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kgalias comments on Yet More "Stupid" Questions - Less Wrong
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For what goal? Longevity, weight loss, muscle gain, ethics?
Longevity and cognitive performance.
Longevity: Consider "What kills people?" Heart disease, linked to a shitty diet and inactivity. So eat mostly vegetables, healthy meat (grass-fed free range organic etc.), and limit processed foods. Do cardio so that you don't keel over from basic activity. Cancer is a big one; avoiding carcinogens seems to be the only way to fight that. Again, don't eat much processed food, don't smoke, don't live in a high pollution area, etc... After that, injury from broken bones and bodily weakness are huge problems for elderly people. Do weight training to build muscle mass and bone density (and be sure to eat enough to put on muscle), as muscles and bones get weaker without a training stress.
Why would "organic" be a health-improving characteristic of a food? Organic foods tend to use more and nastier pesticides, contain less nutrients, and as a side benefit they damage the environment far more than normal food because they use more resources.
Edit: In retrospect, this is more a mockery of organic plant farming, not organic animal farming. The environmental concern stands, but they haven't done nearly as much laboratory-based genetic modification of animals(though we've done just as much with selective breeding, of course, which is why GMO complaints always seem funny to me), and I'm not familiar enough with organic livestock chemical use to say for sure that they use worse ones(though it wouldn't surprise me, I can't make that claim confidently enough to do so).
Could you give sources for these three claims?
I'm most interested in the nutrition one; the first hit on google is contrary.
Actually, what do you mean by "organic"? Your edit makes it sound like you just mean not GMO, while I think it's a lot narrower.
See for example this, this, or this - there are safe organic pesticides, but the most effective ones tend to be in the "shockingly lethal products of evolution" category, and are only believed to be safe because of vitalism myths.
The less nutrients thing refers to crops like golden rice, which has been genetically engineered to contain Vitamin A to help stave off 1-2 million people dying every year from deficiency. Naturally, organic food activists are violently opposed to it(sometimes literally).
The more damage refers mostly to the Borlaug hypothesis - using more efficient scientific farming techniques means you can grow more food on less land, which means we need to do less deforestation and can leave more land in its natural state. Also, remember that prices contain information - farmers need to pay for all the resources they use, and those costs are embedded in the price of the food. If organic food costs twice as much, it's probably because organic farming uses twice as many resources. (Admittedly, this does include resources like labour, which isn't strictly a "green" concern, but I like people, so I care about how hard they have to work on top of environmental issues)
I was specifically referring to meat, which has much better conditions than factory farming, and much better nutrition as a result.
But that's a gain due to free-range techniques, not organic prohibitions.
Agreed. My comment and thought process is USA-centric. Free-range doesn't really mean anything in the US as a standard for poultry, and nothing for other kinds of meat. Organic beef on the other hand has "Must have unrestricted outdoor access" as a required criteria, along with prohibitions on hormones and antibiotics.
Ah, if you're engaging in rules lawyering I understand completely.
Don't eat sugar. If you can avoid eating processed man-made sugar (believe me, it is everywhere), you'll by necessity be avoiding so much of the bad stuff. Do that and ephion's tips, you'll be fine. Expect unbelievable difficulty when reducing carbs for the first two weeks, followed by a health, cognition and wakefullness spike, followed by normal life with a little bit more cognitive stability than beforehand.
Some of the very basics I know from researching veganism:
Moderate meat-eaters seem to have longer lifespans than heavy meat-eaters and vegans. I can't remember if vegetarians are equivalent or a little shorter. This is epidemiological data so take it with a grain of salt--you can eat french fries all day and be considered a vegan, likewise many vegetarians probably substitute meat with unhealthy amounts of cheese. But eating meat-heavy meals for every meal appears to be bad for longevity.
Fish is effective at preventing alzheimer's. This does not seem to be reproducible by taking (overrated) omega-3 fatty acid capsules.
So, eating more vegetarian dishes and fish once every few days or so is probably a good idea. I have no clue what to help with short-term cognitive performance.
Also, moderate wine consumption is extremely good for you. 3 glasses a week can increase your lifespan significantly.