[HN Gopher] Vegetables have become far less nutritious (2018)
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Vegetables have become far less nutritious (2018)
Author : johndcook
Score : 368 points
Date : 2021-06-27 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| todsacerdoti wrote:
| If you are interested in this topic and want to know more, I
| highly recommend the book The Dorito Effect -
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/1476724237/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm...
| minitoar wrote:
| The title of the article is "Challenges in the Diagnosis of
| Magnesium Status"
| ratsmack wrote:
| But it does cover more than that and the current title is
| pretty close.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The guidelines
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ask to use
| the original title unless it's linkbait or wrong.
| rtkwe wrote:
| I get it's there in the guidelines (notably not called
| rules) however when the title isn't informative I'd rather
| have the modified title personally.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| But in practice, even dang(/team) themselves sometimes
| change the title away from the original, to be more
| indicative of the article content, even when it isn't
| exactly linkbait or wrong per se.
| interlocutor wrote:
| Magnesium solved two problems for me: stiff muscles and insomnia.
|
| Scientific information about how magnesium works is hard to come
| by. Here's what I have been able to gather from various sources:
| The cells in your body need calcium to go into "on state". To go
| into "off state" magnesium has to go in and displace calcium.
|
| When your body is low on magnesium your muscles can't go into
| "off state" and your muscles become stiff. To relax you need an
| Epsom salt bath (it contains magnesium) or just take magnesium
| supplements.
|
| When your brain cells can't go to "off state" you can't sleep.
| You need magnesium to help your brain cells go into off state.
| However the "blood brain barrier" (look it up) prevents magnesium
| from easily entering the brain. Magnesium l-threonate (that's a
| compound of magnesium, not a brand name) can pass through this
| barrier and help you sleep.
|
| I have had sleep issues for many years. I saw many doctors
| including sleep specialists but all they wanted to do is put me
| on prescription meds. But these meds are addictive and you have
| to take it for the rest of your life. I didn't want that. These
| are "quick fixes". As a software developer I was interested in
| finding the underlying problem and fix that, as opposed to the
| quick fixes that the medical community was offering me.
|
| A breakthrough came when I saw a naturopathic doctor for my stiff
| muscles and she advised me to take Epsom salt baths. That seemed
| to help. I investigated more and found out that the ingredient in
| Epsom salt that helped me is magnesium. Then I found out that you
| can actually get magnesium pills and tried that. That worked
| remarkably well. But the big surprise was that I slept better the
| night I tried the magnesium pill. Since then I have been
| researching how it is that magnesium helped me sleep.
|
| Stress depletes magnesium in your body. If you are a software
| developer you are stressing your brain all day when you do your
| job and you are depleting magnesium. Low magnesium levels causes
| muscle issues as well as sleep issues. Magnesium supplements
| solve the problem.
|
| It is very unfortunate that medical doctors don't seem to be very
| knowledgeable about this topic. When I see doctors I mention that
| I am taking magnesium for muscle and sleep issues and they seem
| surprised, but no doctor has yet told me that I am wrong.
|
| Note that magnesium is a natural mineral, not a drug, essential
| for your body, and found in many foods. Excess amounts of
| magnesium can cause a laxative effect, but this is very
| temporary.
| walrus01 wrote:
| If you ever travel in a developing nation like Nepal and eat the
| vegetables in a rural region there, and then return to the
| US/Canada, the difference is immediately noticeable.
| jacobkg wrote:
| One thing I have noticed over the years is that I am addicted to
| the taste of Costco's Kirkland signature bottled water (similar
| to Dasani but nothing like bottled "spring water")
|
| One hypothesis I have is that my body is craving magnesium, which
| is one of the "minerals added for taste".
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I had a similar craving for Magnesia, a Czech mineral water
| high in magnesium.
|
| Once I started supplementing magnesium by other means, I can go
| without Magnesia for weeks.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Meta comment on this thread so forgive me. There are only 40
| comments and 3 of them are top level comments stating that taking
| magnesium supplements cured their health issue. One is anxiety,
| one is sleep issues, and one is migraines.
|
| These are some of the same claims I hear from the marijuana
| enthusiasts on Reddit frequently.
|
| I don't have any points to make about the observation, just
| noticed it and felt compelled to share.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I'll add the quiet part: it is off-topic, non-scientific, and
| all too typical when any discussion edges too close to health
| and exercise.
| pvg wrote:
| Oh, an observation
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOs7YjSLEMk
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Medicine solves some medical problems, if you're taking the
| right medicine. (I think this is all a layperson can take away
| from the observation.)
| sabco wrote:
| For anyone taking magnesium supplements that have found it
| helpful, did you ever get a blood test to look at your
| magnesium levels and did they say you were deficient based on
| the reference ranges?
| patall wrote:
| Unfortunately, that is what lots of people do not do. Noticed
| it recently with Vitamin D where everyone was like: "There is
| much deficiency, there are no down sites, let's all take it."
| And I was like: "Sure, there are probably benefits, but for
| people with actual deficiency. There is a test for that, why
| don't you do that?" But at that point, it was too late
| because you can't test for a deficiency once you supplement
| it.
| spfzero wrote:
| As much as 90% of the US population may be deficient in
| vitamin D, so you have a good chance of it. That said, I
| agree that testing is good, either before or after
| supplementation.
|
| https://www.grassrootshealth.net/document/grassrootshealth-
| p...
| hirundo wrote:
| I'd expect the same deficiencies to show up downstream in grain
| and soy fed cows, pigs and chickens. For meat eaters, that's an
| argument to spend more for grass fed beef, lamb, buffalo, and
| pastured chicken eggs.
|
| I don't know if such regenerative agriculture can scale up enough
| to feed everyone, but it can become a lot more affordable and
| accessible than it is now.
| [deleted]
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| In Australia and New Zealand practically all beef is grass fed.
| I don't think I've ever had corn-fed in my life.
|
| And yes, it is very expensive (more so in NZ than AU)
| petree wrote:
| It can't scale up if it still needs to be produced in the same
| quantities. It takes a lot of farmland, about 80% in fact, to
| produce feed for livestock (especially for cattle) even with
| calorie-dense feed like cereals. You'd have to cut down a lot
| of forest to make pastures.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Permaculture techniques can often support significantly
| greater density than monoculture, but are often not conducive
| to machine harvest, so end up being much more labor intensive
| [deleted]
| nate_meurer wrote:
| My youngest daughter struggled mightily with constipation for the
| first six years of her life. Hours on the toilet crying, day
| after day.
|
| At some point when she was six or maybe seven, I read a blurb
| somewhere about the importance of magnesium for smooth muscle
| operation. That day I added a teaspoon of epsom salt to some
| juice and gave it to her. The next day her constipation
| disappeared.
|
| We all now take cheap 400 mg Mg supplement daily, and in the five
| years since she hasn't been constipated even once. Closest thing
| to a "miracle cure" I've ever encountered.
|
| We're all vegetarians and do pretty well on fiber, but increasing
| my daughter's insoluble fiber intake when she was little was
| difficult, and resulted only in more bloating. But a little
| magnesium, whatever the mechanism, fixed her right up.
| rpmisms wrote:
| > We're all vegetarians and do pretty well on fiber
|
| Thank you for not making your kids be vegan. It's extremely
| hard to get kids proper nutrients on a vegan diet.
|
| Related: Milk has good magnesium content, more so if grass-fed.
| If you can get raw milk from a local small farm, it's worth it.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| I've imposed some dietary restrictions on my kids, but
| they're mostly glycemic in nature.
|
| - No sugary drinks; absolutely no soda pop, ever, and very
| little fruit juice, which is really no better than pop.
|
| - No sugary breakfasts. Breakfast cereal is fucking poison,
| especially the sweetened varieties.
|
| - No kids-menu food. When we eat out, they've always ordered
| off the adult menu. No pizza, chicken nuggets, mac-n-cheese,
| french fries, PB&J, grilled cheese on white bread, etc.
|
| Everywhere I look I see people who have let their kids turn
| into kids-menu kids-- kids who tolerate only pizza, deep
| fried food, breakfast cereal, etc. And everywhere I look now,
| I see fat kids and teens with the beginnings of diabetes,
| hypertension, and heart disease. Any pediatrician will gladly
| talk about the growing crisis of metabolic syndrome in kids.
