the types and levels of artificial preservatives on nutrient absorption? I'm not familiar with any data on that, and would like to, eventually, try to digest (no pun intended) some of the available literature (the link as one example, but I'm not experienced enough in this field to make much sense of such studies without spending more time that I can afford at the moment). And I certainly don't trust Kraft Foods to prioritize a thorough understanding of these issues over an extra dose of additives to ensure foods don't discolor and turn sour on the shelf. In the meantime, while i have little basis for telling others that they are "bad", I'm just as happy avoiding these additives when i can do so without too much hassle.
Mmm, fecal transplant therapy...my girlfriend has already talked my ear off about this one as she used to study C. difficile, for which this therapy is sometimes used. From one (only half-serious) perspective, it's another neat reminder of what we can and can't engineer with current biotechnology: "we can't really culture the same flora needed to repopulate your digestive system, but we can shove someone else's poop up your butt!"
If I'm not mistaken, oxidization requires being exposed to oxygen. There's a reason why some stuff can be stored for weeks in a closed package and mere days when the packaging is opened. There's still oxygen exposure, but it is greatly reduced and fairly predictable.
Are there other mechanisms of nutrient loss beyond simple oxidation that are harder to control? For example, does cellular metabolism in plant material, which i believe continues long past harvest, lead to breakdown of nutrients even in the packaging, either directly or as a result of byproducts created in the process? This is, of course, all speculation at this point. Still, I intuitively believe that the blueberries I'm adding to my breakfast might be more nutritionally valuable than the freeze-dried ones in a box of cereal. I enjoy them more, at the very least.
In addition to that, 'non-packaged food' may also have been or be exposed to significant amounts of oxygen and other deteriorating influences.
This is an excellent point, and is probably a pretty significant factor in judging the value of items like pre-cut, plastic-wrapped fruit available in many stores (polyethylene, used in many commercial food wraps, is oxygen-permeable). I also intuitively think the nutritional value of unadulterated produce is correlated to some measure of its fragrance and taste (this at least makes sense from an evolutionary point of view), and, on the flip-side, have seen some pretty depressing-looking produce offerings at several different markets. But, again, I have nothing to back up up that claim of a meaningful difference, or the implicit follow-up claim that I have been better-than-random at picking the "good stuff". I'm ok with that.
With regard to supplements and fortification, it's true that I'm lumping the two together with
I find too many people are quick to know that there understanding encompasses "the right answer" for all dogs. After the first year+ of trying hard and working with trainers to use redirection and positive reinforcement without and positive punishment, I have to say that the e-collar has been an indispensable tool for my dog. And yeah, I put it on myself to see what it feels like at various levels. It goes from 0 to 127, and I typically use it on him at 20. I've given myself a 60, and am very hesitant to go above that on him or me.
I haven't used it for chewing because he rarely does that, and I only find out about it when it's far far too late for the e collar to do anything. But, I could potentially see it being an effective strategy to deliver the stimulus exactly as he puts his mouth on the shoes. Please note, if you don't already know, that I'm not talking about painful (ok, yeah, that's subjective), yelp-inducing shocks, but instead an irritating stimulus that you've first trained him how to stop. This training is the first thing that the last trainer I've used did with me when I asked him about the merits of using one. We first found the lowest level that he showed any sign of noticing (to me, this level feels like an irritating tickle), then spent some time using negative reinforcement by taking away the shocks the moment he obeyed a well-known command.
I have, and occasionally still do, however, use it to direct his attention when outdoors. See, the reason I was having so much difficulty is that he simply didn't care about food, happy rewarding praise, or most anything else I was able to offer, when there was another dog in nose-shot. I had limited success using a command that meant he could sniff around and pee on things for a while as a reward for not pulling on the leash, but I simply wasn't making enough progress. Now that's I've gone e-collar, I have been much more successful at getting him to be able to behave and recall off-leash and on, which means I now get to let him run around whereas I simply could not before (mind you, he's a pit bull, and not being able to recall your pit bull when he's running towards a stranger's dog or child is unacceptable of the owner). It also stresses me out far less now that I can reliably get his attention, and that's improved my relationship with him. So as I see it, the e-collar has greatly improved his (and my) quality of life.
