If you have food science questions or need help, contact me! I'm a food scientist, but due to life-stuff, I'm not working in that field (though I've worked in food plants previously) and would LOVE to be able to talk shop. LOVE to.

If you can access it, I would highly recommend watching Alton Brown's "Good Eats" show. Alton covers a lot of the basics, and while he does get stuff wrong from time to time, I think he's still a good resource for getting a broad framework of how food works. Alton's show is what got me into wanting to go into food science. :)

My Intro to Food Science course used this book: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Food-Science-Technology-InfoTrac/dp/053454486X/ref=sr_1_40?ie=UTF8&qid=1537460151&sr=8-40&keywords=food+science You can buy it used pretty cheaply now. I'd recommend this one.

Chemistry both is and isn't super important when it comes to food science. I had a hell of a time with general chemistry classes, but I liked my carbon compounds class (basically organic chemistry dumbed down for us people not planning on being doctors). I personally think basic organic chemistry is better for food science; knowing how fats and sugars are composed and how they act was more important than knowing about the electronegativity of nitrogen or whatever.

More important than chemistry, at least in my studies, was microbiology. A lot of food science is food safety, and a lot of food safety is about how to control and reduce bacteria populations. That's not even going into fermented foods like cheese (my favorite topic, honestly) or alcohol.

Something to keep in mind, is no matter how much book learning you get a lot of food science is trial and error. And that's part of what's fun about it! Even though I'm not pursuing food stuff as a career right now (damn depression), I still feel like food science benefits my life. I love experimenting in the kitchen, and I actually became friends with one of my BFFs because she had celiac's disease and I liked figuring out how to modify recipes so she could also enjoy them.

What I'm saying is, even if you don't become a food scientist and Change the World (tm), learning more about it will likely be a benefit to your life and to the lives of the people around you. Plus, it's fun!

I'm going to have to see what food science stuff I still have on my computer when I get home; some of it might be beneficial to you.

Something I would recommend, if you're able: see if you can get work in a food manufacturing plant, especially if you can get into the quality department. This will give you more visibility as to what life would be like as a food scientist (probably working largely in food plants). I recommend QA because it has the most to do with food safety, generally, and seeing if you actually like repetitive lab work will help you figure out if being a scientist is what you want to do.

​

What kinds of foodstuffs do you like playing with? That might be a good place to start figuring out what to read and what to research. For me, I love cheese (I worked in the university creamery and a huge mozzarella plant after college); cheese is honestly kind of magical to me. Seeing milk be transformed from a liquid to solid curds and yellow whey is just so cool, no matter how many times I see it-- and cheese tastes amazing anyway.

I also really like old-fashioned fudge (none of that marshmallow-fluff nonsense). The trick (and fun part) of fudge is controlling when and how big your sugar crystals are. It's half art, half science, and that's my favorite when it comes to experimenting in the kitchen.

​

Like I said, PLEASE contact me if you want to talk about food science! I love talking shop! It drives my husband crazy! XD

Also if you're into reading, you might enjoy this book to get a clearer picture of how your stomach works:

• Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ
  
  Another interesting one on longevity is this one:
  
  
• The Blue Zones, Second Edition: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest
  
  The author of Blue Zones has a really good TED Talk here:
  
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff40YiMmVkU
  
  Learning how your body works, as well as what we really actually truly know about managing our bodies, is a really great little hobby to get into. For example, this TED Talk explains how your body actually "burns" fat:
  
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIlsN32WaE
  
  I think the microbiome is a really exciting field. It took us years to figure out (publicly, at least) that smoking was bad for us. Who knows what the future holds? Maybe GMO's are bad, maybe they're good! Maybe we're all gonna turn into zombies from the Walking Dead from glyphosate, lol. Maybe kale gives you cancer long-term...who knows? My friend's cancer doctor (at one of the top hospitals in the country) swears that chocolate causes cancer & sees recurrences based on the re-inclusion of it in the diet.
  
  Science vs. data vs. hard facts is difficult, because like I linked to in the other post, that lady who's 116 years old eats bacon every day. Common knowledge says that should kill you, but that's not really how our bodies work, once you understand the whole stomach/small intestine/large intestine deal.
  
  Who decided that every single fruit & vegetable were perfectly fine, and that Snickers bars were somehow magically bad? I bought into the "clean eating" myth for a long time, but I've gotten far better results eating against my macros - obviously, not eating a non-stop diet of junk food, but you don't have to feel guilty about a cheat meal or cheat day because you can eat whatever you want - if it fits your macros.
  
  Everyone has a different gut, and there are certain universal rules that affect everyone. If you eat nothing but fried food & salty, preservative-laced fast food & junk food all the time, that's not going to make you feel good or be very healthy for your body long-term, obviously. But, you're going to diet anyway at some point, so the question is: how do you want to experience the ride? What does your personal body tell you & what does science know for sure?
  
  Those are things you have to find out for yourself - for example, pomegranate juice gives me severe acid reflux. I don't know why, but it does, so it's just not something I include in my diet, even though it's pretty tasty! And I eat Whoppers like twice a week sometimes & still hit my macros & still know that I'm feeding my body the correct macro-nutrient balance I need to feel good & have high energy. Now, if fried grease hurts your stomach, or gluten hurts your stomach, then obviously you should not include those things in your diet.
  
  Learning about how food works & how your gut really works & how your own particular body actually works are really big stepping stones for taking control of your health. No one knows your body but you know, and you have a responsibility to care for it & to enable yourself to open up the gates to high energy & being at an ideal weight for health reason through how you choose to eat.
  
  I've tried just about every diet & way of eating you can imagine...juicing, vegan, raw vegan, fruitarian, vegetarian, keto, paleo, you name it (and can give you great recipes from all of them!). Macros has worked the best for me. I do a majority of homemade food from mostly real food sources (I use sugar & flour all the time though), but still enjoy a McFlurry & other stuff as party of my regular diet.
  
  It was really hard to get over the conversational programming we all have about what is good & bad for us. Macros has worked amazing for me, with a majority of it being real, actual food - meat, veggies, grains, fruits, nuts, seeds, and so on. I don't eat ridiculously healthy, I eat primarily for taste, against my macros. I feel great all the time, I look so much better than I did when I was 50 pounds overweight, I have way more energy, all of my blood numbers are awesome, I don't have energy dips mid-morning & mid-afternoon, I don't take 20 minutes to become awake in the morning, etc. Raw diet aside, Chris Califano really nails the energy thing here:
  
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U12nMyPLX5Q
  
  If you don't feel like what he says - and if you want to feel like that - then a diet change is a a great starting point! I'd suggest looking into IIFYM (read through my posts here) & if things are severe, doing an elimination diet. Or seeing your GP & a GI doc & a food allergist. Lots of routes to go to begin your journey to better health, energy, and happiness! That's not fluff talk, that's all real stuff - having great bloodwork, being at your ideal weight, feeling good & energetic, feeling driven because of that energy, feeling happy because your stomach system is operating properly!

It Starts With Food is a phenomenal book to start with just to understand how food affects us. Another one that covers autoimmunity is The Immune System Recovery Plan. Both of these books revolve around diet and not anxiety, but it is my firm belief that in order to find what is triggering the anxiety, you must work on other areas of your life first. If diet, exercise, and sleep do not subdue your symptoms, then keep searching. I’d be willing to bet if you tried the elimination diet, whether Whole30 or Dr Blum’s Recovery Plan, this will help you.

