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ChrisHallquist comments on Open Thread, December 2-8, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Looking for people older than me (I'm 26) to tell me their memories of what kind of nutrition messages they remember getting from Nutrition Authority Type People (USDA or whatever).
The reason I ask is because I read a bunch of Gary Taubes over the weekend, and at first glance his claims about what mainstream nutritionists have been saying strike me as... not what I've experienced, to put it mildly. In particular, the nutritiony stuff I learned as a kid was always pretty clear on sugary soda and snacks being bad for you. Charitable hypothesis: maybe mainstream nutrition messaging was much crazier in the 80s? I don't actually think this is likely but I thought I'd ask.
I may be a bit older than you're looking for (44, grew up in small town Indiana) but it just so happens I was back in the US for Thanksgiving and happened to discuss nutrition education with other members of my family.
All of the nutrition education I remember was structured in terms of the four main food groups: meat, dairy, grain, fruit & vegetables - focusing on the idea that these should all be represented in a balanced meal. We also were taught about nutritional content, mainly which vitamins are represented in which food groups (and which specific foods), but almost entirely separately from "meal planning". This was hardly changed from the nutrition education my parents received some 20 years previously.... although not surprising as a few of the teachers were the same!
My younger siblings (38, 40) saw the introduction of the fifth food group, fats & sugars as I recall, presented as bad things that should be avoided. Also the presentation of the four food groups was somewhat altered, bringing nutritional balance (and the "recommended daily allowance") a bit more to the forefront in meal design.
(All of the above is based on our memories of nutrition education which may be highly flawed!)
What does Taubes say mainstream nutritionists said?
That they advocated reducing fat intake and especially saturated fats, and encouraged grain and carbohydrate intake.
This sounds familiar to me. I'm 32 and I definitely remember hearing stuff like this. I remember in elementary school (so, late 80s early 90s) seeing the Canada food guide recommend a male adult eat something like up to 10 servings of grains a day, which could be bread or pasta or cereal. You were supposed to have some dairy products each day, maybe 2-4. And maybe 1-3 servings from Meat & Alternates.
I remember that pretty much all fat was viewed (popularly) with caution, at least until Udo Erasmus came out with his book Good Fat, Bad Fat.
But I do recall a clear message that soda and snacks were unhealthy. It wasn't as though soda was thought ok just because it was low fat / high carb.
That they recommended that people reduce their fat intake (which is definitely true) but then he tries to pin increased consumption of sugary crap on them (which is much less credible). For example:
I'm sorry to say I expected more from you Chris. How do you reducing fat intake is definitely true? Especially when you've read Gary Taubes.
He means that it is definitely true that they were advocating reducing fat intake.
Wires crossed moment. Yes they were indeed, pity they were sooo wrong and that the word fat is conflated with a dietry meaning and a physiological energy storage meaning. In other words people hear "make me fat" when you mention fat and how one(me specifically) eats so much of it.
Peter Attia and Gary Taubes have set up NUSI to get some much needed science behind optimal diet.
Peter's site http://eatingacademy.com/ has loads of cool data on his experience with the keto fyi.
It's been up for quite a while but I haven't noticed any progress. Is anything happening with it or it stalled?
Hmm I haven't seen anything either, my bad. Tis a shame, I'm not aware of any other optimal diet science. Is there any?
Well, there are lot of claims for that :-/
It doesn't sound like you're being neutral on this.
"Sugary crap" is just shorthand for "the sugary stuff everyone agrees is bad for you." The badness of e.g. sugary soda is pretty uncontroversial among nutritionists, "low-carb" or otherwise.
It was my impression that dieticians recommend avoiding processed sugar because of the lack of nutrients, thus making it easy for a diet high in processed sugar to have too many calories and not enough nutrients. Also, that in people with a genetic predisposition to insulin resistance, diets high in sugar have been shown to be correlated with developing insulin resistance and diabetes.
