[lumb63]

I cannot comment on Nina specifically, since I’m not familiar with her work. I’d only like to suggest that being “a joke in nutrition science circles” in the recent past is probably something of a compliment. Mainstream nutrition science led to advice such as putting energy-dense grains at the bottom of the food pyramid, and villainizing fat with respect to CVD, leading to “reduced fat” alternatives which instead use sugar (which is highly addictive). Now, debates center around how much added sugar should be the recommended daily amount (hint: it should be 0). Lawmakers are considering funding overpriced Ozempic via Medicare to fight our rampant obesity, while nutrition science has abdicated its role in helping people maintain healthful, satiating diets.

At least in the United States, the nutrition science of the last 100 years has overseen the most incredible deterioration of metabolic health in human history. There are some folks doing good work out there, as there always have been, but listening to mainstream nutrition science as if their word is law is akin to letting the inmates run the asylum.

[bjoli]

Adherence to guidelines is laughably low in the developed world.

The recommendations regarding fat hasn't changed in 30 years in most countries. FDA recommended limiting saturated fat already in 1980 (didn't bother looking further) and has recommended not exceeding an energy intake from fat over 30% since at least 1990. 30%e from fat is not a low fat diet.

The guidelines from 1980 explicitly mentions reducing saturated fat and sugar.

I think the problem is that we haven't been listening.

[darajava]

The guidelines from 1980 have indeed mentioned reducing satiating saturated fat and since then people have been getting more and more obese.

The problem is that we have, unfortunately, been listening.

[bjoli]

Jeez. Have you had a look at dietary trends since 1950? The adherence to the modern guidelines were arguably better in 1950 than today.

I am so tired of this crap. Energy intake increased by something like 400kcal/day since 1960. Mostly from processed foods.

At the same time physical activity plummeted.

What do you think is the most probable explanation of obesity: the above or that we halved our SFA intake?

[darajava]

Why do you think people are eating more? It’s because that synthetic crap that is called food doesn’t fill you up!

[bjoli]

Which has

1. Nothing to do with saturated fat.

2. Nothing to do with the dietary guidelines.

[darajava]

You think 6 portions of carbs a day is a good dietary guideline?

[KempyKolibri]

Exactly. And we can’t blame nutrition science for that.

[KempyKolibri]

The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the base of the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.

Reduced fat is an interesting one. If you actually look at what Keys was investigating all the way back in the mid 20th century, the hypothesis was always that saturated fat increased CVD risk. The translation of that into policy and marketing aimed at total fat cannot be placed entirely at the feet of mainstream nutrition science.

As to the claims that sugar is addictive, this is unsupported - sugar does not meet the DSM-V criteria for addictive substances based on current evidence (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-8077-9_...)

As for added sugar - again, you’re labelling policy decisions as nutrition science. The DGs that I’m aware of recommend as little added sugar as possible, but when you’re making policy you have to strike a balance between strict enough to make a difference, but not so restrictive that no one listens. That’s different from what mainstream nutrition science would claim (which is indeed that there are no benefits to added sugar and several risks).

The same point applies to your claim that nutrition science has a role in getting people to adhere to satiating diets. No, nutrition science is to help us understand what those diets might look like. It is not responsible for getting populations to adhere to them.

[rendang]

>put whole grains specifically

This is false, in the 90s when I grew up there was no such criterion, and the posters of the pyramid prominently depicted sliced white bread.

The worst part of the food pyramid was the indication to use all fats and oils sparingly. There's never been any point in which the evidence suggested that olive oil or other monounsaturated fats should be avoided

[KempyKolibri]

Agree that the wholesale demonisation of fats was a massive failure of policy. Doubly frustrating because this was known - Ancel Keys' hypothesis was always about saturated fat specifically, and the Keys equation he devised showed the beneficial effects of PUFA. So mainstream nutrition science was on the money, but policy makers and companies less so.

[GuB-42]

The food pyramid makes economic sense.

