Wikipedia defines snack as a small portion of food that is eaten between meals. The way I think about it, that is the only distinction between a meal and a snack. That “in between meals”.

This, as far as weight goes, carries with it an inherent quality that makes regulating weight harder. If not impossible, depending on your sleep patterns (the etymology of the term breakfast indicates exactly how this is relevant to what I am saying here). It’s nearly impossible to find snacks that have zero insulin response in your body. Insulin not only promotes energy storage, but it also prevents the body from using energy already stored. Making a habit of doing that, even when you don’t face weight problems (which are related to health issues), is essentially making a habit of preventing your metabolism of using energy already stored from previous meals.

This is also probably the most important reason why people speak highly of intermittent fasting or low carb diets. Most of them, through these two approaches, regardless of the other positive/negative aspects, completely eliminate the habit of constantly spiking their insulin levels, effectively allowing the body to regulate energy levels through both the energy still available from a meal and the energy stored from previous meals.

As someone who grew up with a (quite) younger sibling in the most disabling end of the spectrum, witnessing all the development from infancy to adulthood, I am very reluctant to recommend for/against any specific approach, because I think that what matters most is the people who actually practice it. So, I absolutely agree with the last sentence of your comment.

The negative aspects of ABA are not entirely in the past. I am not in a position to verify the information I will quote, but this is mentioned in the third of the linked articles:

Mandell says ABA needs to renounce that history — especially the early reliance on punishments like yelling, hitting, and most controversially electroshocks, which are still used in a notorious residential school in Massachusetts called the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center.

To be clear: I am not arguing with your experience here. Rather, I am pointing out how important is the kind of practice of whatever theory and what the focus of the practice actually is. It’s really very difficult to find professionals who are actually both able and willing to care properly for autistic people. At least in the place I live.

Beyond that, I have to say that there are many things that now have positive effects on people’s lives that weren’t exactly positive in their original forms.

Great topic! Looks like a very fun book to read too. So do the Sapiens books mentioned in the article. Nice.

In this scenario, “Bob” is a hypothetical guy who believes that a woman has cut in front of him in line at the supermarket checkout. He and the woman get into a brief shouting match before she informs Bob that she’d just ducked out of her spot in the line to replace a carton of eggs that turned out to be cracked. He apologizes, and that’s the end of it—except someone recorded the incident on their smartphone, then uploaded only the shouting match, reading all kinds of deplorable motives into it. “The video need only include a hint of cultural asymmetry,” Rose-Stockwell writes:

It may be seen as an angry outburst by a man (Bob) toward a woman (the other shopper). Or a Democrat (Bob) toward a Republican (the lady). Or any heightened reflection of their implied group identity. It can be repackaged as an example of a troubling trend in society. People who feel this way who see the clip now have an opportunity to explain exactly why it’s offensive. They can link it to a larger narrative that may have nothing to do with the actual event itself.

That outrage is often stoked by journalists, who, Rose-Stockwell notes, “are shockingly susceptible to reporting on this kind of thing,” furthering what he calls “trigger chains: cascades of outrage that are divorced from the original event.”

This is so common… And not only with incidents where a part of them can be taken out of context and used to evoke emotional response related to rage.

To drive down costs, the meat industry relies on practices that can increase the spread of disease, like overcrowding and intensive breeding, which can trigger the need for gruesome practices like feedback to work around the problems it’s created.

Americans eat more animals than practically any other country — around 264 pounds of red and white meat, 280 eggs, 667 pounds of dairy, and around 20.5 pounds of seafood per person each year.

Insane amounts, horrible -mostly unseen- reality to support them.

First of all, this guy claims he is natural. Does his body composition look natural to you? I really find it difficult to consider advice about health from people who use PEDS to support more muscle mass than their frame (and accompanying gonads with it) can naturally support (I hope you know there is a limit on that).

Second, I watched this part, about the study that shows no difference between low sugar and not-so-low sugar. It takes years of continued abuse of how insulin works (or less time when completely being idle) to start developing problems with your pancreas. A few weeks don’t seem like enough, especially if the rest of the food is properly structured. I am curious to see more, if you can find the study mentioned.

Third, and this is why I have a hard time trusting PED mutants discussing food & health, what he is talking about when he speaks about plant protein, especially when it comes to leucine, is just not right.

Take for example chickpeas . I use this link, for two reasons. One is that this is coming from a quite reliable calculation approach for aminoacids (the site is a front-end for this database, where you can learn more about how they calculate amino-acid profiles). The second is because it is easier to calculate the quantities before cooking (which wikipedia doesn’t).

So, let’s take the RDA for adults, which is 42mg/kg. I am 84 kg (with low enough body fat so that you can see most of my muscle definition, an athlete). This means that I need 3528mg of leucine, or 3,528 grams. One meal (which I really have no issue digesting, I hit the road with my bike half an hour after the meal, quite often) of chickpeas contains (I always measure before cooking and split in meals) 150grams+ of chickpeas. Which is 1.29 X 1.5=1.935, or 1,9 of leucine. Most legumes and beans have similar or higher quantities of leucine*. This is one meal of the 3 I eat in a day. I can tell you with absolute certainty (because I 've spent quite some time calculating what my food contains) that I get more than enough leucine between breakfast and a legume/bean meal (all of it plant based).

