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MyFitnessPal Community

“Healthy” vs “unhealthy” foods?

lorib642

Study: small targeted dietary changes can yield substantial gains for human health and the environment
https://nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00343-4

They quantified minutes of life gained or lost by eating a variety of different foods.

I am hoping someone will point out a bias in the research because I happen to like red meat which supposedly takes 10 minutes off my life.

I apologize in advance if this study has already been discussed

Replies

goal06082021

Looks like the full study is behind a paywall for me, but it seems to me that exactly how many minutes I get to be alive is actually not completely up to me, and to try to control that number just by eating specific foods? That way lies madness.

It sounds like, from the abstract, they also took into account factors beyond just the nutrition of the food within the body of the eater. So like with your red meat example, not all 10 of those minutes are taken off by the act of eating cow flesh as such; some of that comes from the environmental impact of raising beef cattle on a commercial scale, which is significant. The food industry and systems within it that currently exist have plenty of room for improvement for basically everyone involved at every stage of the process.

rileysowner

10 minutes of life or eat red meat? Pass the beef.

lynn_glenmont

Behind a pay wall for me, too. The first question I would want answered is whether they reached their conclusion based on comparing people who eat none of the food in question (e.g., red meat) and people who eat it 2 to 3 three times a day, every day? Did they just assume a straight-line relationship -- i.e., that the first serving consumed had the same effect as the 10th serving consumed and the 20th serving consumed (I'm thinking per week with those numbers)? That would seem to be the case, given that the abstract mentions single numbers for minutes lost or added per serving in the extreme cases. Then I'd like to know their justification for making that assumption.

lorib642

Sorry about that. Here is an article about the study. https://cnn.com/2021/08/27/health/hot-dog-could-shorten-life-trnd-wellness-scn/index.html

I was able to view the study earlier, when I went through the link in the article.

wunderkindking

Somebody needs to get on defining 'healthy life' - because that's what they say you gain or lose minutes of (half hour for a hot dog, etc.) Do they mean before ANY chronic health issue or time before SERIOUS and typically diet (already) linked or complicated health issues?

Also better get to sorting out any correlation between weight, family history, economic status and other variables that are likely also overlapping in there. Because what I read didn't even attempt to do that.

How in the name of heck did they determine ONE hot dog was going to take 26 minutes off your life? I promise they didn't take a bunch of people and follow them birth, control every aspect of their environment and give one half ONE hot dog and the other half NO hot dogs and see later how long it took them to die.

The science here is bad and should feel bad.

But also I think we all know what's good for us and 'bad' for us health wise. Hot dogs probably aren't good for physical health. I doubt you lose a half hour off the end of your life every time you eat one, pretty seriously.

callsitlikeiseeit

i think they had this on the news one day last week.

i dont think any of us here would debate the fact that there are certainly more NUTRITIOUS foods than others. You can't really compare the nutrition in say, a grilled chicken salad vs a hot dog and french fries as far as quality goes calorie per calorie.

that said, I have a really hard time believing that there is any quantifiable way to determine that you are losing almost a half hour of your life every time you are eating a hot dog. Way too many variables and no way to control them. Should you eat them every day? No. Probably not. Just as you shouldnt eat a lot of things every day. Will a couple a month hurt you or take time off your life? Probably not, imo. unless you choke on it (i hate hot dogs, so theres that possibility with me LOL)

sijomial

Healthy or unhealthy overall diets makes sense to me but taking individual foods in isolation, with no personal or situational context and extrapolating a universal outcome just seems a dumb premise to me.
Give a hot dog to a starving person or to a morbidly obese person - same impact? Hmmmm, I don't think so.

For example the lowest nutrition but high calorie item I ate last week would be the 300g of sports drink mix I put in my bottles for a long bike ride.
1200cals of sugary drink would clearly be a pretty poor day for someone eating to a 1200cal goal, but as part of my 3,800 cal goal that day it's leaving plenty of space for all the macros, micros, vitamins etc. to make a healthy day.
And of course, how significant is one day?
And I have no diabetic or IR issues so my response to an unusual high sugar intake is going to be very different to others.....
Did that 300g of glucose/fructose mix (which I more than burned off) take minutes off my life or did the three and a half hours of exercise add minutes to my life?