Grains are cheap and energy dense, if your goal is to feed a large population it makes a lot of sense to put them at the base of the pyramid, that's what will keep you alive, as in, not starving. Higher up are fruits and vegetables, also cheap, they will provide with nutrients that you need to stay healthy on top of the calories that will keep you alive. Higher up are animal products, expensive but rich in proteins and a few other nutrients that are a bit lacking in the base layers, they help you get stronger and more performant in addition to healthy and alive. On top are pleasure foods, not really necessary for your body, but enjoyable.

I take it like a mirror of the "hierarchy of needs" pyramid rather than nutritional advice for people with effectively unlimited resources.

[mcmoor]

Yeah I always see it as the minimum thing to get if you have limited money. For poor people, most of your money is better utilized to get grains instead of meat.

When I saw it in my local village's clinic it makes sense because it actually encourages eating some meat and fruit instead of none, which is the norm here because of poverty.

[ASalazarMX]

The elephant in the room is that nutrition studies (whose results influence health and economic policy) are frequently funded by dominant players of the food industry, creating a huge conflict of interest. This has to end.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the base of the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.

Citation please or I'm calling extreme bullshit. Everything I've ever read has argued for putting more nutrient dense fruits and vegetables as the basis for a healthy diet.

More importantly, I think the nutrition community was woefully naive to the point of being negligent when they tried to defend the food pyramid. One quote I heard was "When we were recommending lower far intake, we never imagined Snackwells." Well, why TF not??? It should have been blatantly obvious that by demonizing fat and making people feel like carbs were "free" that companies would react appropriately and come up with fat-free, sugar-stuffed replacements that had a huge amount of calories, left you feeling unsatiated, and tasted like sweet cardboard. Probably even worse was frankenfood like Olestra.

I agree with the original point - while I think the field of nutrition science has improved a lot over the past decade, they have a ton to answer for and never did an appropriate "mea culpa" for all the great harm they caused.

[KempyKolibri]

What do you want a citation for? Which claim?

[tsimionescu]

Your claims that (1) the food pyramid put whole grains at the base, and (2) that there is any consensus at all that a healthy diet should include more whole grains than fruit and vegetables (which is what "being at the base of the pyramid" means).

[KempyKolibri]

Sure, here's a USDA article referring to the "1984 Food Guide Pyramid" where it states cereals should be whole grain (see p38: https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/42215/5831_aib...)

As for whole grains vs fruit vs vegetables, here's a SR and MA of studies looking at different food groups and the RR of all cause mortality: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...

Three servings of whole grains per day: 0.79 (21% reduction in ACM) Three servings of vegetables per day: 0.89 (11% reduction in ACM) Three servings of fruit per day: 0.90 (10% reduction in ACM)

So the evidence seems to support the suggestion that consumers should focus on whole grain consumption as a base for their diet.

[riku_iki]

> Citation please or I'm calling extreme bullshit. Everything I've ever read has argued for putting more nutrient dense fruits and vegetables as the basis for a healthy diet.

pic from wikipedia named USDA pyramid 1995-2005: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)#/medi...

[hn_throwaway_99]

Wut? Was your comment a joke or satire? This entire thread is about how the food pyramid of that era was an unscientific disaster, so linking to a picture of it is not evidence.

[EasyMark]

If Americans actually stuck to the food pyramid they would be fine. No one does. It needed refinement to “eat whole grains and pasta, brown rice”, but it was hardly a disaster, the disaster is lack of people (adults) paying attention to it and instead eating crap out of boxes loaded with sugar, hydrogenated fats, and lots of ingredients they couldn’t pronounce let alone know how healthy or unhealthy they are. I saw lots of people paying lip service to it, but few people were sticking to it. Same with the current “my plate” ideas. People won’t tsit for 10 minutes and understand what they mean by protein, veggies, grains, and fruit.

[riku_iki]

you asked for citation of pyramid putting grains in foundation, you got it, not sure what you are complaining about now.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Sorry, I realized now, I quoted that section just to give context. I was really referring to "Not sure why you consider this objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption."

Even with that first sentence though, the base of that shitty food pyramid really just doesn't talk about "whole grains" - it calls it the "bread, cereal, rice and pasta" group, with a graphic that includes spaghetti, crackers, a baguette, a bowl of cereal, etc. And having lived through that time when the food pyramid was taught in school, they certainly weren't delineating between highly refined flours and things like oatmeal, brown rice, quinoa, etc.

