Diet Contradictions and Controversies!!

Great to hear another point, Naomi!! I have not heard that one but I'll add:
I've heard from Jordan RAW that it's better to "eat" your water, eg: eating a bunch of watery fruits and veg instead of drinking straight water?

I think it's also a point worth making that having a healthy body that tolerates or compensates for poor diet isn't the same as having the healthiest possible body in conjunction with a good diet.   You may be able to handle/process/live on a less than ideal diet, but that's not necessarily evidence that the diet is a "good" one and couldn't be even better.  You may be able to rest, hydrate, exercise, detox, supplement etc. your way into eating less than ideally and still appearing quite healthy.

Hi Naomi and Nancy,

Congratulations for your first post, and welcome to permies

I have about 10 years experience as a food specialist and about 3 years experience as a marketeer in the food scape.
(Yes I also have my own website where I claim that I know everything: www.vakervegan.nu )
So when you read the studies and have regular contact with dietitians and other specialist, there really arent that much contradictions or controversies, as a science we know a lot, pretty sure, and we know what we don't know, there isn't a lot of discussion there.

When we're talking about marketing though, there is A LOT of discussion!
You see these discussions in the supermarket, on labels: NO SUGAR! LOW FAT! 100% NATURAL! VEGAN! etc...
And we see these discussions online, on websites, forums, social media, in your e-mail inbox, etc.

But what people really do not seem to understand is that companies (influencers, doctors, food and beverage companies, etc) thrive through people not knowing or understanding. There are so many 'experts' that have the 'secret' to health / losing weight / whatever, which makes sense from a marketing frame of refrence. But this has nothing to do with science. Marketing uses science to create an appealing story and the more contraverse there is, the higher the chance you will get know for this point of view.

So if I need to give you advice, is always (always always always) ask yourself, is this person (company) in any way selling something (views on youtube are also indirect sales), and is this person in any way profiting from this claim. It does not mean that there is no worth in what they say when they sell something, but you definitely should reconsider their opinon, especially when it seems contridictive or a controversy.

Glad to find this discussion

OK, so I haven't fully 'digested' everyone's posts, but looks like lot's of good ideas here

Since the 70's I pretty much chose my 'diet', ideally by listening to what my body was 'asking for' (you know, that 'still small voice' thingy). At the time I said I'd try just about anything twice... As time went on I started and continue today on an 'elimination' diet - removing the junk and well-known-to-be-non-life-supporting crap.

We're all unique !! (there's a novel idea), our heritage, living environment, health conditions, bio-terrain, etc., etc., are all unique. Thus, there is unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all diet

In 2019 I started deep-diving into diet and nutrition, and, of course was confronted with a blizzard of information. One thing I came to realize, most of the new-fangled (vs. traditional/cultural) 'name-brand' diets were concocted by people who were dealing with some sort of dis-ease or adverse health condition, either their's or their loved ones. And like a 'born again' [enter creed] advocate, they're keen on proclaiming their new found food-religion to the world - what worked for me MUST work for everyone... NOT - we may find nuggets of 'truth-for-us' therein, but not necessarily the whole kit and caboodle.

Mother Nature seems to know best (yeah, go figure) and likely offers us just what we need, when we need it. More than likely, it's the stuff 'just outside our door'.

My current modus operandi: Eat locally and in season as much as possible, ideally fresh, organically/regeneratively grown/raised, and listen to that still small voice for nature's (life's) guidance. Eliminate as much harmful crap as possible...

Live long and prosper

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:...If you have a healthy soil full of nutrients, then your plants will also be full of nutrients...

Maybe. I've been wondering though, the more I look at alternatives. Here's an interesting ten minutes:

My thoughts - plants that have been mollycoddled - in monocultures, no competition, no pests or diseases, maybe no real sunlight, will be bigger - but lack all those vitamins etc that help their wilder versions - to push through competition, fend off enemies, protect agains solar radiation. What helped them can help us.