One last little point, I think such studies are often overstated but not necessarily deliberately so--rather, with the genuine belief that the assumptions and generalizations being made are valid. I can't back that up, of course, but it's the feeling i get from reading recommendations and interpretations, and it mirrors the kind of thinking I see more often than I'd like in scientists in my own field (auditory neuroscience)
Ok, so I can get into some of the half-formed reasons I have for avoiding the elusive category of "processed foods". Mostly, I eat the way I do because I enjoy it. I love food: growing it, buying it, cooking it, and eating it. But I have this idea that eating foods prepared from fresh ingredients that will go bad within a week is generally a healthier choice too. To put these ideas into words, you'll have to then permit me some unverified ideas and a lot of hand waving as I try to figure this out even for myself right here. "Processed foods", here, is simply a perhaps lazy attempt at a plain-english, loose-fitting label that tends to encompass the foods I would consider part of this group. In general, they are packaged foods with oddly long shelf lives and mostly sugar or salt for flavor. I tend to believe that the reason that this is necessary to make these things palatable is related to my fundamental objection: that, despite what the "nutrition facts" labels says, my body recognizes that I'm eating filler. Not two years ago, I based my entire diet off of reading the nutrition label. Now, I mostly ignore it, read the ingredients list instead, and have found that easier and more successful than my previous strategy for staying fit & healthy. I suppose I do sort of subscribe to the idea that if it's similar to how we've been eating throughout human history, it's probably a good way to sustain ourselves, and that this can't necessarily be said of food chemistry developed in the last century or so. Specific objections might include:
(1): Foods that are uncannily shelf-stable cannot necessarily be said to be as healthy as the picture on the box implies. For example, hydrogenated fats are used to replace the unsaturated fats that would typically go rancid over time. Ok, we've covered the trans fat thing. But then there are ideas like:
(1a) Preservatives are added to make the food inhospitable to microbes. Now, I don't know that there's necessarily a difference between using, say, sodium benzoate vs sodium chloride, which I don't generally object to as much, e.g., in salt cured meats. I'd still only eat the latter in moderation, and would just as soon assume, for my own purposes and as a very loose generalization, that the less easily a food can be broken down by bacteria or fungus in the environment, the more trouble my digestive system (including my gut bacteria) may have in breaking down and properly absorbing the nutrients. Maybe that's complete bollocks.
(1b) Other nutrient loss due to the food's life. For example, vitamins oxidize or otherwise break down with time. Also with heat, often applied to sterilize the food in order to get a longer shelf life. Allegedly this is sometimes known and countered by refortifying the foods with supplemented vitamins / minerals, but I also subscribe to the belief, fueled partly by studies like those mentioned in TFA and here (but yes, I know I'm generalizing without sufficient evidence), that this may be largely ineffective. Other components of the food, such as phytonutrients, may also not last just because the food isn't going "bad". Foods break down, and I little reason to believe that the nutrition label is a particularly meaningful descriptor of a food that for all I know has been months or more from factory to shelf to plate. This leads us nicely to:
(2): trust. I'm sure you know as well as I that labels such as "all natural" and "heart-healthy" are little more than marketing slogans. Many companies seem
I suppose I am begging the question a little in stating that avoiding those foods probably wasn't terrible advice, because I'm definitely thinking of more than just the trans-fat content. I consider it a good enough rule-of-thumb to guide my own decisions, but not really a cogent argument to advise others. I could elaborate if you cared to read, but it's probably just fodder for tl;dr otherwise.
But, while I agree that more time needs to be spent discovering and discussing the specific mechanisms that cause health problems (or benefits), I'm countering what I perceive to be your first argument: that it would be better to educate people on "the actual compounds that potentially have negative health effects". By many folks' definitions, that is exactly what studies on fats, or carbs, or saturated fats, or trans fats, etc, are doing. Yet, advice based on any of these may potentially be equally counter-productive as rule-of-thumbs such as "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." or "regular light excercise, moderation and variatoin". By and large, I think these rules of thumb, when their reasoning is understood at a basic level and followed thus, can be effective guidelines. But yes, there will always be the proverbial bakery-goers who don't bother to understand anything other than a sound bite and think they're following some catch-all guideline and may then get demoralized. I guess I just think that for the rest of us, rules of thumb might not actually be so bad.
