Healthy food, natural supplements, and herbal teas

Wow, I ate a pound of bacon, drank two 12 oz. cups of coffee, with sweet and low and knocked off half a dozen biscuits while reading this. Reading just works up an appetite for me. Now it's time to put some pork steaks on the BBQ grill :D
 
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crpgnut said:
Wow, I ate a pound of bacon, drank two 12 oz. cups of coffee, with sweet and low and knocked off half a dozen biscuits while reading this. Reading just works up an appetite for me. Now it's time to put some pork steaks on the BBQ grill :D
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As I said, I recommend matcha as a coffee alternative. Much healthier, the same stimulant effect as coffee, and none of the crashes.

Bacon is good.

Biscuits are better avoided, and replaced by something like almonds or cashes for snacks (preferably without canola oil).


daveyd said:
I've no doubt that there is misinformation floating around about many of the popular natural supplements. Many of the benefits of vitamins has solid evidence behind it (although there's much debate over exactly how much people need, which forms / sources are most beneficial, bio-availability, etc.). But in the case of herbal supplements where very often little or no scientific research has been done and the "evidence" presented for their purported benefits is entirely anecdotal. I commonly here things like "The Chinese have been using X for thousands of years". Of course without controlled scientific studies to back up these claims we have no way of knowing if people are experiencing anything more than psychosomatic (i.e., placebo effect). The natural / herbal supplement industry is big business so of course the manufacturers and retailers are going to treat these anecdotes as verified facts. Perhaps not quite on the level of snake oil salesman, but not far off. However, I do think there is some pretty solid evidence for the benefits of anti-oxidants from green / white tea.

That being said, it often disturbs me at the almost blind faith many people put into the "Western" medical industry. To hear some of them speak, you'd think they were infallible gods. The truth is medical doctors are often pretty lousy scientists. In college, one of my neuroscience professors would bring in articles from major medical journals like JAMA and then we'd discuss the fairly obvious ways in which their methodology was flawed. Then there's the fact that the perceived effectiveness of many new medical treatments is based on animal research, which means we eventually find some treatments often don't always work as well (or at all) on humans.

Call me a cynic, but medical doctors aren't really going to be big on preventative medicine, because that isn't nearly as profitable as treating people for chronic conditions. I'm not in any way saying that you shouldn't see doctors for serious medical problems, but I think doing your own research and / or seeking a 2nd opinion are both really good ideas before taking any drug, undergoing any major surgery or other type of treatment.

For my own part, I follow what many people would consider a pretty "strict" diet- I almost never drink any alcohol and have been a vegan for 13 years (not entirely for "health" reasons but that's not relevant here) and I love it. While I was once a big consumer of red meat, dairy, and other junk food, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything now. Will I live longer / better because of that? Probably, (there were some studies indicating vegetarians live 7 years longer on average IIRC), but if not I really don't care, because I enjoy the food I eat a lot and in some ways feel healthier now than when I was a teenager. I only wish I could afford more fresh fruits and veggies.
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I largely agree with this post. I would say though that folk herbs that have been used for thousands of years by some civilizations should not be discounted away so quickly. There is much to learn from them.

The best of western medicine, modern nutritional discoveries, and traditional herbal medicine can all be used together.

We shouldn't stop looking for clinical evidence, but on the other hand, it's sometimes wrong to treat plants like drugs, rather than like food, something that will show a beneficial effect, but one that which build up much more slowly over time. It's a mistake to only consider isolated compounds which will have the same effect on everyone and on an extremely short term.

I don't agree with veganism; saturated fat is crucial. Animal fat is the most nutritious and the most bioavailable. I would however recommend you to take eggs or whey protein regularly, or if you're absolutely keen on being vegan, some avocados or coconut oil to get a regular source of saturated fats. I also know there are multivitamins made with vegans in mind to give them the nutrients that are lacking in their diets. But I think veganism is a mistake.
 
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I simply adhere for the most part to what author Michael Pollan said:

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

I like all sorts of things and do enjoy them from time to time - soda, wine, ice cream, etc. But mostly I like to see my food as actual ingredients when I eat.
 