I'll vote for this part of the CNN article - "Changing a diet to include or exclude any one food is unlikely to make much difference -- it's dietary (and lifestyle) patterns that count,"

neanderthin

Poor cows, they just can't catch a break. The world is greener, more food is produced, less people are dying of starvation and maybe one of those people is the genius that will help and be instrumental in solving our energy situation. This is not a study this is an hypothesis based on random value indicators and that eating meat shortens your life as a given, right, where have I heard that before.

ninerbuff

Joey Chestnut is in big trouble then.

He's the Nathan's Hot dog eating champion with 74 hot dogs in 10 minutes. I'll let you guys do the math.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Speakeasy76

I don't even want to read the study, but I think most of us here can agree that the more junk you eat, the greater your risk of diseases that may shorten your life. However, doing a study like this seems can't take into account everyone's individual genetics--including their risk for certain diseases. I think it makes more sense to look at one's family history/risk of disease and maybe eat less of the stuff/chemicals that are correlated with increasing the risk and more of the stuff that may help lower the risk.

goldenxbeauty

Food is food.
I try to make good choices generally but if I want dessert or I'm craving something specific, I'm not going to deny myself that most of the time because we deserve to enjoy life and one of the things I enjoy is food.🤷‍♀️

FinntheVeggie

I think it would be a mistake to take this finding at face value. It's a fun statistical model, but the headline of the article isn't meant to be taken literally. There's no countdown clock that jumps down 10 minutes when you order a burger, but there is probably some interesting things to learn from the model as a whole. The CNN article is phrased a certain way to make it "catchy", rather than 100% faithful to the underlying study. In the article it says their calculations were based on Global Disease Burden calculations, not individual people (like someone pointed out above, it would be impossible and quite silly to track thousands of people from birth to death and account for everything they ate)

FinntheVeggie

If anybody's interested in the full text article, it looks like it's available on Sci Hub:
https://sci-hub.es.ht/?q=Small+targeted+dietary+changes+can+yield+substantial+gains+for+human+health+and+the+environment

suzleigh1

ninerbuff wrote: »

Joey Chestnut is in big trouble then. He's the Nathan's Hot dog eating champion with 74 hot dogs in 10 minutes. I'll let you guys do the math.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

My husband had the same exact comment! Vegetarians don’t live forever. A friend of my husband literally dropped dead in a gym in the middle of a workout. He had lived a healthy life, ate all the right foods, and he had no known health problems. He was in his mid-60’s. My mother in law did no exercising, ate junk food like it was a circus every day, and never met a vegetable she liked. She lived to 98.

penguinmama87

goldenxbeauty wrote: »

Food is food.
I try to make good choices generally but if I want dessert or I'm craving something specific, I'm not going to deny myself that most of the time because we deserve to enjoy life and one of the things I enjoy is food.🤷‍♀️

I think enjoyment is actually really important for health, too, but happiness is very hard to quantify, so that part often gets left out. I do know some people who lived to very old ages who seemed awfully unhappy (also some very happy!)

I would like to live a long time, sure, but quantity of years is far from the only measuring stick for whether or not it's a good life. The reality is none of us are guaranteed tomorrow and we'll all die someday. I'm far from a hedonist (so, SO far), but yes, there are in fact some things I am not going to give up just because it offers better statistical odds I'll reach a particular birthday.

ythannah

Speakeasy76 wrote: »

I don't even want to read the study, but I think most of us here can agree that the more junk you eat, the greater your risk of diseases that may shorten your life. However, doing a study like this seems can't take into account everyone's individual genetics--including their risk for certain diseases. I think it makes more sense to look at one's family history/risk of disease and maybe eat less of the stuff/chemicals that are correlated with increasing the risk and more of the stuff that may help lower the risk.

This is basically my approach, put more of an effort into shoring up the stuff that features heavily in my family history, like cardiovascular issues and osteoporosis. Then avoid the things that are generally known to cause problems, like smoking. And after that, let the chips fall where they may.

AnnPT77

It's . . . interesting . . . but I don't really see the practical implications of this level of (mostly imputed?) detail.

Good overall nutrition is important. As a practical thing, I think there's a higher return on effort from focusing on getting good overall nutrition, not on feeding the click-bait beast that wants to convince people that individual foods are "good" or "bad", "junk" or "superfoods".

Just my opinion, though.

MargaretYakoda

“Good foods” are the ones that nourish us.
And that is something that varies from person to person and situation to situation.

And they probably lie on some kind of bell curve, with inedible things on one end, and poison on the other.

