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What are your unpopular opinions about health / fitness?
Replies
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Bry_Lander wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »The use of the term "meant" leads to the question "meant by whom?" Especially since we are talking about things humans obviously CAN biologically do (here, consume dairy).
I've linked this before, since it's interesting (IMO): http://www.bonappetit.com/trends/article/what-the-irish-ate-before-potatoes
(Answer: largely dairy.)
To me it could just as easily lead to "meant by what?"
Evolution could answer that question.
I think it depends on your worldview, and though I generally do agree with what you're saying. I'm just picking nits for the fun of it because I think this whole thread jumped the shark with the mansplaining pregnancy fat shaming.
Is this the part where I call you baby to try to make things right now?
I prefer "babe." ;-)
I'm cool with the nitpicking, but I usually think when people use "meant" they are implicitly assuming some sort of purposeful or directed creation, which is not the normal idea of evolution as I understand it.
My bigger issue, of course, is why wouldn't I be "meant" to eat something my ancestors have for ages and that I can digest quite easily and get nutrients from. (And you weren't saying we weren't, of course, but quite the opposite. That humans are adaptable omnivores and so by nature seem to be "meant" (meaning "adapted") to eat a ridiculous number of things we never ate until recently, many of which we invented, like bananas in their current form, or corn in same, is something I would not argue with!)
If by "meant," someone is referring to the circumstances in which we evolved (as opposed to someone's intention), I would consider that to be unclear phrasing. That's just me, but I always think "meant" refers back to an intention.
If I saw someone doing something dangerous that would lead to harm, I would never say "You aren't meant to do that." I would warn them about the harm that would likely result. I would say "You aren't meant to do that" if I saw someone doing something that was against a rule or regulation (that is, if I was being a busybody. I'd be more likely to mind my own business unless someone was going to get hurt).
I'm also OK with going along with the fun. All language is metaphor, but sometimes our choices of words belie our understanding. To echo @janejellyroll, you wouldn't say that "humans aren't meant to eat cyanide". (At least I wouldn't.) You say that "cyanide is poisonous".
To say that "meaning" is a religious argument doesn't mean that great father god in the sky dictated something, it means that the speaker understands there is an imposed framework on the universe. Perhaps I should have said that it's a philosophical statement. There are shades of meaning between "X isn't meant to do Y", "X shouldn't do Y", and "It is wrong for X to do Y."
I get a little iffy about invoking natural selection to describe observed biological processes, because so often these explanations devolve into "just so stories." Q: Why do male robins have a red breast? A: Because robins with red breasts had an evolutionary advantage, either in breeding or in survival. It doesn't really explain anything. Natural selection is a blind process involving large numbers and random happenstance.
I can also invoke natural selection to say that certain people with certain genetic mutations can digest lactose as adults, and thus are meant to eat dairy.
Well said. I think another issue with using natural selection to determine what or how we should eat is that natural selection isn't necessarily about living the longest life or the one where we feel our best. It's about successful reproduction. Looking at what humans ate while we evolved won't necessarily help me be vibrant and healthy into my 80s -- that's a whole separate issue. To be "successful" from a biological POV looks rather different than my personal definition of success.
Yes, good points.
Jruzer's point (as well as yours) is also why I am queasy about the idea of "we used to do this, so it must be the way we were MEANT to eat."
Beyond that, we ate what was available to us, that doesn't mean we were perfectly evolutionarily suited to just thoe foods and no others -- the diversity of the human diet (and our ability to adapt, a strength of ours!) says otherwise.
I brought this point up before, but I think it is a relevant one: evolutionarily, that we can and want to eat when food is available (well, many of us) even if we have eaten over our TDEEs for the day or week was a STRENGTH, because food availability would vary quite a lot. In the current surplus environment, it means it's easy for many of us to gain weight, unless we exercise vigilance. Does this mean that we are "meant" to overeat when food is available, even if that means gaining weight, even now when of course that is not evolutionarily advantageous and probably even bad for our health (2 separate things, as you note)?
If not, then why should the fact that most humans 50,000 years ago couldn't digest lactose as adults mean that I (who can) am not "meant" to consume milk?
Usually the dairy argument is a bit different -- it's that for mammals milk is produced specifically for the biological purpose of being infant food, so it's "meant" for that and therefore not for us. Okay, fine, but carrots also don't grow biologically in order to be our food, deer doesn't reproduce for the privilege of being eaten by us, so I really don't see how this makes cow's milk different from everything else we eat (other than maybe Soylent 2.0). ;-)
I don’t think most people will change their eating habits based upon the perception of what we are “meant” to eat (except for Paleo types of people). To me, it is more of a philosophical discussion about how cultural advancement has impacted our eating habits. The widespread practice of drinking animal milk was only made possible by the domestication of animals as large groups of humans emerged from the hunter/scavenger period. Previous to this, chasing, capturing, and tying down wild animals to extract milk was a bit labor intensive.
I think that the point of noting this is to achieve some level of mindfulness regarding our modern food supply. There is a drastic increase in obesity, cancer, diabetes, food allergies, etc. that has emerged over the past 50 years, and a part of the problem is arguably caused by the industrialization of our food supply and the introduction of additives that were never a part of the human diet throughout most of our evolution. In the past, new items were slowly introduced into our food supply over the course of thousands of years, like animal milk. In contemporary times, additives like food dyes, steroids, antibiotics, laboratory preservatives, etc., were introduced into the food supply of billions of people in a very short amount of time. How humans will tolerate these modern diet alterations long term remains to be seen.
How well did the original drinkers of animal milk tolerate it? I’m assuming that the practice of drinking it was originally motivated out of desperation. Perhaps many could not tolerate it and died of malnutrition, if there was a food shortage and that was one of the only sources of nutrition available (beyond slaughtering and eating the animal), which would have thinned the population of non-milk drinkers and perpetuated the enzyme which allowed lactose tolerance.
To the bolded passage:
Having been alive and old enough to be aware through most of the past 50 years (I'm 61), there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that the obesity epidemic's main causes are a dramatic decrease in the average person's NEAT, in tandem with changes in eating norms that have dramatically increased the average person's calories consumed. I could list a dozen specific examples of these trends.