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Some foods like wheat or high fructose corn syrup wreak a terrible havok on your body and it takes a while for their nasty effects to ward off. Saying it's OK to take them once in a while is like saying it's OK to smoke once in a while. You get addicted to them. A big reason why so many people have eating problems is that they are addicted to carbs.
 
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I am not going to spend to much time on this but wanted to say.

If you are really concerned about what you are eating. Buy from your local farmers all of your whole foods, meats veggie's and fruits. Please watch anything you are putting your body that is made by any company.

This would include protein powered, or any supplement included in vitamins.

Lets put it this way I have spent 30 years working out in the gym and helping Body builders and studying diets.

Edited notes.

Don't be afraid of good carbs like whole oats, best to have them in the morning for energy. You also need good fats in your diet from whole foods.

A good rule would be if you are eating 4-6 meals a day, so 28 to 42 a week. It is fine to make one of those meals complete junk. Like having a burger and fries(better to be home made or from a high end burger place).

Though as humans you are free to do as you wish.
 
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Humanity has risen! said:
I don't agree with veganism; saturated fat is crucial. Animal fat is the most nutritious and the most bioavailable. I would however recommend you to take eggs or whey protein regularly, or if you're absolutely keen on being vegan, some avocados or coconut oil to get a regular source of saturated fats. I also know there are multivitamins made with vegans in mind to give them the nutrients that are lacking in their diets. But I think veganism is a mistake.
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I wonder what you're basing this on. I honestly don't think I've ever heard anyone claim that animal based saturated fats are more bio-available before. Saturated animal fat has been linked to heart disease in the past (raises LDL "bad" cholesterol). Even though lots of people now claim that has basically been dubunked (e.g., it's actually trans fat that is the problem), there are other reasons that red meat is probably bad for cardiovascular health. There's also some evidence suggesting that saturated animal fats (other than omega-3 rich fish*) are linked with colon cancer. And even some research suggests that diets high in animal based proteins actually inhibit / reduce calcium absorption. Other possible health risks of red meat include gout, high blood pressure (which increases risk of stroke), and other cancers. Meat cooked at high temperatures contains HCAs (Heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which causes cancer (at least in animal studies).

The only nutrients generally lacking in a vegan diet is b12 ; b12 is added to a lot of foods) like soy, hemp, and nut milks, nutritional yeast, etc. (and technically it is in dirt, but there are various reasons it's probably not a great idea to eat dirt). I take calcium magneisum pills (although you can get plenty of calcium from leafy greens, I don't always eat them as much as I should / would like to), an omega 3 supplement (algal oil), and sometimes a multi-vitamin- mainly for the b12 and for vitamin D (since I don't like the sun). And as a side note the reason they make vegan vitamins isn't because vegans are particularly deficient, it's because certain vitamins contain gelatin or other animal derived ingredients (i.e., lanolin based vitamin D). I do eat avocado and coconut every so often; love both of them. The saturated fats in these foods different from saturated fats; coconut contain medium chain triglycerides, whereas the saturated fat food in meat and dairy is long-chain.

*If not for the issues with mercury contamination I'd entirely agree that fish (the omega 3 rich ones at least) are a pretty healthy food source. Still wouldn't eat them, but not out of health concerns. But I've no credible evidence that pork or beef is actually good for you (at best, it's "not as bad as previously claimed" in regards to heart disease, at least).
 
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Humanity has risen! said:
Some foods like wheat or high fructose corn syrup wreak a terrible havok on your body and it takes a while for their nasty effects to ward off. Saying it's OK to take them once in a while is like saying it's OK to smoke once in a while. You get addicted to them. A big reason why so many people have eating problems is that they are addicted to carbs.
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You have some good points, but I think you're trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. I detect a bit of OCD. Nothing wrong with wheat (unless you're a celiac). Wheat as in whole wheat. Not the bleached white stuff that is essentially the same thing as sugar. Just go by the "don't eat stuff made in a factory" advice and most of the world's diet problems are solved. It's not all carbs that are addictive, it's the simple carbs. Otherwise that would suggest we shouldn't be eating fruits and vegetables either.
 
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daveyd, there has never been a single credible study linking saturated fat to heart disease, in fact like you pointed out this is a piece of common wisdom that is slowly starting to change. Even time magazine who made a famous issue in 1984 saying that cholesterol was killing people made an issue this year saying "we were wrong 30 years ago, here's why".