I’d love to hear about your progress. Please feel free to follow up. You’re so young!! You have so much potential!! Don’t let something like this control you. Initially, you might find yourself resistant to try new things, so it will take what I call ‘just making the decision’. This means that if you want to find peace with your health, you just have to decide to do it and push through whatever doubt (or anxiety) you might have.

It’s one thing to make the decision, so how do you stick with the decision you might be thinking? Especially when the stress really peaks. Three things.

1. Know the why. If you do not have a ‘why’ to what you do in life, regardless of what it is, there is no way you’ll stick with it. The why gives us guidance. It gives us dedication and strength. When part of you says who cares, the part that knows the why will say, I do. Really think about this. Take a few days and literally write down a mission statement for yourself. When the anxiety is really affecting you, go to wherever you have this hanging up and read it. Breathe! Deep breaths! If you have to, say, Progress, not Perfection! to remind yourself that it’s okay to feel the way you because you have a plan to get to a better place. This is merely a bump in the road, not a road block.
   
2. Once you have the why, make some goals. The rules about goals: they must be measurable, have a time of completion, and they must be assessed regularly to see if they are still effective.
   “I will work on being less stressed”. This is not a goal. It has none of the components of a goal. “This week, I will take 10 minutes each day to meditate before starting my day.” That is a proper goal. It’s measurable, it has an end date, and at the end of the week, you can measure its effectiveness. Write these goals down to make them real and tangible. Put them with your mission statement and at the end of each week, assess your progress. This might sound time consuming, but after a couple weeks, this new habit will take very little time.
   
3. Make the goals small! So many people who make goals want to go for the gold immediately. Perhaps the person wants to lose 50 lbs. so their goal is to lose fifty pounds, within 6 months, working out 6 times a week. That meets all the requirements of rule #2 technically, but if the person has never worked out or has no idea what diet they should be eating, what’s the likelihood of sticking to this goal? Instead, maybe some goals should be, pick up 3 different whole foods I have never ate before to cook with at the grocery this week. Boom. Small, obtainable, measurable, and can be assessed. Smaller goals also give us the chance to start getting some momentum. They build optimism and positivity, which, in and of itself, can work wonders for anxiety.
   
   For you, being anxiety free might be the ultimate goal, but to reach that, you will need to make smaller, more focused goals to reach that bigger one. You can do this. You might need to enlist the help of someone you trust. Find an accountability partner so when you do hit rock bottom (and that’s okay if you do!), you have someone to lean on who can help you stay on track with your goals.
   
   Again, feel free to reach out if you have more questions. Patience is going to be your friend here. However, just on elimination diets alone, people have made sweeping recoveries to all sorts of illnesses. I won’t go into the details but look at those books I suggested to see how food can truly affect us.
   
   Life is a journey. No one lives your life but you. Make it yours. Make it awesome!

So you're saying that since we know very little about what early Paleolithic man ate (~2.5 million years ago up until 10,000), and despite the fact that we know our brains grew and stomachs shrank specifically because of meat consumption, we should eat vegan.

And that (RE: #3) because our day-to-day lives look very little like (in a literal sense) a hunter-gatherers life, we ought not eat meat? We may not run around and hunt our food, but how many of us run around all day, to this job or that, working overtime, etc. If anything, I'd think it would make more sense to streamline your foods for maximum efficiency - i.e., eat the foods that are most nutritious, which certainly includes a hefty amount of vegetables, but also includes a significant (dietarily) amount of high-quality meat product whose bioavailability or healthy fats and complete proteins (nevermind micronutrient breakdown) is virtually unmatched. That would only make sense in this over-worked and un-rested era.

(By the way, Paleo is all about quality. Only grass-fed/pastured animals, preferably that includes a hefty dose of the nutrient dense organ meat, as well as a short-but-intense exercise plan that would very much mimic that of a hunter-gatherer.)

RE: #4 - if you seriously can find me one piece of information that does not show very clearly an exponential increase in grain consumption in the last 100 years (that goes right along with the prevalence of diseases of civilization), I'd love to see it. I really don't think it exists.

Just a few examples (that aren't even talking about Paleo):

• Dangerous Grains
  
  
• The Great Cholesterol Con
  
  
• Trick and Treat: How Healthy Eating is Making Us Ill
  
  
• Food and Western Disease: Health and nutrition from an evolutionary perspective
  
  
• Gluten and Autism
  
  
• MS and Diet
  
  
• RA and Diet
  
  
• If those aren't enough, happy reading. I hate to break it to you, but even non-paleo dr.'s and scientists from across a host of fields are all coming to the conclusion - based on biochemistry and specifically how our guts, intestines, etc. interact with them - that grains are a far bigger problem than quality meats.
  
  Yes, every one of these will talk about shit-quality meats, but also extensively about "high-quality, whole" grains. And before you use the word "pseudoscientific" again, I'd just like to say I'm not sure that you know what it means. These citations are from scientists. I haven't yet seen you cite one scientist. And before you quote the China Study - don't. It's bunk, been proven to be bunk, by people smarter and more thorough than Denise Minger's pretty solid piece on Campbell's skewing of the stats.
  
  Get your learn on.
  
  Personally, I don't give a shit if you eat meat or not. But you're conflating a moral issue (of yours) with a health issue (of ours). I'll agree with you that the vast majority of meat that gets eaten in this country is crap. Factory farms need to go. Grain-feeding animals needs to stop. So do food subsidies for corn and grain. But beyond your morals, there's absolutely nothing unhealthy about eating a grass-fed steak, or a cage-free, chicken that's been allowed to run around outside and do its chicken-y thing. So long as you tolerate those well (food allergy tests - another thing I'm not sure you're aware of that's very, very popular in the Paleo community, and many people come back allergic or intolerant of many animal products).
  
  Anyway, I'm done here. You still haven't specifically told me what's pseudoscientific. You've linked to a group with an agenda and wikipedia, but have made all sorts of claims that imply you have some very specific knowledge relating to some damaging aspects of consumption of high-quality meats in a balanced diet with high-quality fruits, veggies, etc. I can link you studies and papers by scientists and doctors all day. You haven't cited one.
  
  Moreover, you make the claim that because we don't know what foods we're evolved to thrive on we shouldn't eat Paleo - all the while claiming Veganism is better. On what grounds if you can't say what we've evolved to eat? You can't have your cake and eat it too.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

> She was not a vegan/vegetarian!

*Ahem* From her own "about" page:

>>Tara's Affiliations Include

>> Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

>> Greater New York Dietetic Association

>> Chinese Americans in Nutrition and Dietetics (2015 award winner)

>> Nutrition Entrepreneurs DPG (2016 award winner, current PR/Marketing Coordinator)

>>* Weight Management DPG

Gee, I wonder what those "affiliate" organizations she was a member of promote for diets...

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

• Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Greenlights Veganism
  The largest organization of healthcare professionals in the country officially deemed the vegan diet best for health and the environment.
  
  What's more, their official site heavily promotes vegetarianism AND veganism, even for infants and small children.
  
  
• https://www.eatright.org/food/nutrition/vegetarian-and-special-diets/vegetarianism-the-basic-facts
  
  
• https://www.eatright.org/food/nutrition/vegetarian-and-special-diets/feeding-vegetarian-and-vegan-infants-and-toddlers
  
  Their basic "Dietary Guidelines" are the generic government promoted "MyPlate" -- which is essentially a vegetarian/vegan (and heavily ANTI-meat, ANTI-animal food) -- a sightly updated version of the abysmal "food pyramid" that was POLITICALLY crafted back in the mid 1970's, and which are the ROOT cause of the vast majority of America's present obesity, chronic gastrointestinal, and chronic mental illnesses.
  