|
| My kids went vegetarian completely of their own accord,
| likely copying me, but they've stuck with it. The main thing
| is that they've always eaten what we eat. It took a little
| training, but their tastes developed rapidly (as all kids'
| do) and from a young age they could enjoy a full range of
| healthy adult food with few very few aversions.
|
| For example, my youngest still doesn't love blue cheese, but
| she can tolerate it. My older teen eats blue cheese from a
| bowl like ice cream.
| rpmisms wrote:
| And you are a responsible parent for doing that.
|
| I have a friend who was raised on a kids-menu diet, and the
| poor guy still doesn't like burgers or steak. I'm working
| on introducing him to the good stuff, but the damage has
| been done.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > Magnesium deficiency can be attributed to common dietary
| practices, medications, and farming techniques, along with
| estimates that the mineral content of vegetables has declined by
| as much as 80-90% in the last 100 years.
|
| This is why, when people defend GMOs with the argument that we've
| been genetically modifying plants and animals for hundreds of
| years by selective breeding, that I don't think that argument
| leads to the conclusions they're looking for which is that its
| all perfectly harmless.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Most anti-GMO sentiments I encountered are appealing to nature.
| In which case pointing out that it's more of the same is a
| valid response.
|
| There might be other arguments against GMOs, like the one you
| put forth, that require different responses.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| What does this have to do with GMOs though?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| But it does help focus the discussion on whether the changes
| are harmful, away from "it's a change, and change is bad".
| guerrilla wrote:
| Change in complex system is risky. Some people are risk
| averse.
| kadoban wrote:
| Is lack of change in complex systems safe? I'd guess it's
| more that complex systems are inherently risky.
| lamontcg wrote:
| No, its deployed as a club to argue that all change is good.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| The BBC more or less episode with James Wong is making me wonder
| if this is true (shorter summary of what James said on the
| podcast:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/984708381507276... )
|
| Anyway, from the paper here:
|
| >> with estimates that vegetables have dropped magnesium levels
| by 80-90% in the U.S. (Figure 2) and the UK [11,12,13,32,33]
|
| Reference 11 doesn't support this claim.
|
| Ref 12 doesn't directly mention Mg but does say some nutrients
| have dropped between 5-40% which is NOT 80-90%
|
| Ref 13 does mention mg specifically on page 3 but states under
| 20%.
|
| ...
|
| I think i'm being fleeced by this paper.
| jcoq wrote:
| Looked into this myself and you're absolutely correct.
| Reference 11 doesn't even come close.
| esquivalience wrote:
| From the source: "The high rate of magnesium deficiency now
| postulated [5,6,7,8] can be attributed in part to a steady
| decline in general magnesium content in cultivated fruits and
| vegetables, a reflection of the observed depletion of magnesium
| in soil over the past 100 years [11,12,13]. A report to Congress
| was already sounding the alarm as far back as the 1930s, pointing
| out the paucity of magnesium, and other minerals, in certain
| produce [14]."
|
| The easiest of those references to link to is
| https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1... :
|
| "Three kinds of evidence point toward declines of some nutrients
| in fruits and vegetables available in the United States and the
| United Kingdom: 1) early studies of fertilization found inverse
| relationships between crop yield and mineral concentrations--the
| widely cited "dilution effect"; 2) three recent studies of
| historical food composition data found apparent median declines
| of 5% to 40% or more in some minerals in groups of vegetables and
| perhaps fruits; one study also evaluated vitamins and protein
| with similar results; and 3) recent side-by-side plantings of
| low- and high-yield cultivars of broccoli and grains found
| consistently negative correlations between yield and
| concentrations of minerals and protein, a newly recognized
| genetic dilution effect. "
| Zenst wrote:
| I was wondering what foods would have high levels of magnisium
| and
| https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/15650-magnesi...
|
| Looking at those foods and daily intake, I'm wondering how many
| people are not hitting their daily intake.
| noodlenotes wrote:
| I wonder if there's a relationship to the obesity epidemic,
| especially since it's not just humans that are getting larger
| but also lab animals, pets, and wild animals living close to
| humans [1]. What if we're compelled to eat more calories when
| we're not getting enough nutrients in our diets? This would
| impact any animals consuming lower quality fruits and
| vegetables.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2010.628
| nerdponx wrote:
| Anecdotally, this has been my personal experience. I have
| gone through phases of my life where I ate a lot of junk
| food. I would feel constantly hungry during those phases,
| until I ate something nutritious, green and easily-
| digestible, like steamed broccoli or green peas.
| anfilt wrote:
| Like that could be contributor, but also don't forget how
| many calories some refined and processed foods can have also
| while either being sweet or fatty/savory.
|
| Does sound like interesting hypothesis though.
| [deleted]
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > I wonder if there's a relationship to the obesity epidemic
|
| You don't have to wonder. Read the inside story of that
| epidemic in this beautifully researched history by Michael
| Moss:
|
| Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giats Hooked Us by Michael Moss
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15797397-salt-sugar-fat
| alaffere wrote:
| > _What if we 're compelled to eat more calories when we're
| not getting enough nutrients in our diets?_
|
| From what is starting to be known about hunger drives from
| animal studies [1] this is essentially correct.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221457
| 451...
| jonplackett wrote:
| It's not just vegetables either - chickens are a lot less
| nutritious than they used to be.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2005/may/15/foodand...
| changoplatanero wrote:
| When my grandparents told me that chicken tastes less good
| nowadays I thought they were just old and had lost their
| sense of taste. Actually they were right though.
| spfzero wrote:
| People I know who grew up in Asia remark consistently that
| the chicken here in the US is larger, softer, and
| tasteless. They are used to smaller chickens and toothier
| meat with a stronger taste.
|
| It is probably breeding practices here, to promote
| attributes other than taste.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It is probably breeding practices here, to promote
| attributes other than taste.
|
| That's a factor, but also stronger flavor isn't
| considered a positive thing in chicken in the US.
| stavros wrote:
| Everything tastes less good nowadays. When I was a kid, we
| used to eat tomatoes like apples, just biting into them,
| maybe with some salt. Nowadays supermarket tomatoes taste
| like water.
| helge9210 wrote:
| Engineered genetic mutation that grants supermarket
| tomatoes mechanical properties of a tennis ball and
| making them always red (instead of normal green to red
| transition) is also responsible for the lack of normal
| tomatoe flavor.
| C-x_C-f wrote:
| Anecdotally (though studies like [1] seem to confirm
| this), I've found that tomatoes are quite sensitive to
| transportation and storage. To me, garden tomatoes taste
| fantastic; the ones at the local farmers' market taste
| pretty good too; supermarket tomatoes are only good for
| making tomato sauce. I wonder whether the tomatoes you
| ate as a kid had been transported over long distances.
|
| Also anecdotally, I haven't found any other fruit or
| vegetable that exhibits such a drastic contrast. Maybe
| persimmons, but I haven't had that many supermarket
| persimmons. For most fruits and veggies, I've found the
| supermarket ones tend to taste roughly the same as garden
| grown ones. Indeed, sometimes I prefer the supermarket
| version, e.g. for apples.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S16
| 58077X2...
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's because they are picked green, stored cold, and
| artificially ripened with ethylene gas.
| akiselev wrote:
| The varieties you see in a supermarket are optimized for
| industrial farming and yes, transportation is one of the
| things they optimize for. The tomato specifically,
| though, lost most of it's flavor purely for aesthetic
| reasons [1]. Consumers have an image of the perfectly
| round red tomato so all the farmers optimized for it,
| losing at least one critical gene that contributed
| significantly to flavor and sugar production.
|
| Those varieties have mostly out competed everything else
| in farmers markets and supermarkets but if you buy seeds
| online from specialized stores and grow them yourself,
| you can unlock an entire universe of flavor. Personally,
| I've never found a supermarket fruit or vegetable that
| tastes as good as the ones I have grown or eaten in
| countries with less industrialized farming, with the
| exception of designer varieties like cotton candy grapes,
| cosmic crisp apples, or sumo mandarins (though their
| quality is rapidly falling as they go from coddled
| breeding labs to industrial scale). I don't think I've
| had a "proper" strawberry, blueberry, or raspberry since
| I moved to the United States.
|
| [1]
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/336/6089/1711.full
| stavros wrote:
| You may be right, I recently (a few years ago) ate garden
| tomatoes that my mom had planted and they also tasted
| amazing, so that tracks.
