There's new stuff in this post, and it could matter to you. It's unlikely you've encountered the info before.
This info is below the line.
Let's keep this simple. What should we eat? Not eat?
If you're in one of the groups below, you probably feel strongly about it.
This is just a summary of the available research, distilled down and made easy- look it through and see if it helps.
So- Light, not heat. Let me just make a case-
They're all wrong of course. You can find a boat load of exceptions in all the situations above. None of those is a complete answer. Each sect dumps a whole category of food - and none of that makes sense because the categories used hold quite a wide mix of stuff. And some of it is good, or even critically essential. So it cant be justified to reject a huge chunk of foods. We need to be much more specific.
There are specific things that are trouble. We know what they are:
No, it's not "up for debate" No, there aren't sides to it. No, I'm not going to argue it, let's all be friends. Here's the current understanding-
I'm identifying a small specific bit of the big food groups here. Sugars, refined flour/processed carb, and Saturated fats. These cause disease, so limit the intake, don't try living on them. But birthday cake is Ok, on birthdays.
OK, that's noncontroversial if you read the research, or just look at the simple epidemiology. And just ignore the very loud extremists with their all-encompassing rejection tactics.
Mediterranean diets with unsaturated fats and complex carb out perform both low-fat Ornish style and low-carb Atkins versions. So there are no justifications to completely remove or excessively restrict yourself from either group of nutrients, just avoid the bad subsets, compose your food however you want, keep calories reasonable, and you'll be basically good to go.
The things is, Fats and Carbs are not the whole picture, and this can confuse results in testing. I'm going to propose that a lot of the confusion about what we should/should not eat is mostly because the following info wasn't known till recently, and it's not in the news.
It's becoming more widely confirmed that there's a protein component of food contributing to the global obesity/diabetes/heart disease epidemic.
Branch Chain Amino Acids. You can buy it in the GNC store. But- please don't. Bodybuilders live on it. Or rather- they die on it.
Once these are added to diets in the lab, adverse metabolic effects emerge. It seems that the longevity research is narrowing down the culprits, and it wasn't what we thought-
Restrict ALL food----> get longer lived animals ( McKay, 75 years ago)
Restrict Calories -----> same effect ( Berg and Ross, Berg and Simms 1961)
Leave the calories, just restrict Protein--------> same longer life ( Longo's Longevity Diet 2018)
Research has moved on from there:
Leave most protein, restrict BCAA's -----------> same longer life (2021 study here)
Give all the BCAA's, except Isoleucine and Valine -----> longer life kept ( Dudley Lamming, 2022)
The most central agent seems to be the Isoleucine. Out of all the BCAA, it's the most potent one in the most negative way.
It is a signalling molecule, not just a part of protein structure, but we still don't know what the signal does exactly or how it works. Eat more Isoleucine, and you'll get fat and sick. Take it mostly out of the diet, and weight drops off, even if there are more calories. It's possible that high isoleucine diets are causing scattered failures no matter what else people are eating, explaining the variability in the success rate of this diet or that one.
Wait, so it improves insulin resistance like a high carb-fibre diet, and it induced ketones like a keto diet?? AND it burns fat like magic?
Rut Roh, Scooby?? It might be that if isoleucine is low, organisms could tolerate a bad diet otherwise, and we might be able to eat doughnuts and cocacola without getting fat and sick. Fingers crossed that this turns out to be true. But it probably isn't.
FGF21 appears to be centrally important. It's a new hormone that extends life. Levels go UP when you exercise, fast for a looooooong time, or just restrict protein (2 days or so) . In fact:
This Study showed that without FGF21, protein restriction doesn't work.
A LOT of what Cardio exercise is doing for us is through FGF 21. Looks like we can recapitulate that with less isoleucine in our food. Weirdly, heavy Resistance training raises FGF21 more than cardio, and I can argue that it has a more profound effect on mortality. 30 minutes/week weightlifting reduced mortality by 17%, vs doing 8000-10000 steps a day, everyday which only gave 16.5% reduction, but took 4-5 hours. Still, we can do both kinds of exercise, and get benefit going up.
Ok, what has a lot of Isoleucine? Both Plants AND Animal proteins.Plants are generally lower per unit weight, because they have less protein per unit weight- but the protein itself has the same amount.
