Healthy food is typically less expensive than junk food. The problem is education and motivation. I think diabetes is more a disease of affluence. When you can buy twinkies and pork chops you're not actually poor. When you are really poor you eat rice and beans and some vegetables you grow for yourself. And then you don't have diabetes typically.
Disclaimer: Not every T2D is purely from a bad diet. But many are.
> When you can buy twinkies and pork chops you're not actually poor. When you are really poor you eat rice and beans and some vegetables you grow for yourself. And then you don't have diabetes typically.
The EBT program here in the US completely distorts the situation.
My local grocery store serves a very poor community, most of the customers pay with EBT. I get to see what kind of things these folks buy, it's idiotic. We could do a lot of good if EBT were only applicable to fresh perishable goods like produce/eggs/milk/fish/meat.
It almost seems like people on EBT hate themselves for being poor and lean in on being self-destructive while at the store paying for things with EBT. They largely buy processed/prepared junk food, it's unbelievable, but if you view the food they buy as another drug prodding the reward centers of their brains, it's making them feel good in the short-term while giving them diabetes and other ailments in the long-term. EBT enables affording it by being almost equivalent to cash.
As I said: These people should be educated and motivated. They have to learn about the consequences of these decisions. Only if that does not work I would restrict EBT to healthier foods.
On a personal note: I agree with you. It‘s hilarious what people buy even when they are on a tight budget.
Is it hilarious? Is the misfortune of others humorous?
Perhaps it's the people with poor impulse control and lack of education that end up economically poor. Maybe they never learned better.
Taking pleasure from those less fortunate than yourself is a trick of the ego. It makes you feel better about yourself by labeling someone else inferior. It comes from a place of insecurity about one's own worth.
By simplifying the problem to a group of people simply being inferior, you miss all the nuance, the complex system of factors that created the result.
It's much easier to dehumanize. But if we don't counter these primitive tribal urges, we are bound to repeat the tragedies of history.
> Healthy food is typically less expensive than junk food.
This isn't true, at least in the US. Or maybe we have a very different idea about what "healthy" food is.
Rice, beans and starchy vegetables are problematic for various (different) reasons and non-starchy vegetables generally aren't very nutritious from a macro perspective, which makes them relatively expensive.
I don't think there's a common understanding of how much time working class people have to spend on work. It's frequently on the order of 50-60 hours across more than one job, plus the attendant transit and pre-work chores. Your job doesn't provide you with cheap, healthy food on-site. You frequently can't eat on the way to or from work, per transit rules or enhanced police presence on your route. Lunch breaks are a strict 30 minutes, and being late can get you fired (hope whatever you're eating doesn't have too much fiber). You may have to go out of your way to shop, if you live in a food desert, and apartment fridges preclude buying in bulk. Oh, and for a racial angle, produce in cities (and, not uncommonly, in majority-minority suburbs) costs more than in white suburbs and rural areas.
We have so many UX experts on here, is it really that difficult to think of this problem as an experiential narrative instead of an engineering problem that can be solved by tweaking a few variables?
> Bananas by themselves are not healthy food, they're very high in sugar and have little else to offer.
That depends on ripeness [0], I eat a mostly green banana every morning and it doesn't have much sugar at all while keeping my bowels very regular.
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. I rarely ever cook, and if I didn't go for organic produce this would be a very cheap diet except for the nuts.
> 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.
> 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."
> 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.
Bananas are high in potassium. And for a healthy individual fruit consumption has never been a problem. Please show me a study that fruit consumption is linked with higher rates of disease in healthy individuals.
Could you tell me why rice and beans are problematic? The studies I know are typically in favor of these kinds of food. Bean consumption is typically a good predictor for survival in elderly people. Is this some kind of carb-phobia?
In the context of T2 diabetes, white rice is a high GI food. Brown rice, legumes and grains contain plant toxins and antinutrients which are poorly researched, but at least anecdotally can cause all kinds of issues especially in sensitive people.
Also, in the west, a lot of the culture of preparing these foods (such as fermenting or vigorous soaking) is bypassed.
> Bean consumption is typically a good predictor for survival in elderly people.
That data suffers from the usual issues related to nutritional studies. Consuming beans in place of donuts may be a good predictor of health, that doesn't mean that beans themselves are healthy relative to other healthy foods.