  This is the shit diet she was trained in, and it was the shit diet she SOLD, and the shit diet that she ate.
  
  -
  >She ate meat and delicious healthy foods that she also recommended to her patients, myself included.
  
  Ayah, she may very well have eaten a trivial portion of "meat" (or more likely faux-meat) things in trendy-foodie meals; unfortunately that isn't sufficient to offset the manifold health problems that come from eating a high-carb crap food diet.
  
  Add on that -- depending on what supplements she was taking and what medications -- OTC as well as prescription -- that she was on (and given the present era, the pervasive use of such medications in our society -- especially amount women of her general age range -- combined with her own statements of a DECADE of mental health problems, and her professional states... I would be GREATLY surprised if she wasn't on several different such medications: psychoactive as well as "gastrointestinal" issues) those same medications & supplements almost certainly INHIBITED or blocked the uptake of several critical things that animal food products contain, not the least of which being B12 (which is NOT a single compound, but rather a very complex array of chemically related compounds) as well as IF (aka "intrinsic factor").
  
  Her occasional eating of small amounts of meat -- especially when prepared in various "trendy/foodie" restaurant meal form -- was almost certainly abysmally insufficient to overcome the gradual and steady depletion of critical things from her body; and nowhere NEAR sufficient to help her recover from what was apparently multiple-decades of an inadequate/problematic diet.
  
  -
  Oh and in terms of the whole "delicious" -- candy-like coatings & sauces, and overspiced foods -- are NOT the same as "healthy" eating.
  
   
  
  As for yourself: Aye and what were & are your problems?
  
  
• Obesity and/or Diabetes, binge & purge, trouble maintaining a healthy weight?
  
• Probably a variety of chronic gastrointestinal issues (acid reflux, IBS, bouncing back and forth from constipation to diarrhea, etc)?
  
• Chronic mental health issues... mood swings? Shallow affect?
  
  What supplements are you taking? How many different prescription medications -- including mental health as well as ones to deal with your digestion & other physical issues -- are you taking on a regular and/or intermittent basis?
  
  ---
  >She was a great nutritionist and a very pleasant, sweet, beautiful person in real life.
  
  She put on a false front. From her "good bye" (or "see you later") pre-suicide note:
  
  >>"I truly have a great life *on paper.***"
  
  Implication: but not in reality.
  
  >>"However, all these facets seem trivial to me. It’s the ultimate first world problem, I get it. I often **felt detached while in a room full of my favorite people; I also felt absolutely nothing during what should have been the happiest and darkest times in my life."
  
  Moreover this was not some temporary or RECENT thing... she began that "good bye" note with the following:
  
  >>"I have written this note several times in my head for over a decade, and this one finally feels right. No edits, no overthinking. I have accepted hope is nothing more than delayed disappointment, and *I am just plain old-fashioned tired of feeling tired.***"
  
  OVER A DECADE... since she was now a mere 27, that means since she was at least 17, 16 possibly younger.
  
  Given her statement on her about page that her father was a "foodie" -- I'm inclined to believe that she very likely NEVER ate a healthy diet a day in her life; from childhood onward -- and as she never KNEW what an actually "healthy" diet or a healthy "life" (mentally as well as physically healthy); well she had no way of knowing that what she was taught, what she learned to regurgitate and teach others in turn... was anything & everything BUT a healthy diet.
  
  NO matter how many "official" -- or quasi-official, "professional" and so called "expert" -- stamps of approval get placed on such.
  
  Labels are just labels.
  
  ---
  >How dare you people writing this about her not knowing her in person?!
  
  Well she killed herself; and as noted above, she was apparently never REAL with anyone in her life -- whatever emotions she showed were (per her own words) hollow and fake... NOT actually "felt" inside.
  
  Plain fact or the matter is that you actually didn't know her at all.
  
  -
  That's SAD.
  
  What would be SADDER still... would be to DENY the very problems that caused her to needlessly suffer so much, and for so long; only to end her own life in such a truly tragic manner.
  
  -
  Save yourself from similar chronic suffering, and a potentially similar sad fate: Could It Be B12?: An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses**
  

Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism by Gropper is the book my university classes on nutritional biochemistry used. Difficult to comprehend for the lay person but great for those with a decent background in organic and biochemistry. I notice it is uber expensive on this link from Amazon but look up and get an old edition or even look around for a PDF or something.

http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Nutrition-Metabolism-Sareen-Gropper/dp/1133104053

Also, pages like this may be of interest.

https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminK-HealthProfessional/

Lastly, I believe you can find and read the Dietary Reference Intakes as PDF online but that doesn't focus too much on biochemistry.

Good luck and hope that helps!

First of all, calcium is pretty hard to be deficient in if you’re really eating a whole food AIP diet. Most people get too much and even doctors (who bother to pay attention to updated evidence-based guidelines) don’t recommend calcium supplements, as they don’t help osteoporosis, unless there is evidence of a legit deficiency. If you’re getting enough vit D you’re absorbing enough calcium.

Vit D lab values should be mid point on a blood test ~50-70, with “normal” levels being between ~30-100, & any Dr that says otherwise is either lazy or ill informed regarding pretty much all research over the last 10 years-always remember “normal” values aren’t even kind of the same as “optimal for best health/healing a broken body” levels. Fun fact: RDA for Vit D was established as amount needed to avoid rickets. Personally, I’d like to set the bar higher than non-rickets, especially considering how absolutely vital it is in terms of immune system function-regardless of calcium. But I digress...

“Vit K” is really two different things-K1 & K2 and they are not metabolically interchangeable. K1 is from mostly leafy greens and, as you alluded to, is the one that is best known for assisting with clotting. K2 is ONLY available after K1 has been converted via specialized bacteria and is used by the body (in simplified terms) to put calcium where it’s supposed to go-ie, bones rather than arteries.

Most humans aren’t able to convert K1 to K2 on their own in their own guts (even “healthy” adult guts, as demonstrated in research) and thus almost all K2 is gained through fermented foods like aged cheeses, sauerkraut, etc. One of the many reasons ALL traditional cultures ate fermented foods in one way or another & had great teeth!

Best food source of K2 anywhere is Natto, which is a fermented soy bean & used as a condiment in Asia. As with many Asian flavors/foods, it has a pungent “acquired” taste to it that even most “I love Asian food!” folks can’t bring themselves to gag down. Not only that, but on an AIP diet you’d have to weigh pros of a small exposure to a traditionally prepared soy product vs. just getting it through other types of fermented foods or even a K2 supplement (many D3 supplements now come as a D3/K2 combo formula).

In any case, though I understand your caution regarding Vit K-as blood clots are frequently deadly-the functional difference between K1 & K2 is the reason that your doctor hasn’t warned you off of pickles & aged cheese, like he has with too much spinach and salads, in fear of too much K2 ingestion.

I’d worry less about calcium than I would magnesium. Post is already long enough so I’ll let you research that on your own. More info about K2 can be found either through PubMed (for the deep dive science nerds of us out there who love the soporific effect of reading lengthy alphabet soup microbiology & statistical analysis scientific research) or the book Vitamin K2 & the Calcium Paradox.

Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little-Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062320041/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_PtMiDb6G0XEJD

>why do so many doctors stand behind these drugs, the money?