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| Tomatoes are particularly egregious. There are still
| tomatoes that taste good, but you won't find them in most
| grocery stores. Scientists are working on some genetic
| engineering to make a tomato that's mechanically strong
| enough to withstand commercial growing and shipping, but
| still tastes good. In the meantime, you have to search
| for real tomatoes at specialty grocery stores and
| farmers' markets.
|
| https://www.wired.co.uk/article/why-do-uk-tomatoes-taste-
| bad
| simplify wrote:
| This article writes under the assumption that fat is bad for
| you (high fat = junk food), a false idea that still permeates
| much of society today.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I love magnesium pills! I take two in the morning. It relieves
| brain fog, reduces lower back pain and makes you shit. (Those
| three are totally related, btw)
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Sounds like a soil engineering problem!
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Can it be solved by simply adding more magnesium to the
| fertilizer?
| DistressedDrone wrote:
| I suspect it can be solved in many different ways, but when
| you sell food by the pound, it's much more advantageous to
| distribute your limited quantity of nutrients in as much
| produce as possible.
|
| This seems really, really hard to regulate.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Frankly, it seems to me like it's rather relatively simple
| thing to regulate. We already mandate things like adding
| vitamins to milk or flour. Extending this to vegetables
| really doesn't seem like big problem: farmers would just
| have to buy magnesium-enriched fertilizer.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Why pour it in your diet when you can put it in a pill to
| eat directly along with 30 other vitamins?
| justinator wrote:
| Vitamin absorption via pills doesn't seem to work very
| well.
| bumby wrote:
| Diet is quite more complicated that just taking a
| multivitamin, unfortunately. Some nutrients compete for
| absorption (Zn and Ca, for example) and shouldn't be
| taken together. There's also debate about the need for
| phytonutrients that also come along with plants. The data
| is mixed enough that the US Preventative Services Task
| Force isn't yet willing to endorse supplements as a means
| of reducing cardiovascular or cancer risk.
|
| My personal opinion is that the human body may be too
| complex to say we fully understand a seemingly
| straightforward solution like just taking a multivitamin.
| We evolved over an awfully long time before
| industrialized agriculture and supplements. I'm not
| trying to demonize them because they have solved the
| number 1 concern humans had for the last 10,000 years of
| not getting enough calories, but I think it's wise to
| temper the hubris of thinking we understand the human
| body well enough to expect a simple fix from a pill.
| spfzero wrote:
| For all of the things we know are present in food and
| necessary for nutrition, I suspect there are still a lot
| we don't know of.
|
| Biodynamic farmed food seems like the best bet if you
| have access to it. At least you're avoiding the worst of
| the mega-farming shortcuts.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Then the issue is to remember to take the pill. Much
| easier to forget than to forget to eat.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Another issue is that the effect of a nutrient can
| sometimes differ based on what it is consumed alongside.
| Pills are not necessarily as effective as supplemented
| food.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Also, can be hard to reach out to everyone and let them
| know that they need these pills. Many might not know what
| "magnesium" is?
|
| It's simpler to add iodine to salt -- and maybe magnesium
| to the soil
| slipframe wrote:
| Because anybody with sense prefers eating food to popping
| pills.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| This is an instance of the orthogonality thesis, by the
| way. Your assertion is that "increased ability to think"
| should cause "increased desire to eat Traditional Food
| (tm)", which is no more true than the assertion
| "increased ability to think causes increased desire to
| consume Renaissance art". Desires are, by and large,
| orthogonal to the generalised ability to achieve desires
| (the ability which you label "sense"). Some desires are
| not orthogonal - the desire to survive and be healthy,
| for example, which is instrumental in achieving many
| other desires - but to argue your assertion on those
| grounds, you must prove that Traditional Food is
| sufficiently dramatically better for achieving some
| instrumental goal.
| krastanov wrote:
| Come on, this is a bit too aggressive of a statement. On
| the other hand, there is some anecdotal evidence that
| nutrients in pills are not absorbed by our gut as well as
| more "naturally" delivered nutrients.
| slipframe wrote:
| _" Why do we need to drink water anyway? Why can't we all
| get our fluids from an IV?"_
| zepto wrote:
| Why stop there? If you are getting fluids via IV, may as
| well add in nutrients.
| bbarnett wrote:
| This sounds grand, but I Googled, and couldn't find a
| provider/source, where do you buy?
| dghughes wrote:
| I wouldnt say anecdotal nutrient bioavailavilty is quite
| well-known and studied.
| ullevaal wrote:
| When reading comments like this, which are good-natured,
| and a natural response, do you ever think "wouldn't be
| great if we as humans had more trust built into our
| systems, and people actually making a best-effort attempt
| at honouring that trust"? Instead of everything being a
| scam until proven otherwise, and even then the scam is
| probably just one level deeper in what triggered the
| interest in that product in the first place.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Terrible as it sounds trust is in computer terms a gaping
| security vulnerability. If anothet clever actor can take
| advantage of it they can gain all sorts of things at cost
| to you.
|
| Distrust is like an immune system - it has costs and can
| occasionally hurt you but it developed and is ubiquitous
| for a reason.
| ullevaal wrote:
| This comment was triggered by the essay "The Story of a
| Generation in Seven Scams" by Jia Tolentino in the book
| Trick Mirror, the essay also being available in audio
| form online. So the scam here was to get you to google
| that book, I wonder if my scam will convert anyone?
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Sadly human nature is what it is. It seems like it would
| take a long time for evolution to make humans not
| naturally lazy, greedy, jealous and xenophobic. It's also
| not clear that, even in a world where resources are
| abundant, there would be any evolutionary pressure to not
| be this way.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Why regulate when you can market? If I knew that a brand of
| zucchini had high mineral content and flavor, I'd buy it at
| a premium
| rdedev wrote:
| Veritasium did a video on this topic of vegetables becoming
| less nutritious
|
| https://youtu.be/Yl_K2Ata6XY
|
| He argues that the increased CO2 in the atmosphere is making
| the plants grow faster. This is making the plants produce
| more carbs wet to other nutrients, making the plant less
| nutritious compared to the past
| wincy wrote:
| Interesting. I recently started using Magnesium Glycinate as a
| supplement and I feel it truly changed my life, not
| exaggerating. I've suffered from chronic general anxiety for
| most of my teens and adult life. Magnesium has completely
| cleared this up, things I thought were just part of my
| personality (being anxious and other associated things) were
| actually due to a chronic magnesium deficiency. I just have to
| make sure I get a decent amount of calcium in my diet (via
| canned mackerel mostly) to avoid muscle twitches from the
| magnesium.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Did the glycinate formulation have a markedly better effect
| than more common alternatives?
| cwkoss wrote:
| Ive read people recommend glycinate because they find that
| salt has less laxative effects than the others
| wincy wrote:
| Not really sure, I heard that magnesium citrate can have
| laxative effects. I used to use cal-mag which helped
| anxiety but it never really "clicked" in my head that it
| was helping, I used it for muscle cramps.
| specialist wrote:
| Ditto. I'm using mg orotate for that reason. Haven't
| tried mg glycinate.
| lk0nga wrote:
| The RDA on Magnesium is almost never there on multivitamin
| formulas and so should be added separatedly, I can't really
| feel that (significantly) it helps for anxiety or jittery
| though, same goes for theanine, in fact theanine makes my
| jittery/anxiety worse. Best for jittery/anxiety is taurine,
| at around 2 grams per each 100mg of caffeine, YMMV.
|
| I've noted overall anxiety got noteacible better when I added
| DHEA, I'd guess due to changes in the cortisol to DHEA ratio.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| I have been heavy dosing magnesium (glycinate, citrate) for
| years and am still a nervous wreck. Your mileage may vary.
| Samin100 wrote:
| I've recently switched to magnesium L-Threonate which has
| shown to be far more effective at being absorbed by the
| brain and I've found myself far less anxious in social
| situations.
|
| The L-Threonate compound was developed at MIT specifically
| for better brain absorption. Source: https://dspace.mit.edu
| /bitstream/handle/1721.1/96066/Slutsky...
| OnACoffeeBreak wrote:
| I found that mag l-threonate helps me fall asleep after
| an anxious afternoon/night but I'm groggy in the morning.
| Also, I've read anecdotal reports that after a couple of
| weeks of regular use, the effect flattens out (sorry, too
| lazy to search for those reports) and one has to take a
| break for the effect to return. Have you noticed anything
| along those lines?