[riku_iki]

> The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the base of the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.

my humble research found that diffs in nutrition between whole grains and refined grains carbs is very small compared to say whole grain to some complex carbs from leaf veggies. The same goes to glycemic index, satiety index, etc.

[EasyMark]

Which leafy vegetables have carbs? Are you talking about fiber? Most leaf veggies like spinach, kale, greens don’t have hardly any carbs at all.

[gnabgib]

Fiber is a carb https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/carbohydrates/fiber...

[hollerith]

Fiber is carbs, but unlike most of the carbs in the human diet, people cannot convert them into simple sugars.

[teytra]

The point is how much of the carbs are you actually getting. The fibers that you excrete isn't part of your net intake.

[riku_iki]

> Most leaf veggies like spinach, kale, greens don’t have hardly any carbs at all.

yes, because they consists of 90%-95% of water, then if you cook them, water evaporates and you get some amount of carbs.

But leaf veggies is one side of spectrum, with refined carbs on another, there are bunch of stuff in between.

[KempyKolibri]

In this comment there’s a link to a meta analysis of food groups and their effect on all cause mortality. A serving of whole grains would appear to be approximately twice as protective as either fruits or vegetables: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41965298

[riku_iki]

> A serving of whole grains would appear to be approximately twice as protective as either fruits or vegetables

this is not my reading of that study.

[KempyKolibri]

What’s your reading of that study and how does it disagree with the inference I’m making?

[riku_iki]

there was no control groups (veggies vs whole grains for example), they selected bunch of studies for metaanalysis with different goals and methodologies, no indications how balanced and what components where in diets in those studies.

This is exact example of junk science.

[AStonesThrow]

Let's get real here: the benefits in the USDA Food Pyramid are benefits for agribusiness and the big subsidized food producers. The benefits that the USDA pushes have nothing to do with good nutrition for the average citizen. This is 100% "regulatory capture" as we call it around here. The Food Pyramid is a scam and a hoax, and the more it can be ignored, the better.

When I joined a Christian Health Sharing ministry, they determined that I needed remedial help, due to hypertension and dyslipidemia. They assigned me to monthly virtual meetings with a dietician. The dietician's advice horrified me, because it would've made me sicker, and exacerbated my conditions. I approached the ministry's administrators, requested a replacement dietician, and they replaced her alright. The new dietician had basically the same credentials and the same letters after her name, but she was way more flexible, listened to my reasoning, and supported my choices with encouragement.

My parents followed every "diet fad" in the 1970s-1980s, from 2% milk, to margarine, to yolk-less-egg-whites, to reducing red meat, to low-sodium everythings, to bottled fluoridated water. It was sheer torture and disgusting. My mother didn't know the first thing about flavor or pleasure in cooking, and never used the spices in her rack. Our food was always bland. For breakfast she'd slap down a jug of milk, a box of Chex, a bowl and a spoon, and abandon me to go do housework. I would sit there and read the mendacious lies known as "Nutrition Panel" on the side, and simply stewed in my resentment for the whole thing. It's a travesty.

[KempyKolibri]

Tbh I know it’s not what you’re going for, but your parents’ dietary decisions generally sound based AF (apart from bottled fluoridated water - depending on the fluoride levels in your drinking water that may or may not be beneficial).

Chex, I suppose it depends on whether it was wholegrain or not. Wholegrain cereal is associated with pretty good health benefits, refined not so much.

[tsimionescu]

Replacing butter with Margarine is "based AF" now?

[KempyKolibri]

Yes. Not so much at the time when some margarines had trans fats in, but now? Yes, absolutely. The evidence suggests that doing so significantly reduces one's risk of CVD.

[tsimionescu]

I don't think there is much reason to continue taking you seriously if this is supposed to be the sound scientific advice.

[literalAardvark]

Given the knowledge available to them in the 70s, yes. A mistake, but done for good reasons (lowering satfat).

