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by flexblue 2284 days ago
> It's been my breakfast for decades, I'm quite healthy, and eat a diet almost entirely composed of raw produce. The rest is nuts/seeds/legumes and canned fish.

You get virtually all of your macronutrients from the nuts, seeds, legumes and the fish - not the produce.

> I rarely ever cook, and if I didn't go for organic produce this would be a very cheap diet except for the nuts.

So it would be cheap if it was something else, but it's not.

In any event, I consider any diet high in grains/legumes a science experient which may or may not work out. I don't consider it a healthy diet.

2 comments

> So it would be cheap if it was something else, but it's not.

By volume most of the "nuts" are roasted unsalted peanuts, which are very cheap, and as you know actually legumes.

I just have a taste for expensive walnuts and cashews, and like organic produce, but I'm not poor.

Everyone can afford peanuts, or peanut butter. I prefer roasted intact peanuts since there's less opportunity for fuckery like replacing peanut oil with palm oil and adding sugar.

People eat beans for decades. Why should this be an experiment? Because people like Dr. Gundry want to sell books? He‘s even admitted on TV that cooking mitigates the whole problem. And who eats raw beans? I think it‘s pure hysteria. In observational studies „anti-nutrients“ are mostly associated with better health outcomes.
> People eat beans for decades. Why should this be an experiment?

People also eat donuts for decades, that means nothing.

People didn't eat beans for hundreds of thousands of years. They're not a "natural" part of the diet. They contain poorly researched plant toxins and anti-nutrients, which can are known to cause issues in sensitive people.

Can you "mitigate" the problem with proper preparation? Apparently, but that doesn't mean we know they are actually healthy as opposed to "sustainable". Populations across the world which have no choice but to rely on grains and legumes as a staple do suffer from malnutrition.

> In observational studies „anti-nutrients“ are mostly associated with better health outcomes.

Observational studies are mostly useless, because anybody who buys into "legumes are healthy" will focus on living a healthy life in other aspects as well. As I said, swapping in legumes in place of donuts is going to be a benefit. That doesn't mean it's optimal.

You say that beans are problematic but you don‘t back it up. I only have to show you that beans are just as much part of human diets as are other foods. What is the actual science that anybody on earth suffers from the consumption of beans? For donuts we see a direct correlation between sugary processed foods and obesity, T2D and other diseases. For beans you can not show this. The only thing you can show is some mechanistic data, where we can speculate. In my personal opinion you are the victim of an industry that wants to sell stuff like Gundrys supplements like „Lectin buster“ and the like.
> What is the actual science that anybody on earth suffers from the consumption of beans?

"More than half of the world populations are affected by micronutrient malnutrition and one third of world’s population suffers from anemia and zinc deficiency, particularly in developing countries."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4325021/

> I only have to show you that beans are just as much part of human diets as are other foods.

Again, that literally means nothing. Humans can survive on very poor diets.

> For donuts we see a direct correlation between sugary processed foods and obesity, T2D and other diseases. For beans you can not show this.

Of course, I never said beans cause T2 diabetes or any other "disease of civilization". They cause nutrient deficiences in populations that are underdeveloped. As for what it does with those few people in developed nations who choose to adopt a plant-based diet, there's just no good data, yet. That's a recent phenomenon.

> The only thing you can show is some mechanistic data, where we can speculate.

Of course we have to speculate, because we don't know. You can always ask for more evidence that this-and-that is or isn't harmful in some dose. Somehow, people are very wary about synthetic toxins or pesticides, but when it comes to natural toxins that plants produce to defend themselves, we don't really pay the same kind of attention.

What's the evidence that heavy metals, or dioxin, or any of the other pollutants are harmful in the doses that we allow them in? There isn't any, that's why we allow them. Does that mean harmful effects don't exist? No. It means we don't know any better.

Legumes just happen to be the biggest offenders of natural toxins in our diet. They all have a rich history of requiring preparation to become digestible at all. We're not evolutionarily prepared to handle them, we haven't eaten them as a staple for more than a few thousand years. That's a red flag.

> In my personal opinion you are the victim of an industry that wants to sell stuff like Gundrys supplements like „Lectin buster“ and the like.

I don't care about Gundry opinions or his supplements, he's no better than your nutritionfacts guy. Also, it's not like there isn't a whole industry behind selling the plant-based diet. A much bigger industry in fact, also fueled by ideology, ethics and virtue signaling. Red flags.

May I ask what your diet is?