That's one big reason among several, yes. Maybe not money directly, but there are always the nice little gifts, the friendly sales rep with his helpful "research" to save them time chasing down and analysing debate between researchers, and the corporate-sponsored medical conferences in exotic countries etc (I personally know a doctor who loves going on these every year). There's also the little item that if your research funding comes from corporations and "non-profit" organisations with funding links to the corporate world, you are less likely to want to bite the hand that feeds you.

Re the logic, isn't it pretty obvious? You have a drug that is supposed to promote heart health which actually puts it at risk. I feel sorry for the trusting people who suffered or perhaps even died before it was realised that statin-induced Co-enzyme Q10 deficiency causes serious harm. And the problems of statins aren't just related to CoQ10. Statins suppress one of the precursors of CoQ10 and cholesterol, HMG-CoA reductase. That enzyme is a precursor about half a dozen steps prior to cholesterol - which means that about five other substances besides cholesterol are suppressed when a statin drug is present. Cholesterol of course is used to make other things, like the sex hormones estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. Like bile, which helps with the absorbtion of fat and the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Like the "stress hormone" cortisol. Cholesterol is also a precursor for the body's synthesis of Vitamin D (so lowering it not only retards absorbtion of Vitamin D through food, but also retards your skin generating Vitamin D when sunshine hits it). Vitamin D is needed for proper bone mineralisation, and is also believed to have an anti-cancer effect. As well as the liver, the brain manufactures cholesterol but Lipitor can cross the blood-brain barrier and stop production there too. As cholesterol comprises a significant portion of the brain and is necessary for proper mental function, it is no wonder that slowness, forgetfulness, and even transient global amnesia are known symptoms of statin use.

I am related to someone who is taking Lipitor right now. He is taking co-enzyme Q10 and still suffering muscular aches and pains, and cannot raise his arms above shoulder-level any more, the pain is so great if he tries. He also suffers from an overwhelming tiredness shortly after taking his fix, and becomes a little slow at following the thread of conversations. His faith in his personal doctor is absolute, and no matter how many books written by DOCTORS I place in front of him to read, his faith in Lipitor and his Medical Priest sustain him like some sort of cult, even though I see it wearing him down before my despairing eyes. Interestingly, the white-coated Priest has been presented with Dr Graveline's first book on Lipitor, and did not choose to contend with it at all. His response to his patient was that "the choice to stop or continue taking it is yours".

When you learn from members of the international medical community that high cholesterol has not been proven as the cause of heart disease and how the stated reason for using statins is flawed by politics, profit and junk science, and there is no medically useful reason to take these dangerous statin drugs at all, you tend to want to boil over in fury.

Some books for you to check out:

The Great Cholesterol Con, by Malcolm Kendrick MD (2007)

The Cholesterol Myths, by Uffe Ravnskov MD PhD (2000, 2002)

The Great Cholesterol Con, by Anthony Colpo (2006) - forward by Ravnskov & contains nearly 1500 citations to medical journals and research trial reports.

Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol, by Mary Enig PhD (2000) - a bit dry for the lay reader, plunges into lipid chemistry, but highly informative. Enig was among researchers who became concerned about trans fats way back in the 1970s.

The Heart Revolution: The Extraordinary Discovery That Finally Laid the Cholesterol Myth to Rest, by Kilmer Mccully MD & Martha Mccully (2000)

Lipitor: Thief of Memory, by Duane Graveline MD (2006)

Statin Drugs Side Effects and the Misguided War on Cholesterol, by Duane Graveline MD (2008)

Those books have plenty of academic and scientific citations for you to seek further.

i'm 29, 5'9, 145 lbs and have always hovered around that weight. 2-4% body fat.

i've never really counted calories on account i've always been pretty happy with my weight, but i estimate i intake about 2500/day on average, with a weekly 'binge' day of 4000+. un-ideally, i get a lot of those calories from sugars and simple carbohydrates. i ride about 15000 km/year and i find it necessary to supplement my diet with calories through shakes and frequent snacks.

i start each day with a whey shake, creatine, cod liver oil and vitamins A+D. an hour later i have an espresso, a bowl of granola or cereal with high fat yogurt. i'll drink pu'erh tea in the morning as well. lunch is usually bread, pasta, rice, with vegetables. afternoon snack is fruit and nuts. most dinners will have meat, but i eat a veg dinner a couple times a week as well. i'll usually have another snack like crackers/chips/popcorn between 10 and 11, and then a tablespoon of unpasteurized honey before bed (helps me sleep sounder).

about once a week i'll do a super rich meal, whether it's 4-course italian dinner, or a triple cheeseburger with poutine. this might be how i maintain my feeble weight, or it might not change a thing given i've got pretty good habits otherwise.

allen lim is controversial of late, but i'd still recommend his feed zone cookbook for ideas and recipes.

I am so sorry you are going through this! I don't have personal experience with this, but I do know that most doctors these days treat birth control as a solution for all problems, and almost never properly educate women about the severe side effects of birth control (like those I experienced when younger.) I would definitely properly read about the side effects before taking birth control, if thats what you want to do. But before that, I definitely agree with the advice here to go to a pro-life clinic and be referred to a good doctor. Also, check out this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Fertility-Cycles-Nutrition-Marilyn-Shannon/dp/0926412345

The author talks about natural ways to handle these problems (including ovarian cysts!) It might be helpful!

Anyway... If you do choose to start taking birth control, know that it is likely not a sin especially since you are not sexually active. Intent is important, and the Church recognizes that. :)

Hey! Reddit is a great source, but it looks like you want some detailed information, Have you tried books and google?

In terms of nutrition, this book is a must have for anyone serious:

http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Nutrition-Metabolism-Sareen-Gropper/dp/1133104053/

But this site has some pretty good articles as well, as a beginning perspective:

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition


In terms of Power/ Motor development/ Performance , I am not really sure outside of powerlifting, but these 2 books are amazing

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Programming-Strength-Training-2nd/dp/0982522703

http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-3rd-Mark-Rippetoe/dp/0982522738


Recovery is actually pretty damn simple - sleep more, eat more, rest and avoid over-exertion. For a more scientific standpoint, this book is a must have

http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Supple-Leopard-Preventing-Performance/dp/1936608588/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_z

Any more specific advice and you would have to list your goals :)

I have a few favorites:

The Feed Zone - Simple ingredients and processes, and geared towards athletes like myself. However, very beneficial for non-athletes as well!

Skinnytaste Fast and Slow - Again, easy ingredients and processes. These recipes are designed to either be whipped together in a jiffy, or with a slow/pressure cooker. Plus they're fairly healthy!

Whole Food Energy - Might seem a little "hippy dippy", but I love the crap out of this book. It has smoothies! SMOOTHIES. Among other great recipes, of course.

You may also want to look into various blogs. My favorites there are Budget Bytes, Damn Delicious, and Thug Kitchen (if you don't mind the swears!).

So if you choose a methylfolate prenatal and get an additional methylated B supplement and eat amazing foods (sidebar: I love this cookbook for prenatal nutrition), you will be ahead of the game.

If you want to be a superhero, also check your pantry and throw out anything fortified with folic acid, like certain breads and noodles. If you want to be a super superhero, get your partner tested for MTHFR, because his genes will affect baby's genes, which will affect how well baby absorbs folate.

You need to decide whether or not you're comfortable deciding to take a baby aspirin without your doctor's approval. I decided to take it right away, and when I met with my midwife later, she told me to take it — but my GP didn't want me on it, because he didn't know enough about MTHFR. The reason for baby aspirin (or the shots) is because MTHFR can lead to clotting disorders, and if the clots clog up the placenta or cord, it can cause miscarriage. My midwife said to take it until 2 weeks before the due date.