[KempyKolibri]

Problem in the 70s was trans fats. Now they're no longer a risk, replacing butter with margarine is a solid evidence-based decision for one's health (though not so much for one's enjoyment!).

[AStonesThrow]

Okay, the cereal commercials in the 1980s: they would have some ridiculous cartoon mascot and sing a catchy jingle about their sugary cereal treats, and then at the end, they were legally required to say "Part of this balanced breakfast" while displaying a tray laden with fresh fruit, buttered toast, perhaps a glass of orange juice.

https://youtu.be/reLIPoZQZ-8?si=lLXfhsdm89zlOWsI

Those commercials played multiple times a day in my childhood, and they never failed to piss me off, because they clearly demonstrated that "milk and a box of Chex" was not by any means a "balanced breakfast".

[s1artibartfast]

This is the story as old as time. Much of science is good faith, fairly accurate, and nuanced.

Policy and advocacy is deceptive, dishonest, and lacks nuance.

[wathef]

Not sure why you’re being downvoted, this is one of the best takes here. It sits squarely in the realm of evidence where the majority of these comments are anecdotal and they don’t translate to population level studies.

[hollerith]

>The food pyramid put whole grains specifically at the base of the food pyramid. Not sure why you consider this objectionable, the body of evidence overwhelmingly points in the direction of benefits for wholegrain consumption.

Many, many people disagree with that. Most days I eat no grains at all and the rest of the time, I strictly limit my grain intake. For example, I just finished a meal where I used one tablespoonful (uncooked volume) of rice (boiled with some peas). (The meal also included meat and butter, the source of most of my calories.) White rice is the only grain I eat anymore, and I would never eat brown rice, which is loaded with oxalate and other phytotoxins. I added to this just-finished meal B vitamins in the form of pure refined powder (which I liberated from capsules).

It is very obvious from how it makes me feel that brown rice is bad for me.

The cultures that have eaten rice for thousands of years eat almost exclusively white rice. Brown rice was not even possible to make before the spread of tech for precision machining (which reached East Asia in the 1900s). You have to remove the hull from the rice before you can eat it, and before precision machining, removing the hull (traditionally done by pounding the rice with a log) also removed most of the bran and germ. Yes, some bran and some germ remained stuck to the rice -- so it was mostly-white rice, as opposed the polished, completely-white rice we have today with no bran and no germ at all. Still it had only a small fraction of the amount of bran and germ that modern brown rice has.

[KempyKolibri]

I don’t find n=1s to be a good form of evidence. Many people may disagree, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.

Look at the dose response curve for wholegrain consumption in this bad boy (and yes, it’s looking at whole cereal grains, not including fruits and vegetables). Greater consumption associated with better outcomes: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...

[Spagbol]

I've read the opposite; that brown rice is just white rice with the bran still attached, and that white rice was only eaten by the elite because of the additional work required to seperate it (like white bread only being for the wealthy during the middle ages), and that beriberi was a noticed more in times specifically because of industrialization increasing the availability of white rice: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamine_deficiency Apperently a lot of white rice is now enriched with thiamine for this reason

[hollerith]

>I've read the opposite; that brown rice is just white rice with the bran still attached, and that white rice was only eaten by the elite because of the additional work required to seperate it (like white bread only being for the wealthy during the middle ages)

I've read that, too, many times, and I stopped believing it after I watched videos (on Youtube) of people preparing rice the traditional way. Particularly, I paid close attention to the color of the rice after the processing steps: it was white with bits of brown stuck to it.

I searched for bookmarks for those videos, but cannot find them.

(I don't know about wheat: I only investigated rice.)

[hollerith]

I found the bookmark. Anyone who has ever seen modern brown rice will immediately be able to tell that although there might be bits of bran still stuck to it, this rice has no more than 3 or 4% of the bran of modern brown rice:

https://youtu.be/qGNUPqHvTso?si=WWnY3OLALTBREVMs&t=525

I bookmarked another video, but it has been made private since I watched it.

