Good Food, Bad Food, I'm the guy with the vectors
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senecarr
Posts: 5,377 Member
The problem with saying food is good or bad is that beyond the psychological connotations it puts on food (that I find just aren't helpful in having a healthy relationship, YMMV), is that it views the complex world of nutrition and homeostasis as an oversimplified scalar.
What is a scalar? In physics class you probably heard about them, and maybe you forgot. Scalars are things with simple +/-, more/less measurements, like temperature.
People talking about good food and bad food are tending to think that food operates like a scalar and that more good food negates more bad food, and that more good food is always a good thing.
Unfortunately, the human body and human nutrition aren't such simple things. We exist in a dynamic equilibrium called homeostasis. Going too much in any one direction means we die. Going too much in the opposite direction and... we die. Nutrition is balancing all of the very different directions we could be headed in to stay near the center. This makes food and its nutrients more of a vector - there's an amount and a direction, similar to velocity - you have a speed (scalar / magnitude) and direction (northwest).
This is why many people say no healthy foods, just diets, or they say that they can't say if a food is healthy without the context of the overall diet.
At a given moment a person's calcium could be low. That means broccoli with its calcium would be a good food. Alternatively, a person have eaten several blocks of cheese today, and be on the way to forming a kidney stone with the excess calcium - now, potentially, the calcium in broccoli is very painfully unhealthy.
So as you can see, anyone saying they can tell you they know a food is good or bad is saying they can know how to get somewhere without knowing where they are. It doesn't make sense.
What is a scalar? In physics class you probably heard about them, and maybe you forgot. Scalars are things with simple +/-, more/less measurements, like temperature.
People talking about good food and bad food are tending to think that food operates like a scalar and that more good food negates more bad food, and that more good food is always a good thing.
Unfortunately, the human body and human nutrition aren't such simple things. We exist in a dynamic equilibrium called homeostasis. Going too much in any one direction means we die. Going too much in the opposite direction and... we die. Nutrition is balancing all of the very different directions we could be headed in to stay near the center. This makes food and its nutrients more of a vector - there's an amount and a direction, similar to velocity - you have a speed (scalar / magnitude) and direction (northwest).
This is why many people say no healthy foods, just diets, or they say that they can't say if a food is healthy without the context of the overall diet.
At a given moment a person's calcium could be low. That means broccoli with its calcium would be a good food. Alternatively, a person have eaten several blocks of cheese today, and be on the way to forming a kidney stone with the excess calcium - now, potentially, the calcium in broccoli is very painfully unhealthy.
So as you can see, anyone saying they can tell you they know a food is good or bad is saying they can know how to get somewhere without knowing where they are. It doesn't make sense.
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Don't forget how amazing our small intestine, liver, and kidneys are. They help to make the body more "idiot proof" than what we credit them to do.
I had a lifespan development professor say everything in life is affected by the timing, dose, and duration of everything else, and it certainly can be applied to nutrition. Eating a small amount of broccoli at one meal at a time we're calcium deficient would affect us differently than eating a high amount of broccoli at every meal when we're already consuming well above the upper limit of calcium each day.0 -
Don't forget how amazing our small intestine, liver, and kidneys are. They help to make the body more "idiot proof" than what we credit them to do.
I had a lifespan development professor say everything in life is affected by the timing, dose, and duration of everything else, and it certainly can be applied to nutrition. Eating a small amount of broccoli at one meal at a time we're calcium deficient would affect us differently than eating a high amount of broccoli at every meal when we're already consuming well above the upper limit of calcium each day.
Very true. If you cut the compass from between North and Northwest to between South and SouthEast, everything on the western side of that line would be what naturally occurs over time, such that time would be a constant vector pushing every measure towards certain conditions.
And yes, timing with does can affect things like update and utilization. Magnesium and calcium together will block each other. Vitamin C and Iron together will increase uptake of iron.0 -
Great thread @senecarr !0
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But...but ...it's a snowflake :bigsmile:
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Yes, a SPECIAL snowflake!0
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I think the bigger problem is that too many people are eating a food-like substance these days, and not real food. I know that used to be my problem.0
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Excellent post. The compass is especially helpful.0
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Great post!0
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It looks more like a Death Star to me.
Nice work. h.0 -
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@middlehaitch I kinda wish I hadn't posted it, because it's started me blubbing again xxx0
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CurlyCockney wrote: »
I feel odd that a month after I started listening to Celldweller's Blackstar, Bowie has a final album named the same. I'm going to guess the music styles are a bit different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6IAXuCSLgw 0 -
CurlyCockney wrote: »
I feel odd that a month after I started listening to Celldweller's Blackstar, Bowie has a final album named the same. I'm going to guess the music styles are a bit different.
LOL yes, a lot different! Mind you, I hang out on davidbowie.com message boards too, and some of the conspiracy/connections being made there are blowing my mind (from 'blackstar' being a type of tumour, to Elvis's song Black Star being about cancer - plus they share a birthday, to hidden messages in lyrics) so I'm happy it's different!
Sorry for hijacking btw!
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A scalar bump for vectors0
h 
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