Sidebar: If heaven forbid you ever have a miscarriage, please know that it's not your fault. Okay? Picture me shaking you by the shoulders until you internalize this. Miscarriages happen for a thousand reasons, and it's not the mother's fault. You specifically are doing a good job for your baby and you are handling this really early and you need to be kind to yourself.

There's no harm in calling other OBs/midwives, right? Might as well, you may find someone who's knowledgeable and a really good fit. But it's OK if this is the path you're on. Even if they don't want you on aspirin, no doctor is going to say "don't take high-quality OTC vitamins!", and as long as you avoid folic acid, you're a step ahead of the game. You are doing good things for your baby. The baby can wait a week for you to get more information. It's gonna be okay.

Plants are not sentient. They are not aware, they do not enjoy their lives, they do not experience pain, they do not experience distress. You know this.

Comparing humans and animals makes sense -- we share several characteristics, as listed above. We share one characteristic with plants: we are both alive. Life has never been mentioned as the requirement for ethical consideration. The line is drawn, logically, at sentience. We do not consider it murder to take a non-sentient human off of life support, for example.

You say that you respect vegans and vegetarians for their choice, but it seems that you don't even understand their choice. Why don't you read a book so you can respect us more convincingly? I'd recommend this one.

I've read several pro-meat books without gaining respect for the authors, but let me know if you also have a tip on a good book.

Part 2:

Anatomy and Physiology

• Gray's Anatomy. My friend suggests getting both a modern version and if you can, one of the classical editions. She does not like the Barnes and Noble or some of the other "collector editions" because she thinks the illustrations are too small to read, despite the elegant binding they come in.
  
  
• The Anatomy Coloring Book My friend greatly recommends the entirety of this series of books.
  
  
• Human Anatomy and Physiology by John W. Hole. My friend owns the 2nd edition (1981) version of this book. She can't speak for the newer, modern version but she says this is an excellent college-level text on human anatomy and physiology.
  
  
• Human Anatomy & Physiology (Marieb, Human Anatomy & Physiology). This is a more modern text that my friend has and suggests.
  
  

  Other Medical Texts (Pathology, organic chemistry, biology, nutritional science, etc)
  

  
  

• Clinical Pathophysiology Made Ridiculously Simple by Aaron Berkowitz
  
  
• Robbin's Basic Pathology
  
  
• Food and Western Disease: Health and Nutrition From An Evolutionary Perspective
  
  
• Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism
  
  
• Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition
  
  
• Real Food For Pregnancy by Lily Nichols
  
  
• Nutritional Grail: Ancestral Wisdom, Breakthrough Science, and the Dawning Nutritional Renaissance
  
  
  
• Dr. Klein's Organic Chemistry (textbook)
  
  
• Campbell's Biology (textbook) - Any newer edition will do. She also suggests the biology coloring book as an additional exercise book.
  
  

  Formularies, Pharmacy
  

  
  

• Herbal Formularies for Health Professionals, Volume I, Volume II, and Volume III by Dr. Jill Stansbury
  
  
• Fenner's Formulary: Containing Formulae for the Preparation of All the Elixirs, Emulsions, Essences, Flavoring Extracts, Glycerites, Solutions, ... Preparations, Now in Use by Byron Fenner. A classical formulary, it is also available in PDF form from forgottenbooks and the SWSBM.
  
  
• Remington: The Practice and Science of Pharmacy
  
  
  

  Classical Herbals
  

  
  
  

• Culpeper's Herbal
  
  
• King's American Dispensatory
  
  
• The classical herbals listed on Henriette's Herbal Page
  
  

This isn’t a personal attack, but debating this with people who haven’t read a single nutrition textbook is impossible. I’m talking about the only CICO that anyone could possibly mean in this discussion.

Obviously the human body as a system does not violate the conservation of energy. Not a single person who is sufficiently educated to cite a law of thermodynamics is going to argue that a meal plan can violate it. So I don’t know why you would crusade against a misinterpretation so outlandish that nobody is ever going to present it.

> there is a lot of variety to choose from to find what works for each person.

There’s a functionally infinite number of diets to choose from, in terms of simply which combinations of foods you’re eating, but they’re all just different ways to achieve adequate amounts of a finite number of nutrients necessary for life processes. If you’re getting same nutrient load from one combination of foods or another one, and they’re calorically similar, those diets aren’t really different in the parameters of this topic.

CICO is a reductionist attitude towards nutrition that states that guessing your caloric deficit and staying under it is a viable solution to maintaining a healthy wait over long periods. That claim has been disproven, for decades, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any reputable figure in the field defend it. Playing the CICO game tapers down your metabolic efficiency, and you end up reducing your average burn rate, and having to restrict your caloric intake more and more to avoid a backlash of weight gain, because you’re perpetually keeping your body in a highly anabolic state, and decreasing your insulin sensitivity, so it’s chomping at the bit to store every calorie as fat. The explosion of popular support behind cyclical calorie restriction, which is called intermittent fasting now (16/8 and other feeding windows, “one meal a day”, etc) is still traversing social media, but it’s been a widespread position in nutritional science for, again decades. I can think off-hand of a couple of studies that came out about 20 years ago on Ramadan fasting, which showed transient improvements across several endocrine parameters. The references in this paper are a good resource on the subject.

https://watermark.silverchair.com/znu00407000981.pdf

If you are interested in the subject, here are two texts commonly used in metabolic science courses:

https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Nutrition-Metabolism-Sareen-Gropper/dp/1305627857

https://www.amazon.com/Biochemistry-Jeremy-M-Berg/dp/1464126100

I started Paleo right after my son was born. Yes, I got pretty skinny, but my milk production was waaay more then enough... I also had high energy, and built up some wicked arm muscle. Keep your foods nutrient dense for optimum breast milk. The Weston A. Price foundation recommends soaked grains (which is debatable according to the Paleo lifestyle), but they also place a major emphasis on nutrient dense food for Mama. Also, fermented foods to keep the gut healthy. Their science is solid, but I always tell other moms to research it themselves and be informed. Foods I ate that were not strictly Paleo: Potatoes, raw goat milk and sometimes soaked oatmeal. Relevant good book to read: http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Babies-Nutrition-Fertility-Breast-feeding/dp/1936608650

edit: nutrient dense foods are key. Liver, butter, raw milk, eggs, caviar, mollusks, BONE BROTH... Emphasis because it's a family favorite. :)

Interestingly, I was reading "The Secret Life of Fat" (so good,link: https://www.amazon.ca/Secret-Life-Fat-Science-Understood/dp/0393244830) and she cites a study that measures hunger cues (not just self-reporting but actual hormonal changes) for men and women when they exercise. What they found was that women experienced increased hunger at a lower calories burn (400 cals and up) whereas men in the study did not experience hunger until they got to higher calorie burn (600 calls and up).

I will say that cardio makes me want to eat everything in site but weightlifting doesn't affect my appetite in the least. And I'm sure you've heard all this but weight lifting = increased muscle mass = increased burn when sedentary. Anyway, best of luck!

I would avoid getting her a new Garmin - though it's an incredibly thoughtful idea, she may have a different one in mind! Instead, perhaps a gift card to a running store or a card with an "IOU a running watch of your choice" message. I say this only because I did an incredible amount of research before buying my watch and was pretty set on that choice.

Otherwise, I'd recommend a FlipBelt (I just bought one for myself and I LOVE it.)