Here is a very illuminating moment: the rice has already been pounded, then winnowed (the separated hulls removed), but there are still many kernels that need to be hulled (roughly one kernel in every 150 or 200 kernels), so the rice is put back in the mortar for another round of pounding. In other words, although there is more pounding to do to make the rice edible, already most of the bran is off the rice (and thrown away along with the hulls). (When only a few unhulled kernels remain, she removes them one by one with her fingers.) This supports my assertion that it is impossible with traditional methods to get the hulls off while leaving on most or even a significant fraction of the bran. Again: I think you need precision machines that only became available in Europe in the 1800s and in East Asia in the 1900s to get the hulls off (which I think you really need to do if you eat rice every day and want to keep your teeth) while leaving most of the bran on the kernel. I.e., people in traditional rice cultures did not have the ability to consume anywhere close to as much rice bran as is possible by eating modern brown rice.

https://youtu.be/qGNUPqHvTso?si=QWYryq16PBHzK8ed&t=436

[Spagbol]

Interesting, though perhaps it is possible the colour change is due to oxidation? It would be interesting either way to see a nutritional comparison of traditionally prepared and modern brown rice, as well as their bran content

[Aurornis]

> I’d only like to suggest that being “a joke in nutrition science circles” in the recent past is probably something of a compliment.

This is the fallacy that makes pseudoscience thrive right now: The idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Wannabe influencers position themselves as the anti-establishment position. People who are frustrated with institutions blindly fall in line behind them.

The fallacy doesn’t stand up to even the simplest critical thinking, yet it triggers something subconsciously that leads far too many people to see a contrarian statement and assume it must be true.

Meanwhile, these people are grifting away, selling books and pitching Athletic Greens (or the latest sponsor of the day). This person is no exception.

[r3trohack3r]

It’s a shame that our institutions have burned so much good will and credibility that they’ve created an environment for this to thrive.

All metrics I see show faith in these institutions going to zero. Most good science I see is making (and has been making for decades) a really strong case that this loss of faith is deserved.

Credentialism is collapsing under the weight of its own corruption.

[ithkuil]

The solution is better institutions, not less institutions.

Good institutions have mechanisms in place to correct themselves.

And most of the past failures of our institutions were discovered and corrected by ... the institutions (sometimes the very same institution or other institutions whose role was to counterweight the institution at fault)

Unfortunately the trap we all fell into is that we interpret this success at catching and fixing failures as proof that the institutions have failed and thus that they will never be trustworthy ever again.

We need to train ourselves that the trust we put in the institutions does not mean we trust everything that comes out of them, but we trust that the mistakes will be eventually corrected as they happen.

But that's not what's happening now. The society has equated the point-in-time failure of an institution with the failure of the entire process and also extended that feeling across the board towards areas of our society that haven't failed us much.

Nothing good will come out of that. For one, it will remove any incentive from future institutions to try to be objective and self-correct. If self-correction becomes a "capital sin" for institutions, they will be selected to favour absolute unquestionable truths which cannot possibly ever need a correction.

But also. it completely ignores the fact that most institutions are useful, even while they suffer from failures/corruption and that destroying them altogether is going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[s1artibartfast]

I haven't seen much self correction out of major institutions, but what I am really looking for is honesty.

I want them to share their uncertainty, nuance, and reasoning. Anything less I view as well intended lies.

Institutions as a concept are critical. Some institutions are net negative. Blindly following and support all institutions because some or even most are useful is a fallacy of its own.

I think the nutritional institution credibility is bankrupt at the moment. given the importance, I am willing to take the risk and put in the work to find my own way in the Forrest.

Furthermore, most institutions can only provide heuristic advice, which even when true, is t always true, or true for everyone. It should never be treated as dogma

[ithkuil]

Yeah you're right about nuance and the fact that it's hard to have a nuanced conversation nowadays.

For what is worth I'm precisely trying to bring nuance to the discussion about institutions.

Institutions do fail. That's a normal mode of their operation. They fail all the time. When institutions fail, they fail and some other institution (in the broadest case the institution of civil society as a whole) calls them out for the bullshit.

The question is: what to do next.

Should we dismantle that institution and other similar institutions, including the ones that helped provide the data that proved the failed institution wrong just because they are all institutions and guilty of the original sin of being an institution?

