[village-idiot]

Favoring stuff with Greek/Latin names is just a bunch of Euro-centrism, which isn't really a good look. The Romans also ignored the risks of lead, which is just ironic in this context.

In general I think it's best, when possible, to stick with foods that have been around for a long long time. I think a lot of the new stuff we've introduced this century has some pretty nasty medium to long term consequences, even if it won't give you acute poisoning right off the bat. If a food/dish has been around for a few centuries or millenia then chances are we've already worked those kinks out.

[hollerith]

>Favoring stuff with Greek/Latin names is just a bunch of Euro-centrism

I think Taleb's heuristic here is for him to eat only fruits his ancestors have been eating for at least 1000 years. IIUC, his advice to a person of Chinese ancestry would be to eat only fruits with a Chinese name.

(Also, you changed the "Greek/Hebrew" in the earlier comment to "Greek/Latin".)

[deialtrous]

>Favoring stuff with Greek/Latin names is just a bunch of Euro-centrism

They said "Greek/Hebrew" not "Greek/Latin".

>which isn't really a good look

How is that exactly? Why would it be bad for a Greek person to embrace Greek culture, history and tradition?

>The Romans also ignored the risks of lead, which is just ironic in this context.

It is not ironic, it is the point. He's not saying "do anything Romans did!" (even if we pretend he said Romans when that's something you made up). He's saying "do things that have been around since Roman times and nobody has found any health problems with in the 2000 years since then." We had lots of time to find out lead is bad, we found that out, told everyone, and now we eat less of it. We've only been eating seed oils for 100 years. They are probably bad too but we haven't had the time to figure it out and tell everyone yet. So you take a risk by eating them.