Occam's razor: CO decrease coupled with CI increase is a much simpler explanation for widespread excess weight than is a vague, poorly-substantiated theory about Evil Additives.
Someone else has already commented on the portion of the argument about diabetes, cancer, etc. I agree and won't repeat it.
Beyond the additives I listed, salt and sodium and ingredients high in fat have been systematically added to industrially produced foods and fast food since the 1950s. (see "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" by Michael Moss for a nice overview). The purpose of this was to make foods have a longer shelf life (sodium) and to get people hooked on the additives. And this worked brilliantly and contributes significantly to our obesity epidemic.
Are you aware of the single most popular food preservation method for thousands of years pre-refrigeration? See if you can guess.
There is a distinction between using salt to preserve something and using it to add taste (and increasing heart attack and stroke, and high blood pressure vulnerability if too much is consumed over a long period of time). Salt in the pre-refrigeration era makes sense - perhaps you can explain why salt needs to be added to a frozen TV dinner.
Dude--seriously? You may not have noticed this, but salt tastes really freakin' good. Try making a loaf of bread without salt and see how you like it. I can assure you, people have been adding salt to food to make it taste good for millennia. Or did you want an actual discourse on medieval and ancient salt trade routes and the uses of this precious commodity in regional cuisine? I can go on at some length, having specialized in a very obscure corner of the humanities dealing with agrarian issues.
still mind blown that salting food for preservation in the middle ages was OK, but once it was done by companies in the 1900's it somehow became evil....
Yes, because I asserted salt is evil - here you go have at it, give him a good beating
I think there is genuine confusion as to why you brought up adding salt to food in connection with a discussion as to whether humans are "meant" to eat certain foods, specifically dairy, based on the claim that because we didn't eat them in pre-agricultural times they are allegedly hard for us to digest.3 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »The use of the term "meant" leads to the question "meant by whom?" Especially since we are talking about things humans obviously CAN biologically do (here, consume dairy).
I've linked this before, since it's interesting (IMO): http://www.bonappetit.com/trends/article/what-the-irish-ate-before-potatoes
(Answer: largely dairy.)
To me it could just as easily lead to "meant by what?"
Evolution could answer that question.
I think it depends on your worldview, and though I generally do agree with what you're saying. I'm just picking nits for the fun of it because I think this whole thread jumped the shark with the mansplaining pregnancy fat shaming.
Is this the part where I call you baby to try to make things right now?
I prefer "babe." ;-)
I'm cool with the nitpicking, but I usually think when people use "meant" they are implicitly assuming some sort of purposeful or directed creation, which is not the normal idea of evolution as I understand it.
My bigger issue, of course, is why wouldn't I be "meant" to eat something my ancestors have for ages and that I can digest quite easily and get nutrients from. (And you weren't saying we weren't, of course, but quite the opposite. That humans are adaptable omnivores and so by nature seem to be "meant" (meaning "adapted") to eat a ridiculous number of things we never ate until recently, many of which we invented, like bananas in their current form, or corn in same, is something I would not argue with!)
If by "meant," someone is referring to the circumstances in which we evolved (as opposed to someone's intention), I would consider that to be unclear phrasing. That's just me, but I always think "meant" refers back to an intention.
If I saw someone doing something dangerous that would lead to harm, I would never say "You aren't meant to do that." I would warn them about the harm that would likely result. I would say "You aren't meant to do that" if I saw someone doing something that was against a rule or regulation (that is, if I was being a busybody. I'd be more likely to mind my own business unless someone was going to get hurt).
I'm also OK with going along with the fun. All language is metaphor, but sometimes our choices of words belie our understanding. To echo @janejellyroll, you wouldn't say that "humans aren't meant to eat cyanide". (At least I wouldn't.) You say that "cyanide is poisonous".
To say that "meaning" is a religious argument doesn't mean that great father god in the sky dictated something, it means that the speaker understands there is an imposed framework on the universe. Perhaps I should have said that it's a philosophical statement. There are shades of meaning between "X isn't meant to do Y", "X shouldn't do Y", and "It is wrong for X to do Y."
I get a little iffy about invoking natural selection to describe observed biological processes, because so often these explanations devolve into "just so stories." Q: Why do male robins have a red breast? A: Because robins with red breasts had an evolutionary advantage, either in breeding or in survival. It doesn't really explain anything. Natural selection is a blind process involving large numbers and random happenstance.
I can also invoke natural selection to say that certain people with certain genetic mutations can digest lactose as adults, and thus are meant to eat dairy.
Well said. I think another issue with using natural selection to determine what or how we should eat is that natural selection isn't necessarily about living the longest life or the one where we feel our best. It's about successful reproduction. Looking at what humans ate while we evolved won't necessarily help me be vibrant and healthy into my 80s -- that's a whole separate issue. To be "successful" from a biological POV looks rather different than my personal definition of success.
Yes, good points.
Jruzer's point (as well as yours) is also why I am queasy about the idea of "we used to do this, so it must be the way we were MEANT to eat."
Beyond that, we ate what was available to us, that doesn't mean we were perfectly evolutionarily suited to just thoe foods and no others -- the diversity of the human diet (and our ability to adapt, a strength of ours!) says otherwise.
I brought this point up before, but I think it is a relevant one: evolutionarily, that we can and want to eat when food is available (well, many of us) even if we have eaten over our TDEEs for the day or week was a STRENGTH, because food availability would vary quite a lot. In the current surplus environment, it means it's easy for many of us to gain weight, unless we exercise vigilance. Does this mean that we are "meant" to overeat when food is available, even if that means gaining weight, even now when of course that is not evolutionarily advantageous and probably even bad for our health (2 separate things, as you note)?
If not, then why should the fact that most humans 50,000 years ago couldn't digest lactose as adults mean that I (who can) am not "meant" to consume milk?
Usually the dairy argument is a bit different -- it's that for mammals milk is produced specifically for the biological purpose of being infant food, so it's "meant" for that and therefore not for us. Okay, fine, but carrots also don't grow biologically in order to be our food, deer doesn't reproduce for the privilege of being eaten by us, so I really don't see how this makes cow's milk different from everything else we eat (other than maybe Soylent 2.0). ;-)
I don’t think most people will change their eating habits based upon the perception of what we are “meant” to eat (except for Paleo types of people). To me, it is more of a philosophical discussion about how cultural advancement has impacted our eating habits. The widespread practice of drinking animal milk was only made possible by the domestication of animals as large groups of humans emerged from the hunter/scavenger period. Previous to this, chasing, capturing, and tying down wild animals to extract milk was a bit labor intensive.