I find this approach to be a little bit too extreme.

Yes. many institutions are full of shit. Let's reward people who can reign them back in. But we need professionals. We cannot all be experts in everything. I know it can feel this way because we have an unprecedented source of information at our fingertips but realistically we cannot all just figure out things on our own.

I sure feel I'm super smart and I can figure out everything if I just had a weekend but luckily I grew just wise enough to know foolish and misleading that feeling is.

[s1artibartfast]

That's a fair question, I don't know what the mechanism for institutional reform is, or if the public has a role to play in it.

I agree that folks should not condemn the messenger. In this context, that seems to mean science as an institution or individual scientists. The lying institutions should be disregard untill they are shown to actually be reformed.

[tomcar288]

with regards to who you follow in nutritional circles, just beware that there's a lot of social media content out there by people who are really good at business (seo, social media content gen, etc) but haven't read much nutritional research. Meanwhile the real scientists who know a great deal, have very little social media content, if any at all.

Personally, I follow the advice of Dr Micheal Gregor, one of his most recent books has over 13,000 citations! Their team has read over 20,000 nutritional papers!! And he'll tell you that whole grains and beans are an excellent staple of a healthy diet.

And with regards to Saturated Fat and even dietary cholesterol, he said, to make a really long story short, that they're really bad for you. There's way too many specifics to list but his 500+ page book (How not to age, and How not to Die) goes into great details and backs it up with a ton of research.

[davebrown10]

Actually, excessive omega-6 arachidonic acid intake is far more problematic than saturated fats. Dr. Gregor knows about the arachidonic acid problem but doesn't seem to understand it. https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/arachidonic-acid/ Compare what Gregor says to this comment by Norwegian animal science researchers. "Chicken meat is commonly regarded as a healthy type of meat; it is popular, and hence the consumption has increased. Chicken meat is lean, protein-rich and rich also in other important nutrients. However, the fatty acid composition is strongly dependent on the diet fed to the birds. A typical modern poultry diet is rich in cereals having a high ratio between omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. This diet is very different from the natural diet for the same species containing more green leaves that are rich in the omega-3 fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). It has been shown that a diet rich in ALA gives increased concentrations of ALA, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), docosapentaenoic acid (DPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in broiler muscle and improved, i.e. reduced ratio between total omega-6 and total omega-3 fatty acids. The utilisation of ALA and linoleic acid (LA) for synthesizing EPA and arachidonic acid (AA) depends on feed concentrations of ALA and LA as well as on other factors. Much AA in the diet may contribute to prostaglandin overproduction in disease situations in humans, but some AA is necessary for virtually every body function. Dietary sources of AA are especially meat, eggs and offal, with smaller amounts coming from milk and fish. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2875212/ It's likely that the global increase in obesity and diabetes is largely due to increased consumption of grain-fed monogastrics such as poultry and swine. A 2021 paper by Australian zoologist Anthony Hulbert, PhD entitled 'The under-appreciated fats of life' concludes, "As a final comment, I note that we are only beginning to understand the implications of the balance between omega-3 and omega-6 fats in the human diet. Although most animals have a relatively constant diet, we humans are especially diverse (both between individuals and over time) in the types of food we consume. Over the last half-century, the modern human food chain has emphasised omega-6 and diminished omega-3 intake, largely because of: (i) a shift from animal fats to vegetable oils, (ii) an increase in grain-fed meat and dairy, and (iii) a decline in full-fat dairy products from grass-fed livestock (an important source of omega-3). In the opinion of the current author and others, these diet trends are likely to be responsible for the increased incidence of obesity and other modern epidemics of chronic disease, but that is a story for another time." https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/224/8/jeb232538/...

[KempyKolibri]

This is just mechanistic speculation based on animal studies. There is no good evidence that I’m aware of showing harms from high n6 consumption in humans, outside of their contribution to caloric excess.

The n3:n6 ratio was a hypothesis that never panned out. If you look at the studies that “support” it, the “bad ratio” is brought about by reducing n3 levels below sufficiency, not by keeping n3 levels at the RDA or higher and then boosting n6 further.