| fasteo wrote:
| You may want to add theanine to the mix in a 2:1 mag:theanine
| ratio. It will improve you anxiety even further
| TrevorFancher wrote:
| How much and which brand do you take?
| colsandurz wrote:
| Not sure what he's doing but this should help:
|
| http://fellrnr.com/wiki/Magnesium
| wincy wrote:
| I use this[0] not every day because I'll get muscle spasms
| unless I eat a lot of calcium, but a few times a week seems
| to make a big difference.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZD7R4RF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api
| _glt_...
| bmuon wrote:
| If you're getting muscle spams, are you really
| "supplementing"?
| s5300 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Just like if you take some extra Zinc (30mg-50mg
| picolinate) for a variety of reasons - you have to take a
| bit of copper with it, or eventually your copper supplies
| will be drained and start causing issues.
| wincy wrote:
| I'm not 100% sure if it was zinc but I supplemented zinc
| for like a week then had the worst constipation of my
| entire life. Like, wife had to run to the pharmacy to
| resolve it while I cried in agony sort of bad. So yeah,
| be careful with how you supplement!
| s5300 wrote:
| I'd like to hope most people are careful in how they
| supplement, and do due diligence as necessary.
|
| Unfortunately, I know how people actually operate. It's
| quite depressing.
| rblatz wrote:
| Weird I take magnesium to prevent muscle cramps. I don't
| supplement calcium at all.
| Mirioron wrote:
| Should vitamin and mineral levels be checked during yearly
| checkups as standard practice? It seems like it would give us a
| lot of useful data and help people live healthier lives.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I know Weston A. Price is a bit of a controversial topic, but
| his work does show the demineralization of the western world
| quite effectively. I think supplementation alone is simply a
| patch on the larger issue, which is the degradation of our land
| and farming practices.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Vitamin D deficiency is fairly common, it would make sense to
| check for it.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965771
| scandox wrote:
| And less tasty. One of my in-laws started an organic garden
| solely to supply a local hotel down the country and she gave us a
| big box of vegetables when we were leaving after a visit.
|
| It was very revealing. Everything she gave us had distinct and
| powerful tastes that were blatantly lacking from their
| supermarket equivalents (including the ones that say Organic on
| the label). The garlic blew my mind: I used the usual number of
| cloves in a recipe and ... well ... we were reeking.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| When we moved to the Bay Area, I started going to the farmers
| markets and was blown away by the quality of the vegetables. Peas
| grown at Iacopi Farms in Half Moon Bay were crisp and sweet.
| Zuckerman's Farm grew a special kind of squash bred specifically
| for flavor (honeynut squash). Fresh plums pulled off of trees in
| San Francisco were just bursting with juice. Mashed potatoes made
| from La Ratte potatoes. And Delta asparagus -- wow.
|
| Now that we've left the Bay Area, I find that I'm even more
| disappointed by grocery store vegetables than I used to be. The
| vegetables are dry, wilted, flavorless -- repugnant even. No
| wonder children don't want to eat them. Seriously considering
| setting up a miniature green house and growing my own stuff at
| this point.
| mycall wrote:
| Vertical farming is replacing green houses these days.
| icedistilled wrote:
| More people should grow some food in their yard. There's quite
| a few benefits to it in addition to getting a small amount of
| produce like better understanding of natural cycles and more of
| a connection to the environment that sustains us.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Steve Solomon is the go-to guy for how to grow nutrient-dense
| backyard produce.
| kossTKR wrote:
| A good example of this is "good" Tomatoes versus the slimy,
| gooey, tasteless thing you find in supermarkets. It's like a
| completely different vegetable.
|
| Personally, i feel like something is "unbalanced" or missing in
| me as i get these flashes of "waking up" not to some euphoria
| or bliss but just clarity that feels "normal" that sometimes
| lasts for hours.
|
| I'm pretty sure most people are deficient in various "hard to
| measure" nutrients - i myself for example have felt completely
| changed after megadosing B12, but as with most supplements the
| effects rarely lasts. The culprit i suspect is mostly soil
| depletion and diet that despite being more varied often is
| grown from "diluted" soil, and with most calories from
| incredibly refined and therefore nutrientlesss fats and
| carbohydrates.
|
| Gut biome is probably another important mirror aspect in this
| system.
| ferdowsi wrote:
| You were previously buying family-farm vegetables and switched
| to industrialized, grocery store produce. You can definitely
| walk into a Safeway in SF and get garbage produce.
|
| Hopefully your local ecosystem supports some native farming
| that you can make use of.
| nine_k wrote:
| Check if a farmer market is held near where you live. It may be
| seasonal, but it's still better than dull vegs around the year.
| VLM wrote:
| Around here its the same brands and same cardboard boxes at
| the farmers market, the upscale supermarket, and the organic
| supermarket, although they mark the price up at the farmers
| market because of the extra labor and substantial fees the
| market charges, also its sort of a hipster tax. In addition
| to paying to park at the farmers market.
| yumraj wrote:
| Which farmers market? Not all farmers markets here are equal,
| so curious.
| mahgnous wrote:
| And people think artificial meat is gonna be good for them, LOL.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| one big potential problem with simply adding magnesium to
| fertilizers is that its is extremely hydrophilic and will lock to
| water and become impenetrable. My suspicion is that one of the
| larger issues that aren't even discussed is the role of fungi in
| the soil. Usually there is a symbiotic relationship between
| plants and fungi whereby the fungi breaks down minerals in the
| soil and hands off these precious ions to the plant in exchange
| for sugars. By giving readily digestible nutrients to the plants
| via artificial fertilizers, we rob the fungi of its role. The
| plants stop working with the fungi and they soon die off. This in
| turn robs us of nutrients the plant would have attained as a
| result of the symbiotic relationship. Magnesium being among them.
| seaorg wrote:
| If you put a whole cow into a meat grinder, the resulting paste
| contains every single micro and macro nutrient required by the
| human body, in their most bioavailable forms, many of which are
| completely absent in vegetarian and vegan diets.
|
| For millions of years, humans ate ruminant animals who's herds
| they followed around, and almost nothing else.
|
| People who eat nothing but ruminant meat and organs become slim
| even in advanced age, ripped without going to the gym, regain
| hair, lose their psoriasis, feel mentally sharper, and see their
| autoimmune problems go away. And couples who do it get pregnant
| immediately after failing for years. It's all documented on
| meatrx success stories section.
|
| Two doctors have now ate nothing but meat, animal fat and organs
| for two years and posted their test results. CAC scores of zero
| despite high LDL. Their hearts are in perfect health.
|
| I'm not breaking guidelines so don't flag me.
| objclxt wrote:
| > For millions of years, humans ate ruminant animals who's
| herds they followed around, and almost nothing else.
|
| This is just wrong. Nearly all archeological evidence suggests
| humans were hunter-gatherers. They hunted (meat) and they
| gathered (fruit, vegetables, nuts, etc). Hunter gathering
| represents about 90% of human history prior to the invention of
| agriculture.
|
| > And couples who do it get pregnant immediately after failing
| for years. It's all documented on meatrx success stories
| section.
|
| Ah yes, because the company _selling the diet plan_ has no
| incentive not to mislead you with highly selective research.
| seaorg wrote:
| It's not wrong at all. The amount of edible carbohydrates we
| ate then was basically nothing compared to the astounding
| amount of carbohydrates we eat now. We eat almost nothing
| else. Our bodies aren't meant to be flooded with
| carbohydrates all the time, and chronic disease and diabetes
| is the result. Our ancestors didn't have diabetes and it's
| becoming clear that exercise doesn't fill the gap.
|
| There is no diet plan. They don't sell you anything that you
| need in order to do the diet. And it's just video testimony,
| long interviews from all kinds of people who experience
| things like sudden pregnancy. I have looked through all of
| this and practically everything else out there about this and
| it's not a scam. I have never believed in or practiced a diet
| before in my life. I have never fallen for a scam in my
| entire life. It's real.
| klyrs wrote:
| > I have never believed in or practiced a diet before in my
| life. I have never fallen for a scam in my entire life.
|
| That second sentence alone is a bright red flag with
| sequins and bells on. But in this context... if you don't
| believe in this red meat diet, why are you pitching it so
| hard?
| rtkwe wrote:
| > humans ate ruminant animals who's herds they followed
| around, and almost nothing else.
|
| This is the incorrect part. Meat was never the sole part of
| human or any human ancestors diet, for starters we don't
| have the teeth for it. The rest of the diet may have been
| lower carb than what we eat now but it was not meat only.