Let’s look at the other part of his statement. Which is “you might need an isolated form of protein”. Look at the RDA again. According to the RDA I need ~ 3,5g, why should I get 3 or 4 times this from an isolated form of protein powder (super processed “food” btw)?

*Since leucine is the amino-acid mentioned, a few examples (in dried form, which is what I find easier to weight before cooking):

• chickpeas 1.29g / 100g -> 1.935g per meal for me or 54% of the RDA
• white beans 1.87g / 100g -> 2.805g per meal for me or 79% of the RDA
• lentils: 1.87 g / 100g -> 2.805g per meal for me or 79% of the RDA
• cranberry beans 1.84g / 100g -> 2.760g per meal for me or 78% of the RDA

So… what gives?

If you want, I can show you why what he said about BCAA’s is not true either. It really is not that hard, takes less time than the segments I just watched. Him being an expert on nutrition, shouldn’t allow him to spread this kind of information. Unless he cares about turning a profit from this.

I 'll try to refrain from commenting on all the manipulative comments he made when talking about obesity, cause I 'll get really negative. But I will say this, it’s really depressing how people who actually care about improving the condition of their bodies, fall into these traps for years.

when your body doesn’t know how to handle the glucose anymore.

Anymore is probably the key word here. And for younger beeple, I would suggest wondering why is that. Is it not possible to keep your carbohydrate metabolic pathways strong and healthy, like you keep… I don’t know, your lungs? Do you have to destroy your pancreas before you learn to eat properly?

Low carb, high protein and fat to satiety is the way to eat ad be healthy long term.

Its one way, and pretty limiting too if you consider a life without supplements. For that reason alone I am pretty certain its not the only way, as long as someone is actually healthy. How many people are actually healthy and why, is a very interesting discussion.

I am eating something like 400grams of watermelon as I read this study. My feet hurt a little, its been a long ride, almost 3,5 hours (no snacks) on the bike. 80+ km distance, 1300+ meters of elevation. I keep wondering, does that count as hibernation? Will I become obese until I get 40 (getting close)? Will my (lower than 15% atm) bodyfat increase? Is it only the few grams of fructose in watermelon, or is it sorbitol (produces small fatty acids when eaten in moderation) too? What about lycopene (makes my sperm diagrams look like I am in my 20ies)? Oooof, all those studies, really, make me worry! At least I 'm safe, in the winter there is really no watermelon for poor me that doesn’t shop fruit out of season. Maybe that’s the secret and I don’t get fat? Who knows !!

Took me longer to read the article than it took me to learn how to ride one :P

Nice read though!

Well, I thought I should omit the first line of the introduction (which contains the number) for the same reason you pointed out in your initial comment. What kind of study has 5 person sample with pretty much no control? I debated myself (english is not my first language) whether I should use the word “study” in the title, or an another word, like observation or something. But they call this a study in their article. Besides, if taken at face value, it’s not prompting people to do something unhealthy (moving a little more than zero), doesn’t push some magic thinking towards a super processed food (or supplement, or drug), so …

Not the 3 am, or stoned or whatever. Most of us have been there :P It’s the “not going past the second sentence but posting a comment anyways” habit that feels bad to me.

what the comparison would be to people who did not go through bedrest and were constantly active through the decades

I am curious too, but the more I look for such studies the more it becomes apparent that I won’t find them. Looks like there is not much motive to study what prevents our health from deteriorating…

Well, at least people living away from urban environments, usually have a few examples of this. Active persons, refusing to remain idle for too long. You know… that person who was still standing, fully functioning (well, with some arthritis :P) and able to tend to a garden in his 90ies?

the potential impact office work will be on a portion of the population

If jobs were good for us, we wouldn’t get paid to do them.

You can work construction, be active all day, but end up with serious debilitating injuries of overuse. You can work in an office, and get all kinds of underuse issues.

As long as most of us have to work, we need to find ways to balance what our kinds of jobs do to our bodies. Long before we go to doctors for fixes, in systems that have already broken down. A very clear (and becoming more and more clear) example of this, is insulin resistance. The liver of an average person can hold something around 120g of glycogen, which is way more than most of sedentary people consume in carbohydrates daily. It doesn’t take much before the system starts saying “no more triglycerides, all vital organs are cramped in here!” and starts doing all kinds of less than good compensations for the extra energy coming in from this metabolic pathway. Our muscles that hold that absorb glucose and turn it into glycogen do not share it with other body cells (like the liver does, i.e. by feeding the brain and all other body cells that require glucose through blood). If you don’t move, they don’t break it down to glucose and use it. If they are full, they don’t absorb glucose from the bloodstream. So, even if they can hold like 500g of glycogen, how many meals of carbs before they are full? 2? 3? 4? Excess carbs from that point on become triglycerides (fat). It’s such a simple concept to grasp…

What is sad, is that while usually kids do not have to work many of them stay inactive anyways…

Tiny indeed, especially if it were to draw general conclusions. But it doesn’t.