So it’s no more evidence that n6 is harmful than taking a cohort of people, reducing half of the group’s iron intake to a minuscule amount and claiming that because that group’s “iron:magnesium” ratio is wrong, then consuming more magnesium is clearly harmful. It just doesn’t add up.

[davebrown10]

Actually, there is human research. Below is a message Olaf Adam sent to myself and several others on September 5, 2021.

    I refer to the very readable review by Philip Calder “A systematic review of the effects of increasing arachidonic acid intake on PUFA status, metabolism and health-related outcomes in humans.” His final statement is that an increase in arachidonic acid intake up to 1.5 grams per day does not significantly change the parameters associated with inflammation, blood clotting or atherogenesis. In this very interesting observation, I was astonished by the fact that the background diet was not taken into account. Although the intake of arachidonic acid with the background diet is reported several times, the resulting metabolic consequences are not discussed.
    From the data provided, it can be concluded that the background diet in all studies included in the review was a Western diet, the proportion of arachidonic acid being estimated at 200 to 400 mg per day. Our studies on healthy volunteers were carried out with formula diets and allowed a precisely defined supply of arachidonic acid over a period of 6 weeks. These studies have shown that the exclusion of arachidonic acid from the diet (vegan diet) causes a progressive decrease of this fatty acid from 11 + 3% of the total fatty acids in the cholesterol esters of the plasma to 8 + 2% after 6 weeks. The later studies on patients with rheumatoid arthritis have shown that an intake of arachidonic acid amounting to not more than 80 mg/day does not increase the concentration of arachidonic acid in the phospholipids of the plasma and in the erythrocyte lipids. From these findings I have concluded that the body's own production of arachidonic acid is around 80 mg per day. This means that the Western Diet provides approximately 2.5 to 5 times the estimated need for arachidonic acid.
    This intake that is higher than the requirement primarily has no negative consequences. We know from many studies that the "silent inflammation" characteristic for the prevalent diseases of western societies has a latency period of more than 10 years before the consequences such as arteriosclerosis and myocardial infarction become apparent. The body is evidently able to avert the consequences of an unfavorable diet for a long time. To do this, there are numerous regulatory options, such as substrate or product inhibition in the case of enzymes or the inhibition of transport to or incorporation into cells. Arachidonic acid has a very special metabolic pathway that offers possibilities for regulating absorption from the intestine, transport in the chylomicrons, metabolism via the enzymes involved and also for incorporation into the cells. For example, we have found a completely different efficiency for the uptake of arachidonic acid into the cell membrane for platelets compared to erythrocytes or granulocytes. It is therefore very likely that regulation options on the metabolic pathway of arachidonic acid can, to a certain extent, compensate for changes in intake.
    Only when too much arachidonic acid is present in the food for a prolonged time do these protective mechanisms apparently fail and inflammation and the manifestation of lifestyle diseases is seen. This explains the long latency period with which the diseases of civilization occur. It is documented in the literature that unhealthy supplementation, such as megadoses of vitamin E, has no deleterious effects on health-related outcomes for humans in the short term. Only long-term observations and meta-analyzes have been able to prove the increased overall mortality. These protective functions with which our body is endowed are very important, because our body is often confronted with megadoses of vitamins or other food stuff or unreasonable diets. Otherwise humans would already be extinct.
    In summary, I would like to note that the human metabolism has many opportunities to compensate for unreasonable interventions for a limited time. The studies available so far relate to arachidonic acid intake with the Western Diet. This condition may already have provoked defense mechanisms that delay the occurrence of Western Diet diseases. We all agree that the Western Diet is too meat-based. The studies included in the review gave me the impression that an attempt had been made to further aggravate an already bad situation, present in Western civilizations. The negative result of these studies is reassuring for me, but does not mean that this supplementation has to be harmless and without long-term effects.
    From my point of view, it would have been more productive from the experimental approach if vegans had been given the doses of arachidonic acid employed in the studies that are included in the review. This would come closer to the desired goal of the effects of arachidonic acid on PUFA status, metabolism and health-related outcomes in humans. Then one could also come to a result for the desirable intake of arachidonic acid, which I estimate for patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases at 80 mg per day, corresponding to 560 mg per week. This corresponds to a diet with 5 vegan days and 2 days with consumption of animal products per week.