I don't know if non-Brits can pick up this excellent BBC doc, 3x1 hour programmes: BBC Royal Institute lectures
Some relevant points:
We have the inate ability, like other animals but often/easily overridden, so decide how much of what food we need.
We need a mixture of protein sources - animal proteins have all the essential amino acids, ones we can make ourselves and ones we can't. Plant proteins - we need a mixture of plants to get all the essential amino acids.
We need a range of fats, they're not all equal.
We need fibre to help our microbiome, we need water. A goat has a monumental gut biodiversity relative to the best human - it gets a lot of value from its crude vegetable diet as a result. Enough fibre and liquid helps get the residue out.
Beware processed food. They make it delicious and easily digested - in our mouths we feel 'this is good', but while an unprocessed item gives our gut time to tell us 'enough', that limit is easily exceeded with processed food. An awful lot of which is derived from maize, purified to leave just the calories.
How much energy we need has nothing (or very little) to do with physical activity - computer work or hunter-gatherer, the same. But the sedentary person will be putting more energy into tackling stress and other side-effects.

Almond Thompson wrote:Trace, I would agree with this. But some people say that we used to only eat meat with vegetables being a famine food, others say vice versa.

The way I settled this conundrum for myself was to imagine that I was in my "natural" state: naked and without tools.  1. What locations on the planet could I survive in like that?  2. In those locations, what plants/trees/animals/insects naturally live there?  3. In my naked, tool-less state, which of those could I access to eat, and digest?

Could I chase down a deer or rabbit or (wild) chicken, kill it, tear it apart and eat it raw without tools?  No.  Maybe an occasional dying or injured one, or one killed and burned in a fire, but on a regular basis, no.  Could I pick fruit from bushes and vines, and glean fallen fruit from trees?  Yes.  Could I pick leaves to eat?  Yes.  Dig up roots?  Sure, if I were hungry enough to work that hard and could digest them raw.  Mushrooms?  Yes, if I survived the learning curve!  Could I scare a bird off a ground nest and take its eggs?  Probably.  Could I get honey from a beehive without getting stung to death?  Maybe, if I waited for someone else to try first, and let them lead the bees away!  Could I lift a rotted branch off the ground and pick up insects or grubs?  Yup, but civilized me would rule that one out immediately (gag!)  If I were starving though, I might stoop that low (figuratively and literally.)

In Hawaii for example I could live off fruits, nuts and some greens year round if I used freely available rocks to crack the nuts.  Coconuts would provide much of what my body would need, again just using "tools" I could find in the landscape, plus there are citrus, bananas, avocados, macadamia nuts, noni (just hold your nose!) and many exotic fruits easily available.  

Humans who migrated developed clothing and other ways of harvesting edibles and feeding themselves over time, but I did not consider that in my contemplation of humans' "natural" or "original" diets.  Cooking, killing and eating animals, farming grains, processing legumes, and keeping animals for milk (to feed already-weaned humans) are all later modifications to the human diet and lifestyle regardless of how one believes we came to be, and to me are not "natural" or "original."  I guess that's why, when I'm trying to be a purist, I tend to gravitate toward the raw vegan diet.  I also feel the best on it when I can maintain it.  While I truly love my fresh backyard eggs (cooked) and my free-range Thanksgiving turkey with all the yummy leftovers, and the occasional grass-fed humanely raised filet mignon and forest-raised bacon, coffee and tea, cooked roots and baked grains, fresh butter and cheese and ice cream... I don't need those things to thrive and feel healthy.   They are indulgences for my taste buds and/or brain chemicals.  

I think variety is important--you know, "Eat the rainbow!" Because of permaculture, I'm growing over 50 different fruits and tons of vegetables here.  I've started canning, fermenting, freezing and drying the extra.  I also am keenly aware of building up my soil.  I mulch up leaves from my property and my neighbors', I add biochar and do the "chop and drop". I add in manure and other minerals, figuring that it can only make the food I grow that much better.  Of course, I grow organically.