I am glad that you wouldn’t get worked up about the fact that one of the most important markers of health of the human body quickly deteriorates when you don’t move at all. I wouldn’t either. The fact is so obvious that it should be common sense.

What is interesting in this study, is the follow-up, on those few people. Not just the very rapid decline of their cardiovascular systems shown initially, but the comparison of the decline shown 30 and 40 years later. Even if those 5 samples are outliers (maybe they are the worst cases, maybe they are the best cases, we can’t know, 5 is too few), the comparison remains impressive.

But maybe its just me.

Besides, if one does not see certain actions, those actions might as well not be happening at all. If only there was a way people who cause the greatest harm to control what gets reported in mainstream media, effectively shifting people’s attention away from the harmful practices of their businesses…

As a tall guy who wanted to read and write poetry and also enjoyed moving my body a lot, which included dancing while being quite shy, I 've been called “closeted straight” when I was young.

I agree with everything you wrote, especially with the books > videos. Beside the space a book provides for the author to express himself clearly, it is also a quite active mode of engagement with content, since in following the narrative, imagining and understanding it, who we are is actually quite important too.

Oh, and Fahrenheit 451… what a great book!

Elon Musk tweeted on his official account on Sunday that Twitter would be changing its logo to an “X”

Am I the only one that thought of house Bolton ?

Some don’t need the carbs though and that’s not as easy as getting the proper amount and kind of aminoacids when going completely plant based. If you have the time you might find this interesting.. The number of people having a messed up body when it comes to carbs, is beyond impressive.

I am commenting on the “healthy” aspect. Healthy, sometimes is not just about adequate.

100g of wheat gluten is almost 80g of protein. Which easily provides the amino-acids most legumes have in lower concentrations. Besides seitan which is very easy to make from wheat gluten, tofu, tempeh and many other plant based (and really easy and cheap to prepare on your own, in large quantities and store in the freezer, I have a drawer in mine full of them) foods in some traditions that are even low in carb content for people with insulin resistance. Or just low in calories so you can cook them whichever way you want with whatever else you want to add to your food. It’s not really hard to actually do it.

Being “not flabby” has more to do with your understanding of how insulin works on the body than it has with anything else, even activity levels. Especially in western societies. And its pretty damn hard to think properly about your food, even though its scientifically clear those in charge are pushing shitty guidelines to the people. For example, as you can see here :

Conflicts of Interest: First-ever systematic review of the extensive financial conflicts of interest on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Findings: 95% of the 2020 committee had at least one tie to a food or pharmaceutical company; Over half had 30 such ties or more; USDA does not disclose conflicts of interest, despite a National Academies recommendation to do so.

I just watered my plants on the balcony. I noticed that one pigeon had taken a shit near one of the pots. Then I remembered that neighbor that feeds tens of them before they fly to bombard every balcony near him. I started feeling some kind of frustration. Then I opened this thread, saw your nickname. Started reading your comment. Negativity started going away. A laugh escaped near leg day. Cool.

On topic, there are quite a few reasons why women are better the longer the distance gets. Which is very nice, since ultra-marathons are one of the few sports that are not yet super-tainted by commercial interests and steroids. One of the few clean sports, and women are better XD

The little time I spent looking for information on persistence hunting, I didn’t come across any convincing arguments against it. That’s why I commented the way I did in my first comment. But I like the idea very much.

As for the gym bros, all I have to say, training for pleasure instead of training for pain is way more sustainable in the long run! ;-) No hate though, something is better than nothing. I guess.

This article attempts to provide some reasoning.

As for the neighbouring area, since it’s mentioned near the end of this article, a related fact from wikipedia:

Notably, opium production in Myanmar is the world’s second-largest source of opium after Afghanistan, producing some 25% of the world’s opium, forming part of the Golden Triangle. While opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar had declined year-on-year since 2015, cultivation area increased by 33% totalling 40,100 hectares alongside an 88% increase in yield potential to 790 metric tonnes in 2022 according to latest data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Myanmar Opium Survey 2022[283] With that said, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has also warned that opium production in Myanmar may rise again if the economic crunch brought on by COVID-19 and the country’s February 1 military coup persists, with significant public health and security consequences for much of Asia

More often than not, ethnic disputes are just leverage used by people in power to achieve their goals.

Besides the brutality of mentioned in the OP, there have been tens of deaths in the area during the past few months.

If persistence hunting was really happening, female bodies might actually be better suited for the task.

Our ancestors probably weren’t eating horses in cool climates though. At least not very often! :-)

The mortality rate was highest in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal.

Which are places where the cost of electricity has gone dramatically up the past few years making air-conditioning less and less accessible.