Or a runner's cookbook? ONE and TWO

I'm a Registered Dietitian in the U.S. and work within the powdered foods community doing consulting for both Powdered Foods Market and invidiual clients. In school we used a slightly older version of Krause Food and Nutrition Therapy which is an excellent in depth resource for medical diets. This is a great starting point to understand general needs as well as specialized disease/condition needs. If you're like me you will quickly want to know the biochemistry that the body is going through, to which I'd recommend Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism. In med-school the idea is "teach the framework of the body, instead of memorizing the pieces". When I'm really struggling to figure out what a patient needs, this is the resource I fall back on. Either way, if you ever have questions feel free to jump over to PFM and check out some of the questions I've already answered, I guarantee you'll learn a few things!

I really enjoyed Gut by Guilia Enders. There is a lot of great information in there about the gut and the brain as well as other aspects of the digestive system, and it is also very funny with lovely pictures too

FWIW, I definitely don't disagree with you in theory. I am just a random guy. And random guys are not often right!

If you think there is a small chance I am right, then I would check out these cheap Kindle books, which are slightly more credible:

This guy is an actual MD who prescribes D3 in the range that I take:

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Vitamin-Scientific-Practical-Information/dp/1508946310

This dude is what got me initially curious, he is a bit of a lunatic (what an endorsement!), but he cites a LOT of papers. After reading this, I read some more books.

https://www.amazon.com/Miraculous-Results-Extremely-Sunshine-Experiment/dp/1491243821

And then this one on K2:

https://www.amazon.com/Vitamin-K2-Calcium-Paradox-Little-Known/dp/0062320041

Also, I have gotten several friends and family members to run the same test in the last year, and all report positive results with healthy D and calcium levels. Again, I'm just a random dude, so YMMV, but I'm obviously a big believer at this point.

Thanks!

Natural saturated fats got a bad reputation for 2 reasons:

1. Cholesterol was almost always found with natural saturated fats, so when they were trying to get people to reduce cholesterol, the easiest rule of thumb to follow was to avoid natural saturated fats.
   
   
2. When the early saturated fat studies were done, they used man made saturated fats (partially hydrogenated vegetable oils), which are full of TRANS FATS, in the studies. Trans fats do cause heart problems, but it wasn't recognized until the 1990s. So natural saturated fats were getting lumped in with trans fats for causing heart disease.
   
   The old timer doctor who wrote that coconut oil bashing article is still stuck in the past. He has failed to take into account the research that shows it was trans fats--not natural saturated fats--that were the culprit in the saturated fat trials.
   
   Mary Enig was the researcher who discovered the link between trans fats and heart disease. If you want to know about what fats are good and bad for you, I suggest her book on fats: "Know your Fats".
   
   https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0967812607/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i2

You can self-study that stuff man. That's what i did. It will take you many many months(or years) of self study to complete this stuff.

I can give you a list of books i used as well -

Nutrition -

NUTRITION NOW (This is a academic textbook used in nutrition courses.)

https://www.amazon.com/Nutrition-Now-Judith-Brown/dp/1133936539

Lyle mcdonalds stuff - https://bodyrecomposition.com/category/nutrition/

weightrainer's stuff -
http://www.weightrainer.net/nutrition/nutrition.html

American Dietetic Association Complete Food and Nutrition Guide, Revised and Updated 4th Edition

https://www.amazon.com/American-Dietetic-Association-Complete-Nutrition/dp/0470912073

Psychology -

Phew big fan of this subject. List of academic books i used to self study.

• Social psych- Eliot aronson - Social animal.
  
• Psychology 101 - Discovering psychology 6th edition.
  
• Biological psychology - Kalat.
  
• Positive psychology - Snyder.
  
• Cognitive psychology - sternberg.
  
• Evolutionary psychology - david buss.
  
• Influence - Robert ciadini.
  
• Theories on personality - Feist authors.
  
• Sensation and perception - goldstein.
  
  Economics -
  
  Macroeconomics and microeconomics - mankiw. Basically any mankiw book will give you a basic overview.
  
  Adam smith - wealth of nations.
  
  Economics can go way deep as well and it will take years to gain mastery of the subject.
  You got game theory, Behavioral economics, developmental economics etc etc..
  
  These are very very deep subjects to be exploring - And what you plan to do in 1 year is simply not possible. Any courses offered by any institute will be puny and won't cover anything decently considering the vastness of the topics we are talking about.

So I'm not a doctor, and I don't want to advise you to jump to injecting before talking to someone. But B12 serum tests alone aren't the best diagnostic for every situation. It will show how much B12 is in the blood stream, but it cannot show how well it is being used by the body. So if you're supplementing, it will show there's a lot. And when someone is injecting, the test becomes pretty useless as a diagnostic tool because the person being tested will always show a maxed out testing range. That's why there's a few tests that you would need to do to see the full picture. There's a good book I read this summer. Could It Be B12: An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses. It's easy to follow and understand. You could read an ebook version and make notes to ask your doctor about some other tests you might like to run.

I think the author, Sally M. Pacholok, also has some videos on youtube.

Edited to add: I forgot earlier, but if you want to follow the route most western docs prefer, you would need to go off b12 supplements for 4-6 weeks to go back to a “blank slate.” That would make a blood serum test its most helpful

First, I want to point you to this story by Marsha Dunn Klein, an occupational therapist who specializes in children's feeding disorders. Everything is a Grashopper

Second, I recommend that you have him evaluated by a speech therapist or occupational therapist. Being so panicked at the thought of trying new foods that he begins gagging and vomiting is not normal and is also not something he has psychological control over. This is unlikely to be something you can help him manage without professional help, and your instinctual reactions to keep pushing him to eat stuff you know he likes have the potential to create lifelong problems. Kids and eating issues are absolutely maddening, and parents' instincts are often plain wrong, so I really, really, really recommend you seek professional help with this.

Third, I recommend Ellyn Satter's books, especially Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense, and How to Get Your Kids to Eat (But Not Too Much).

My daughter has a diagnosed feeding disorder and is tube fed in part due to food sensitivities. We have been working with specialists for two years to help her get to the point where she can eat by mouth safely and comfortably. It will come, but it has surprised me how often my own instincts about what to do have been wrong, and how the therapist's recommendations have helped. Good luck to you, this is so, so hard.

Oh I see... that could certainly take timing out of your hands.

> my decidedly un-mucus-y cervix and his drier than normal semen

My wife has had gotten good advice on these kind of 'nitpicky' aspects of the cycle from a book called Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition. Some of the supplementation advice in that book has really helped some women we know (we volunteer to teach fertility awareness, so we're somewhat familiar with a lot of couple's bodily functions, haha).

As for your husband... has he tried drinking tons of water? I know it sounds stupid, but I've personally noticed a ton of difference. There's some advice in that book for men too! We've found that some of these tips make us feel like we're 'doing something', so at least there's some psychological benefit?

Well anyway, just thought I'd recommend that. Totally understand if it sounds unappealing, though.

i'm just curious, how did you come upon this way of eating and living? sounds like it's working great, but it wasn't a book or website that drew you in.

anyway, it won't be hard to find evidence for the bad effects of sugar, and the good effects of vegetables. to understand fats, particularly saturated fats, i think the best resource is mary enig's 'know your fats.' a collection of her articles can be found here. somebody else may reply with some of the good blog posts out there - there are many!