Lately, I came across Dr. Li's videos, who wrote Eat to Beat Disease, which I bought.  I was intrigued because he comes from a research/science/data/results perspective.  He looks at different systems in the body and what foods help and hinder these systems such as DNA repair, angiogenesis (blood vessel growth), regeneration, microbiome and immunity. He is a doctor and researcher and looks at the makeup of various foods that are beneficial toward these ends.  His big thing is to not necessarily taking things out of your diet, but to think about what you should add in and why; he does discourage things like ultra-processed foods like deli meats and soda, but other than that, he promotes fresh, whole foods. (Shopping the perimeter of the store.) He does talk about finding some very decent things within the aisles, though: canned tomatoes and the like. He talks about the chemical/enzymatic makeup within various foods and what that does for our bodies. He is not at all judgmental or condescending, but has wonderful analogies to make a point.  Because of him, I've got some broccoli sprouts started on the counter to add in to salads (Studies found that they increased Natural Killer T cells twenty-fold--Immunity systems.)  I've been re-invigorated to eat more grains and beans and ferments again.  I now make yogurt by the gallon in my dehydrator--microbiome.  He encourages more of a plant based diet, but does eat fish and meat protein, too, but more in side dish rather than main dish sort of way. He talks a lot about following the science; yes, coffee and chocolate...and even a beer from time to time is good for us!

I had been on a keto-leaning diet, but that was slipping...it's hard to stay under 20 carbs a day, and unless I do, the rest is worthless...I remember the day I discovered an onion had 14 carbs.  Geez! I still do avoid white foods like flour, sugar, potatoes, and white rice, although, with the holidays, I will confess that I've indulged.  I've had my fun...which wasn't really fun at all; it always makes me feel terrible and it's instant weight gain for me.  It's time to get back to good, nutrient-dense food.

I also stumbled on to a website that breaks down what you eat into so much more than calories.  It's called Chronometer. It tells you where you are as to vitamins and minerals, proteins, etc.  I am always intrigued by the fact that I get plenty of fiber, but struggle to get enough protein.  I get plenty Vitamin C, but it takes a bit more to get A, B, D and E, just to name a few.  It's free and you can sign up to play around and see what it does.  You can enter recipes and it will store them and break them down nutritionally.  I no longer enter all my food daily, but once a week, and it reminds me to eat more orang foods like sweet potatoes or carrots  for that vitamin A!  There are pop ups that inform you of what each nutrient does for the body, and if you hover over a food, it will tell you its nutritional makeup. You can also hover over on the right side of the nutrients to see what the leading foods you ate contributed to gaining that particular item. The more I play around with it, the more I discover it can do.  A very worthwhile and educational site that I highly encourage.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Maybe. I've been wondering though, the more I look at alternatives. Here's an interesting ten minutes presenting evidence that plant genetics plays a greater role than does e.g. soil mineral balance...

We've pushed "big" and "grow fast" genetics over nutritional density, but there is also at least some evidence I've read suggesting poor soil makes the situation worse.

Someone did a test which showed that the same breed of lettuce grown in calcium rich vs calcium poor soil, had different levels of calcium with rich soil having more.

However, they also did tests of different varieties in identical soils, and genetics also was an important factor.

As someone with a very fine build, keeping a healthy amount of calcium in my food is important to me, so I tried to choose plant varieties that appeared to have better genetics. However, I then did my best to save my own seed, so that the plants would gradually 'land race' and adapt to my climate and soil. And all while doing this, I kept trying to improve my soil and encourage microbes.

I have strawberry plants that I've continuously propagated since we bought our land 25 years ago. My friends complain about how my strawberries are 'quite small' (compared to the ginormous ones in the shops). But they don't complain about the intense "strawberry flavor". They don't just taste like sugar water!

I think the most important thing we can do to fix the North American diet, is to fix farming. Modern chickens and pigs never see the sun shine or get any fresh greens on "Industrial Farms". Joel Salatin and Greg Judy among others, have been demonstrating we can do much better and be commercial size. Permaculture has also demonstrated great benefits, although most people farming at a commercial level, seem to call it something else, even if the word permaculture would fit.