| seaorg wrote:
| Fair enough. We strip fat out of everything now. Fat free
| this and fat free that. Red meat is demonized.it's a part
| of our evolutionarily consistent diet...
| rpmisms wrote:
| Fat is really good for you, as long as it's fat you can
| find in nature. For example, the fat below the skin on a
| cut of salmon. Utterly delicious, super healthy, and will
| make your brain work better.
| 988747 wrote:
| Some scientists seem to disagree [1] They theory is
| basically that for the first few millions years of
| evolution we were eating mostly meat, and switched to
| more plant-based diet when we ran out of big animals to
| hunt, which was quite recently.
|
| [1] https://www.livescience.com/humans-were-super-
| predators.html
| robotresearcher wrote:
| > I have never fallen for a scam in my entire life
|
| Your username...
| seaorg wrote:
| I've never subscribed to any religion of any kind. I was
| watching a documentary about Scientology right before I
| made this account. Im surprised anyone at all has even
| noticed the connection.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| I noticed, and enjoyed the irony of the username-
| statement combination.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > For millions of years, humans ate ruminant animals who's
| herds they followed around, and almost nothing else.
|
| This is not supported by the historical evidence. Please see
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691160535/ev...
| for a popular-press telling.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Two doctors have now ate nothing but meat, animal fat and
| organs for two years and posted their test results
|
| I see your n=2 "study" and raise the risk of colorectal cancer;
| an n=900 study with plausible causative link.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27655186
| seaorg wrote:
| Your proof that I'm wrong is some garbage epidemiology study
| about colon cancer?
| klyrs wrote:
| No, I did not prove you wrong. I highlighted a risk that's
| implicated for the diet you're hawking. Maybe you'd enjoy
| living with a colostomy bag; no judgements here.
|
| What about that study makes you say that it's "garbage?"
| celticninja wrote:
| It's garbage when you disagree with it and solid science
| when 2 people who claim to be doctors post something on a
| web forum?
| draw_down wrote:
| Nobody said anything about vegans, come on
| carbocation wrote:
| Without commenting on the veracity of your claims (which I
| don't really believe, and because they aren't sourced, it would
| require a ton of effort), your writing style is very
| compelling.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Do you purchase a lot of products you see advertised?
|
| GP's comment reads as a cheesy infomercial sales pitch, full
| of confidently stated BS.
| seaorg wrote:
| The incredible thing is that there is no way for me to not
| make it seem like a scam. I try. It's not a scam. Just eat
| a cow.
| seaorg wrote:
| Hey carbo. I'm trying to make progress in biochemistry and
| pathology in a timely manner so that I have more to offer in
| these threads. And sometime soon I'm going to have references
| to mechanistic justifications. It's just a lot for one guy.
| Can you imagine if you were convinced that you had the
| formula for snake oil and then everybody dismissed you for
| promoting snake oil? It's like a bad dream.
| seaorg wrote:
| Doctor Paul Saladino has been very public about his test
| results, including CAC score of zero, and I consider that a
| source. Same with doctor Shawn Baker.
|
| And I made reference to Meatrx which is indeed a source. It
| contains hundreds of video testimonies that will provide any
| discerning viewer with enough evidence to motivate a proper
| interventional study. This topic is blacklisted in academia
| and there aren't any good studies on it.
|
| And if you investigate the mechanistic underpinnings of all
| of this yourself, crack open a biochemistry book, you will
| see very clearly that something is going on. We need proper
| interventional studies.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| I can't comment on parent due to flag, I'm studying this for
| my wife and the relationship to autoimmune issues.
|
| It's not just ruminant, but ruminant meat eating appropriate
| food. Grass fed beef versus grain fed is fascinating.
| Furthermore, how we raise ruminants is important for the
| ecosystem. When I tried carnivore diet, I can attest that the
| benefits are real but so is the hungering addiction from
| processed foods. I'm currently detaching myself from sugar
| which is... hard.
|
| I can't wait for properly controlled studies on this subject.
| There is great anecdotal evidence https://benjamindavidsteele
| .wordpress.com/2020/01/10/multipl... which warrants proper
| studies.
| seaorg wrote:
| I don't see a flag... people flag my comments because they
| are offended by eating meat. It's fucking unbelievable.
| Especially if I'm right and it's an important medical
| advancement.
|
| Yes, grass fed is necessary because of the omega 3 to 6
| ratio. This is even more important if you are targeting
| autoimmune. And don't sleep on the organs, I have found
| that those are important to immune-tangential things as
| well.
|
| Another note: you don't get dehydrated because of ketosis
| and glycolysis. You get dehydrated because you stop making
| insulin, insulin tells your body to hold on to water. The
| only other thing that does that is sodium. Not potassium,
| sodium. On this diet you are replacing insulin with sodium.
| Make sure to have very high fat and at least 5 grams of
| sodium chloride per day.
| mponw wrote:
| Grass fed is not necessary. Please check out "Sacred Cow"
| (https://www.sacredcow.info/book) for the latest
| research.
|
| I (and many others) agree with your recommendation on
| sodium.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| Can you give a quick summary of why grass fed is not
| necessary. I can imagine a spectrum from grass fed
| pasture all the way to specialized diets with hay and
| grain, but this feels like an in-between to all corn fed
| beef.
| [deleted]
| monetus wrote:
| The advice you are giving is interesting but
| irresponsible considering how different peoples'
| digestive systems are. I would downvote your original
| comment for that and for being off topic, but I view the
| downvote as a way of organizing comments. Again, this is
| interesting, but you are pitching a foot-gun to people.
| seaorg wrote:
| It isn't irresponsible. Nobody is going to hurt
| themselves with a carnivore diet. I have tested it on
| myself so how could I be irresponsible for getting the
| word out about something I have done to my own body?
| monetus wrote:
| Thanks for testing it first. Using an analogy, your gut
| may be an apple and while some other people have oranges.
|
| My hunch is that you could push that analogy further with
| something more hyperbolic - the gut is fascinating.
| rpmisms wrote:
| > The advice you are giving is interesting but
| irresponsible considering how different peoples'
| digestive systems are
|
| This is fair, but you have to admit the same statement
| applies to evangelical vegans.
| monetus wrote:
| Definitely. Osteoporosis is no joke. I just didn't see
| any of those comments. And gah, no one likes hearing
| someone yell murderer at a dude eating a sandwhich. It
| just isn't nice. The animal is already dead, let it
| become sustenance. But anyways, take your gut health
| seriously. It affects your personality, like some other
| commenters have mentioned.
| hjek wrote:
| Most of the B12 from cow flesh is from supplements given to the
| cows.
| seaorg wrote:
| Grass fed liver is high in that and many other things and
| they aren't given any supplement as far as I know.
| lkschubert8 wrote:
| Definitely going to need to source some of those claims.
| seaorg wrote:
| The sad truth is that I don't have an interventional,
| randomized study to show you. I could tell you to do your own
| research but that's not very convincing either. All I can say
| is that if you or someone you know has symptoms that could be
| improved by a carnivore diet, just try it for a month. That's
| the best proof I can offer.
|
| As soon as academia gets around to conducting a study, I will
| make sure it's posted.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| You're not wrong at all, and animals are an important part of
| the ecosystem. It's kind of implied that the reason vegetables
| are less nutritious now is because we don't use manure for
| fertilizer as often.
| dlsa wrote:
| Also they often don't do crop rotation to balance out the
| soil. Part of that is to run animals over the land for that
| all important fertilizer. Also don't let the soil rest.
| celticninja wrote:
| Isn't that a bit like survivor bias though? People who are on
| meatrx (not familiar with the site at all) are already
| predisposed to thinking that this is the best thing to do, so
| all the positive things that occur they are attributing to
| their meat diet. What about the people that didn't get pregnant
| or who didn't regain their hair? I assume they are not posting
| about this outcome.
|
| I think some sort of peer reviewed study would be a better
| source of truth than anecdotal evidence on a site that (I am
| assuming) promotes meat eating.
|
| I am an omnivore, so I am not disagreeing because I am against
| meat.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Who would fund such a study? There's no money in it.
|
| Food politics is awful and leads people to make terrible
| decisions. People develop health problems due to pursuing
| plant only diets (stuff like vitamin B deficiency, anemia,
| etc).
