[Lokalpod]

I’m working on mehungry dot app that I launched last week. It’s the 1 hour mvp and after some positive feedback, now I’m working on my next milestones with tons more features.

My goal is to simplify healthy eating and improve nutrition habits.

I asked people outside various grocery stores and most folks do not know how to read nutrition labels nor identify healthy foods. My dad was able to practice some healthier eating habits and get his BP from hypertension to normal.

Please feel to reach out if you have any questions or advice for me. I’m new to this so I appreciate your message.

YC videos have been instrumental for me as someone who is a self taught engineer and wants to build useful software.

[sph]

As someone that has had high BP from their 20s, I would not trust any app to give me good advice, because I found that mainstream dietary advice, especially surrounding circulatory problems, is utter nonsense.

In my deep dive into the world of low carb, I learned that elevated levels of fructose/uric acid reduce the synthesis of nitric oxide, a known vasodilator, among other mechanisms (did you know that the explosive nitroglycerin is an effective vasodilator?). High blood pressure is reversible by reducing the amount of insulin spikes and ingested simple sugars, and low carb is the most effective method.

Yet most apps tend to pride themselves in "medically approved science here!", which means the usual story of eating less meat and saturated fat, and exercising more. "Leafy vegetables!"

The problem is that medically approved science that your GP offers tends to be about 25 years out of date, so we're at least a generation away before we have apps that tell you to stop eating bread, cereals for breakfast and heaping bowls of fruit, but instead eating real, non-sugary foods and not to shy away from saturated fat.

Now I am 50kg overweight than my first hypertensive diagnosis in my early 20s, and I have better blood pressure in about 2 weeks of eating fewer carbs than I did at the time when I was fit as a trout, but with tight arteries.

And don't get me started on cholesterol and statins, because I'll be here all day.

A link to get you started, if you want to base your app on up-to-date research: https://youtu.be/KlHPmJTihBc

[stikit]

I respect your enthusiasm and journey to get healthy. My experience is I went on a low fat, low simple carb, low sugar diet (commonly referred to as vegetarian) and lost over 30 pounds and reduced my LDL by 60 points over 4 months. I think it’s unfortunate that the Keto industry has chosen to brand themselves low carb/high fat. Rarely do they distinguish good fat from bad fat and good carbs from bad carbs. Keto gets its benefit from low simple carbs , not high saturated fats.

[moneywoes]

Is it possible to elaborate, what are these bad fats? Meat?

[stikit]

I avoid or minimize saturated and trans fats. When I do eat meat now I eat lean meats. Eat whole non-boxes foods, mostly vegetables,legumes,oat meal, brown rice, some whole wheat and fruits, some chicken , turkey fish, and eggs. Red meat and dairy rarely.

Edit on initial reply: “Keto gets its benefit from avoiding low simple carbs , not from avoiding complex carbs or consuming high saturated fats.“

[mrbombastic]

Keto and low carb may be very effective tools in your tool belt but I would caution you to exercise the same skepticism you have for the mainstream medical advice with fairly new world of keto and low carb. I have done it myself and it is undoubtedly extremely effective in losing weight but long term affects of drastic changes in diet are real.

[j45]

It’s also a reason the application of dietetics can vary so much.

People will focus on their individual experience as a proxy for generalizing others way too much.

While there are some universal principles, extremes around eating both bad and eating healthy can be confused with eating simple or eating clean.

If someone has a cashew allergy, the practice of veganism can be life threatening where it’s used so much.

If you come from a certain area of the world, your genetics might be a little more used to benefiting from eating certain things than not, too. A negotiation for might be nice for me but for someone who’s being eating it well for a few generations..

[dahart]

This is an insanely valid point, and I didn’t realize til I just looked it up how many people have high blood pressure. But isn’t the problem with medically approved science assuming that any given metric or recommendation works for everyone? This happens on both ends; apps marketing advice based on some amount of science without specifying or understanding who it does and doesn’t apply to, and us consumers taking the “it’s science” to mean it’s supposed to work for us, and that if it doesn’t it means the science was wrong. Scientists and papers and doctors definitely do not agree on everything dietary, and any given scientist or doctor will give you different dietary advice if you have high vs low blood pressure. (But I guess it’s good to look at the things that all doctors and scientists do agree on.) Lowering saturated fat and meat intake and increasing fiber intake actually is generally good advice for a lot of people, especially if they’re overdoing it, but definitely not everyone and most especially not everyone with specific health issues. I’m a little surprised by the comment that advice to eat low carbs feels a generation away to you. I can’t think of specific apps, I guess, the only dietary apps I’ve used track macros and calories, and don’t make recommendations. But, practically everyone I know is highly carb aware and many have tried the Atkins diet for weight loss and/or high protein for workouts, with varying levels of success. It’s gone far enough that I’m starting to hear people talk about how we’re eating way too much protein, and that people misunderstand carbs (they build muscle as well). While that might be true for many, it’s definitely not considering high blood pressure, nor, for example, celiac or Crohn’s disease. I guess we always need to remember, both when making apps and when buying them, that whether the correlation a scientist found in a study works for someone may depend entirely on how closely this person matches the study cohort, and we have to remember that assuming we can project correlations found in a cohort to a wider audience has historically been one of the best ways to get science wrong, right?

[Hel5inki]

Great video, thanks for sharing. Would you mind continuing on statins? Or provide a similar resource? Would love to hear it

[sph]

The videos from Dr. Paul Mason on that channel about cholesterol will tell you everything you need to know about statins, LDL, atherosclerosis. The whole channel is a treasure trove of research and plenty of citations. It's just too new for your GP to be aware of it.

tl;dr: statins don't do much apart from reducing a single metric of an entire systemic disorder, and have terrible side effects, LDL is positively correlated with longevity in healthy subjects, high levels of blood sugar destroy a "marker" protein on LDL cells, they stop being recognised and reabsorbed by the liver but instead they go and accumulate under artery walls. Atherosclerosis is not caused by dietary fat, but high levels of dietary fat paired with high levels of blood sugar.

In general, high levels of sugar alone are worse by all metrics that high levels of dietary fat, and very recent research seems to suggest mitochondria work better burning fatty acids than glucose (to be clear, the chemical pathway is exactly the same, but fatty acids skip a couple steps and produce fewer free radicals)

[moneywoes]

What is your diet like, especially protein?

What about the type of carbs in oatmeal, those are better right?

[bambax]

> most folks do not know how to read nutrition labels nor identify healthy foods

My approach: healthier products aren't wrapped and don't have nutrition labels on them.

[QuiDortDine]

That's a good rule of thumb, but I just don't have time to cook everything from scratch.

[disgruntledphd2]

Slow cookers are pretty great for this, as you can put stuff on in the morning before work, and eat as soon as you finish/return home.

[satvikpendem]

Instant pots as well, plus they're much faster. Meal prepping is also useful, just cook everything on Sunday and eat it throughout the week.

[disgruntledphd2]

They're electric pressure cookers, right? My slow cooker (Ninja 9 in 1) also does that, and it's super helpful for when I forget to put things on in the morning.

[bambax]

Yes, and they're fantastic. Couldn't live without one now.

[brookside]

I agree with the other commenters.

How do you know how to identify healthy foods?

What is a "healthy" food?

[shubb]

This looks useful, nice mvp.

Assuming you have a normal diet are the recipes it generates pretty healthy?