I use the technique from the book Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald. He talks about learning to discern the difference between 'head hunger' and 'belly hunger'. Soon as I read that section, I immediately noticed that some of the time when I eat, it's because I think I'm hungry, but my stomach is not hungry. Now I wait for that 'empty' feeling in my stomach to eat, at which point I eat a reasonable amount. So far it's been working out well, though it still takes discipline not to give in to random food craving. On a side note, these cravings often seem to be brought on by the lack of fluids, which I generally don't drink mid-workout unless it's on a track or it's a long run. I theorize that because of this, after a workout, I'm dying for food, but after a couple of glasses of water, I feel full and can make a more rational food choice 10-20 minutes later.

I plan my meals ahead of time so I don't have to make a meal when I start to feel hungry; the meal is already ready and of a portion size that is reasonable! The Feed Zone Cookbook has also helped me with this because it has a lot of food tailored for athletes that can be made easily and quickly with some previous preparation (cooked chicken, cooked yams, cooked rice are always in my fridge now!).

tl;dr Wait till I get that 'empty' feeling, have a healthy meal or small meal already in the pipeline at the time so that I can take care of the hunger immediately and without excess calorie consumption.

The book we have is How to Get Your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0915950839/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8

It’s fairly old but still relevant so we got an inexpensive used copy. My husband has read a lot of it (he’s the cook); I’ve only read some parts that seemed most relevant. Like with Ferber it takes a little bit of effort to get past feeling defensive that you’re doing everything “wrong” especially if like me you have been begging/pressuring kid to eat out of worry. I feel like changing our approach gave me “permission” or something not to worry if my kid only wants one food or only wants bread for 3 meals in a row.

We adapted the basic approach and made meal/snack times closer together than I think she suggests (about 2-2.5 hours except a long stretch around nap) for now to be able to avoid giving unplanned snacks to hangry toddler. Even though he didn’t have much patience for it we started putting him in the high chair for most food. Now he’s still not as patient as basically every other kid I see but big improvement, even when he’s not that hungry he will often explore his foods and “chat” with us a bit instead of immediately freaking out to get down. Seems obvious in retrospect that the predictable structure/cues help him know what’s happening.

One thing you can do is to make sure your vitamin D levels are sufficient:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/02/study-confirms-vitamin-d-protects-against-cold-and-flu/

I take 2000 IU twice a day now. I like this one by Now Foods:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001UZPY1O/

I was taking 5000 IU a day for a while, but then I got tested and my blood levels were on the high side of normal, so I dialed it down to 2000 IU once a day and they were on the lower side of normal, so now I'm doing 2000 IU twice a day. The key is to get yourself tested to see what your base level is, then get tested again after supplementing for a while at a particular does, and dial it in from there.

Incidentally it also seems to be a good idea to take Vitamin K2 and calcium if you're taking Vitamin D3. Apparently the D3 tells your body to absorb the calcium, and the K2 tells your body where to put the calcium - i.e. in your bones and teeth rather than deposit it in your arteries. I take this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002N1MW3W/

More info on the K2/D3/calcium link here if you're interested:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062320041/

Thanks for the feedback! Good stuff. 👍

First, let me be very clear that I'm not a professional nutritionist but just a happy amateur. So take everything from here on out with a big grain of salt.

You have a good point. Two things though:

• Jack Norris writes that passive diffusion accounts for 1-3% of B12 absorption from food (referencing a book I haven't read).
  
  445.4 µg B12 above what IF can handle would then mean up to 20.7 µg B12 absorbed through diffusion (3 µg daily average).
  
  
• I don't see anything in the study you cited that indicates any sort of cut-off point after 54.6 µg of B12 intake. Rather their equation shows there's a diminishing marginal absorption rate (ln(Ai) = 0.7694 * ln(Di) - 0.9614) which is to say that any microgram added is absorbed at a lower and lower percentage but the overall B12 absorption does go up.
  
  500 would mean: e ^ (0.7694 ln(500) - 0.9614) = 45.6 µg absorbed (6.5 µg daily average).
  
  I think the key part in their quote on maximum absorption is "amounts usually consumed with a meal"*. With supplements we've seen much higher levels of absorption than the 1.5 µg they talk about. More than 54.6 µg + passive diffusion can explain.

Besides the D and magnesium you also need enough K2 to make sure the calcium ends up in your bones and not your arteries. You don't say anything about butter but if you're not eating it I recommend adding in some good grass fed butter. It will have good levels of K2 and fits quite well into the average paleo diet.

source

Celiac disease is associated with clubbing, see, e.g., this paper - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3029079/ See also http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11761775 as another example.

The clubbing suggests that you should be thoroughly evaluated for osteoporosis/osteopenia/osteomalacia as well as fat malabsorption and vitamin and mineral deficiencies (e.g., calcium, vitamins D and K2 and other fat soluble vitamins (A and E), B vitamins, etc.).

Note that it is primarily vitamin K2 (menaquinone) - not K1 (phylloquinone) - that is involved in bone formation. This book - http://www.amazon.com/Vitamin-K2-Calcium-Paradox-Little-Known-ebook/dp/B00D5TSMAS/ - does a pretty good job covering the research about that.

I've got some semi-local rides that I can check that out on.

Will definitely check out Joe Friel's books. Thanks for the beta! :)

The books that helped me the most this year are listed below. What books, or training programs, do you recommend for someone who can get on 2-3 rides a week?



http://www.amazon.com/The-Time-Crunched-Cyclist-2nd-Ed/dp/193403083X

http://www.amazon.com/The-Feed-Zone-Cookbook-Flavorful/dp/1934030767

I got this book and it has some great meal recipes to help cut weight while getting enough nutrients. The foods are filling but low in calorie and it has all the macros listed to help you meet your goals. I'm sure you could find similar recipes online but I really appropriate having them all in one spot and organized. it also has a shopping list so you can just buy everything on it and know you can make every recipe in the book.

If you know how to cook, and don't mind spending $19, I highly recommend it.

Been slowly compiling resources on this as we get a lot of questions in the regard. Hope it helps.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick + sauna use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL7vVG_CFWA

Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast addressing protocol for dementia or Alzheimers: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2015/12/episode-340-full-transcript/ (see the 45min mark of the transcript for a listener question about protocol’s for Alzheimers)

Dr. Trent Austin - Natural Treatments for Symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HTn8Xr3TGk

Olive oil + Alzherimer's: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170621103123.htm

Cognitive Decline Protocols: https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/wiki/cognitivedeclineprotocols

Lions Mane: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18844328


Books:

• Wahl’s Protocol: https://www.amazon.com/Wahls-Protocol-Radical-Autoimmune-Conditions/dp/1583335544/
  
• End of Alzheimers: https://www.amazon.com/End-Alzheimers-Program-Prevent-Cognitive/dp/0735216207/
  
• Genius Foods: https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Foods-Smarter-Productive-Protecting/dp/0062562851/
  
  Possible Products/Protocols
  
  
• lion’s mane mushroom
  
• THC/CBD
  
• Biotin
  
• Vitamin D
  
• Curcumin
  
• Fasting
  
• Ketogenic diet
  
• Fish Oil
  
• Bacopa
  
• Creatine
  
• Ashwagandha

Here is one of my favorites for a long training day, or race day. Try to eat it a couple of hours before you start if you can.