As far as red meat goes I've always known it was a concern, but I would question the credibility of some of these studies. Specifically, anything that is based on a meta-analysis dependent on food logs (which are by their nature extremely unreliable) is more or less useless. It's true that most of the concerns you mentioned exist, but by and large it is due to the absolutely mediocre conditions of industrial livestock grooming, feeding, and meat processing. This is why I started to order beef from a small independent farm, one which is exclusively grass fed, and processed organically. Corn-fed beef will comprise the beef we eat today has a much poorer nutritional profile. Also a lot of those problems such as the glycation are due to cooking the meat at excessive temperatures; I always cook mine at no more than 170F, and with butter. I've also read that you can use an acidic sauce like citrus to minimize these effects. So in a nutshell it's not really down to red meat itself.

I would doubt that you are as lacking in deficiencies as you think you are, as it's also not just down to measuring rates of certain nutrients in the body. The food we eat contains a lot of cofactors which we don't quite understand fully, but which is also essential. For example with a vegan diet you could be lacking in Coenzyme Q10, which is found in trace quantities in beef. I have to wholeheartedly disagree on the nutritional profile of animal fat. I think if you go without eat, you are guaranteed to have some deficiencies and to be weaker.

Also in regards to omega 3, if you don't take fish oil, you are basically wasting your time, since your body won't be able to convert the plant into bioavailable omega 3 fats. An example of this is flax seed oil, which is marketed as a "omega 3 source", but which your body cannot actually use for this purpose. You need a decent amount of EPA and DHA fatty acids in order to positively change your omega 3 index into a desirable ratio, sufficient to ward off some diseases and ailments and to boost overall health. I would really recommend you stop taking the vegan omega 3 you are currently taking.
 
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Caddy said:
You have some good points, but I think you're trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. I detect a bit of OCD. Nothing wrong with wheat (unless you're a celiac). Wheat as in whole wheat. Not the bleached white stuff that is essentially the same thing as sugar. Just go by the "don't eat stuff made in a factory" advice and most of the world's diet problems are solved. It's not all carbs that are addictive, it's the simple carbs. Otherwise that would suggest we shouldn't be eating fruits and vegetables either.
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I suggest you have a look at a book and website called Wheat Belly. I'm not saying the cardiologist behind this book and movement has all the science down exactly right, but he points out important aspects on the impact of modern high yield, semi dwarf wheat.

Wheat will trigger a big glycemic spike, sometimes as high or even higher than drinking a can of coca-cola. Modern wheat has not been genetically modified. However, it has been selectively reproduced at a very rapid pace, and due to the nature of the plant its DNA has grown a lot during these breed successions. Modern wheat contains more of the elements that we are sensitive to in the plant, some of which even have an opioid effect. It is also spread with Roundup, which many people have a sensitivity to. There's lots and lots to go on about and describe and I suggest having a look at the book or site.

Just because something is a "complex carbohydrate" doesn't mean it's still not a bunch of sugar that won't have the same effects as sugar.
 
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Something is definitely up with nature, since we've apparently evolved in such a way that we need to be wannabe scientists and have faith in a very specific subset of "current research" just to live in a reasonably healthy way :)

What a load of bullshit.
 
DArtagnan said:
Something is definitely up with nature, since we've apparently evolved in such a way that we need to be wannabe scientists and have faith in a very specific subset of "current research" just to live in a reasonably healthy way :)

What a load of bullshit.
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Actually it is the 'science of food' that has evolved - practically nothing that we eat now is as it would have been even a couple of hundred years ago. GMO, hormones in feed, persticides, and on and on. Things that seem simple are no longer so simple.

'A tomato is not a tomato' is a sad but true reality. As consumers we need to be more educated when we go to the store - well, if we care about what we put into our bodies, that is ... and most people don't.

Historically people would just assume they had a 'sensitive stomach', or IBS or that something 'disagreed with them' - or they caught a 'stomach bug' or whatever. Now we know that very often there are various levels of intolerance to foods - the ability to test for intolerance has advanced considerably in recent years, so you can tell with a bit more clarity what foods cause mild, moderate or severe tolerance reactions, as well as pure allergies.