Hell, I even consider "eat a different color of vegetable every day" an alright rule of thumb, although obviously it is hugely susceptible to misuse by consumers and trickery by producers. But so is yours: a friend's definition of "variation" was to order different toppings on his weekly order of domino's pizza (which he kept in the fridge and ate throughout the week).
A friend of mine literally didn't trust food that was grown at home, based on a self-admitted irrational fear of the unknown but trust in supermarket food. Sadly, I don't think that sentiment is too uncommon. I'm not trying to be all "good ol' days" or anything, but I really wonder how we got here.
I cooked for someone who claimed to be extremely sensitive to MSG. I used a sauce once that I didn't realize at the time had MSG in it. Thing is, when she ate it, neither did she.
How we got it in the first place could be something as simple as a coincidental sickness or unwell feeling (that will happen, of course, at some base level by chance alone), and it being falsely attributed to a Chinese restaurant. Looking retrospectively, MSG gets fingered, and thus a myth is born. It could also be an interaction, but if it is I (with all of my completely unrelated qualifications) highly doubt it's something as simple as MSG + some other specific ingredient.
Assuming that is the case (which I agree with enough to affect my personal decisions but not strongly enough to tell others it is so), it should also be clarified that the distinction isn't specifically RoundUp-ready vs. not. Most people will be buying those same bred-for-shipping-and-storage varieties even if they avoid the GMO versions.
Lastly, crops that have GMO varieties typically don't make up the bulk of a varied diet anyway, at least as of now (I'm sure that statement will require yearly review). I think it's mostly soy, corn, rice, along with a few specific fruits like papaya and zucchini. So the raw nutrition content of a varied diet shouldn't be too largely affected by GMO vs. non-GMO (the ability to absorb nutrition is a separate question however)
If the trans fats are the problem, then why not say 'things that contain significant amounts of trans fats' instead of 'processed food'? That is my main gripe with the generic nutritional advice. Instead of educating people on the actual compounds that potentially have negative health effects, we end up with a plethora of bullshit advice like 'processed food is bad', 'things in cans are bad', 'eat a different color of vegetable every day' or 'brown bread is healthy' (which has lead producers to add dye to their whitebread).
One arguable reason is that it could be more effective at getting people to eat more healthily than the approach of "avoid X and Y unless Z" etc. Now I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here, I personally prefer to get at the more detailed science; however, I also recognize that sometimes the more detailed science approach is going to be bad at quickly developing a complete understanding of the entire nutritional system and all of its interactions. This leads us to shun butter but slather on the margarine, put 7-11 servings of grains on the bottom of our (US; now obselete) food pyramid, and so on. That is, of course, the beautiful progress of science, but it's led to decades of what many now call bad nutritional advice. On the other hand, saying "avoid boxed pre-processed foods" is horrendously unscientific and vague, but, quite honestly, probably not terrible advice.
I don't doubt that there is, as you point out, the significant danger of a plethora of bullshit advice if we start blindly accepting advice of this nature. I just think there's an interesting balance between the two ends of nutritional advice.
Even trans fat research is mostly hard to control epidemiological research. What evidence there is still doesn't warrant saying things like "trans fats are deleterious to health", simply because that is such a broad statement. The risks for a lot of things can differ greatly varying with age, genetics, total diet composition, the average amount ingested over a longer period etc
Not to mention the type of trans fats, which may be an important but overlooked distinction
What do the hunting abilities of the modern person have to do with the nutritional benefit of the associated foods?
Same question with the current state of some large-scale industrialized slaughterhouses. I have not been to a slaughterhouse, but I have been involved in slaughter on occasion. I know people who kill animals routinely, either for a living or for their own sustenance, who are not sociopaths. So I really don't get your point.
This tendancy to lump things together
... is exactly the generalization error that I start to find myself really confused by its frequency, particularly in nutritional recommendations. Saturated and mono / poly-unsaturated fats are one I've been looking into a lot, and can find very little reason why we've been so comfortable treating those three classes of fats as the only meaningful distinction. In case you're interested, there's also some interesting recent research into a division in trans fats and the corresponding effects on cardiovascular disease and even body weight.