Rice may be relatively high GI but it and similar foods do not usually give you type 2 diabetes. Junk food does. Rice is far cheaper than that. I don’t really think you can make the case that T2 diabetes is a poor man’s sickness.
White rice is linked with 10% increased chance of t2 with each serving per day(1).
I don't know if poor Americans are doomed to diabetes, but it is certainly orders of magnitude easier for the poor to eat poorly compared to the rich. Boosting morale in the poor is difficult without cheap fatty/sweet food and drugs, other poor people have nearly nothing else to get by excessive stressors except exercise. Running a perfectly clean life is admirable and very difficult with limited resources, social standing and spare time.
I‘m pretty sure that that‘s a reverse causation. People who eat very high amounts of rice are the poor who can not afford a better mix of food. They are then malnourished as rice is not providing all needed nutrients. Also being poor means often no health care. Controlling for these socioeconomic factors is very difficult.
Rice in itself is a healthy food, especially when it is brown. I read a study some years ago where a doctor even cured mild forms of diabetes with high loads of rice instead of junk food. Don‘t have a link handy though.
Americans are not doomed to diabetes. Diabetes T2 is one of the easiest diseases to prevent. Vegans for example have 60-70% less diabetes according to observational studies like Adventist Health II.
When you’re sufficiently poor and live in a society that insists that you work to qualify for benefits, you absolutely do not have time to cook healthy meals. Prepared, junky food is a staple.
If you are well informed you could just cook once a week and eat that. I do that on the weekend with my family of five and it's quite a nice ritual. We cook rice and potatoes, put beans and sauce on top. And then put it in 20 containers for the week. I can prepare these meals within 2 minutes with a microwave. Breakfast is basically the same every day: Oat meal with some fruits. In the evening we eat bread with spread (which we also make on the weekend).
I would say we spend way less on food than your typical American. It's really THAT cheap. Also we have a lot of food for CoViD-19 as we store a lot of food in our cellar all year around (lentils, whole oats, canned beans, etc.).
Ah, and we are not poor in any way. I'm among top 5% in Germany. I think it's just healthy and sustainable (for the same reason we don't own a car).
Without any further context, this is most likely not a healthy diet. You're certainly missing out on B vitamins and heme iron due to lack of meat and likely have a poor Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio due to the use of plant oils over other fats. Just a guess.
You also probably get way too much sugar from sugary fruits which you overindulge in because your diet otherwise is so "healthy". Instead of soft drinks you have fruit juices, which have effectively the same amount of sugar. Again, just a guess.
You probably got your nutrition advice from ideologically based publications, or you're just "winging it" based on what makes sense to you, in which case you're likely going to be wrong as well.
I did my research. Also I tracked my nutrition with Cronometer in the first weeks. Not a single day did I miss on B-vitamins.
Heme iron is associated with disease in all major studies. I don‘t see a reason to ingest it.
I have a great O3/O6 ratio. I don‘t use oil at all and avoid foods that are filled with plant oils. My breakfast contains lots of flax seeds. Our usual foods contain hemp seeds. All good sources of O3. And all without pollutants from fish.
I get a lot of information from nutritionfacts.org. Dr. Greger offers free information as in free beer. No ads, no sponsors, even the earnings from his books are given to charity. I highly recommend you check him out. He certainly has his biases but still way less than most other doctors.
> I did my research. Also I tracked my nutrition with Cronometer in the first weeks. Not a single day did I miss on B-vitamins.
If you didn't have any animal foods, you're going to be missing out on B-vitamins, because of low bioavailability[1].
> Heme iron is associated with disease in all major studies. I don‘t see a reason to ingest it.
An excess of many essential nutrients and vitamins is associated with disease, that doesn't mean you should cut them out. Non-heme iron is way less bioavailable, especially in combination with plant antinutrients[2], so you can end up iron-deficient.
> I have a great O3/O6 ratio. I don‘t use oil at all and avoid foods that are filled with plant oils.
You probably should be using oil, just not plant oils.
> My breakfast contains lots of flax seeds. Our usual foods contain hemp seeds. All good sources of O3.
Unfortunately not, because those sources also have low bio-availability.
> And all without pollutants from fish.