I think that the point of noting this is to achieve some level of mindfulness regarding our modern food supply. There is a drastic increase in obesity, cancer, diabetes, food allergies, etc. that has emerged over the past 50 years, and a part of the problem is arguably caused by the industrialization of our food supply and the introduction of additives that were never a part of the human diet throughout most of our evolution. In the past, new items were slowly introduced into our food supply over the course of thousands of years, like animal milk. In contemporary times, additives like food dyes, steroids, antibiotics, laboratory preservatives, etc., were introduced into the food supply of billions of people in a very short amount of time. How humans will tolerate these modern diet alterations long term remains to be seen.
How well did the original drinkers of animal milk tolerate it? I’m assuming that the practice of drinking it was originally motivated out of desperation. Perhaps many could not tolerate it and died of malnutrition, if there was a food shortage and that was one of the only sources of nutrition available (beyond slaughtering and eating the animal), which would have thinned the population of non-milk drinkers and perpetuated the enzyme which allowed lactose tolerance.
To the bolded passage:
Having been alive and old enough to be aware through most of the past 50 years (I'm 61), there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that the obesity epidemic's main causes are a dramatic decrease in the average person's NEAT, in tandem with changes in eating norms that have dramatically increased the average person's calories consumed. I could list a dozen specific examples of these trends.
Occam's razor: CO decrease coupled with CI increase is a much simpler explanation for widespread excess weight than is a vague, poorly-substantiated theory about Evil Additives.
Someone else has already commented on the portion of the argument about diabetes, cancer, etc. I agree and won't repeat it.
Beyond the additives I listed, salt and sodium and ingredients high in fat have been systematically added to industrially produced foods and fast food since the 1950s. (see "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" by Michael Moss for a nice overview). The purpose of this was to make foods have a longer shelf life (sodium) and to get people hooked on the additives. And this worked brilliantly and contributes significantly to our obesity epidemic.
Are you aware of the single most popular food preservation method for thousands of years pre-refrigeration? See if you can guess.
There is a distinction between using salt to preserve something and using it to add taste (and increasing heart attack and stroke, and high blood pressure vulnerability if too much is consumed over a long period of time). Salt in the pre-refrigeration era makes sense - perhaps you can explain why salt needs to be added to a frozen TV dinner.
Dude--seriously? You may not have noticed this, but salt tastes really freakin' good. Try making a loaf of bread without salt and see how you like it. I can assure you, people have been adding salt to food to make it taste good for millennia. Or did you want an actual discourse on medieval and ancient salt trade routes and the uses of this precious commodity in regional cuisine? I can go on at some length, having specialized in a very obscure corner of the humanities dealing with agrarian issues.
still mind blown that salting food for preservation in the middle ages was OK, but once it was done by companies in the 1900's it somehow became evil....
Yes, because I asserted salt is evil - here you go have at it, give him a good beating
I think there is genuine confusion as to why you brought up adding salt to food in connection with a discussion as to whether humans are "meant" to eat certain foods, specifically dairy, based on the claim that because we didn't eat them in pre-agricultural times they are allegedly hard for us to digest.
The conversation shifted to food additives in general. Or maybe I shifted it. If you are keeping score at home, that would be about the 50th change in direction in this thread, which now has absolutely nothing to do with the OP's title, which had nothing to do with mammal milk or calling females "baby"
3 -
Bry_Lander wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »The use of the term "meant" leads to the question "meant by whom?" Especially since we are talking about things humans obviously CAN biologically do (here, consume dairy).
I've linked this before, since it's interesting (IMO): http://www.bonappetit.com/trends/article/what-the-irish-ate-before-potatoes
(Answer: largely dairy.)
To me it could just as easily lead to "meant by what?"
Evolution could answer that question.
I think it depends on your worldview, and though I generally do agree with what you're saying. I'm just picking nits for the fun of it because I think this whole thread jumped the shark with the mansplaining pregnancy fat shaming.
Is this the part where I call you baby to try to make things right now?
I prefer "babe." ;-)
I'm cool with the nitpicking, but I usually think when people use "meant" they are implicitly assuming some sort of purposeful or directed creation, which is not the normal idea of evolution as I understand it.
My bigger issue, of course, is why wouldn't I be "meant" to eat something my ancestors have for ages and that I can digest quite easily and get nutrients from. (And you weren't saying we weren't, of course, but quite the opposite. That humans are adaptable omnivores and so by nature seem to be "meant" (meaning "adapted") to eat a ridiculous number of things we never ate until recently, many of which we invented, like bananas in their current form, or corn in same, is something I would not argue with!)
If by "meant," someone is referring to the circumstances in which we evolved (as opposed to someone's intention), I would consider that to be unclear phrasing. That's just me, but I always think "meant" refers back to an intention.
If I saw someone doing something dangerous that would lead to harm, I would never say "You aren't meant to do that." I would warn them about the harm that would likely result. I would say "You aren't meant to do that" if I saw someone doing something that was against a rule or regulation (that is, if I was being a busybody. I'd be more likely to mind my own business unless someone was going to get hurt).
I'm also OK with going along with the fun. All language is metaphor, but sometimes our choices of words belie our understanding. To echo @janejellyroll, you wouldn't say that "humans aren't meant to eat cyanide". (At least I wouldn't.) You say that "cyanide is poisonous".
To say that "meaning" is a religious argument doesn't mean that great father god in the sky dictated something, it means that the speaker understands there is an imposed framework on the universe. Perhaps I should have said that it's a philosophical statement. There are shades of meaning between "X isn't meant to do Y", "X shouldn't do Y", and "It is wrong for X to do Y."
I get a little iffy about invoking natural selection to describe observed biological processes, because so often these explanations devolve into "just so stories." Q: Why do male robins have a red breast? A: Because robins with red breasts had an evolutionary advantage, either in breeding or in survival. It doesn't really explain anything. Natural selection is a blind process involving large numbers and random happenstance.
