The government's awful diet advice

dxhound2005 wrote: »

you should only eat what cavemen ate nonsense has been pushed as real science over there for years.

This part I agree with. 1) we've evolved since, especially regarding new foods in our diets. 2) "Cavemen" ate an enormous range of foods at different times, climates and places, going from extreme meat eaters to mostly fruit and veg. 3) many if not most of the fruits and veggies today simply didn't exist before we created them by selective breeding. Try eating a wild banana and if you come back with a full set of teeth after trying to chew through the seeds you win a prize.

Blithely ignoring the fact that modern humans are living far longer than ever and generally in good health in affluent societies like Ireland.

This I would have some issue with. Generally speaking, studies of huntergatherers living today show them to be far healthier than your average westerner. They're stronger, leaner, fitter, have much higher bone density, better teeth, less arthritis, less muscle loss with age, cardiovascular disease is rare and type two diabetes is so rare as to be pretty much nonexistent*. We have extended life beyond 60/70 and have seen off the murderously high rate of childhood mortality, but for the average westerner we've most certainly not extended healthy life. Your average Cro Magnon was far fitter at 35 than your average 35 year old Irish man.

El_Dangeroso wrote: »

I'd disagree with that, lean meat is actually not great compared to cheaper, fattier cuts. The fattier cuts are naturally higher in collagen and other connective tissue (which is why you have to cook them low and slow to be tender) which contains lots of the amino acid glycine, which balances the amino acid tryptophan.

I grant you that El D, however with a couple of caveats, the hunters you mentioned are dining on very different animals compared to modern livestock. Your average "lean" cut of beef today has significantly more fat in it than the lean meat of say a gazelle. Secondly they have to expend energy to get the food and thirdly they don't eat it every day as a general rule, so them selecting for the high value calorie fat portions makes sense(they also go mad for marrow, a very high fat, calorie and nutrient rich source. One of the very first tools our distant ancestors readied up were cleavers to extract marrow). We on the other hand drive to Tesco, stroll down an aisle and can choose to eat meat every day. On top of which some might argue that the various medications that livestock consume is more concentrated in the fat(especially in somewhere like the US). So if you're a San Bushman reading this on your ipad, then go for the fatty stuff dude, but if you're a bloke from Cork reading it might be more prudent overall to choose "lean" over the fattier portions?

Actually on the US front, they'll advertise "cornfed" as a good thing. It's even entered their language as a byword for strong and healthy. Yet cattle are not meant to eat corn. They can barely digest it, but it is cheap as chips so.. Over there grass fed beef is kinda exotic(and more expensive). The stuff cows are supposed to eat. Mad, how people will buy into obvious and illogical bullshít.


*Type one diabetes was one of the first medical conditions recorded by the ancients, the Egyptians knew all about it as did the Greeks, however type two wasn't recorded as an illness until around the time Rome fell(by the Indians and later the Muslim doctors). They also knew it's cause, IE a disease of the rich eating too much, especially carbs and considered it easy to cure by dietary methods.