As for the rest ... (i.e. your 'bullshit' reaction) - I thoroughly enjoyed the book 'Diet Cults', which is something I might attribute to many different people who are Paleo or Vegan or whatever and believe it is "The One True Way" ... (hint: it is NOT). The book debunks fad diet after fad diet ... and is very informative.

TL;DR - agreed. ;)
 
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Humanity has risen! said:
I suggest you have a look at a book and website called Wheat Belly. I'm not saying the cardiologist behind this book and movement has all the science down exactly right, but he points out important aspects on the impact of modern high yield, semi dwarf wheat.

Wheat will trigger a big glycemic spike, sometimes as high or even higher than drinking a can of coca-cola. Modern wheat has not been genetically modified. However, it has been selectively reproduced at a very rapid pace, and due to the nature of the plant its DNA has grown a lot during these breed successions. Modern wheat contains more of the elements that we are sensitive to in the plant, some of which even have an opioid effect. It is also spread with Roundup, which many people have a sensitivity to. There's lots and lots to go on about and describe and I suggest having a look at the book or site.

Just because something is a "complex carbohydrate" doesn't mean it's still not a bunch of sugar that won't have the same effects as sugar.
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Yes my wife has read it, i've read some of it. She has a friend who is obsessed with being gluten free and abolishing wheat from humanity. The book is a money grab, with sensationalized information. Michael Moore could have written the book. He's a good business man because he capitalized on the book right in the middle of the glutten/low-carb movement. I can make anything fit my agenda. 100% of all people who ate carrots in 1850, are dead now. Carrots are bad. Don't eat apples. The seeds have cyanide in them that leeches in to the fruit. Don't eat bananas. Did you know they give off radiation that can be measured on a Geiger counter? Let use our common sense, and not base our information on one book. Read all the studies out there that show that whole wheat decreases risk of diabetes, heart disease, long term weight management and lowering LDL. Every year some sort of food becomes the whipping boy. It wasn't that long ago that you're favorite staple of eggs was considered the absolute worst food you could eat! All the cholesterol! Turns out eating chicken wings, won't actually make you grow wings... I'm not saying lets gorge on wheat. Moderation in everything. If I were to pick on wheat it wouldn't be the grain, it would be what happens after the grain is harvested. Try and find a true whole wheat bread out there. Even "whole wheat" bread, as long as the content is something like 60%, they don't have to include white flour on the ingredients if it's added. There's nothing out there that tastes like bread baked from homemade freshly ground Red wheat.
 
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DArtagnan said:
Something is definitely up with nature, since we've apparently evolved in such a way that we need to be wannabe scientists and have faith in a very specific subset of "current research" just to live in a reasonably healthy way :)

What a load of bullshit.
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It's not that we need to seek all kinds of specific foodstuffs, it's that nutritional science has progressed considerably and we now have access to a lot of plants with very interesting often unique properties coming from all over the world. It makes sense to profit from the best modern nutrition and phytotherapy have to offer.


txa1265 said:
Actually it is the 'science of food' that has evolved - practically nothing that we eat now is as it would have been even a couple of hundred years ago. GMO, hormones in feed, persticides, and on and on. Things that seem simple are no longer so simple.

'A tomato is not a tomato' is a sad but true reality. As consumers we need to be more educated when we go to the store - well, if we care about what we put into our bodies, that is … and most people don't.

Historically people would just assume they had a 'sensitive stomach', or IBS or that something 'disagreed with them' - or they caught a 'stomach bug' or whatever. Now we know that very often there are various levels of intolerance to foods - the ability to test for intolerance has advanced considerably in recent years, so you can tell with a bit more clarity what foods cause mild, moderate or severe tolerance reactions, as well as pure allergies.

As for the rest … (i.e. your 'bullshit' reaction) - I thoroughly enjoyed the book 'Diet Cults', which is something I might attribute to many different people who are Paleo or Vegan or whatever and believe it is "The One True Way" … (hint: it is NOT). The book debunks fad diet after fad diet … and is very informative.

TL;DR - agreed. ;)
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Calling a diet a "fad" doesn't really tell anything, the truth is that there are sound dietary principles which are more or less universally applicable, or make the best starting point for virtually the whole population. Some are much close to this ideal than others.


