Comments by "nexus1g" (@nexus1g) on "Top 10 Unhealthy Health Foods" video.
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+Wrong Hole Senpai What you're saying about butter is correlative data research. And what's high school science tell you? Correlation is not causation! Even the data scientists themselves forget that. Butter is actually an amazing food full of dense energy, nutrients and proteins. I wouldn't recommend it in any appreciable amount to someone who sits at a desk all day, but for someone who burns through calories, it's a great source of energy and nutrition.
"I think it's no secret anymore that a whole food, plant based diet is the best for the human body."
This is actually a diet that's very hard on the body. First of all, our digestive systems are pretty bad at digesting plant matter (on a scale from ruminant to obligate carnivore, we're closer to the obligate carnivore end of the spectrum). Most of what we consume in plants just passes through. This means that you're typically working at an energy deficit, despite the amount being eaten. Such diets also tend to have a higher concentration of contaminants like E. coli that your body needs to handle, which is an inflammation process that's generally best to avoid. There are also holes in nutrition including Vitamin B12 (only found in animal products), complete proteins, direct Vitamin A (as opposed to beta keratin which has to be converted by the liver to usable Vitamin A, which is about as inefficient as the liver breaking down protein for glucose), Vitamin D (especially important if you have a darker complexion and live in a low-UV exposure region), and others.
On the other hand, we have the need just as much for plants. The one thing that our bodies need, is a constant supply of sugars every minute of every day or we'll die in quick order. Specifically, simple sugars (very specifically, glucose). Plant matter is a great place to get this and some other essential nutrients we miss from the carnivorous portion of our diets. I'll leave this paragraph short since I'll just be preaching to the choir on the benefits of plants.
We evolved as a rather unique omnivore in the animal kingdom. Insanely premature birth for a non-marsupial mammal, a little obligation on both meat and plants in a diet with the ability for the body (at a cost) to fill in what's being missed, obtaining a higher level of cognitive function and intelligence than any other creature on the planet), and the ability for to evolve so quickly. The last one, quick evolution is something amazing. Only in the last 15,000-20,000 years, have we come to the Americas by way of Alaska. In that short time the northern natives have developed to be capable of eating a diet that consists of almost all animal meat. This is a diet that would kill you or me (provided you're not a native Alaskan). But in a short 5,000 years or so, people were capable of adapting to such a diet. If they had not, the Americas would have never had humans on them until the vikings landed there. In fact, their unique diet is what allows them to maintain a brown complexion despite being so far from direct sunlight. Typically skin, through natural selection, lightens the longer a line of humans stays away from the more direct sun exposure because a lack of Vitamin D translates directly to higher birth mortality rates. However, since the Alaskan native diet is so high in Vitamin D from all the sea life they eat, they never had a high birth mortality rate from a lack of it and so the darker skin was not naturally bred out. Fascinating stuff what a diet can do, and how the human body is capable of adapting to new diets -- especially considering that there have been many creatures that have gone extinct due to an inability to adapt to a new diet.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that our general view of diet in our society is really skewed. I think that too much importance is placed on what is eaten when we're already so widely adaptable to all kinds of things. In our collective search for "healthy" we've created an entire industry preying on the uninitiated with pseudo-scientific, morally questionable products that promise the world and deliver nothing more than a placebo effect. GMO-free? No hormones? Low fat? No fat? Sugar free? Organic? It's scary how many people think these labels guarantee actual health benefits.
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