As we age, our nutritional requirements change too, and your body changes also. for example, I have to watch my water intake as for some reason, I no longer experience thirst, even when I'm seriously dehydrated. That has caused vertigo.
Considering that the human body is composed of approximately 60% water, we do need a fait amount of water every day.
For me, I struggle getting 60% of my water in food.
When you look at the human dentition, we have incisors, cuspids and molars, and that points directly to an omnivorous diet by our ancestors. Perhaps some of the diets that some folks espouse is due more to the environmental factors we all live with, especially the crazy advertising we endure: food ads can make up between 11% and 29% of all commercials on television. We are built for eating food. Why do we need to be prompted?
That is seriously insane, as while we are getting more and more overweight, we are constantly prompted to eat food, when we should instead listen to our own bodies. We might also make much better choices as to *what* we consume if we listened to our bodies.
As we have entered what I call the "chemical age", we are surrounded by produce that has been altered, sprayed, packaged, but also medication that is also constantly pushed at us.
Here again, we should listen to our bodies. We understand why we are prompted to request such and such medication: It is because someone wants to make a buck, and suggesting that this product or that product will fix everything will induce us to request it from our doctors, who may feel that if they don't listen to what we request, we may look for another provider. Plus, they may also be receiving kickbacks for pushing this or that on their patients.
Listen for hunger pangs, make sure you drink enough water if you are in my situation. Limit medications to the minimum and seek vitamins in fresh produce if you can afford them. Diets are not really good: As soon as you abandon them, you will go back to your old habits, and along with that, to your old weight. The changes you make have to be permanent, not temporary. so makes those changes with that in mind.
We are aggressed by commercials. Once you realize that you know what to do...
Good luck, and Happy New Year 2025

For me all health and healing, starts with food. The right food for you. There are no diet that fixes all, it depends on who you are, where you live, what your genetics are and how your general health is. I agree that industrial over processed foods, and food produced at large industrial farms, isn’t good for you, but other than that we are all different, so our diets depends mainly on your genetics and where you live. It’s very obvious in our family. My husband and son needs a diet high in fat and protein, and need long periods of intermittent fasting. In fact, my husband only eat one meal a day plus maybe a small snack.
My oldest daughter and I need large amounts of fresh from the garden produce and easy to absorb nutrients with protein added in, but low in fat. For us the differences are so to health issues. My daughter and I have an autoimmune disease where our bodies create antibodies that attacks our own bodies. One of the things it does is cause nerve degeneration so that the stomach empties much slower than normal, it also causes inflammation and absorption issues, and mast cell granulation causing allergic reactions. My treatment is plasmapheresis, where my blood is filtered and my plasma removed and exchanged with new plasma. This treatment has side effects, one being that some minerals and vitamins are filtered out too. Once food is either picked, or for meat killed, it starts to break down and histamines are produced in it. It means that if what I eat isn’t fresh, I get an allergic response. It also means that I need foods with concentrated vitamins and minerals, or I will become depleted. To counteract this, I eat vegetables within an hour of picking, and I juice vegetables and fruits containing essential vitamins and minerals. I do eat meat and eggs, but meat in small amounts, since I often react to it. My main protein source is collagen powder and eggs. My system down tolerate beans and legumes, unless green fresh from the plant and in small amounts. I have been fighting this disease (that is genetic) since I was in my teens, but didn’t get diagnosed until 6 years ago. With treatment and the right foods, I have gone from being confined to a bed and a wheelchair, to spending my days gardening and preserving food.
I have very strict rules for the way I garden, and which plants ends  on our table. I don’t accept plants that are stunted or attract any other pest than aphids, and usually I toss those too. My main focus is the soil I grow in, and I am constantly looking for ways to improve my soil. Twice a year, I get it tested but mostly to confirm what I have observed.
This means that only the best and healthiest plants are used for our food. The rest goes to our livestock, and since I save seeds and buy seeds from a local company, the plant genetic are used to our growing conditions. My medical team say that they rarely get a patient with a diet this healthy, and agree that it is playing a big part in why I have healed so much faster and better than most patients with this type of disease. Right now I am experimenting with sorghum, to get my levels of phosphate and phosphorus up.
Because of this I also meet many other people struggling, and I have and are guiding many, including the nurses, through the transition of lawns to food. I now give garden tours where I explain the importance of a healthy eco system, soil and plants. I explain why I don’t use neem oil, dish soap or any other organic approved pesticide in my gardens, but remove the plants instead. I explain why I don’t use sterile oil for my seedlings, but homemade compost. I explain the importance of only saving seeds from the best plants, and about the importance of insects, birds and other critters in the ecosystem.
While we all benefit from a diet free of pesticides and herbicides, this doesn’t mean that we all need the same diet. It depends on so many other factors. Where did our genetics originate? Where do we live? What is our lifestyle? How much exercise do we do? Do we have a job where we sit down all day? or one where we are physically active? What environment do we live in? Is it cold, hot, dry or humid? It all influences what we need to eat and how much we need to eat. I juice, simply because I can’t eat the amount of vegetables and herbs my body needs to heal and stay healthy.
So, in my opinion no diet fits all. We all have to take the time to figure out what we need to stay healthy.