[KempyKolibri]

I don’t mind discussing arachidonic acid after this - I’m less woke on the literature on it and am always up for learning something new. When I was referring to no evidence in humans, I meant with regards to the idea of n3:n6 ratios.

If n3 is at sufficient levels, I see no reason to believe the n3:n6 ratio should be of any concern in terms of health risks. All the evidence I’ve seen cited to support the claim that a given n3:n6 ratio raises risks of negative health outcomes has induced “unhealthy” n3:n6 ratios by dropping n3 levels to insufficiency.

It’s on that point that I believe there is no supporting evidence in humans, and the fears of an issue are rooted in speculation. Happy to be proven wrong, though!

[davebrown10]

It's an omega-6 toxicity problem. Bruce Hammock writes, "Fatty acid composition in the Western diet has shifted from saturated to polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and specifically to linoleic acid (LA, 18:2), which has gradually increased in the diet over the past 50 y to become the most abundant dietary fatty acid in human adipose tissue." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9060469/

Vijay p. Singh says, "Separately, on analyzing global COVID-19 mortality data and comparing it with 12 risk factors for mortality, they found unsaturated fat intake to be associated with increased mortality. This was based on the dietary fat patterns of 61 countries in the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization database. Surprisingly, they found saturated fats to be protective."https://www.medpagetoday.com/reading-room/aga/lower-gi/86940

It's interesting that fasting and exercise furnish some protection from excessive polyunsaturated fatty acid intake. For example, "The increased proportional intake of dietary fat, decrease in feeding frequency and increased physical activity in free-ranging compared to captive cheetahs are all predicted to result in enhanced mitochondrial FA oxidation through the lowering of circulating glucose concentrations and insulin:glucagon ratios. During fasting/refeeding cycles and increased levels of exercise, tissue PUFA concentrations have been shown to deplete rapidly in both humans and rats. These studies show that most PUFAs, including α-linolenic acid (ALA) and linoleic acid (LA), are preferentially oxidized in periods of exercise or fasting. During refeeding, SFAs and monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), such as palmitic acid and oleic acid, are also more rapidly replaced than any of the PUFAs. Similarly, the concentrations of most plasma PUFAs and MUFAs have been shown to be significantly lower in rats fed a high fat ketogenic diet than in controls. The predicted increase in FA oxidation in free-ranging cheetahs is therefore likely to also skew their serum FA profiles toward lower proportional serum concentrations of PUFAs and MUFAs relative to SFA." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5167222/

In the final analysis, dietary saturated fats are benign, if not outright beneficial over a wide range of intakes as long as they are consumed in the context of healthy nutrient configuration as in whole foods. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7846167/

[pkphilip]

What about all the "consensus" about red meat being bad and that it must be avoided at all cost?

[rawgabbit]

I believe the current thinking is to consider the effect on inflammation and bad cholesterol.

If your doctor says your number one priority should be to lower inflammation or lower bad cholesterol, you should consider lowering the amount of red meat.

The issue is that of course we need protein. Older people who tend to lose muscle mass and are at risk of falling should actually increase protein intake and weight resistance exercises. If their stomach tolerates fish legumes nuts, wonderful. If they tolerate red meat better, then they should eat red meat. Like every thing else in life, there are trade offs and nothing is completely healthy or unhealthy.

[ambientenv]

Personally, I don't think the capitalist-driven agenda anywhere in the world gives a flying fricative about the health of anyone, only the health of the profit motive and it's benefits to shareholders. Food and healthcare is but one more example. Love or hate the JRE, I think this episode [1] provides much food (pun intended) for thought. The common person simply does not matter other than as a(n) (addicted) consumer.

[1] https://youtu.be/G0lTyhvOeJs?feature=shared

[s1artibartfast]

Sure. The government isn't your mommy, and neither are corporations. People have to take responsibility and look out for their own health. Nobody else is going to do it for you.