|
| Many overall health issues can be helped by teaching people
| to eat smaller, balanced meals and less focus on extreme
| diets.
| vzidex wrote:
| 1-year vegan here, no new health issues to report. I
| supplement vitamins D and B12 and omega-3 fats.
| rpmisms wrote:
| There are people for whom a vegan diet works. You seem to
| be one of them. I tried it a few times, and no matter
| what I supplemented, I would lose weight rapidly. I
| understand that it can turn into a moral argument as
| well, except that I kill fewer animals than you to eat.
| Responsibly-grown meat is less detrimental to local
| ecosystems than vegetables.
| seaorg wrote:
| It isn't survivor bias when the giant red rashes all over
| your body go away after nothing else has worked your entire
| life and your doctor says that for that to happen is
| impossible. It's overlooked science.
|
| But there could still be survivor bias in there to some
| degree. We need proper interventional studies.
| [deleted]
| celticninja wrote:
| My wife has psoriasis, she has recently (ish) switched to a
| plant based diet, her psoriasis has cleared up too. She
| isn't making claims that her change in diet fixed it.
| Mirioron wrote:
| Maybe it's _a change_ in the diet that helped? Not a
| change to a specific, but rather a change in general.
| celticninja wrote:
| Very possible, but diet changes usually go hand in hand
| with other lifestyle changes too. It could be any one of
| them or a combination, and it can also be person
| specific.
| seaorg wrote:
| If she is plant based now, she could have only been SAD
| before? This is the reason why vegans and vegetarians
| think their diets are good, because literally anything
| besides the SAD is an improvement. She is a reduction in
| symptoms because of a reduction of sugar and other
| things. Put her on carnivore for a month and if she
| doesn't experience anything I've described then I'll eat
| my hat.
| celticninja wrote:
| SAD? She has always had a good diet with low sugar
| intake, her change was literally to cut out meat from her
| existing diet.
| dlsa wrote:
| I can't say nice things about carnivore diets but Keto has
| worked out very well for me. You couldn't pay me to resume
| "normal" or "typical" carb consumption guidelines. Blood work
| for multiple factors, weight and many other metrics are all
| steadily going into their correct ranges for me now.
|
| The entire "food pyramid" is irrelevant and, based on my
| experience, utterly wrong. When you're bored just dig into the
| science behind it. Its a mess. So is the whole "saturated fat
| is bad for your heart" thing. The science behind that is even
| worse.
|
| Get baseline medical tests done. Do your intervention and track
| the results. Get regular tests from a doctor. The difference
| can be significant.
| seaorg wrote:
| I whole heartedly agree. I have also had life changing
| results with keto. Any carnivore diet I do is ketogenic.
| mponw wrote:
| Thanks for sharing - this would be easier to read if you didn't
| make it sound like everyone should be doing this all of the
| time. Yes, a carnivore diet will probably bring lots of
| benefits to many people. At the same time I want to remain open
| to other lifestyles and tweaks which maybe don't fit into just
| one category. I want to eat out of choice, not out of habit.
| seaorg wrote:
| If you don't have health problems or your health problems
| don't bother you then there's no reason to eat this way.
| Eating nothing but meat sucks. It's a medical treatment, not
| really a diet. Only to be used if it's necessary.
| papito wrote:
| The must-read book The Dorito Effect covered this years ago. De-
| nutrification of food has been decades in the making.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That's right. If you want magnesium you need to eat _Cool
| Ranch_ Doritos ... they have twice as much magnesium as the
| Nacho Cheese variety.
|
| Seriously though a handful of Doritos has as much magnesium as
| a raw carrot. Vegetables just aren't a concentrated source of
| metals. Nuts are more reliable.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| A good article I read on a similar angle:
|
| https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrie...
| mistaken_mouse wrote:
| I was wondering when someone was going to bring up climate
| change. And this article is the only thing that's brought it up
| in this thread so far, meanwhile everyone else seems to be
| talking about taking magnesium pills.
|
| This is just another sign that climate change is making this
| planet uninhabitable for us.
| skymer wrote:
| The paper shows that it is essentially impossible for an adult
| male to get the recommended DI of magnesium (420 mg/day) by
| eating vegetables alone. As far as I can see, the paper does not
| resolve whether that target is too high, or whether it can be
| reached by eating meat or taking supplements.
| cageface wrote:
| Seeds are a great source of magnesium. Pumpkin seeds in
| particular have a lot of it and are inexpensive and tasty.
| skymer wrote:
| The paper says "The highest food sources of magnesium are
| leafy greens (78 mg/serving), nuts (80 mg/serving), and whole
| grains (46 mg/serving)..."
|
| So five servings every day of nuts and/or leafy greens would
| do it, but that doesn't sound like anybody's typical diet.
| duckmysick wrote:
| The same paper also says "[...] foods containing phytates,
| polyphenols and oxalic acid, such as rice and nuts, all
| contribute to magnesium deficiency due to their ability to
| bind magnesium to produce insoluble precipitates, thus
| negatively impacting magnesium availability and
| absorption."
| opportune wrote:
| A typical serving of leafy greens is quite small, an adult
| can easily eat 2-4 servings at a time after they've been
| cooked.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Matter cannot be created, just reformed. There were 100,000
| humans at one point and now there are 7 billion. All that matter
| came from somewhere. To be fair, we have killed a lot of animals
| but also created a lot more in the form of farm animals.
|
| It seems reasonable to me that this is unlikely to be sustainable
| even if we found a way to send humans off planet. Maybe that
| missing magnesium gets pulled out of the soil into crops, then
| into our bellies, and then into a wooden box that sits as far
| away from our arable land as we can get it.
|
| I of course have no scientific background or idea what I'm taking
| about, just a fun pop science theory that came to mind when
| reading this.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I know we're all talking about the supplements we take, which
| fixes the issues for the individual, but what of the actual
| problem ?
|
| I'm starting to feel like the USA is doomed in the long run
| because there's too many corrupt influences in politics and
| science.
|
| We're constantly told x is good for us. Until we all find out it
| really wasn't and now we're in trouble.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| This is awfully technical, but in practical terms: Magnesium
| citrate is yummy. So should we all be taking it or is it useless
| as a substitute for the kind in vegetables?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Magnesium and other minerals don't disappear when consumed, it
| comes out again with sewage. Hence, soil depletion could be
| addressed by turning sewage into fertilizer.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I personally would get ocular migraines pretty
| frequently for years. They started when I was a teenager, but I
| was always told by doctors that it was nothing to worry about.
|
| A few years ago I read about magnesium deficiency and migraines,
| figured it was worth a shot to try supplementing it, and now I
| rarely get those ocular migraines. The only time I get them now
| is when I run out of magnesium supplements, forget to buy more,
| and end up going a few weeks without them.
|
| I really can't say that it's the magnesium, but as long as I'm
| not getting the ocular migraines anymore I'll continue to
| supplement it. A bit of a warning though, it can act as a
| laxative for some people and cause digestive issues. Liquid based
| forms are gentler. Mineral water tends to have high magnesium
| content as well (e.g. Gerolsteiner brand).
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm not arguing against these findings but the whole subject of
| nutrition leaves me frustrated at times.
|
| Ever tried to have 100% daily recommended intake of every
| nutrient? I suspect almost nobody achieves that.
|
| And yet, despite this, and magnesium issues among likely many
| other issues, our species has never lived longer, grown taller,
| survived infancy, etc. more than we have now.
|
| That being said, as we understand and overcome specific issues, I
| imagine we can become even healthier.
| canadianfella wrote:
| I don't understand what your point is.
| _tom_ wrote:
| That was 20 years ago. Life spans are falling, as is height.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| In the United States?
|
| Average height in Central America quite a bit lower than the
| US, which is where most migrants to the US come from.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Not everywhere is USA. In most developed countries, lifespans
| were going up until start of Covid, even though our
| vegetables are watery too.
|
| If I had to guess, I would say that life expectancy in USA
| would start climbing again if all the obese people managed to
| shave, say, 5 points off their BMI. Morbid and supermorbid
| obesity is horribly widespread there.
|
| Of course, it is more likely that the rest of the world
| catches up than that the US slims down.
| opportune wrote:
| Yes, I've done it [0]. It's not too hard, surprisingly
| affordable and not bad-tasting, but you are limited in what you
| can eat, and it takes some research/optimization that I think
| is too much for 90% of people.
