Message #23050

[mccoy]

Hi daemoon, glad you are reading with interest and I too would like to meet you in person sometime.
I've recently decided to update my rusty knowledge of nutrition for practical purposes. Presently, dietary science has been revolutionized by some concepts which are pretty sensible.

There is no 'healthy diet' in absolute, although 'natural' diets are regarded as such.

'Natural' means no refined or processed foods, junk food and so on. No sweets is much better.

I concur with the accepted, sensible concept  that a vegan (or vegetarian) diet which contains a lot of commercial junk vegan food and little natural food is far worse than a diet where meat and fish are consumed in moderate amounts together with plenty vegetables and other wholesome, natural food.

The meat-eaters concur that meat should be from grass-fed animals, not the commercial stock. Although I imagine that grassfed is expensive and out of the reach of most people.

There are some interesting people out there like Dr Hyman, who coined the term peganism, that is, paleo-veganism. They eat mostly vegan but with the addiction of some animal food which is more consistent with the gatherer-omnivore nature of the apes from whom we genetically descend.

Conceptually, I do not concur that a pure paleo diet is the best for the human being, simply because the conditions during the glacial periods (paleolithic diet) should not necessarily be the ones ruling the genetics of our digestive system. Also, there are some populations which have been studied, just emerging from the paleolithic, which ate mostly plant based food (this in tropical areas).

Bottom line, everyone should understand what is an healthy diet for him/herself according to his/her subjective conditions and tolerances, which are widely variable. Possibly without cheating, LOL.