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What are your unpopular opinions about health / fitness?
Replies
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Chef_Barbell wrote: »
So glad we moved on from that....3 -
Is there womansplaining? Asking for a friend.9
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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). ;-)
The logic of what we're "meant" to eat is pretty much going to begin and end with fruit, as fruit evolved the way it did because it was more successful when animals would eat it and help spread the seeds. (At least that's what I've always read).
While I like fruit a lot, I'm not ready to adopt the "Foods we are meant to eat" diet.5 -
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janejellyroll wrote: »
I was expecting "You're just supposed to know".6 -
janejellyroll wrote: »
I was expecting "You're just supposed to know".
I just want you to want to know about it, don't just ask about it because you think I want you to.18 -
I guess the most controversial thing is that I am pro-GMO and every time I see GMO-free on a lable, I roll my eyes. I also think 95% of the people who eat gluten-free don't need to eat gluten-free.15
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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.
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Thanks all y'all for making sure this popped into my FB Newsfeed this morning.
https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/21/pregnancy-weight-gain-women/7 -
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.
As for dramatic increases - I'll grant you obesity as an outcome of our stability and growth - at least for Western civilization. There is no increase of cancer, diabetes (other than linked to obesity), allergies, etc. other than longer life span and increased detection methods. Most of this is due to increased awareness and perception of our reality. Statistically there is a very minor shift, but again largely due to increased availability to medical care. Many specific diseases were diagnosed differently in the past. Many patients would have died much earlier.3 -
The_Enginerd wrote: »Thanks all y'all for making sure this popped into my FB Newsfeed this morning.
https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/21/pregnancy-weight-gain-women/
I think it was written buy a guy
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The_Enginerd wrote: »Thanks all y'all for making sure this popped into my FB Newsfeed this morning.
https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/21/pregnancy-weight-gain-women/
Oh you better pray a woman wrote that.
Oh crud...1 -
Tacklewasher wrote: »The_Enginerd wrote: »Thanks all y'all for making sure this popped into my FB Newsfeed this morning.
https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/21/pregnancy-weight-gain-women/
I think it was written buy a guy
You might want to add a few extra smileys and winks. I just had one
and got flagged. 3 -
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.
I am imagining the technology to domesticate the animals moved very slowly, so it would be easier for a human group to adapt. So, one village captures a wild cow, goat, or reindeer and takes a hand at milking it: success! They share the quantity of milk around the village/tribe so no one gets too much. Eventually the animal goes dry, so they have to delve into breeding technology to freshen her; at any rate, milking is probably a pretty tough proposition, and the wild animals are not putting out as much milk as, say, a Holstein or Guernsey that has been bred for generations for copious milk production. So small family groups would be getting small quantities of milk over generations. Cheesemaking and fermentation technologies would make milk even easier to digest, so if there was a surplus of milk, their storage techniques would be more suitable for digestion.
As the milking technology became sophisticated and hit critical mass and milk drinking became established as the norm for groups like the Celts or the Sami, that is the point that some of the un-adapted population would start being weeded out, some through malnourishment through brutally hard northern winters, as the herding populations push further north, and some would just not be seen as ideal reproductive partners if they constantly have the runs or are incapacitated due to stomach issues, so they would be putting a reduced number of progeny back into the genetic pool.2 -
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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).
But using the term "meant" suggests they should (and is also just incorrect -- there are no specific foods we are "meant" to eat other than, if possible, breast milk as babies, I guess).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.
Sure, I think this kind of thing is interesting, which is why I have some knowledge about it (and about how varied it was), but I don't see what it has to do with "meant." And recall this was all in response to someone saying we are not "meant" to consume dairy or gluten -- despite years of us doing so, well before the modern era.I think that the point of noting this is to achieve some level of mindfulness regarding our modern food supply.
Sure, whatever, I'd be into that, and am, but I don't think that has a thing to do with "meant" OR with eating like we (whoever "we" is in that sentence) before the agricultural era. Again, we are talking about dairy (which was again the food staple in Ireland pre potato, so hardly a brand new addition, and has been a longstanding part of the diet in much of Europe) and gluten (wheat, barley, rye, etc.), which also have been long a staple (and played a huge part in human history in interesting ways).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.
I wouldn't assume that. I'd assume people consumed milk when they happened to hunt lactating mammals, that they observed animals feeding their young and used the milk when a mother could not produce or died and there was not another lactating mother available (as suggested upthread) and they decided to raise animals anyway and saw that milk could be an important part of this that did not require the killing of the animal (and cheese and other ways of preserving milk were convenient). Sure, it was more common in colder climates, likely, where there are seasons where other foods are less available, but that doesn't mean it required "desperation" for a culture to add in dairy.