I can also invoke natural selection to say that certain people with certain genetic mutations can digest lactose as adults, and thus are meant to eat dairy.
Well said. I think another issue with using natural selection to determine what or how we should eat is that natural selection isn't necessarily about living the longest life or the one where we feel our best. It's about successful reproduction. Looking at what humans ate while we evolved won't necessarily help me be vibrant and healthy into my 80s -- that's a whole separate issue. To be "successful" from a biological POV looks rather different than my personal definition of success.
Yes, good points.
Jruzer's point (as well as yours) is also why I am queasy about the idea of "we used to do this, so it must be the way we were MEANT to eat."
Beyond that, we ate what was available to us, that doesn't mean we were perfectly evolutionarily suited to just thoe foods and no others -- the diversity of the human diet (and our ability to adapt, a strength of ours!) says otherwise.
I brought this point up before, but I think it is a relevant one: evolutionarily, that we can and want to eat when food is available (well, many of us) even if we have eaten over our TDEEs for the day or week was a STRENGTH, because food availability would vary quite a lot. In the current surplus environment, it means it's easy for many of us to gain weight, unless we exercise vigilance. Does this mean that we are "meant" to overeat when food is available, even if that means gaining weight, even now when of course that is not evolutionarily advantageous and probably even bad for our health (2 separate things, as you note)?
If not, then why should the fact that most humans 50,000 years ago couldn't digest lactose as adults mean that I (who can) am not "meant" to consume milk?
Usually the dairy argument is a bit different -- it's that for mammals milk is produced specifically for the biological purpose of being infant food, so it's "meant" for that and therefore not for us. Okay, fine, but carrots also don't grow biologically in order to be our food, deer doesn't reproduce for the privilege of being eaten by us, so I really don't see how this makes cow's milk different from everything else we eat (other than maybe Soylent 2.0). ;-)
I don’t think most people will change their eating habits based upon the perception of what we are “meant” to eat (except for Paleo types of people). To me, it is more of a philosophical discussion about how cultural advancement has impacted our eating habits. The widespread practice of drinking animal milk was only made possible by the domestication of animals as large groups of humans emerged from the hunter/scavenger period. Previous to this, chasing, capturing, and tying down wild animals to extract milk was a bit labor intensive.
I think that the point of noting this is to achieve some level of mindfulness regarding our modern food supply. There is a drastic increase in obesity, cancer, diabetes, food allergies, etc. that has emerged over the past 50 years, and a part of the problem is arguably caused by the industrialization of our food supply and the introduction of additives that were never a part of the human diet throughout most of our evolution. In the past, new items were slowly introduced into our food supply over the course of thousands of years, like animal milk. In contemporary times, additives like food dyes, steroids, antibiotics, laboratory preservatives, etc., were introduced into the food supply of billions of people in a very short amount of time. How humans will tolerate these modern diet alterations long term remains to be seen.
How well did the original drinkers of animal milk tolerate it? I’m assuming that the practice of drinking it was originally motivated out of desperation. Perhaps many could not tolerate it and died of malnutrition, if there was a food shortage and that was one of the only sources of nutrition available (beyond slaughtering and eating the animal), which would have thinned the population of non-milk drinkers and perpetuated the enzyme which allowed lactose tolerance.
To the bolded passage:
Having been alive and old enough to be aware through most of the past 50 years (I'm 61), there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that the obesity epidemic's main causes are a dramatic decrease in the average person's NEAT, in tandem with changes in eating norms that have dramatically increased the average person's calories consumed. I could list a dozen specific examples of these trends.
Occam's razor: CO decrease coupled with CI increase is a much simpler explanation for widespread excess weight than is a vague, poorly-substantiated theory about Evil Additives.
Someone else has already commented on the portion of the argument about diabetes, cancer, etc. I agree and won't repeat it.
Beyond the additives I listed, salt and sodium and ingredients high in fat have been systematically added to industrially produced foods and fast food since the 1950s. (see "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" by Michael Moss for a nice overview). The purpose of this was to make foods have a longer shelf life (sodium) and to get people hooked on the additives. And this worked brilliantly and contributes significantly to our obesity epidemic.
Are you aware of the single most popular food preservation method for thousands of years pre-refrigeration? See if you can guess.
There is a distinction between using salt to preserve something and using it to add taste (and increasing heart attack and stroke, and high blood pressure vulnerability if too much is consumed over a long period of time). Salt in the pre-refrigeration era makes sense - perhaps you can explain why salt needs to be added to a frozen TV dinner.
Dude--seriously? You may not have noticed this, but salt tastes really freakin' good. Try making a loaf of bread without salt and see how you like it. I can assure you, people have been adding salt to food to make it taste good for millennia. Or did you want an actual discourse on medieval and ancient salt trade routes and the uses of this precious commodity in regional cuisine? I can go on at some length, having specialized in a very obscure corner of the humanities dealing with agrarian issues.
still mind blown that salting food for preservation in the middle ages was OK, but once it was done by companies in the 1900's it somehow became evil....
Yes, because I asserted salt is evil - here you go have at it, give him a good beating:
no need to, I will just use your own words..
"There is a distinction between using salt to preserve something and using it to add taste (and increasing heart attack and stroke, and high blood pressure vulnerability if too much is consumed over a long period of time)..."
so OK for preserving but not OK when added for taste?4 -
Bry_Lander wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »The use of the term "meant" leads to the question "meant by whom?" Especially since we are talking about things humans obviously CAN biologically do (here, consume dairy).
I've linked this before, since it's interesting (IMO): http://www.bonappetit.com/trends/article/what-the-irish-ate-before-potatoes
(Answer: largely dairy.)
To me it could just as easily lead to "meant by what?"
Evolution could answer that question.
I think it depends on your worldview, and though I generally do agree with what you're saying. I'm just picking nits for the fun of it because I think this whole thread jumped the shark with the mansplaining pregnancy fat shaming.
Is this the part where I call you baby to try to make things right now?
I prefer "babe." ;-)
I'm cool with the nitpicking, but I usually think when people use "meant" they are implicitly assuming some sort of purposeful or directed creation, which is not the normal idea of evolution as I understand it.
