Ask HN: Is there an ultimate guide to healthy food diet?

[the_rock_says]

I grew up on eating a balanced diet (at least that's what I think) until I moved from home for college and jobs. Like many of us, I occasionally cook at home due to ease of restaurants or food delivery services like Freshly etc. here in the Bay Area. Now that I have started getting shoulder and back pain, mostly due to poor sitting habits, I'm thinking to change my habits and learn to live and eat better. I found some good exercises online but didn’t find any curated list of food that is good for the body. What I'm more interested in is how to have a balanced diet. For example, in one of the YouTube videos on shoulder pain, the doctor linked it with a possible dysfunction of the liver/gallbladder and recommends eating beetroot tops and other cruciferous leaves. I was wondering if there's this ultimate guide which talks about good eating habits and links it with the improvements of the body organs. Does anyone know about this kind of guide or like an app?

[smt88]

Very little is known to be good, general advice about food. The science is very difficult and expensive:

https://www.vox.com/2016/1/14/10760622/nutrition-science-com...

Michael Pollan has some good advice, though. His book, The Eater's Manual, is not "a diet", but rather an expansion on his rules for eating:

https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20090323/7-rules-for...

[risto1]

This is false. There's plenty we know about nutrition. Special interest groups introduce doubt

[smt88]

Can you cite anything? I cited something that demonstrates the uncertainty and explains why it exists (difficulty of studying it, extreme variation among individuals).

There is no single, hard rule for nutrition yet. We don't even know how healthy milk and fish oil are. Vitamin D supplements were just shown to have no benefit for bone health. Exercise and amount of food play a huge role in whether a diet works.

[risto1]

You cited a magazine article. Just look at the recommendations that nutrition organizations give, WHO, etc, people that are experts in the field. If you think it's bs then there's not much I can do about that

https://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/dietetic-associations

My 2c to your response: there is some variation among individuals, I think it's intentionally exaggerated. Milk isn't a health product, but it's nutritious and useful for those that don't have much appetite to eat. Agree about fish oil unless you're deficient in omega 3. The amount of calories you can eat plays a huge preventative role in having any deficiencies. Most people have some kind of deficiency. Most people don't, or can't due to age or health issue, exercise so much that their metabolic rate is high enough (1.5-2x higher) to see those gains, which is why nutrition advice matters. If you ignore everything about nutrition, you can get the most benefit by avoiding added sugar and oils. It goes a very very long way

[risto1]

If you're getting shoulder and back pain from poor sitting habits, you should address that directly. Fix your posture, your spine should be slightly curved when you sit with your shoulders upright. You can also get a standing desk, and start weight training or doing calisthenics

The general dietary advice these days is:

- avoid added sugars and oils

- eat a (primarily or complete) plant-based whole foods diet

- people are also experiencing some benefits from fasting, which can be divided into 3 categories:

  1. intermittent fasting
  2. a water fasting session, usually 1-3 days long
  3. going into ketosis for prolonged period of time