A lot of this discussion is a reflection of my journey.

According to BMI, I was "Obese Class 1".  I struggled with that moniker.  My wife is in a medical profession and her perspective is that it is one of the best measures we've been able to come up with that is easy to compute.  Another is waist to hip ratio.  I've never been accused of being slim nor slender in my life.  I do have a relatively broad build and am reasonably muscular.  In the doctor's office, her BMI chart has a point that it is not for pregnant women nor overly muscular individuals (or some similar wording).  I get that implies the bodybuilder types, but there's a spectrum that we are all on and muscle is denser and therefore heavier than fat.

Anyway, in the spring of 2021 I took in a food summit.  At that time I was questioning a lot of things about health, especially since enough of the authoritative lines didn't entirely make sense to me.  I didn't realize when I signed up, but it quickly became apparent during the summit that it was an event promoting vegan living as the best possible diet, least environmentally destructive, and "cruelty-free".  There was a lot of good information there and it led me to investigate more of the rabbit warren.  There was enough contradiction though that I couldn't bring myself to a vegan diet (especially as it can be somewhat cultish and is considered a religion in some jurisdictions).

We did make changes, having more vegetarian diets, watching portion sizes more intently, and being more critical of processed foods (not that we leaned heavily in that realm, particularly the ultra-processed category).  In the ensuing year and a half, I shed about 40 lbs...since then, I've come back up about 10, and am staying pretty consistently around the same weight.  My wife also lost a chunk of weight as well (she has always been slender, but had put some on after a significant health issue and major surgery over a decade ago).  

Over time, I came to see processing and chemical-laden foods as a significant issue.  Thus, in the fall of 2021, after a couple of overspray incidents through the years, we told the neighbouring farmer who was cropping about 3 acres of our land that we were taking it back.  It wasn't that I wanted to develop that much garden space, but that I wanted to reduce the amount of land with chemical gick, especially since everything is so interconnected.

Somewhere in the rabbit warren of dietary (mis)information, I came across one saying that I like.  "Eat real food; less of it; mainly plants."  I'm not as excited about the last part any more, but I think it makes sense.  If we look at the rise of negative health in North America, obesity and chronic disease is relatively recent (as in measured in decades, not centuries).  Coincidental with these human health changes are the rise of chemical agriculture (synthetic fertilizer and 'cides), increased mechanization, leading to bigger farms and the reduction of the small family / mixed farm, increased pharmaceutical use (both human and livestock), increase in intensive livestock operations and CAFOs, land use changes that correspond somewhat with those, and increase in processed foods and the rise of "ultra-processed" "food".  I trained in engineering so consider myself to be something of an applied scientist in background although it isn't what I'm presently doing as a career.  Correlation does not imply causation, but it is pretty hard to ignore these changes in the world around us and how human health has deteriorated more or less in lockstep.  A longer term trend that has really taken hold in recent decades is also increased mechanization and computerization which have led to more sedentary lifestyles.