Again, we have to be accurate about what to avoid - not dump a whole group out of ignorance. The easiest thing to do is limit your overall protein intake to the reccomended range, and try not to eat excessive amounts- same as the fats and carbs. What would happen if somebody temporarily removed most of their protein? There are 2 medically tested situations in which there are years of data:
- The Kempner Rice Diet, Duke University
Kempner successfully treated and reversed malignant hypertension, kidney failure, and retinal damage in the 1940's with no drugs.
- The Oatmeal Diet Study here
2 DAYS of oatmeal only/mostly reduced the insulin needed for patients dramatically, with the effect persisting for 4 weeks. Oatmeal diets were used before the advent of Insulin, and drugs for diabetes. They're coming back into vogue, but are not suitable for long term use. ( Dear gawd, just try eating only oatmeal for 2 days straight. I know, because I do it now and then.)
In both situations, the metabolic improvement can be substantially attributed to the isoleucine restriction-- but of course, we didn't know that till now. So just like with the Fats and the Carbs, we don't need to toss out an entire third of the food. We need to specifically separate isoleucine rich food, and just eat less of it, replacing it with Isoleucine-Low food. And we can thereotically get the same benefit that way. Turkey has low Isoleucine, compared to chicken or fish, so there we go. Also emu meat is low. Yeah, no chance of finding that here.
Low Methionine diets also extend lifespans.
Optimal protein supplements should be low in both Methionine and Isoleucine, and high in Glycine/Cysteine.
( Rice has a lot of methionine, so that Kempner diet could have been made a lot better. )
There is a medicalhack method to artificially elevate FGF21, in conjunction with (seemingly paradoxical)lower protein and weight training, if you want to accelerate your weight loss in this manner. If you wanted to know what it was, you would have to research Duschenne muscle dystrophy treatment, Northwestern University experiments, KLF15, alpha-Klotho, and FGF21. The single-dose treatment costs me 15 cents per fortnight, and it may be sufficient to bypass isoleucine in the diet. It's not in general medical use.
There are multiple authorities that cite increased protein Intake as a means to combat old age. There's a use for that too, over age 65. Frailty is a big problem. However lab rats on low isoleucine did not get frail. Is that going to work in humans too? We don't know yet. But for sure, I would want a low isoleucine protein supplement rather than restricting all the protein.
This info is below the line.
Let's keep this simple. What should we eat? Not eat?
If you're in one of the groups below, you probably feel strongly about it.
This is just a summary of the available research, distilled down and made easy- look it through and see if it helps.
Keto guys: " Carbs are the Devil!"
Carnivore guys: " Everything but MEAT is the Devil!"
Lo-Fat guys: "No, Fats are the Devil!"
Vegans: "No, everything BUT plants are the Devil!"
Carnivore guys: " Everything but MEAT is the Devil!"
Lo-Fat guys: "No, Fats are the Devil!"
Vegans: "No, everything BUT plants are the Devil!"
So- Light, not heat. Let me just make a case-
They're all wrong of course. You can find a boat load of exceptions in all the situations above. None of those is a complete answer. Each sect dumps a whole category of food - and none of that makes sense because the categories used hold quite a wide mix of stuff. And some of it is good, or even critically essential. So it cant be justified to reject a huge chunk of foods. We need to be much more specific.
There are specific things that are trouble. We know what they are:
No, it's not "up for debate" No, there aren't sides to it. No, I'm not going to argue it, let's all be friends. Here's the current understanding-
- Saturated fat causes disease. The rest of the fats ( except Trans-fat, unfit for human consumption, designed to lubricate industrial food processing machinery) are relatively safe, and some are actually essential, illness preventing and very good.
- Refined Carb causes disease. The complex-slow digesting carb makes up a huge component of the diet in the world's longest lived areas. It's safe to eat generally.
I'm identifying a small specific bit of the big food groups here. Sugars, refined flour/processed carb, and Saturated fats. These cause disease, so limit the intake, don't try living on them. But birthday cake is Ok, on birthdays.
OK, that's noncontroversial if you read the research, or just look at the simple epidemiology. And just ignore the very loud extremists with their all-encompassing rejection tactics.
Mediterranean diets with unsaturated fats and complex carb out perform both low-fat Ornish style and low-carb Atkins versions. So there are no justifications to completely remove or excessively restrict yourself from either group of nutrients, just avoid the bad subsets, compose your food however you want, keep calories reasonable, and you'll be basically good to go.
The things is, Fats and Carbs are not the whole picture, and this can confuse results in testing. I'm going to propose that a lot of the confusion about what we should/should not eat is mostly because the following info wasn't known till recently, and it's not in the news.