|
| First you need to learn how to get complete nutritional info. A
| lot of packaged food does not have a full nutritional profile
| on its packaging, and will omit many vitamins and minerals that
| could even be abundant in that particular food. To work around
| this you should use software like Cronometer [1] that allows
| you to look up nutritional info against various databases. In
| my experience the most comprehensive data source is the NCCDB,
| which has all important vitamins and minerals plus amino acid
| profiles. You can then estimate full nutritional info for most
| whole foods you buy in a store by converting the store-bought
| brand's nutritional info to the NCCDB info. For example if you
| buy oatmeal that says it has 150kcal per 0.5 cup, and the NCCDB
| info says 100kcal per X grams, you track your store-bought
| oatmeal as 1.5X grams per 0.5cup you eat. Note this only works
| for whole/single-ingredient foods, for processed foods with
| multiple ingredients the ratios of ingredients will vary too
| much from product to product for the NCCDB to be useful.
|
| You should also get a food scale so that you can properly
| measure food that has its nutritional info based on mass rather
| than by volume. They're pretty cheap, and you can do
| before/after measurements to make it less tedious to measure
| small things.
|
| Now that you can get full nutritional info for each whole food,
| the rest is an optimization problem across macros, micros,
| amino acids (important if you get a lot of protein from plant-
| bases sources), price/availability, and your personal
| preferences.
|
| Here is an example of a set of foods I eat almost every day
| which gives you a very strong macro/micro base: 80g (1 cup)
| rolled oats, 1 cup unsweetened soy milk, 1 tbsp chia seeds, 1
| container Oikos Triple Zero yogurt, 0.5 oz pumpkin seeds, 0.5
| oz sunflower seeds, 2 mandarin oranges. Try entering that to
| Cronometer, you'll see it's about 800kcal and makes good
| progress in a lot of vitamins and minerals - relevant to the
| article, it already has 84% of the RDA of magnesium. You can
| easily max all other micros by eating a dinner consisting of
| fish, rice and beans, 1 carrot, and some broccoli - and still
| have room left over for additional macros (which will of course
| themselves contain extra micros) if you exercise.
|
| Of course, this is much more cognitive work than the majority
| of people want to put in, and because it only works when you
| buy most of your food in the form of single-ingredients that
| you then prepare yourself, it's not compatible with a lifestyle
| of eating lots of prepared foods or dining out. However once
| you invest the up front time in learning how to do all this,
| it's not very hard to do, especially if you eat a consistent
| diet or combine things into set meals you can mix and match
| [2].
|
| [0] The major exception is I usually don't hit 100% of the RDA
| for dietary Vitamin D. Dietary vitamin D in non-supplemental
| form (as found in milk and milk substitutes) is only present in
| very few foods - oily fish and sun-exposed mushrooms. I do eat
| these somewhat regularly but not enough to hit 100%. But I
| think as long as you get adequate sun exposure it's not a big
| deal.
|
| [1] cronometer.com
|
| [2] For example, in the example set of foods I provided, the
| rolled oats + soy milk + chia seeds are eaten together in the
| form of overnight oats almost every morning.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > Ever tried to have 100% daily recommended intake of every
| nutrient?
|
| I take soylent (that is, a European fork of it) with some
| regularity. Mainly out of laziness, but also I hope that it's
| good for whatever I might have been deficient in when eating
| other foods. It doesn't reduce how healthy I try to eat, but
| with a picky partner and semi-picky self, it probably helps.
| It's also just convenient. Would recommend. The flavored
| versions, that is, not the cardboard variant.
|
| In case anyone wants to get started and isn't sure what to try
| first, some of the variants I tried or know people that tried
| it:
|
| - Jimmy Joy (previously: Joylent), their Plenny Shake powder: I
| like all flavors that I tried (that is chocolate, vanilla,
| strawberry, and banana).
|
| - Nano: not a big fan of it, and neither is friend A that gave
| it to me iirc.
|
| - Huel: friends B and C liked it a lot better than JJ, but the
| Huel Black (B,C didn't try that one) is absolutely disgusting
| to me as well as to friend D. I and friends A,D never tried the
| regular Huel.
|
| Not sure how close each is to the original Soylent, but Joylent
| as a name probably says enough. If you read their blog, the
| updates to the powder seem to be about things like "uptake was
| found not to be great for X so we increased that" and some
| such. I also liked SoylentLife which iirc was closer to Soylent
| than Joylent was at the time, but they went out of business.
|
| One interesting data point is that I am much less vitamin D
| deficient than my girlfriend who doesn't eat any soylent
| variants (she doesn't like any). We eat many meals together /
| the same stuff, and if anything she sees more sunlight than I
| do, so that might say something or nothing. There have also
| been a lot of people that do Jimmy Joy _only_ (eating nothing
| else) for months and then have their blood checked and it comes
| back clean. From what I 've been able to find, it's quite fine
| as a food replacement, but of course you don't have to (and I
| don't) use it that way. Other brands probably have similar
| tests done on them but I didn't look into those as I only ever
| ate them experimentally.
| opportune wrote:
| The issue I have with soylent and some of their competitors
| is that they get to their RDA amounts by directly adding
| vitamins and minerals, some of which have low absorption
| depending on how they are bound - for example zinc and
| magnesium oxides have poor absorption compared to other zinc
| and magnesium salts - and which is not substantially better
| than just taking a multivitamin as far as I can tell.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > they get to their RDA amounts by directly adding vitamins
| and minerals, some of which have low absorption
|
| Do read the blogs from these companies. This is taken into
| account, and updated when new studies come out. From what I
| know, the reference intake was a starting point and they're
| definitely reading the research on real uptake from
| supplements. (Like, even you and I know about uptake
| issues, and it's these people's jobs to know about it.
| They're not stupid.)
|
| Not sure if you saw, since I've been editing the post a
| bit, but also people that eat only this for months still
| have normal blood values, so either they're not measuring
| what they're deficient on or uptake is good. Last I checked
| was a while ago, probably they were on Jimmy Joy powder
| version 1 or maybe 2.
|
| > not substantially better than just taking a multivitamin
|
| I wasn't arguing that eating healthily can't be done via
| other ways. Waterluvian was asking about matching the
| reference intake, this would just be one way to do it. If
| you already do it with supplements or even just a lot of
| vegetables, power to you!
| opportune wrote:
| Oh, I think I started writing my reply before you added
| that. Will take a look.
|
| >Even you and I know about uptake issues, and it's these
| people's jobs to know about it. They're not stupid.
|
| Sure, but their primary goal is to get people to buy
| their product, not necessarily to be as nutritious as
| possible. You could apply this same argument to the
| myriad vitamin and supplement companies which use the
| cheapest possible mineral salts even if the absorption is
| trash.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I never believed in getting nutrients (besides the calories) from
| the actual food. Supplementation is necessary.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| I had sleep issues for years, including periodic limb
| movements[1]. My sleep doctor said to try 500mg plus of magnesium
| supplements. That was probably one of the most significant steps
| to (mostly) resolve the issue.
|
| 1 -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_limb_movement_disor...
|
| PS full TMI story here:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/PelvicFloor/comments/kq089v/my_25_c...
| newsclues wrote:
| Funny, that there is a big push to have plant based meat
| replacements and promotions of vegetarian or vegan diets in the
| media.
| jbotz wrote:
| It stands to reason that meat is probably also becoming less
| nutritious, since the animals are being raised on those same
| less-nutritious plants. Especially with respect to micro-
| nutrients and trace minerals... being short on these causes
| subtle problems which get worse as you age, but the meat
| animals don't get very old anyway, so these deficiencies stay
| hidden.
| canadianfella wrote:
| Why?
| ajharrison wrote:
| What they've done to your meat and dairy is far far worse.
|
| Go vegan, eat your fruits and veggies, and supplement with a
| multivitamin.
| version_five wrote:
| I understand this seems mostly to be about soil depletion. I'm
| curious more generally if vegetables are also less nutritious
| because they are selectively bread for high water content and
| size. For example, its appeared to me for years that you
| vegetables you get on a Subway sandwich must have almost no
| nutritional content. They are all way paler than you'd normally
| see, and super watery.
|
| Thinking about it, I suppose the vegetables may get that way from
| growing in poor soil, and Subway et al just buy those ones
| because they're cheaper
| rini17 wrote:
| Depends on your definition of "poor soil". It may actually be
| due to too good soil, the plants grow too fast and the
| micronutrients get diluted.