Somewhere in all this, I also noticed that every diet (implying some sort of specialized way of eating) was backed by medical professional(s) and there was peer-reviewed literature that backed their claims.  How can these opposing views (especially more drastic ones like carnivore versus vegan) be back by science and be correct?  It seems incongruous to me.  That is the signal to tighten my skeptic hat.  Of course, as others have noted, we can add extra skeptic points to a lot of these ideas based on profit motive.

The scientific method, as applied to human nutrition, has also been about an attempt to break everything down into constituent parts in an attempt to isolate the impact of a given vitamin/mineral/nutrient.  However, the value of food may be the combination of all the components together, rather than just a single bit that can be encapsulated and commercialized.

Another thing to note as has been previously discussed, is the developments centred around plant breeding.  Aside from the commercial aspects of better shelve life, consistent colour, and so forth, fruit in particular has been developed for sweetness.  The apples of today are very different from apples of 100 years ago, and especially compared with the earliest examples that were grown in North America.  Considering that fermenting a drink was one way to make it safe to drink (alcohol killing off potentially nasty things in water), cider was popular.  Preservation through drying was bigger than it presently is.  In temperate regions, tropical fruit was relatively rare earlier in my lifetime, whereas now, the supermarkets will have "fresh" pineapple, mango, avocado, and a wide array of citrus as commonplace items.  After having fresh dragonfruit in Vietnam in 2018, we noticed it in the markets here, but there was no comparison (instead of white interior of the fresh stuff, it was sort of grey).  Why is it that developing wheat to have more gluten ostensibly for fluffier bread has been coincident (or at least seems to be) with a rise in gluten-intolerance?  I've heard of people who are gluten-intolerant being able to eat baking made from flour from older or ancient grains.

One thing I have seen in my travels (limited but various locations) is that everywhere I've been outside North America values food much more so than here.  Elsewhere, they want fresh/local/traditional and they tend to eat more slowly, savouring a meal along with the company.  In North America, gobbling as fast as you can is almost seen to be a virtue, so everything that aids that (prepackaged/processed "foodstuffs", microwave ovens, etc.) is worshipped and glorified (just added to see if anyone is still reading...).

I think it also makes sense that there would be regional / cultural disparities in diet and how we react to them (as per the earlier response noting Inuit and Australian Aboriginals).  I understand that regions where livestock was milked and that was part of the local diet maintained the ability to digest lactose.  Other locales did not, so our globalization and mobility around the world has thrown a bit of a wrench into that as well.  Many of us no longer know which "tribe" may best describe us and as we intermingle among peoples, our genetics may get confused as well.

I suspect I've thoroughly bounced around this topic.  It's one I've been fairly keenly interested in the past few years.  I think my overall way of thinking has been to tighten my skeptic hat, and strive to eat real food, less of it, and move more.

One thing to keep in mind about "peer reviewed" research is that most of the time (I won't say all, but I think it probably is), the peers are reviewing that the person did the research the way they said they were going to. This does not mean they checked it for a valid scientific method. This does not mean they agreed with the results. It is always good to at least read the summary of research projects yourself, to get an idea of what and how they did it.

Also, keep in mind that sometimes a scientific study is based on a previous faulty scientific study or faulty assumption. There was a study done back... I believe in the 1950's (possibly 60's), that found that diets high in carbs and fat made you fat. They made the assumption that it was the fat causing obesity, and the fat-free craze was started. There were other studies that based their research on that assumption. However, Americans have continued to get fatter, while eating more fat free stuff. So I don't think that is the key. You have to be careful about assumptions when looking at studies.

I have learned that we can have all our nutrition from the food from plants, being whole food that is much healthier for us, and we would not have to eat less, but this way we can eat to our satisfaction. But at my age I am just eating a bit less anyway.

As far as sustainability in our living, there is less demand on resources,  land and water with growing our own food, and even vegetation for medicinal herbs and needed materials, right on land where we are. Even some things useful to us could be available to us with light foraging. We would need others with us in community for this, such community is important for how we need to live.