Caddy said:
Yes my wife has read it, i've read some of it. She has a friend who is obsessed with being gluten free and abolishing wheat from humanity. The book is a money grab, with sensationalized information. Michael Moore could have written the book. He's a good business man because he capitalized on the book right in the middle of the glutten/low-carb movement. I can make anything fit my agenda. 100% of all people who ate carrots in 1850, are dead now. Carrots are bad. Don't eat apples. The seeds have cyanide in them that leeches in to the fruit. Don't eat bananas. Did you know they give off radiation that can be measured on a Geiger counter? Let use our common sense, and not base our information on one book. Read all the studies out there that show that whole wheat decreases risk of diabetes, heart disease, long term weight management and lowering LDL. Every year some sort of food becomes the whipping boy. It wasn't that long ago that you're favorite staple of eggs was considered the absolute worst food you could eat! All the cholesterol! Turns out eating chicken wings, won't actually make you grow wings… I'm not saying lets gorge on wheat. Moderation in everything. If I were to pick on wheat it wouldn't be the grain, it would be what happens after the grain is harvested. Try and find a true whole wheat bread out there. Even "whole wheat" bread, as long as the content is something like 60%, they don't have to include white flour on the ingredients if it's added. There's nothing out there that tastes like bread baked from homemade freshly ground Red wheat.
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The Dr has treated tons of patients, more than a thousand who have followed the principles he elaborated, and every last one of them has had great success by eliminating wheat, and other carb rich products from their diet.

It's difficult if not quasi impossible to think of one element to remove from the diet that can solve such a broad variety of health problems and which works in basically every single case. How many people do we know who duly follow official dietary guidelines and who struggle to lose any weight, and who still get problems like high blood pressure, diabetes, or bad cholesterol?

And I'm sorry but those "studies" are very misleading and based on junk science, like the vast majority of nutritional studies. The only worthwhile ones are the ones who are not meta-analyses which overblow minor differences from multiple studies based on unreliable food logs; rather it's the clinical, double blind studies which actually offer reliable and consistent results. Also, most of the times misleading comparisons are being made. Rather than to compare for example the healthfulness of white bread vs whole wheat bread, you need to compare the effect of whole wheat bread with a whole other diet of food.

My wife and I have been wheat free for nearly three years now and we are not going back. I know that if I try to eat a sandwich or a pizza I start having terrible bloating.

It doesn't matter what type of wheat it is, whether it's "whole grains", or "organic", it still comes from the same semi-dwarf, high yield variety with the messed up content.
 
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Humanity has risen! said:
The Dr has treated tons of patients, more than a thousand who have followed the principles he elaborated, and every last one of them has had great success by eliminating wheat, and other carb rich products from their diet.

It's difficult if not quasi impossible to think of one element to remove from the diet that can solve such a broad variety of health problems and which works in basically every single case. How many people do we know who duly follow official dietary guidelines and who struggle to lose any weight, and who still get problems like high blood pressure, diabetes, or bad cholesterol?

And I'm sorry but those "studies" are very misleading and based on junk science, like the vast majority of nutritional studies. The only worthwhile ones are the ones who are not meta-analyses which overblow minor differences from multiple studies based on unreliable food logs; rather it's the clinical, double blind studies which actually offer reliable and consistent results. Also, most of the times misleading comparisons are being made. Rather than to compare for example the healthfulness of white bread vs whole wheat bread, you need to compare the effect of whole wheat bread with a whole other diet of food.

My wife and I have been wheat free for nearly three years now and we are not going back. I know that if I try to eat a sandwich or a pizza I start having terrible bloating.

It doesn't matter what type of wheat it is, whether it's "whole grains", or "organic", it still comes from the same semi-dwarf, high yield variety with the messed up content.
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Of course he's had great success removing carbs from peoples diets. I never argued that low carb diets are bad. In fact I'm a huge supporter of low carb diets. I sound like a commercial, but I went from 225 to 155 pounds in 6 months (I actually had to slow down my weight loss), and on top of that got rid of my high blood pressure, GERD acid reflux, and went from getting out of breath going up stairs to hiking 25 miles a day with a 25 pound pack and never once counted a calorie. So yes low carb diets work. That does nothing to show whole grain whole wheat is bad. I still eat whole wheat pasta and whole wheat pita/wraps to maintain. My ldl is still dropping. Of course pizza and bread will make you feel bad after 3 years. Its almost impossible to find pizza and bread without processed flour in it these days. Not only that, introducing wheat in your gut after its had 3 years to eradicate the bacteria used to digest it? And organic is a joke. You can be right next to a farm that's not organic and have its pesticides leached in to your soil and you're still allowed to call it organic! But there's a huge difference between whole wheat and processed. Its like the difference between an apple (a complete carb with fibre and nutrients) and apple juice (liquid sugar). You're still condemning whole wheat as a grain itself, yet using results that have processed flour/sugar mixed in with the results.
 
