[Doublej]

If you look at all the different diets out there, when you are done excluding the foods that each one tells you not to eat there's only a handful of vegetables left. But this is insufficient to survive.

So how do you decide what you should and shouldn't be eating? One diet says fish is good another says avoid. Another beans are great, no they are toxic. Flax seed good, no wait bad.

Eggs? Yes and no and maybe.

Milk bad, no wait raw milk maybe good. Cream stay far away from it, no eat as much as you want.

I get that processed foods and large amounts of animal protein is not good but it's gotten to the point of I don't know who to believe anymore.

Anyone got a genetic test that will tell me?

[soundbitten1]

Eat what you want. Life is short.

[rahimlee54]

I find no diet is really right.  I just eat clean lean food and indulge a handful of times a week.  Moderation is my diet.

[vanderstephen]

Doublej,
Consider using a calorie counting app. I used myfitnesspal. It can be used online or on a smartphone. I used it for about two months until I developed good enough habits that I didn't need to use it consistently. The big things I did were cutting out soda, changing my evening dessert to a low fat yogurt, switched from juice to water, and eating out less at lunch time. My weight has gotten 10 pounds less than my goal- 25 pounds total. I'm also more consistent about going to the gym. I think a lot of the diets out there are BS and think they go to too much of an extreme. Cut out most fatty foods and processed food. I tend to let loose more on the weekends.

[Elizabeth]

The moral of the question is: None of those people espousing those 'diets' know what they are talking about. The are exactly like audio gurus. Each has some agenda which has no real bearing on being healthy, mixed in with half truths, and crazy idealogy,  but usually relates to thier own dollar count.
And the ones who are 'true believers' man... run from them even faster.
If you feel the need to 'follow, then perhaps a therapist is more in order than following some diet gurus.
Basically: think for yourself.

[Tyson]

Cut out all processed foods (especially grains) and keep your sugar/alcohol intake low, and eat anything you want after that. 

The reason most people gain weight and stay heavy is not really because they eat too much and move too little.  The real question is WHY do people eat too much and move too little.  And it comes back to sugar and grains.  There were tons of native populations that ate a HUGE variety of foods and had very little obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc... Some at a lot of sweet potatoes, some ate a lot of coconuts, some ate lots of buffalo and bison, some ate lots of fish, some ate lots of taro root, some ate lots of milk, and so on and so forth. 

But with EVERY population, as soon as western food was introduced to them (ie, sugar and grains), they developed ALL of these problems, within a single generation.  Want to "fatten up" your livestock?  Feed them grains.  Want to make your cats and dogs obese and have terrible cavities?  Feed them grains.  Want to make humans obese and sick?  Feed them grains, and then compound it with sugar to make sure you really screw them up. 

[drummermitchell]

Seems if you listen to everybody instead of yourself you'll end up sick just because  your worrying and stressing over it.
Pass  the Bacon I'm hungry,and I'll have two slices of home made bread out of my grandmothers oven lathered with real butter.
Desert homemade apple pie(YUM)she passed at 86 yrs.and was in terrific spirit.
I'd rather worry about stepping out onto the street  or driving on the highway than worrying about 2 eggs over easy with golden brown fried potatoes.
Get out there and enjoy yourself,lifes very short as even athletes have heart attacks.

[mjosef]

Soylent Green.

[Rocket_Ronny]

Eat what you want. Life is short.

And will be even shorter with that advice. 

The closer food is to its original source, the way it has been designed and created, the better. Man seems to mess it up by processing it.

If you like high blood pressure, heart attacts, strokes, impotence, add high cholesteral foods to your diet. These are animal based products which includes fish. 

Best foods are fruits, grains, nuts, vegetables. Doesn't sound like much but really offers a huge variety.


Rocket_Ronny

[Ericus Rex]

To compare it to our audio hobby, you don't have to look far to find 'experts' who recommend NOT buying/listening to the following: tubes, solid state, digital, analog, passive pres, active pres, redbook CDs, push-pull, SET, OTL, coned speakers, panels, subwoofers, MM cartridges, MC cartridges, SUTs, buffers, see where I'm going with this?  The list can go on and on ad nauseum.  Conflicting advice everywhere, even among scientists.

Your best bet is to pick the diet that makes the most sense to you and addresses your family history best and go with it.  For me, it was the glycemic index diet which restricts processed/refined foods and limits other types of high fat/sugar foods.  I look svelt in my wedding photos b/c of that diet.  Now, keeping svelt is the hard part.

[ctviggen]

And will be even shorter with that advice. 