My bigger issue, of course, is why wouldn't I be "meant" to eat something my ancestors have for ages and that I can digest quite easily and get nutrients from. (And you weren't saying we weren't, of course, but quite the opposite. That humans are adaptable omnivores and so by nature seem to be "meant" (meaning "adapted") to eat a ridiculous number of things we never ate until recently, many of which we invented, like bananas in their current form, or corn in same, is something I would not argue with!)
If by "meant," someone is referring to the circumstances in which we evolved (as opposed to someone's intention), I would consider that to be unclear phrasing. That's just me, but I always think "meant" refers back to an intention.
If I saw someone doing something dangerous that would lead to harm, I would never say "You aren't meant to do that." I would warn them about the harm that would likely result. I would say "You aren't meant to do that" if I saw someone doing something that was against a rule or regulation (that is, if I was being a busybody. I'd be more likely to mind my own business unless someone was going to get hurt).
I'm also OK with going along with the fun. All language is metaphor, but sometimes our choices of words belie our understanding. To echo @janejellyroll, you wouldn't say that "humans aren't meant to eat cyanide". (At least I wouldn't.) You say that "cyanide is poisonous".
To say that "meaning" is a religious argument doesn't mean that great father god in the sky dictated something, it means that the speaker understands there is an imposed framework on the universe. Perhaps I should have said that it's a philosophical statement. There are shades of meaning between "X isn't meant to do Y", "X shouldn't do Y", and "It is wrong for X to do Y."
I get a little iffy about invoking natural selection to describe observed biological processes, because so often these explanations devolve into "just so stories." Q: Why do male robins have a red breast? A: Because robins with red breasts had an evolutionary advantage, either in breeding or in survival. It doesn't really explain anything. Natural selection is a blind process involving large numbers and random happenstance.
I can also invoke natural selection to say that certain people with certain genetic mutations can digest lactose as adults, and thus are meant to eat dairy.
Well said. I think another issue with using natural selection to determine what or how we should eat is that natural selection isn't necessarily about living the longest life or the one where we feel our best. It's about successful reproduction. Looking at what humans ate while we evolved won't necessarily help me be vibrant and healthy into my 80s -- that's a whole separate issue. To be "successful" from a biological POV looks rather different than my personal definition of success.
Yes, good points.
Jruzer's point (as well as yours) is also why I am queasy about the idea of "we used to do this, so it must be the way we were MEANT to eat."
Beyond that, we ate what was available to us, that doesn't mean we were perfectly evolutionarily suited to just thoe foods and no others -- the diversity of the human diet (and our ability to adapt, a strength of ours!) says otherwise.
I brought this point up before, but I think it is a relevant one: evolutionarily, that we can and want to eat when food is available (well, many of us) even if we have eaten over our TDEEs for the day or week was a STRENGTH, because food availability would vary quite a lot. In the current surplus environment, it means it's easy for many of us to gain weight, unless we exercise vigilance. Does this mean that we are "meant" to overeat when food is available, even if that means gaining weight, even now when of course that is not evolutionarily advantageous and probably even bad for our health (2 separate things, as you note)?
If not, then why should the fact that most humans 50,000 years ago couldn't digest lactose as adults mean that I (who can) am not "meant" to consume milk?
Usually the dairy argument is a bit different -- it's that for mammals milk is produced specifically for the biological purpose of being infant food, so it's "meant" for that and therefore not for us. Okay, fine, but carrots also don't grow biologically in order to be our food, deer doesn't reproduce for the privilege of being eaten by us, so I really don't see how this makes cow's milk different from everything else we eat (other than maybe Soylent 2.0). ;-)
I don’t think most people will change their eating habits based upon the perception of what we are “meant” to eat (except for Paleo types of people). To me, it is more of a philosophical discussion about how cultural advancement has impacted our eating habits. The widespread practice of drinking animal milk was only made possible by the domestication of animals as large groups of humans emerged from the hunter/scavenger period. Previous to this, chasing, capturing, and tying down wild animals to extract milk was a bit labor intensive.
I think that the point of noting this is to achieve some level of mindfulness regarding our modern food supply. There is a drastic increase in obesity, cancer, diabetes, food allergies, etc. that has emerged over the past 50 years, and a part of the problem is arguably caused by the industrialization of our food supply and the introduction of additives that were never a part of the human diet throughout most of our evolution. In the past, new items were slowly introduced into our food supply over the course of thousands of years, like animal milk. In contemporary times, additives like food dyes, steroids, antibiotics, laboratory preservatives, etc., were introduced into the food supply of billions of people in a very short amount of time. How humans will tolerate these modern diet alterations long term remains to be seen.
How well did the original drinkers of animal milk tolerate it? I’m assuming that the practice of drinking it was originally motivated out of desperation. Perhaps many could not tolerate it and died of malnutrition, if there was a food shortage and that was one of the only sources of nutrition available (beyond slaughtering and eating the animal), which would have thinned the population of non-milk drinkers and perpetuated the enzyme which allowed lactose tolerance.
To the bolded passage:
Having been alive and old enough to be aware through most of the past 50 years (I'm 61), there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that the obesity epidemic's main causes are a dramatic decrease in the average person's NEAT, in tandem with changes in eating norms that have dramatically increased the average person's calories consumed. I could list a dozen specific examples of these trends.
Occam's razor: CO decrease coupled with CI increase is a much simpler explanation for widespread excess weight than is a vague, poorly-substantiated theory about Evil Additives.
Someone else has already commented on the portion of the argument about diabetes, cancer, etc. I agree and won't repeat it.
Beyond the additives I listed, salt and sodium and ingredients high in fat have been systematically added to industrially produced foods and fast food since the 1950s. (see "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" by Michael Moss for a nice overview). The purpose of this was to make foods have a longer shelf life (sodium) and to get people hooked on the additives. And this worked brilliantly and contributes significantly to our obesity epidemic.
Are you aware of the single most popular food preservation method for thousands of years pre-refrigeration? See if you can guess.
There is a distinction between using salt to preserve something and using it to add taste (and increasing heart attack and stroke, and high blood pressure vulnerability if too much is consumed over a long period of time). Salt in the pre-refrigeration era makes sense - perhaps you can explain why salt needs to be added to a frozen TV dinner.