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Caddy said:
But there's a huge difference between whole wheat and processed. Its like the difference between an apple (a complete carb with fibre and nutrients) and apple juice (liquid sugar). You're still condemning whole wheat as a grain itself, yet using results that have processed flour/sugar mixed in with the results.
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This is what happens when you join a 'diet cult' - the way you behave truly resembles a cult ... and anything outside of the cult must be destroyed. Rational or logical thinking are of no interest - they will ignore 99 solid pieces of evidence to choose the one that supports their cult.
 
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Humanity has risen! said:
It's not that we need to seek all kinds of specific foodstuffs, it's that nutritional science has progressed considerably and we now have access to a lot of plants with very interesting often unique properties coming from all over the world. It makes sense to profit from the best modern nutrition and phytotherapy have to offer.
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Do you realise that scientists or "wannabe scientists" have said this kind of thing for decades?

It's not a new concept that "current research" is confused with fact - and people are eating it up because they read it in an article or watch some person of authority speak on TV about it.

Difference is that, these days, it's google, wiki and youtube. The rest is the same - and people have different levels of what it takes to "believe" in something. That doesn't make it any more solid as fact, though.

Now, I'm not saying it CAN'T be solid - it's just that this kind of knowledge is fickle - and there's a potentially ridiculous amount of biased interest involved when producing research. We're way, way, WAY past integrity when it comes to profit in these fields, unfortunately. SOME of it may be completely void of bias - and totally "pure" and insightful research. It's that we have no way of knowing, unless we're part of the process and we know who did what first and who followed it up. It's pretty much impossible.

That's what makes it about faith.

You're not exactly the first person naive enough to consider our current level of "knowledge" so infallible as to structure your life around it. You're not the first to consider himself capable of sorting shit from cream either.

Now, there's nothing wrong with faith in this kind of "science" - I just don't think blind faith to such a degree is a safe bet.

I'm not trying to stand in your way though, and if you believe your excessively exclusive way of consuming food is of some use to you, that's great.

I doubt you'll get sick or whatever, as I happen to believe our bodies are remarkably adaptive and that we can take all kinds of "unhealthy" punishment in some moderation.

But there's no denying the impact in terms of time and effort just to pretend to be aware of what you're putting into your mouth. I can't, personally, see how that's possibly worth it - but that's me.

If you want a much easier and slightly reliable way of establishing healthy food, look at where people live long lives correlated with what they consume. What is it these days, Japan? Something like that. Just eat fish, vegetables and rice or whatever, and you might get a few more years. It's not that hard, really.
 
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http://time.com/3313332/salt-and-blood-pressure/

Surprise surprise, salt consumption is not associated with high blood pressure despite years or decades of "contradictory" evidence.

You really have to be extremely careful in what you believe as far as nutrition goes because a lot of the science is bunk and based on those unreliable meta-analyses or artificially exaggerated differences I talked about previously. Most of the time, they end up being debunked, but it takes forever for the scientific consensus to shift, due to economic or political imperatives, or people having staked their reputation on such studies who don't want to lose face.

Salt isn't a boogeyman at all, we need it, and have a natural craving for it. Salt isn't dangerous, we are worse off if we don't get enough. Sugar/carbs are the enemy.
 
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Humanity has risen! said:
Salt isn't a boogeyman at all, we need it, and have a natural craving for it. Salt isn't dangerous, we are worse off if we don't get enough. Sugar/carbs are the enemy.
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Ugh ... so you are cherry-picking to support your pre-conceived notions?

The study shows a lack of causality between salt and high blood pressure ... but ALSO found that those who HAVE blood pressure tend to also be high salt consumers.