It's becoming more widely confirmed that there's a protein component of food contributing to the global obesity/diabetes/heart disease epidemic.
Branch Chain Amino Acids. You can buy it in the GNC store. But- please don't. Bodybuilders live on it. Or rather- they die on it.
Once these are added to diets in the lab, adverse metabolic effects emerge. It seems that the longevity research is narrowing down the culprits, and it wasn't what we thought-
Restrict ALL food----> get longer lived animals ( McKay, 75 years ago)
Restrict Calories -----> same effect ( Berg and Ross, Berg and Simms 1961)
Leave the calories, just restrict Protein--------> same longer life ( Longo's Longevity Diet 2018)
Research has moved on from there:
Leave most protein, restrict BCAA's -----------> same longer life (2021 study here)
Give all the BCAA's, except Isoleucine and Valine -----> longer life kept ( Dudley Lamming, 2022)
The most central agent seems to be the Isoleucine. Out of all the BCAA, it's the most potent one in the most negative way.
It is a signalling molecule, not just a part of protein structure, but we still don't know what the signal does exactly or how it works. Eat more Isoleucine, and you'll get fat and sick. Take it mostly out of the diet, and weight drops off, even if there are more calories. It's possible that high isoleucine diets are causing scattered failures no matter what else people are eating, explaining the variability in the success rate of this diet or that one.
Wait, so it improves insulin resistance like a high carb-fibre diet, and it induced ketones like a keto diet?? AND it burns fat like magic?
Rut Roh, Scooby?? It might be that if isoleucine is low, organisms could tolerate a bad diet otherwise, and we might be able to eat doughnuts and cocacola without getting fat and sick. Fingers crossed that this turns out to be true. But it probably isn't.
FGF21 appears to be centrally important. It's a new hormone that extends life. Levels go UP when you exercise, fast for a looooooong time, or just restrict protein (2 days or so) . In fact:
This Study showed that without FGF21, protein restriction doesn't work.
A LOT of what Cardio exercise is doing for us is through FGF 21. Looks like we can recapitulate that with less isoleucine in our food. Weirdly, heavy Resistance training raises FGF21 more than cardio, and I can argue that it has a more profound effect on mortality. 30 minutes/week weightlifting reduced mortality by 17%, vs doing 8000-10000 steps a day, everyday which only gave 16.5% reduction, but took 4-5 hours. Still, we can do both kinds of exercise, and get benefit going up.
Ok, what has a lot of Isoleucine? Both Plants AND Animal proteins.Plants are generally lower per unit weight, because they have less protein per unit weight- but the protein itself has the same amount.
Again, we have to be accurate about what to avoid - not dump a whole group out of ignorance. The easiest thing to do is limit your overall protein intake to the reccomended range, and try not to eat excessive amounts- same as the fats and carbs. What would happen if somebody temporarily removed most of their protein? There are 2 medically tested situations in which there are years of data:
- The Kempner Rice Diet, Duke University
Kempner successfully treated and reversed malignant hypertension, kidney failure, and retinal damage in the 1940's with no drugs.
- The Oatmeal Diet Study here
2 DAYS of oatmeal only/mostly reduced the insulin needed for patients dramatically, with the effect persisting for 4 weeks. Oatmeal diets were used before the advent of Insulin, and drugs for diabetes. They're coming back into vogue, but are not suitable for long term use. ( Dear gawd, just try eating only oatmeal for 2 days straight. I know, because I do it now and then.)
In both situations, the metabolic improvement can be substantially attributed to the isoleucine restriction-- but of course, we didn't know that till now. So just like with the Fats and the Carbs, we don't need to toss out an entire third of the food. We need to specifically separate isoleucine rich food, and just eat less of it, replacing it with Isoleucine-Low food. And we can thereotically get the same benefit that way. Turkey has low Isoleucine, compared to chicken or fish, so there we go. Also emu meat is low. Yeah, no chance of finding that here.
Low Methionine diets also extend lifespans.
Optimal protein supplements should be low in both Methionine and Isoleucine, and high in Glycine/Cysteine.
( Rice has a lot of methionine, so that Kempner diet could have been made a lot better. )
There is a medical
There are multiple authorities that cite increased protein Intake as a means to combat old age. There's a use for that too, over age 65. Frailty is a big problem. However lab rats on low isoleucine did not get frail. Is that going to work in humans too? We don't know yet. But for sure, I would want a low isoleucine protein supplement rather than restricting all the protein.
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