Dude--seriously? You may not have noticed this, but salt tastes really freakin' good. Try making a loaf of bread without salt and see how you like it. I can assure you, people have been adding salt to food to make it taste good for millennia. Or did you want an actual discourse on medieval and ancient salt trade routes and the uses of this precious commodity in regional cuisine? I can go on at some length, having specialized in a very obscure corner of the humanities dealing with agrarian issues.
still mind blown that salting food for preservation in the middle ages was OK, but once it was done by companies in the 1900's it somehow became evil....
Yes, because I asserted salt is evil - here you go have at it, give him a good beating
I think there is genuine confusion as to why you brought up adding salt to food in connection with a discussion as to whether humans are "meant" to eat certain foods, specifically dairy, based on the claim that because we didn't eat them in pre-agricultural times they are allegedly hard for us to digest.
The conversation shifted to food additives in general. Or maybe I shifted it. If you are keeping score at home, that would be about the 50th change in direction in this thread, which now has absolutely nothing to do with the OP's title, which had nothing to do with mammal milk or calling females "baby"
So what is the claim you are making? That's what's causing the lack of communication, I think. You jumped in, apparently to defend the claim that we weren't "meant" to consume dairy -- or that we weren't "meant" to consume something or other unspecified -- and then started going on about salt, fat, and sugar, which are not new foods. (I'd agree new in the amounts consumed for sugar and salt, and I'd also agree certain types of fat are new to us, although that's not the main focus of the Moss book.)
Salt is a bad example for something we were not "meant" to consume.
Are you no longer talking about that at all?
If not, what is the "unpopular opinion"? That salt is addictive and added for that reason? If so, I'd argue that's not actually what the Moss book says, and not accurate. Salt is a cheap way to make food more palatable and to preserve them, and so many packaged foods are high sodium. If you want a low sodium frozen dinner (I don't really buy frozen dinners, so couldn't care less, personally), you can find those too. What consumers demand by paying for tend to be produced, after all.3 -
Imma goin' be rich selling these things online!
10 -
i have a lot
IIFYM- plain stupid. An excuse by fatties to allow themselves to eat whatever they want. That type of behavior is what got them in this situation in the first place- you shouldn't ENCOURAGE this behavior
Pre-Workouts- If you lack the energy or the drive to do a proper workout and need to take a powder to give you that energy, you aren't worthy of achieving fitness
Keto- "muh carbs, so let me just eat some bacon instead." You dummy. Carbs didn't make you fat, it was you eating too much that made you fat. Make wise choices, such as whole grains, and you can enjoy carbs. Not to mention this plan is *kitten* for anyone trying to build muscle.
"I can't lose weight"- yes you can, you aren't trying hard enough. Take responsibility.
5 -
Bry_Lander wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »Bry_Lander wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »The use of the term "meant" leads to the question "meant by whom?" Especially since we are talking about things humans obviously CAN biologically do (here, consume dairy).
I've linked this before, since it's interesting (IMO): http://www.bonappetit.com/trends/article/what-the-irish-ate-before-potatoes
(Answer: largely dairy.)
To me it could just as easily lead to "meant by what?"
Evolution could answer that question.
I think it depends on your worldview, and though I generally do agree with what you're saying. I'm just picking nits for the fun of it because I think this whole thread jumped the shark with the mansplaining pregnancy fat shaming.
Is this the part where I call you baby to try to make things right now?
I prefer "babe." ;-)
I'm cool with the nitpicking, but I usually think when people use "meant" they are implicitly assuming some sort of purposeful or directed creation, which is not the normal idea of evolution as I understand it.
My bigger issue, of course, is why wouldn't I be "meant" to eat something my ancestors have for ages and that I can digest quite easily and get nutrients from. (And you weren't saying we weren't, of course, but quite the opposite. That humans are adaptable omnivores and so by nature seem to be "meant" (meaning "adapted") to eat a ridiculous number of things we never ate until recently, many of which we invented, like bananas in their current form, or corn in same, is something I would not argue with!)
If by "meant," someone is referring to the circumstances in which we evolved (as opposed to someone's intention), I would consider that to be unclear phrasing. That's just me, but I always think "meant" refers back to an intention.
If I saw someone doing something dangerous that would lead to harm, I would never say "You aren't meant to do that." I would warn them about the harm that would likely result. I would say "You aren't meant to do that" if I saw someone doing something that was against a rule or regulation (that is, if I was being a busybody. I'd be more likely to mind my own business unless someone was going to get hurt).
I'm also OK with going along with the fun. All language is metaphor, but sometimes our choices of words belie our understanding. To echo @janejellyroll, you wouldn't say that "humans aren't meant to eat cyanide". (At least I wouldn't.) You say that "cyanide is poisonous".
To say that "meaning" is a religious argument doesn't mean that great father god in the sky dictated something, it means that the speaker understands there is an imposed framework on the universe. Perhaps I should have said that it's a philosophical statement. There are shades of meaning between "X isn't meant to do Y", "X shouldn't do Y", and "It is wrong for X to do Y."
I get a little iffy about invoking natural selection to describe observed biological processes, because so often these explanations devolve into "just so stories." Q: Why do male robins have a red breast? A: Because robins with red breasts had an evolutionary advantage, either in breeding or in survival. It doesn't really explain anything. Natural selection is a blind process involving large numbers and random happenstance.
I can also invoke natural selection to say that certain people with certain genetic mutations can digest lactose as adults, and thus are meant to eat dairy.
Well said. I think another issue with using natural selection to determine what or how we should eat is that natural selection isn't necessarily about living the longest life or the one where we feel our best. It's about successful reproduction. Looking at what humans ate while we evolved won't necessarily help me be vibrant and healthy into my 80s -- that's a whole separate issue. To be "successful" from a biological POV looks rather different than my personal definition of success.
Yes, good points.
Jruzer's point (as well as yours) is also why I am queasy about the idea of "we used to do this, so it must be the way we were MEANT to eat."
Beyond that, we ate what was available to us, that doesn't mean we were perfectly evolutionarily suited to just thoe foods and no others -- the diversity of the human diet (and our ability to adapt, a strength of ours!) says otherwise.