I say this while reflecting on something a nurse told me once when my son was a very ill toddler.

It turned out to be to tonsillitis. Which I was already telling the local doctors. But for whatever reason they had decided it was because I wasn’t feeding him. Or because my stepson was a delinquent.

Point being. He would not eat. The only things he willingly ate for many months were butter and frozen peas. And cookies.
I told the nurse I was trying to limit his sweets. He was dangerously thin, but I was a first time young mother and I was trying to feed him healthy things.
And she told me that cookies have butter, and wheat, and eggs, and raisins, and lots of healthy ingredients.
I started not limiting his cookies. Which helped.

He also got sent to Children’s, where they immediately spotted the need to remove his tonsils. And he grew three shoe sizes in two months.

But anyhow, whatever nourishes you is a “good food”

Which is not me saying “EAT ALL THE COOKIES!”
But sometimes the cookies are the good food.

NVintage

russellholtslander1

The bias is in what people think is " good " food. Eggs & bananas have been good or bad several times in my life. Which is it? Nutritious, too carby, too much cholesterol, a balance of nutrients.. all depending on who was talking about it.

Also, circumstances matter.. what do you eat together.. are high fats a problem, or is it due to combining them with starch, and sugar? Is red meat bad, or is it, if you also have pizza, pop, and ice cream in your diet. How about your health concerns? Diabetic.. cut that banana in HALF. That " good " banana will spike your blood sugar. I have A-Fib, and am on blood thinners, due to CHF.. if I eat a lot of greens, I will thicken my blood, and have a stroke..

I think we can all pick out BAD food.. sweets, pop, fast food.. obvious stuff, but most food is GOOD for someone, eaten in the right way. I eat KETO, but don't eat bacon all day.. I eat fatty red meat.. and my doctors love my test results, and weight loss. I also eat veggies, and 5-6 eggs a day, cooked in butter. use mayo, and olive oil as well. Plenty, so I can get to 75% fat. My cholesterol is 105, my triglycerides are 75.

Our bodies use fat, broken down into ketones, or glucose, derived from carbs for energy.. excess energy is stored as bodyfat.. so I think the problem is excess energy.. you can use the fat from a roast, or olive oil ( or both ), but also the glucose from carbs. There will be other health considerations.. salt for example... but I think we look at groups of people, and we see red meat eaters, and we never ask.. are they eating that with a salad and water, or a side of non-starchy vegetables, or do they have mashed potatoes, gravy, and a bowl of canned fruit in heavy syrup.. peaches are healthy, right?

I could also eat very low carb, use just enough ketones to fuel my body, and reach a healthy weight, and eat so much bacon, I consume 5000 mg of Na.. and have high blood pressure, and be very unhealthy.

Most food isn't bad.. it can be, paired with other things, but diet, and health are more complicated than simply saying veggies are good, red meat and eggs are bad. The whole diet matters. Results matter, which is why you go see your doctor, and find out if you are healthy.. if you ARE healthy, and staying healthy, not getting worse, or like me, getting healthier.. is the food I am eating bad? Or is it simply not what people recommend, when forced to back ONE way of eating.. the one they think works for the most people.. the one easiest to stick on, even if the results aren't that great for a lot of people.

We should look at various diets, and what people like, and say things like.. yes, red meat is OK.. but be aware of WHAT you eat with it.. if you eat bread, and mashed potatoes, your body will have lots of fat it could break down into ketones for energy, but also lots of glucose, which the body prefers.. so you do NOT break down the fat.. you burn the glucose, and the fat gets stored.. which is unhealthy, as anyone who is obese knows.. because they tend to get health issues.

I have chosen ketones, over glucose.. it controls my appetite, so I can eat below my caloric needs, and the excess is made up by breaking down my bodyfat, which I think is a major contributor to my other health issues.. 1 lb. of fat is 3,500 calories.. so if I eat 1800, and my body needs 3000 calories to operate.. there is plenty of fat to break down.

Carbs make me crave more carbs. So for me, they are unhealthy. I'll enjoy a mushroom omelet ( 5 eggs ), fish and green beans for lunch, and a big steak, with a side of salad greens, black olives, 2 ozs. shredded cheddar cheese, olive oil and vinegar dressing for breakfast, and nothing but water to drink.

When I ask my doctor if I'm getting healthier, they say yes, so if the food is not good.. all the tests, and my scale have not been informed yet.