I have never seen a professional dietician refer to 'sugary stuff' as 'bad for you'.
That terminology has always confused me. What, sucrose is not a nutrient? Why not?
Not to mention that this is talking apples and oranges -- calories are a term from the physics-level description and nutrients are a term from the biochemistry-level description.
The correct word is micronutrients. Perhaps some people mistakenly interchange the words.
I doubt anyone's confusing physics with biochemistry when they talk about these things.
Mass media uses "nutrients" in the sense of "a magical substance, akin to aether or flogiston, that makes you thin and healthy". It is mostly generated by certificates of organic farming and is converted into its evil twin named "calories" by a variety of substances, e.g. anything connected to GMOs.
Ok. You clearly have a different kind of mass media there.
"It's got electrolytes."
You're right that sucrose can indeed be considered a nutrient, but I'm just using the word to refer to essential nutrients i.e. molecular groups that you need to consume in your diet for the proper functioning of human biochemistry and cannot be substituted for anything else. As Nornagest says, these are vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids and essential fatty acids. Sucrose is not any of these so it is not an essential nutrient.
I don't see why 'comparing apples and oranges' invalidates the argument, though. What difference does it make if they refer to different processes?
I also agree that nutrition is extremely contentious and politically charged.
Well, essential nutrients are a bit different thing, but even that doesn't really help. The issue here is that there is an unstated underlying assumption that everyone needs all the essential nutrients and the more the better.
To give an example, iron is an essential nutrient. Without it you get anemia and eventually die. So, should I consume more of this essential nutrient? In my particular case, the answer happens to be no -- I have a bit too much iron in my blood already.
Unsurprisingly, for many essential nutrients you can have too much as well as too little. And yet the conventional wisdom is that the more nutrients the better.
Human biochemistry is very complicated and all the public discourse about the diet can manage is Less calories! More nutrients! Ugh.
(yes, I know, I'm overstating things for dramatic effect :-P)
Does anyone actually think that the optimal amount of calories is zero and the optimal amount of nutrients is infinity? I haven't seen many people taking a dozen multivitamins a day but otherwise fasting, so...
(If what they actually mean is that more people in the First World are eating more calories than optimal than fewer, and vice versa for certain essential nutrients, I'd guess they're probably right.)
Then again, it's hard for most people to think quantitatively rather than qualitatively, but that doesn't seem to be a problem specific to nutrition.
I once tried to plan a very simple diet consisting of as few foodstuffs as possible. Calculating the essential nutrient contents I quickly realized that's not possible and it's better to eat a little bit of everything to get what you need, unless of course, you take supplements.
I agree with you that 'more nutrients!' is not sound advice, but again, I never said anything like that, not even implicitly.
Human biochemistry is indeed very complicated. That's exactly why I responded to ChrisHallquist's remark about 'sugar being bad', because I feel that that is vastly oversimplifying the issues at hand. For instance, simple sugars like fructose exist in fruit, and not necessarily in small amounts either. Yet I don't think he would argue that you should avoid all fruit.
In this context, I'd take "nutrients" to refer loosely to the set of things other than food energy that we need to consider in diet: vitamins, dietary minerals (other than sodium, usually), certain amino acids and types of fat, and so forth. That doesn't map all that closely to the biochemical definition of a nutrient, but I don't expect too much from pop science, especially not in a field as contentious and politically charged as nutrition.
Oh, I don't expect much from it at all, but unfortunately this terminology is pervasive and, IMHO, serves to confuse and confound thinking on this topic.
This may help... And that, too.
If someone decides to read these, a tiny summary would be nice.
I will likely end up doing so in an upcoming post, but I may not find time to write it for a few weeks.
Does he argue there was a change of opinion in the 80s or before that? If I recall correctly, he argues that the guidelines have remained roughly the same for decades, or even changed for worse.
Don't have the quotes readily on-hand but basically, yes, he claims offical low-fat recommendations of 70s/80s were important.