I brought this point up before, but I think it is a relevant one: evolutionarily, that we can and want to eat when food is available (well, many of us) even if we have eaten over our TDEEs for the day or week was a STRENGTH, because food availability would vary quite a lot. In the current surplus environment, it means it's easy for many of us to gain weight, unless we exercise vigilance. Does this mean that we are "meant" to overeat when food is available, even if that means gaining weight, even now when of course that is not evolutionarily advantageous and probably even bad for our health (2 separate things, as you note)?
If not, then why should the fact that most humans 50,000 years ago couldn't digest lactose as adults mean that I (who can) am not "meant" to consume milk?
Usually the dairy argument is a bit different -- it's that for mammals milk is produced specifically for the biological purpose of being infant food, so it's "meant" for that and therefore not for us. Okay, fine, but carrots also don't grow biologically in order to be our food, deer doesn't reproduce for the privilege of being eaten by us, so I really don't see how this makes cow's milk different from everything else we eat (other than maybe Soylent 2.0). ;-)
I don’t think most people will change their eating habits based upon the perception of what we are “meant” to eat (except for Paleo types of people). To me, it is more of a philosophical discussion about how cultural advancement has impacted our eating habits. The widespread practice of drinking animal milk was only made possible by the domestication of animals as large groups of humans emerged from the hunter/scavenger period. Previous to this, chasing, capturing, and tying down wild animals to extract milk was a bit labor intensive.
I think that the point of noting this is to achieve some level of mindfulness regarding our modern food supply. There is a drastic increase in obesity, cancer, diabetes, food allergies, etc. that has emerged over the past 50 years, and a part of the problem is arguably caused by the industrialization of our food supply and the introduction of additives that were never a part of the human diet throughout most of our evolution. In the past, new items were slowly introduced into our food supply over the course of thousands of years, like animal milk. In contemporary times, additives like food dyes, steroids, antibiotics, laboratory preservatives, etc., were introduced into the food supply of billions of people in a very short amount of time. How humans will tolerate these modern diet alterations long term remains to be seen.
How well did the original drinkers of animal milk tolerate it? I’m assuming that the practice of drinking it was originally motivated out of desperation. Perhaps many could not tolerate it and died of malnutrition, if there was a food shortage and that was one of the only sources of nutrition available (beyond slaughtering and eating the animal), which would have thinned the population of non-milk drinkers and perpetuated the enzyme which allowed lactose tolerance.
To the bolded passage:
Having been alive and old enough to be aware through most of the past 50 years (I'm 61), there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that the obesity epidemic's main causes are a dramatic decrease in the average person's NEAT, in tandem with changes in eating norms that have dramatically increased the average person's calories consumed. I could list a dozen specific examples of these trends.
Occam's razor: CO decrease coupled with CI increase is a much simpler explanation for widespread excess weight than is a vague, poorly-substantiated theory about Evil Additives.
Someone else has already commented on the portion of the argument about diabetes, cancer, etc. I agree and won't repeat it.
Beyond the additives I listed, salt and sodium and ingredients high in fat have been systematically added to industrially produced foods and fast food since the 1950s. (see "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" by Michael Moss for a nice overview). The purpose of this was to make foods have a longer shelf life (sodium) and to get people hooked on the additives. And this worked brilliantly and contributes significantly to our obesity epidemic.
Are you aware of the single most popular food preservation method for thousands of years pre-refrigeration? See if you can guess.
There is a distinction between using salt to preserve something and using it to add taste (and increasing heart attack and stroke, and high blood pressure vulnerability if too much is consumed over a long period of time). Salt in the pre-refrigeration era makes sense - perhaps you can explain why salt needs to be added to a frozen TV dinner.
Dude--seriously? You may not have noticed this, but salt tastes really freakin' good. Try making a loaf of bread without salt and see how you like it. I can assure you, people have been adding salt to food to make it taste good for millennia. Or did you want an actual discourse on medieval and ancient salt trade routes and the uses of this precious commodity in regional cuisine? I can go on at some length, having specialized in a very obscure corner of the humanities dealing with agrarian issues.
still mind blown that salting food for preservation in the middle ages was OK, but once it was done by companies in the 1900's it somehow became evil....
Yes, because I asserted salt is evil - here you go have at it, give him a good beating:
no need to, I will just use your own words..
"There is a distinction between using salt to preserve something and using it to add taste (and increasing heart attack and stroke, and high blood pressure vulnerability if too much is consumed over a long period of time)..."
so OK for preserving but not OK when added for taste?
Food industry corporations covertly adding sodium in excessive quantities to the extent that it was impairing the health of millions of consumers in the 50s through the 80s is dangerous and unethical. This happened. If it doesn't align with your narrative, than just lash out and frame my well-documented assertion as paranoid, but the reality of it won't change.3 -
kolagani12 wrote: »i have a lot
IIFYM- plain stupid. An excuse by fatties to allow themselves to eat whatever they want. That type of behavior is what got them in this situation in the first place- you shouldn't ENCOURAGE this behavior
Pre-Workouts- If you lack the energy or the drive to do a proper workout and need to take a powder to give you that energy, you aren't worthy of achieving fitness
Keto- "muh carbs, so let me just eat some bacon instead." You dummy. Carbs didn't make you fat, it was you eating too much that made you fat. Make wise choices, such as whole grains, and you can enjoy carbs. Not to mention this plan is *kitten* for anyone trying to build muscle.
"I can't lose weight"- yes you can, you aren't trying hard enough. Take responsibility.
I realize this is an opinion thread, but if you are going to give an opinion, you should at least understand what you are spouting off against. IIFYM does not in any way mean you can absolutely eat anything you want. You should do your homework first.20 -
French_Peasant wrote: »jseams1234 wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »stormcrow2 wrote: »jseams1234 wrote: »My wife's OB/GYN was a man. He used to mansplain every appointment. Men couldn't possibly know more about pregnancy than a woman.
Actually an OB/GYN who's been practicing for decades can absolutely know more about pregnancy than a woman who has had 1-2 children. That's not manspalining (which is a *kitten* term to begin with) its experience.
He was joking, hence the wink.
Thanks - I had thought it was pretty obvious. Obviously it wasn't obvious.