The closer food is to its original source, the way it has been designed and created, the better. Man seems to mess it up by processing it.

If you like high blood pressure, heart attacts, strokes, add high colesteral foods to your diet. 
These are animal based products which includes fish. 

You do realize the relationship between "cholesterol" in the blood (or in food) (and animal fat) and heart disease including heart attacks and strokes is tenuous at best and based primarily on epidemiological evidence (which proves correlation but not causation)?  And when they design actual studies (such as the MRFIT -- multiple risk factor intervention trial, of which one of the risk factors was saturated fat, or the 480 million dollar women's health initiative) to test the cholesterol/saturated fat hypothesis, the studies are complete failures?  That is, they in no way indicate saturated fat is bad for you.  As for "cholesterol", this subject is so dumbed down relative to how complex the actual blood chemistry is, that it's useless.  Nonetheless, comparisons between low carbohydrate (eat as much as you want) and (calorie-restricted) low fat diets indicate that the dieters on the low carbohydrate diets have better blood values for triglycerides, the so-called good "cholesterol" HDL, etc. 

The relationships are so bad that the theories become riddled with holes.  For instance, the relationship between blood (total) cholesterol and death is actually an upside-down curve, where the people at the lowest and highest values of blood cholesterol have the most deaths from all causes.  Furthermore, the higher the saturated fat intake of a population, the fewer strokes there are.  It literally goes on and on and on. 

For more information, see anything written by Gary Taubes, such as:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?scp=1&sq=what%20if%20its%20all%20been%20a%20big%20fat%20lie?&st=cse

[rahimlee54]

You do realize the relationship between "cholesterol" in the blood (or in food) (and animal fat) and heart disease including heart attacks and strokes is tenuous at best and based primarily on epidemiological evidence (which proves correlation but not causation)?  And when they design actual studies (such as the MRFIT -- multiple risk factor intervention trial, of which one of the risk factors was saturated fat, or the 480 million dollar women's health initiative) to test the cholesterol/saturated fat hypothesis, the studies are complete failures?  That is, they in no way indicate saturated fat is bad for you.  As for "cholesterol", this subject is so dumbed down relative to how complex the actual blood chemistry is, that it's useless.  Nonetheless, comparisons between low carbohydrate (eat as much as you want) and (calorie-restricted) low fat diets indicate that the dieters on the low carbohydrate diets have better blood values for triglycerides, the so-called good "cholesterol" HDL, etc. 

The relationships are so bad that the theories become riddled with holes.  For instance, the relationship between blood (total) cholesterol and death is actually an upside-down curve, where the people at the lowest and highest values of blood cholesterol have the most deaths from all causes.  Furthermore, the higher the saturated fat intake of a population, the fewer strokes there are.  It literally goes on and on and on. 

For more information, see anything written by Gary Taubes, such as:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?scp=1&sq=what%20if%20its%20all%20been%20a%20big%20fat%20lie?&st=cse

Diabetes and poor quality of life due to obesity are both effects of poor diet that can be documented.  Diet choices can prevent these things and most of the other stuff is genetic.

My opinion of course.

[Tyson]

Diabetes and poor quality of life due to obesity are both effects of poor diet that can be documented.  Diet choices can prevent these things and most of the other stuff is genetic.

My opinion of course.

Sorry, but that is complete bullsh!t.  If it were all genetic, then why are our disease rates getting WORSE in a very short time period.  Is everyone suddenly coming down with a case of bad genetics?  Of course not, genes don't change/evolve nearly that quickly.  We are poisoning ourselves, at the population level, pure and simple.  Go back to eating a diet that healthy populations ate historically and you end the diseases of civilization.

[Rocket_Ronny]

You do realize the relationship between "cholesterol" in the blood (or in food) (and animal fat)

In a recent doctor's lecture I attended by Neil Nedley who wrote the book called "Proof Positive" regarding depression, he mentioned it's when animal cholesteral is oxidated that it becomes bad for you. He is an expert in preventative medicine.

Rocket_Ronny

[tull skull]

I think Tyson is saying a lot of good stuff here and it is actually common sense if you think about it. Unfortunately it seems we have managed to even corrupt the simple growing of vegetables and fruits by the need for more, more, more. It seems the very ground itself is being starved of minerals by our production philosophies.
I have always wondered why in the old testament the Hebrews were commanded to give each plot of farmland a year of rest every seven years and rotate them.  I think it was to to allow for the replenishment of the soil with all the goodies that we need to live that we extract from our food when we eat it.