What that tends to indicate is that ... wow, shocker, foods and minerals impact different people differently. Simply put ... there is not a single ABSOLUTE RIGHT WAY TO EAT.

Period.

So what is your 'enemy' might be fine for others in moderation, and a real need for still others. Everyone has their own protein/fat/carb balance ... and none of them are zero.

Ultimately I think that 'moderation' and seeking the 'closest to nature' solutions are the keys.
 
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I'm not cherry picking anything, I'm calling out bad science.

As for the correlation between high blood pressure sufferers tending to be high salt consumers, it is just that, a correlation that doesn't account for potential confounding variables. This is a big problem in nutritional science that occurs frequently. For example, it could be that high blood pressure sufferers tend to eat less healthy food which happens to be richer in salt. It doesn't prove that salt itself is the cause of it.

http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2011/08/01/another-a-salt-on-science/

Also look at this page for another example of bad science being used to justify a phobia of salt. The funniest is how the anti-salt fears began:

Worries escalated in the 1970s when Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Lewis Dahl claimed that he had “unequivocal” evidence that salt causes hypertension: he induced high blood pressure in rats by feeding them the human equivalent of 500 grams of sodium a day. (Today the average American consumes 3.4 grams of sodium, or 8.5 grams of salt, a day.)

Let’s see … some goofy scientist feeds rats the equivalent of 147 times as much salt as the average human consumes in a day, and the rats developed high blood pressure. Well, my goodness, let’s toss those salt shakers right now!

Last time I checked, most health authorities were still recommending we consume eight glasses of water per day. I wonder if it ever occurred to Dr. Dahl to force-feed rats the equivalent of 1,176 glasses of water per day and see how that affected their health. If he ran that experiment, I’m pretty sure he’d end up declaring water a health hazard. What kind of hopeless idiots could possibly be swayed by such a nonsense study?

In 1977 the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs released a report recommending that Americans cut their salt intake by 50 to 85 percent, based largely on Dahl’s work.
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Scientific tools have become much more precise since then, but the correlation between salt intake and poor health has remained tenuous. Intersalt, a large study published in 1988, compared sodium intake with blood pressure in subjects from 52 international research centers and found no relationship between sodium intake and the prevalence of hypertension. In fact, the population that ate the most salt, about 14 grams a day, had a lower median blood pressure than the population that ate the least, about 7.2 grams a day.

Well, that’s just an observational study, so perhaps we’re not accounting for some confounding variables. Surely if we restricted salt in a controlled clinical setting, we’d see some real health benefits, eh?

In 2004 the Cochrane Collaboration, an international, independent, not-for-profit health care research organization funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, published a review of 11 salt-reduction trials. Over the long-term, low-salt diets, compared to normal diets, decreased systolic blood pressure (the top number in the blood pressure ratio) in healthy people by 1.1 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) by 0.6 mmHg. That is like going from 120/80 to 119/79.

You may recall that some troll who claimed to hold a PhD in science once insisted in several comments that salt is indeed bad for us, and to prove his point he sent me a link to a clinical study in which researchers produced a “significant” reduction blood pressure by drastically restricting salt. As I explained in my Science For Smart People speech, “significant” simply means that statistically, the results weren’t likely to due to chance. The “significant” reduction in blood pressure reported in the study that the troll sent me amounted to around three points. In other words, meaningless … all the salt-restricted dieters got out of the deal was some really bland food.

Studies that have explored the direct relationship between salt and heart disease have not fared much better. Among them, a 2006 American Journal of Medicine study compared the reported daily sodium intakes of 78 million Americans to their risk of dying from heart disease over the course of 14 years. It found that the more sodium people ate, the less likely they were to die from heart disease.

And yet various government agencies around the world are telling people to restrict salt … to prevent heart disease, of course.
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So you see how it began due to an absolutely nonsensical study and became defacto government policy, and still grandfathered in today. And differences found pertaining to accrued salt consumption are not statistically significant, they are meaningless.

I never said that everyone will react the exact same to everything. But for the general population, the fears of extreme salt consumption are indeed unfounded. It is possible to find a general dietary model which works the best for the overwhelming majority of the population, and can then be adapted to the minority of cases who do not correspond well to it. What this is about first is discovering all the bad nutritional science dogmas and getting rid of them.
 
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