Lesson learned.... more winks!
I have taken the liberty of crafting a disclosure and ran it through legal--feel free to affix it to any further deadpan attempts at humor.
Oh, I'm sure the person who flagged me understood it was a joke... I just happened to use the word man four times in two sentences. Triggering occurred - kittens were punched. RAAAaaaaaGGGE.... sadness and many cookies consumed.
oh, and...
IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE FOR CERTAIN PEOPLE WHO HAVE RECENTLY JOINED THE DEBATE AND ARE CONFUSED BY SARCASM: THIS IS WRY HUMOR. IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY.
*no kittens were punched (I hope)
9 -
I can't decide whether my popcorn or my facepalm gif would be more appropriate in here.5
-
jseams1234 wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »jseams1234 wrote: »French_Peasant wrote: »stormcrow2 wrote: »jseams1234 wrote: »My wife's OB/GYN was a man. He used to mansplain every appointment. Men couldn't possibly know more about pregnancy than a woman.
Actually an OB/GYN who's been practicing for decades can absolutely know more about pregnancy than a woman who has had 1-2 children. That's not manspalining (which is a *kitten* term to begin with) its experience.
He was joking, hence the wink.
Thanks - I had thought it was pretty obvious. Obviously it wasn't obvious.
Lesson learned.... more winks!
I have taken the liberty of crafting a disclosure and ran it through legal--feel free to affix it to any further deadpan attempts at humor.
Oh, I'm sure the person who flagged me understood it was a joke... I just happened to use the word man four times in two sentences. Triggering occurred - kittens were punched. RAAAaaaaaGGGE.... sadness and many cookies consumed.
oh, and...
IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE FOR CERTAIN PEOPLE WHO HAVE RECENTLY JOINED THE DEBATE AND ARE CONFUSED BY SARCASM: THIS IS WRY HUMOR. IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY.
*no kittens were punched (I hope)
In MFP Debate section, kitten punches you!
Disclaimer: I am not promoting violence and would suggest that if a kitten actually feels like punching someone that it contact an anger management consultant pronto!32 -
I sat down to catch up. I have a cup of coffee with milk and some cantaloupe with salt. Oh, and a piece of bread with peanut butter.
I didn't know it would kill me to have a snack.
Placeholder.
11 -
cmriverside wrote: »I sat down to catch up. I have a cup of coffee with milk and some cantaloupe with salt. Oh, and a piece of bread with peanut butter.
I didn't know it would kill me to have a snack.
Placeholder.
Your already dead 3 -
Alatariel75 wrote: »I can't decide whether my popcorn or my facepalm gif would be more appropriate in here.
Is the popcorn salted?5 -
WinoGelato wrote: »Alatariel75 wrote: »I can't decide whether my popcorn or my facepalm gif would be more appropriate in here.
Is the popcorn salted?
Yup, I'm ded. May as well wash it down with some milk and be done with it!7 -
WinoGelato wrote: »Alatariel75 wrote: »I can't decide whether my popcorn or my facepalm gif would be more appropriate in here.
Is the popcorn salted?
If for preserving, salted popcorn is ok....if given by the food overlords for taste then, you are dead8 -
kolagani12 wrote: »i have a lot
IIFYM- plain stupid. An excuse by fatties to allow themselves to eat whatever they want. That type of behavior is what got them in this situation in the first place- you shouldn't ENCOURAGE this behavior
Pre-Workouts- If you lack the energy or the drive to do a proper workout and need to take a powder to give you that energy, you aren't worthy of achieving fitness
Keto- "muh carbs, so let me just eat some bacon instead." You dummy. Carbs didn't make you fat, it was you eating too much that made you fat. Make wise choices, such as whole grains, and you can enjoy carbs. Not to mention this plan is *kitten* for anyone trying to build muscle.
"I can't lose weight"- yes you can, you aren't trying hard enough. Take responsibility.
- IIFYM - LOTS of people use this to successfully lose weight, not get fat. It's all about CICO in the end, but finally learning that you don't have to be (insert fad-ish here) is life altering for a lot of people when it comes to losing weight. I personally don't track macros, but I'm significantly more successful with a "as long as it fits my goals" mentality than trying to be paleo or low carb or "clean" eating, etc.
- EVERYONE is worthy of achieving fitness if they put in the time and effort. So what if someone takes a sup?
- Agree, basically
- Also agree.
4 -
kolagani12 wrote: »i have a lot
IIFYM- plain stupid. An excuse by fatties to allow themselves to eat whatever they want. That type of behavior is what got them in this situation in the first place- you shouldn't ENCOURAGE this behavior
Pre-Workouts- If you lack the energy or the drive to do a proper workout and need to take a powder to give you that energy, you aren't worthy of achieving fitness
Keto- "muh carbs, so let me just eat some bacon instead." You dummy. Carbs didn't make you fat, it was you eating too much that made you fat. Make wise choices, such as whole grains, and you can enjoy carbs. Not to mention this plan is *kitten* for anyone trying to build muscle.
"I can't lose weight"- yes you can, you aren't trying hard enough. Take responsibility.
I realize this is an opinion thread, but if you are going to give an opinion, you should at least understand what you are spouting off against. IIFYM does not in any way mean you can absolutely eat anything you want. You should do your homework first.
Yeah, in my opinion it's flame-baiting. Apparently the thread isn't as much fun since we got past the mansplaining pregnancy weight.9 -
Alatariel75 wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »Alatariel75 wrote: »I can't decide whether my popcorn or my facepalm gif would be more appropriate in here.
Is the popcorn salted?
Yup, I'm ded. May as well wash it down with some milk and be done with it!
I think you can be revived if the milk is in the form of yogurt.1 -
Can someone honestly tell me how these nefarious overlord conspiracy things actually work? I mean, there has to be thousands of people involved. All keeping it quiet. No leaks. Highly organised. Incredibly coordinated.
I mean, I've worked in Government, pretty high up, pretty respectable security clearance and I can honestly say - the things that they are doing *publicly*, with broad based support, resources and funding, they're... just not that good at. How the hell are these giant conspiracies working so smoothly? How has this been going for 60+ years and no one has blown the lid on it yet?24
This discussion has been closed.
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