| jbotz wrote:
| That's not what happens with actual good soil. It _is_ what
| happens with high doses of nitrogen fertilizer (or NPK) on
| poor soil.
| greggman3 wrote:
| interestingly when I worked at Jack-in-the-box in the early 80s
| their produce seemed much better than what I saw at the
| supermarket.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Home grown tomatoes are typically much better tasting/more
| flavorful than the store bought ones, so I think there is
| probably something to this.
| peer2pay wrote:
| Although this can mostly be attributed to ripeness. Ripe
| tomatoes degrade extremely quickly so store bought ones are
| almost exclusive picked unripe and then artificially ripened
| at locations closer to where they are intended to be sold.
|
| This is also why canned tomatoes are generally considered
| superior for making tomato soups and sauces. Tomatoes
| harvested with the intention to be conserved are picked much
| riper since they can be processed and packaged almost
| immediately after.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| This is why, countrary to common belief, vegetables that
| are sold frozen are higher quality than fresh ones. My
| brother works in the industry and says if you can buy whole
| (with certain exceptions) and frozen, you have the best.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Does it need to be whole?
| caturopath wrote:
| Generally the finer specimens go to the whole products.
| [deleted]
| patall wrote:
| I would actually argue no. Stuff you grow at home is
| never looking as good as from the store because worms,
| rain and so on. Strawberries or cherries that have been
| picked by birds, wasps or slugs are usually fully ripe.
| Although I agree, whole fruit make it harder to hide bad
| ones in there
| aledalgrande wrote:
| Does not need to, but the whole variety is usually
| highest quality because the producer cannot hide the
| defects. Think about tea or tomatoes: the more you grind
| it down, the more you can mix in lower quality tiers. One
| exception I know of is porcini mushrooms: the most
| expensive are whole halfs, because you can actually see
| there's no worms in it.
|
| Also for mushrooms dried is really good, but obviously
| the texture is a little bit different when you eat it.
| croo wrote:
| No. I harvest tomatoes for 4 years now, about 30-50 plants
| per year. The taste of a half-green-left-on-shelf-because-
| i-dont-wanna-throw-it-out fruit is better than anything you
| can get in a shop. You can tell just by the smell, no need
| to taste it. Sun and soil brings more to the table than led
| lamps and chemical fertilizers.
| patall wrote:
| I agree but think its also the variety. I once bought
| semigreen tomatoes in a supermarket in December in Italy
| and those turned out great after some ripening at home.
| But they were not the standard red tomatoes you would get
| everywhere else but real italian flesh tomatoes. Last
| year my grandma had only standard red ping-pong ball
| tomatoes and those were almost like store bought,
| although grown like you described. The other grandma had
| old varieties and the leftovers in February were still
| awesome. There are also rumors that grafting while
| increasing yield decreases flavour, though I haven't
| tested that
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Can that happen, or is color change the same as ripening?
| I thought ripening requires the fruit to be attached to
| the plant and exchanging nutrients/waste with the roots?
| version_five wrote:
| That's a good point. I was thinking about similarity
| between tomatoes and eggs, where a free range egg,
| especially where the farmer let's the chickens have the run
| of the farm, have much brighter and deeper colored yolks. I
| had understood this to relate to the chickens diet and the
| nutrition of the egg. So I imagined deeper brighter red
| tomatoes to be similarly more nutritious. It could be
| different mechanisms though, or maybe neither is more
| nutritious, they just look nicer.
| robocat wrote:
| It is common to add sources of yellow and orange to
| chicken feed, for both free range and caged chickens.
|
| Two quotes from an internet page:
|
| "The yolks in my certified organic birds vary in colour.
| Because the public expect deep yellow/orange yolks in
| free range eggs I supplement mine with organic vege
| scraps. You don't need very much to make a difference.
| Just toss them the odd pumpkin."
|
| "The intensity of yolk colour may be measured against
| standards such as the DSM Yolk Colour Fan. Most egg
| marketing authorities require deep-yellow to orange-
| yellow yolk colours in the range 9 to 12 on the DSM Yolk
| Colour Fan. Yolks of more intense colour may be required
| for specific markets. The most important sources of
| carotenoids in poultry feed are maize (corn), maize
| gluten, alfalfa (lucerne) and grass meals; these sources
| contain the pigmenting carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin,
| which, together with other oxygen-containing carotenoids,
| are known by the collective name of xanthophylls."
|
| And an article:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3457452/amp/How-
| sec...
| bumby wrote:
| It seems we selected for one trait and influenced another. In
| the case of tomatoes, we selected for uniform ripening
| because of the aesthetic appeal and it also caused
| unwittingly selecting fruit with lower sugar content[1]. I've
| also heard similar regarding selecting fruit that is hardy
| enough to survive transport without damage but the same genes
| make the fruit taste like cardboard.
|
| [1] https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-trouble-with-
| tomatoes
| nine_k wrote:
| Supermarket breeds of vegetables are optimized for good looks
| and long shelf life.
|
| Farmer market vegetables are optimized for flavor, because
| this is what differentiates them from the supermarket
| vegetables.
|
| This makes the contrast all the more stunning.
| yumraj wrote:
| There was a Good Eats episode or perhaps I came across it
| somewhere else, but tomatoes undergo a change when
| refrigerated and lose flavor. Due to this tomatoes should
| never be refrigerated.
|
| This always explains why store bought tomatoes taste
| tasteless, while home green ones have actual flavor.
| caymanjim wrote:
| I wonder what the source of the nutrition information on FDA
| labels is. They're not assessing every batch of produce. Is the
| information we're told about the vitamins and minerals in our
| broccoli based on crops from last year? A decade ago? A century
| ago? Is it possible we think we're eating twice as many nutrients
| as we actually are?
| ainiriand wrote:
| This is a very important question, in my opinion. I am going to
| check how the amounts are calculated.
| wkavey wrote:
| Please report back!!
| opportune wrote:
| See https://thecounter.org/nutrition-labels-meet-recipal/ and
| https://consolidatedlabel.com/label-articles/how-to-get-a-
| nu....
|
| The TLDR is not every food needs to be lab tested as long as
| they can take their ingredients and compare them against
| national databases (e.g. NCCDB) to estimate nutritional info.
| And yes, some of the data in those databases is old and perhaps
| overly general - it's totally reasonable to suspect that
| vegetables grown in one area, as part of a specific breeding
| line, in a certain manner, have totally different nutritional
| info compared to the same generic vegetable grown elsewhere in
| a different manner.
|
| However keep in mind a lot of food does not list all
| micronutrients as part of their labelling. This actually kinda
| drives me nuts and I have no idea why e.g. frozen vegetables
| don't list things like Vitamin K, magnesium, and zinc when
| they're often actually good sources of many nutrients.
| viburnum wrote:
| I know geeks love Norman Borlaug, but there was a catch: the new
| high-yield varieties are dependent on fertilizers made from
| fossil fuels. These plants grow fast and have more carbs and less
| of everything else. There needs to be a second Green Revolution,
| this time sustainable.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Or, just have 2 billion people on the planet, instead of 8.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's not a necessity that nitrogen fertilizer comes from fossil
| fuels.
|
| Some of the first massive deployments of hydrogen electrolyzers
| are fir making ammonia fertilizer, replacing natural gas with
| solar-driven processes.
|
| Also, I don't think that Borlaug is super closely associated
| with the fertilizer, as much as with breeeding hardier strains
| or shorter stalks, to prevent loss of wheat crops or rice
| crops, for example. For that matter, manure could ne used as
| fertilizer for the Green Revolution, there's no dependency on
| the Haber process, that was an entirely different revolution
| both in time and geography.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| There is a reason nerds love Normal Borlaug, and that is he
| probably saved tons of people. Sure, maybe the food is less
| nutritious (a nebulous term, anyway) but we do have food.
| lainga wrote:
| Put another way, one might say he borrowed from the future to
| save the present.
| rini17 wrote:
| I wouldn't put all the blame on him. Wouldn't be first or
| last time the narrowly efficiency-minded nerds and
| businessmen took a good idea and optimized it into a
| monster.
| PKop wrote:
| Another argument against the senseless, detrimental addition of
| Fluoride in water supply:
|
| " _In addition, fluoride, found in 74% of the American
| population's drinking water, with ~50% of drinking water having a
| concentration of 0.7 mg /L, prevents magnesium absorption through
| binding and production of insoluble complexes._"
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