[Folsom]

If you want to know what would work for you, specifically, I recommend looking into the GenoType diet, by Dr. D'Adamo. It can get further specific as towards what to eat. There isn't a diet on the planet with a high accumulation of what we know about humans and food. The good part is that figuring out your type isn't overly difficult (I'd even help you out). Every bit of it actually follows all FDA recommendations for food, too. The point is to choose specifics on what type of protein you eat, not if you eat protein or not. There simply isn't any other work out there advocating specific diet and exercise based on anything particularly specific to you, that has more lies and piss-ass-retard journalist, bloggers, etc, reporting on it. They don't even fully read any of his books, let alone try to tackle the dauntingness of a human far beyond us.

What it advocates is actually very much what Tyson does, but it gets a bit more specific. Red meat for one is a health food, for another it is bad. Some people need grains, but almost no one should eat regular wheat products.

Well, it can't hurt to try. Unless you got some ego that is easy to offend because it is insecure.

[JakeJ]

Tyson,

So why are Asians not typically obese when they have been eating rice for centuries?

[rollo]

If you want to know what would work for you, specifically, I recommend looking into the GenoType diet, by Dr. D'Adamo. It can get further specific as towards what to eat. There isn't a diet on the planet with a high accumulation of what we know about humans and food. The good part is that figuring out your type isn't overly difficult (I'd even help you out). Every bit of it actually follows all FDA recommendations for food, too. The point is to choose specifics on what type of protein you eat, not if you eat protein or not. There simply isn't any other work out there advocating specific diet and exercise based on anything particularly specific to you, that has more lies and piss-ass-retard journalist, bloggers, etc, reporting on it. They don't even fully read any of his books, let alone try to tackle the dauntingness of a human far beyond us.

What it advocates is actually very much what Tyson does, but it gets a bit more specific. Red meat for one is a health food, for another it is bad. Some people need grains, but almost no one should eat regular wheat products.

Well, it can't hurt to try. Unless you got some ego that is easy to offend because it is insecure.

  Right on. My wife a Cancer survivor and mysel stich to the diet offered by the Cancer Research Institute. Eating for your blood type has cured her and keeps me feeling great. One size does not fit all.
    Stay alkaline, eat less, just say no to processed foods. Stay away from wheat, sugar and fatty meats. Eat smart and unless one has a genetic issue you will be just fine.


charles

[Folsom]

Tyson,

So why are Asians not typically obese when they have been eating rice for centuries?

Wheat is by far the worst grain (now), and it is now a super gluten variety (even organic ones are). Spelt is a good choice for most people; many seem to tolerate it well.

Asians don't have very many endomorphic people, or endo-meso. If you look at them they are primarily ectomorphs and ecto-mesomorphs. Their bodies are not really setup to store fat. They do experience health problems. But not eating wheat saves them from a considerable amount of them! They also haven't been very big sugar eaters. Did you many of them actually have a different gene that the rest of the world, specific to the metabolization of rice?! I'd say Japanese appear health often, and I'd point out they eat fish, too. All cultures throughout history that eat fish have been healthier, taller, and leaner.

The starvation diet that many of them have been on for so long hasn't set them up to sort of swing the other direction. In Europe and other places you get people eating tons, then famine, then eating tons, etc. It really swings the epigenetics around and increases likelihood of endomorph qualities. However different types of endomorphs respond to the world differently. Well mostly just some blood type A ones don't function like the rest in that regard.

Technically some like 90% of health problems didn't start until the same time agriculture picked up (10k years ago). That doesn't mean that everyone should try to eat like pre-agriculture humans. That'd be a disaster because too many forces of nature, man, etc, have reshaped the epigenetics of so many humans. Some people have to eat grains to be well, some need less, some do better on none, all do best to differentiate choices of grains to their needs. Those that do the best on none seem to have a difference in the FUT2 gene; they don't secret the antigen of their blood in their bodily fluids in a high amount, nor is it water soluble - its actually alcohol soluble.  Perhaps about 20% of humans have that FUT2 expression.

Charles, it is nice to know you are doing well. Did your wife go to one of the clinics started/run by Peter D'Adamo?

I find a really interesting thing is those that don't have big health problems try to convince others of what they should or should not eat, because they can afford to make the choice. Those that have suffered tend to go with what will work and be open. That is why I'm so appreciative of dietary and exercise information that can helps bring people back into health, like fixing pathology literally, instead of complacency that the modern world of medicine encourages with pills.

[wushuliu]

Eat what you want. Life is short.

That's hilarious. Especially since the latter is the result of the former.