01-21-19 08:19 AM -
Post#876809
This one was really great...and likely to ruffle feathers of anyone deep into any diet camp.
Here is some notes I typed after reading but I highly suggest reading the book.
Short version first:
“Eat mostly unprocessed or minimally processed vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts and seeds - with or without modest additions of anything else - in any balanced, sensible agreement, and when you are thirsty, drink plain water usually, or always.â€
Longer version next:
This book (The Truth About Food by David Katz) is a bit over 700 pages in length, which I was completely unaware of when I put it on my Christmas list. It ended up being a pretty quick read for how long it is, though. I want to get a few notes down while it is fresh in my head.
Firstly, the author isn’t Vegan, Paleo, Carnivore, or any of that. It isn’t a book to sell a diet or sell bottles of pills or sell frozen XYZ Diet Snack Bars. This gives it a bit more credibility than many other also excellent books. Katz has really devoted his whole life to the science of food. He is an MD and also has an MPH degree. He mentions that his most recent textbook has 10,000 references in it. Ten. Thousand. He has written numerous textbooks on the topic. He is a badass on this topic. Period. If you want to know about a topic, just google it with his name...it is likely there.
It is one of the most thorough books on the topic of nutrition along with Greger’s How Not To Die. I’ll come back around to a comparison to other books later.
He mentions early on that humans are totally fine feeding all other species by observing what they do in the wild. We know perfectly fine how to feed animals without a randomized controlled trial. But for humans we act all confused and ignore what we can see plain as day.
Katz begins the book with about 25 different major lies that turn up in media and drive nutrition confusion. These are somewhat similar to the book Crimes Against Logic, which is awesome. These are important as they enable the reader to pick out bullshit quickly and decrease their confusion. I do find it funny he mentions how many nutrition books are written by folks with ZERO training in it. There is actually pretty broad consensus in the literature on what makes a healthy diet, so the thoughts of “oh those guys can’t agree on anything†isn’t really true at all.
He often brings up the argument many present about nutrition that ,â€Oh man! We had it all wrong...first they told us not to eat fat then we didn’t, then we got sicker, so fat is okay.†He goes into great depth on how inaccurate this is on multiple levels. Americans seem committed to explore various ways of eating poorly, as he says. Ancel Keys comes up often too, who after he died at the age of 100 with 2 phDs often gets dumped on as some sort of evil person.
On the topic of macronutrients...he seems to find it rather misguided as a fat can be an avocado or butter. A carb can be a lentil or lollipop. There are good and bad of every macronutrient and focusing on macros drives incredible confusion. He mentions some “Low carb†studies where veggies and fruit aren’t even counted as carbs, which seems insane. In short, summary judgments on any macro are useless.
Regarding statistics, he says they help formalize many of the same conclusions that good intuition helps us find. He goes pretty deep into how studies can be manipulated in various ways to change outcomes. There is a similar section after that on lies told in the media, which is due to them needing to sell news. Again, he doesn’t go down the “nobody knows, can’t trust anything roadâ€, he simply educates the reader on common types of lies told and how they form. Very useful.
The biggest part of the book is probably the Catalog of Dietary Truths, on everything from coconut oil to calories to Paleo Diets. No way I can cover them all, but they each start with a concise summary then have just enough details to make sense. One thing that comes up over and over is regarding the health of any food we must ask ,â€Compared to What?â€
The studies from 2014 and 2010 that stirred up the “Butter is Back†time magazine cover? They generally showed that if we cut saturated fat and replace it with sugar and processed food, heart disease remains high. Shocking, right? If we replace it with fruits, veggies, and whole grains, heart disease drops. Not quite the “We had it all wrong!†story that gets told.
The section on Calories is pretty funny. Of course they count. They always have and always will. Eat too many of them, gain weight. People metabolize calories differently, but they do count.
He pulls from the full range of research, from epidemiology to RCTs, with a broad view of what each can or cannot do. He mentions we will never ever have a study that one diet is BEST but its pretty clearly seen nearly every optimal diet variant is mostly comprised of mostly plant foods including fruits, veggies, beans, legumes, nuts and seeds.
Protein deficiency is only really seen in starving populations, but some folks may benefit from more including seniors and athletes. People can get this from plant or animal sources, with plant sources having better long term health outcomes. Protein combining is a myth. Protein seems to have some benefit for increased feeling of fullness.
He advocates canola or olive oil for cooking purposes and definitely is not pushing an oil free diet. We don’t NEED oil for health and having more of it to promote health isn’t a great idea.
Some humans evolved to digest dairy, some did not. Dairy is NOT necessary for good health and the best outcomes are seen with low intake of dairy.
“If eggs replace deli meats, for instance, as a source of protein minus the many adulterations, it is trading up. If eggs replace donuts or Danish or muffins for breakfast, that is trading up as well. But should eggs replace, for example, a breakfast of steel cut oats, mixed berries, and walnuts? Hell no!†Thought that was pretty clear there, haha. He mentions often foods can only be compared to what they dispace in the diet or are replaced with! As with meat and dairy, he mentions while humans can consume them they don’t NEED to.
Humans also evolved to digest meat, but again humans don’t need it for great health and best outcomes are seen with low amounts of it in the diet. Most people eat too much meat. Processed meat is definitely worse. The environmental impact of modern meat production is quite severe and to feed everyone grass fed beef it would take 15 planets our size to grow it all.
Most “diets†don’t work. Long term health is brought about by lifestyle change. No diet is proven better than another for weight loss and also, long term health and short term weight loss are NOT the same. There is nothing special about intermittent fasting.
Total fat content in the diet is a useless indicator of its health. Research shows better health outcomes with plant sourced fats vs animal sourced.
Fish is good for human health overall. Better than meat (much better from the graphs in the book) and a bit worse than beans as a protein source. His big issue with fish is environmental impact and sustainability. He suggests limiting intake.
Whole grains lead to consistently better health outcomes unless someone has Celiac disease or a gluten sensitivity. Don’t avoid gluten unless you are allergic. Whole grains have been in the human diet up to 100,000 years in some studies so calling them unnatural is misguided.
GMO food is generally safe, a conclusion reached in some pretty huge books on the topic but GMO foods also serve to generate corporate profit in shady ways...Montsano etc. Should be labeled better.
Organic food is often a marketing attempt and may or may not be healthy. It is better for the environment and ingesting pesticides is probably bad, depending on dosage.
Fiber is a big one. He says most of the US is constipated and gets around 15 grams of fiber a day. We should be upward of 30 grams daily and Paleo diets had around 100 GRAMS A DAY.
There is no scientific evidence to the health benefits of drinking kombucha. Water is the best thing to drink. Coffee and unsweet tea are fine. Soft drinks are pretty bad for health. Alcohol is fine in low to moderate amounts.
Most humans need B12 and Vitamin D, regardless of diet choices due to working inside and modern agriculture.
Processed soy isolate is bad for health. Unprocessed soy products like tofu are good for health.
Sugar and processed foods should both be avoided for best health. Artificial sweeteners don’t really help people lose weight. Just because sugar is unhealthy doesn’t mean saturated fat is good or vice versa.
I do think Greger’s How Not To Die is still worth getting as it has more detail on how to eat day to day and info on individual disease processes. Read both of them. Worth the time!