Pollutants are unfortunate, but when it comes to nutrition, you have to pick your poisen. Salmon roe is a good source of Omega 3 that is low in pollutants.
> I get a lot of information from nutritionfacts.org. Dr. Greger offers free information as in free beer. No ads, no sponsors, even the earnings from his books are given to charity. I highly recommend you check him out. He certainly has his biases but still way less than most other doctors.
A plant-based diet is ideology that is cherry-picking and misrepresenting some insights of nutrition science while sweeping others under the rug. With his exaggerated claims[4], Greger isn't any more credible than certain people on "the other side".
I think it is not productive to have this discussion. I have good blood markers after 6 years on this diet. LDL of 52. BP of 101/74. So for me this diet is way healthier than the omnivorous diet that I had before. If you want to believe that animals are essential for human health, go on. But in my opinion science does not back this up. But that is my interpretation.
Your thoughts on bioavailability are also outdated. It has been shown for protein, iron and some vitamins that bioavailability in practice is very good for plant sources. E.g. iron is converted as good as heme iron when combined with vitamin C. And it‘s hard to avoid C on a plant based diet.
> I have good blood markers after 6 years on this diet. LDL of 52. BP of 101/74. So for me this diet is way healthier than the omnivorous diet that I had before.
Perhaps, but we're talking about nutritional deficiencies, have you tested for all of those? A vitamin deficiency can take up to a decade to manifest in symptoms.
> If you want to believe that animals are essential for human health, go on.
I don't want to believe that, I would prefer not to have to believe that. On the other hand, many people want to believe that animals are not necessary, for ethical reasons. That causes distortion and misrepresentation, because it would be inconvenient if a plant-based diet was not entirely healthy and nutritionally complete.
> Your thoughts on bioavailability are also outdated.
Those aren't "my thoughts", that is scientific data. Show me yours.
> It has been shown for protein, iron and some vitamins that bioavailability in practice is very good for plant sources. E.g. iron is converted as good as heme iron when combined with vitamin C. And it‘s hard to avoid C on a plant based diet.
Source?
> May I ask where you get your information from?
I get it from all available sources. If Doctor So-and-so claims this-and-that, I look at the scientific publications supporting that.
On top of that, I try to look at what's plausible from an evolutionary history perspective. A plant-based diet doesn't seem plausible. That doesn't mean it's not good, of course - especially compared to a junk food diet. However, there's a lot of "ethical incentive" to misrepresent it as better than it is. You gotta watch out for that.
Regarding B6. The last days that I tracked I had 3-4 times the RDA of B6 with ~4mg. Even if the absorption were really low I still meet what my body needs. And other sources report way better absorption rates.
Have you measured it in the blood? Even if your B6 is fine, what about B12? That has even worse bioavailability from plants or supplements. Again, you need to measure it, furthermore B12 takes years to deplete.
My B12 was so high I had to lower my supplementation twice. Now I only take the spray every two weeks to allow my values to get down. But even on that dose my values are at the very top of the reference range.
The problem with B12 is more with low cobalt in the soil and genetically low absorption. There are now even bioactive plant forms of B12 like water lentil.
Who says that B12 supplementation works less good than eating meat? The last studies I read on supplementation all showed good results. Better results than among omnivorous people.
Vitamin B12 supplements require very high doses due to poor bio-availability. You have to ask yourself, could this be a healthy diet when you effectively need a pharmacy to maintain it? What else is your body missing out on that we might not be aware of?
That's why I say a plant-based diet is science experiment with no plausible basis in evolutionary history. I'm not saying it's bad per se, I'm saying we don't actually know if it's good.
Looks like you have done your homework and are not in fact deficient, at least in terms of those biomarkers and reference values. A lot of plant-based dieters are not that diligent, affluent or educated.
I think the current diet that 90% of the developed countries practice is the large experiment. Question is how long our health system can tolerate these rates of disease.
This is nonsense, you don't even need to cook anything at all to eat healthy from the grocery store.
You just have to get off your ass and actually go buy perishable fresh groceries regularly and plan for the week ahead.
Laziness and convenience prevails.
If it's a lack of time, then it's a lack of time to even hit the grocery store. Which depending on where you live, if it's a food desert situation, may be valid.
Disclaimer: Not every T2D is purely from a bad diet. But many are.