What is the healthiest diet for humans?

[Aciddhartha]

What is our species specific diet?

Please... put biases aside and watch this gem.

https://youtu.be/rO_9sRiK2XY

[Snuitje]

Humans are omnivores, so there is no specific or right diet that is particular best for the sapiens. But, looking at things a plant-based diet seems to be the "best" if conditions allow it. Our ancesters used to be very vegetarian in the past if the history books are correct.

[Aciddhartha]

6 hours ago, Snuitje said:

Humans are omnivores, so there is no specific or right diet that is particular best for the sapiens. But, looking at things a plant-based diet seems to be the "best" if conditions allow it. Our ancesters used to be very vegetarian in the past if the history books are correct.

It was a rhetoric question in order to invite you to watch the video...

If you are interested in the the theme, pelease watch...

Thank you.

[Michael569]

Any appeal to ancestral diet is redundant by default in the current day and age. Natural selection always favours the most immediate survival to achieve a state of reproduction over longevity and disease avoidance. This is called hypothesis of antagonistic pleiotropy (the theory is of course way more complicated than that). The genes responsible for the ability to produce offspring even at the cost of decline of longevity and rapid ageing would be favoured by the evolution. 

Basically whatever the ancient people ate, would have favoured the immediate survival and prevention of death before was one able to mate and reproduce. It was also literally anything that was available at that time. Mostly plants in spring and summer and mostly meat in autumn and winter once foraging would have become impossible. After offspring has been produced, what happened to the previous generation (once offspring achieved the age of self-dependence) was not important. 

We have now moved past that. Infant mortality is less than 0.5% and most people will live beyond the age of peak reproduction achieving longevity that would not have been possible or achievable thousands of years ago when our ancestors lived. And so whatever they ate at that time is completely irrelevant to our diet today. We have moved past antagonistic pleiotrophy and over generations, the genes favouring longevity has been switched on more and more as we have achieved abundance of resources and food never before available so the body does not have to be in state of perpetual survival anymore. Ofcourse this also means other genes sich as those of more pro-oncogenic states have also been switched on as well as those responsible for aggressive detoxification and cellular proliferation such as NRF2, mTOR, Pi3K and all the other fancy names that are sometimes linked to chronic disease simply because our lifestyle is so so different to what would have been 10,000 years ago, yet another reason why ancestral diets have nothing to do with that we should eat today. 

Rather than appealing to our ancestry which was driven 100% by short term survival we should take advantage of the research we have today into a variety of food categories that helps us determine which food groups help prevent the most fatal of all diseases (means diseases that kill 8 out of 10 people) which is heart disease, cancer and diabetes. That data we have albeit sometimes inconsistent show that there is a clear indication that mostly plant-based diets with an abundance of fruits, vegetables, legumes and wholegrains are the best diets for chronic disease prevention and all-cause mortality reduction. Whether one decides to include sources of saturated fats (such as meat or eggs) is an individual choice however at very small amounts it appears (at least based on the evidence today) that they do not contribute to negative health outcomes. In small amounts. 

Once that threshold is crossed , disease risk rises pretty much immediately. 

Of course this does not take into account alcohol, smoking, toxins, sugar and junk food and trans fats which everybody pretty much agrees on that they are harmful. 

[TripleFly]

Personally I seem to function best on raw high quality fresh fruits and vegetables. 

[undeather]

Quote

put biases aside and watch this gem.

[Gregory1]

Depends.. 

[Snuitje]

@Michael569 Thanks for your reply. I have to look into this antagonistic pleiotropy theorie, sounds interesting.

I can see now that I looked at our ancesters not from their pov but from my modern understanding of food and lifestyle. I never thought of it that way you described it. You made a really good post, I learned alot from it.

[UnbornTao]

Well, I have a bias towards a plant-based, whole foods diet.

Hearsay taken from Michael Greger: Science says that this is the healthiest diet in the long term —the only one we can say with confidence is “the best,” not only for the individual but for the ecosystem, too.

[Michael569]

1 hour ago, Snuitje said:

Thanks for your reply. I have to look into this antagonistic pleiotropy theorie, sounds interesting.

I can see now that I looked at our ancesters not from their pov but from my modern understanding of food and lifestyle. I never thought of it that way you described it. You made a really good post, I learned alot from it.

@Snuitje it's just another perspective. Possibly if somebody with a background in anthropology would read that comment maybe they'd just pull out their hair and be like "wtf you talking about :D" This theory makes the most sense to me but could be that it is even more complicated than that. SO as always, remain sceptical of everything you read on the forum

[EntheogenTruthSeeker]

@Michael569 fire post bro. Downloaded all 3 your books??

[Michael569]

8 hours ago, EntheogenTruthSeeker said:

fire post bro. Downloaded all 3 your books??

awesome  hope you'll find some answers them. Let me know if I can help in any way