Humans adapt very well to new foods -- there is a good discussion of this re the Lewis and Clark Expedition in Diet Cults. Also, human diets over the world and over time have been quite variable. That doesn't mean that what we eat doesn't matter, but the idea of there being an "ideal" diet we were "meant" to eat (again, by whom? by nature? then why so many other alternatives, and why are we naturally able to develop easier and more stable forms, like, you know, agriculture, when it is helpful to do so?) and other foods that we didn't eat by some certain time in the past (pick one) being what we were not "meant" to eat.
I prefer eating whole foods and prefer being closer to the production when possible (growing vegetables, knowing where they are from, so on), but I don't pretend I'm not MEANT to eat a banana because I can't grow it where I live or not meant to eat broccoli in January or frozen blueberries, and I certainly am not going to say I'm not meant to eat dairy because it was a later development when I digest it perfectly well -- that makes no sense to me.4 -
Eating chocolate definitely gives me acne.2
-
- I think that 1200 calories is an absurdly low target for the vast majority of people.
- I think that the distinction between "purposeful" and "nonpurposeful" exercise is meaningless.
- I think that, if you don't have a medical condition preventing it, you shouldn't allow yourself to be "sedentary". As per point #2, I would consider someone who is sedentary for much of the day but exercises to be "not sedentary" in this respect. If they want to use MFP's sedentary setting, that's their business and not my point.
- Someone can increase their calorie intake and, as a result lose more weight. All it takes is for that increase in calorie intake to shift hormone balance enough to increase their energy level and increase calorie output. While this would never be my *first* response to someone who's having trouble losing weight, it's a valid option for some.
- Incorrect database entries and forgetting to log some of your food (and/or thinking you don't have to log some of your food) are probably bigger problems for most people than using measuring cups instead of a scale. A scale is much *easier*, but weight discrepancies will go in both directions. Thinking you don't need to log fruit/veg (or the cream in your coffee) doesn't.
- There is no material difference between a BMI of 24.5 and 25.5 for the same person. The BMI categories were completely arbitrary, chosen for generating convenient groups of equal size: 15-20, 20-25, 25-30, 30-35, etc. *After* the categories were chosen, the 20-25 category turned out to be the healthiest. This is hardly surprising since most people have their ideal weight fall roughly in that region. But many shorter people are fine in the 18-20 range and many taller people are fine in the 25-27 range. And it's as easy to find someone who is overfat with a BMI of 24 as it is to find someone who isn't with a BMI of 26. Humans just happen to like numbers that are multiples of 5. How many people have a goal weight that is a multiple of 5?
Don't even get me started on the nonsensical "how do you gain weight if you're nauseous all the time?" question. When 99% of foods make you vomit, you very quickly work out what are the remaining 1% of foods that you can usually keep down, and you do your best to make healthy choices given that very restrictive list. Calorie counting under those circumstances would very tough because you wouldn't know how much stayed down vs. how many calories went into the toilet (or whatever receptacle you were able to reach in time). Also, you can gain water weight without any calorie surplus.
All this from a woman who spent 6 months of pregnancy puking and dropped 30 pounds within a week or two of giving birth. Yes, I gained "too much" weight. Baby + fluid retention was 30 pounds. You would have had me gain 20?! Pregnancy can be hell on earth. If you haven't been there, you have no clue.12 -
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.18 -
I confess I didn't read all 36 pages before posting.
Mine would be:
* I also am OK with exercising largely for extra calories, and somewhat for aesthetics. Fitness is a nice side effect.
* I'm fine with GMO foods and can't be bothered to buy organic versions of things.
* I can understand reservations about WLS, but I read that one form is far more effective than anything else for a lot of obese people, so I try to reserve judgment.
* I eat LCHF so as a pp said, that's either unpopular or annoyingly trendy depending on who you ask. (Though I always try to explain it's what works for me and my particular health issues, I don't think it's right for everyone, yada yada.) My body seems to be happier with minimal grains, not a lot of sugar, and relatively high amounts of fat and protein, so I'm sticking with it until I have good reason not to.3 -
I wouldn't assume that. I'd assume people consumed milk when they happened to hunt lactating mammals, that they observed animals feeding their young and used the milk when a mother could not produce or died and there was not another lactating mother available (as suggested upthread) and they decided to raise animals anyway and saw that milk could be an important part of this that did not require the killing of the animal (and cheese and other ways of preserving milk were convenient). Sure, it was more common in colder climates, likely, where there are seasons where other foods are less available, but that doesn't mean it required "desperation" for a culture to add in dairy.
For more color around how this happened, here is a great article on all that tasty paleo food enjoyed by hunter-gatherers. Milk would have been a delicacy consumed immediately upon the butchering grounds by the ranking hunters of the tribe, along with blood, brains, eyes, assorted entrails, fetal calf hooves, and--ahem--man parts.
http://www.native-americans-online.com/native-american-buffalo.html
7 -
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.1 -
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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.18
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