1/2 cup Rolled Oats
1/2 cup Unsweetened Vanilla Almond milk
1/4 cup Full Fat Greek Yogurt
1/2 cup Blueberries
1/4 cup chopped pecans

Mix together in tupperware the night before, and put into the fridge. I find it gives me good long lasting energy throughout the day. This is an adaptation of the muesli recipe found in "The Feed Zone" cookbook by Allen Lim and Biju Thomas. I highly recommend all of their cookbooks!

https://www.amazon.com/Feed-Zone-Cookbook-Flavorful-Athletes/dp/1934030767/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469417032&sr=8-1&keywords=the+feed+zone

I feel like I link to this book on every thread, but if you want a good explanation of the Paleo diet and the science/nutrition behind it I highly recommend picking up [It Starts With Food] (http://www.amazon.com/Starts-Food-Discover-Whole30-Unexpected-ebook/dp/B008C20TDG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407293809&sr=1-1&keywords=it+starts+with+food).

So the knock against red meat is usually about saturated fat. If you have another concern about red meat other than that, please post so we can find you the relevant research. The point is, that red meat is not just a big ball of saturated fat, its mostly mono-unsaturated.

Here is a link from a university in Australia with a Red Meat breakdown:
http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1053&context=hbspapers

There was a link posted already re: saturated fat. If you want to dig down more, this is a good starting point, filled with references for you to follow:
http://www.amazon.com/Know-Your-Fats-Understanding-Cholesterol/dp/0967812607

If its cholesterol you are worried about, this is a good place to start:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/01/does-dietary-saturated-fat-increase.html

Lastly, there is a large amount of anecdotal clinical experience where people's HDL\LDL and especially Triglycerides improve on this higher-red-meat diet.

TL:DR: Red meat has plenty of "good fat" besides saturated fat, and saturated fat is actually good for you anyway.

This is an excellent book that answers your question perfectly.

> correlated by co2 emission

Yeah, ok now we're talking together. The first time around you said vo2 ;) co2 is ofc different, that's the respiratory exchange ratio. Vo2 is oxygen uptake during exercise. One letter that makes a difference.

So, the 20-30% number is pretty much the bottom of glucose utilization in a non-keto adapted person, since the brain uses ~20% and pretty much just glucose.

Then it becomes an issue of liver glycogen being depleted once the time period lengthens, and that's when muscle breakdown kicks in as a means to feed glucose to the brain.

As the stores decrease, glucogenesis ramps up using mostly amino acids.

I'll quote a few passages from a textbook that shows the timeline of what's going on. Those are relevant quotes from the post absorptive metabolism section.

>When glycogenolysis is occurring, the synthesis of glycogen and triacylglycerols in the liver is diminished, and the de novo synthesis of glucose (gluconeogenesis) begins to help maintain blood glucose levels.

This is the start of the post absorptive phase. When liver glycogen starts breaking down, gluconeogenesis starts.

>The brain and other tissues of the CNS are extravagant consumers of glucose, oxidizing it for energy and releasing no gluconeogenic precursors in return. At rest, the brain uses about 20% of the available energy even though it is only about 2% of the body by weight.

Underlining the role of the brain in depleting liver glycogen. Those numbers ~equal the storage capacity of the liver, but the cns is not the only consumer of glucose at this time.

>In the course of an overnight fast, nearly all reserves of liver glycogen and most muscle glycogen have been depleted.

This varies of course, someone used to IF and with a high carb intake and a large evening meal will obviously not be glycogen depleted by morning but it still shows the time frame. An overnight fast is actually usually around 12h and not just the 8 spent sleeping though.

Source

The texts by Gropper and Stipanuk are pretty good, comprehensive.

This one is advanced and expensive but it's the absolute best text book I've ever had. [Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism] (http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Nutrition-Metabolism-Sareen-Gropper/dp/1133104053/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419868421&sr=8-1&keywords=advanced+nutrition+and+human+metabolism) There is a lot to learn from this book

Vegans are religious fanatics about their diet. Reading their books, checking their websites and joining their groups is like essentially saying that you should join a church group and read the Bible to learn if Christianity is true. The sources are all biased in favor of the belief.

Instead of reading blogs and websites, people should go to Google Scholar and actually search for real scientific papers on the topic and they should buy a real textbook on how the fuck human metabolism works. There are real life Biochemists who study human metabolism for a living, but no one wants to read their work. Instead, they'd rather read the blog of some dude who looks buff in his photos or a blonde girl with a nice ass that says her juice date made her hot, not her amazing genetics. Here's a good starting point. Notice how the WHO finds that a mixed diet increases protein absorption if you check:

TABLE 6-7 Example of Calculations Needed for Adjustment of Protein Allowances for a Diet with 33%, Animal- and 67% Vegetable-Source Protein.

TABLE 6-6 Values for the Digestibility of Protein in Humansa

33% of the diet from animal sources. By golly gosh, that sounds like a balanced diet! But I think your own experience at least proves to you that vegan doesn't work.

I highly recommend the book "Beautiful Babies" by Kristen Michaelis. Really great no-nonsense guide to eating right for your pregnancy.

Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism

>In her groundbreaking new book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, Melanie Joy explores the invisible system that shapes our perception of the meat we eat, so that we love some animals and eat others without knowing why. She calls this system carnism. Carnism is the belief system, or ideology, that allows us to selectively choose which animals become our meat, and it is sustained by complex psychological and social mechanisms. Like other "isms" (racism, ageism, etc.), carnism is most harmful when it is unrecognized and unacknowledged. Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows names and explains this phenomenon and offers it up for examination. Unlike the many books that explain why we shouldn't eat meat, Joy's book explains why we do eat meat -- and thus how we can make more informed choices as citizens and consumers.

(I have not actually read the book, but I was introduced to the term when Gever Tulley took it and applied the same concepts to danger to form Dangerism )

If you don't have this yet, it's a good buy and a great read:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Feed-Zone-Cookbook-Flavorful/dp/1934030767/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345651096&sr=8-1&keywords=feed+zone

The Feed Zone Cookbook.

My wife (mid-40s) suffers from strange tingling and numbness in her face, hands, legs ... been happening for years. She's wondering if it could be caused by low B12 (she also has had ulcurative colitis since childhood).

Her serum B12 levels come back as "normal", but she's been reading about something where that test can be deceptive that it doesn't show the amount of B12 that's actually active in your cells ... or something like that, she can describe it better.

There's books on the subject (specifically "Could It Be B12") that suggest an aggressive "B12 shot a day for a week" (or until symptoms subside) and then B12 shot a week, then one a month for life.

Do you have any familiarity with any of this? Thanks!

Food and Western Disease: Health and nutrition from an evolutionary perspective

Pretty techinical, but worth it.

People also seem to be a big fan of Perfect Health Diet. I have not read it yet, although it is sitting on my shelf at the moment.

I've made some using the Feedzone Cookbook and they taste amazing, are easy to pack and I get to control what is in there. Overall, it's cheaper than buying Clif bars.

I read it in Secret Life of Fat, but it looks like there's some legitimate science to back up the claim that heat applied to plastic can secrete chemicals that impact SHBG (and I figure you have to assume that gets into food if it's in the container).

I found a few links on the topic, not a ton though, and literally none are definitive and none mention meal prep (minus the book I mentioned above, which did outright say it). But I've included some below.

• Xenoestrogen interaction with human sex hormone-binding globulin (hSHBG)
  
  
• The Association of Obesity With Sex Hormone-binding Globulin Is Stronger Than the Association With Ageing

great suggestions - i’d also recommend ellen satter’s books. they completely changed how i fed our kids when we had similar feeding issues.

how to get your kid to eat

and whats weird is people usually get a second opinion, but when a doctor puts you on insulin and all this other stuff they just shrugg and accept it. There's this book called Genius Foods that talks about this, maybe it could help your grandma

Take it one day at a time, one meal at a time. It's overwhelming to think about it like, "I'm never ever going to eat sweets again" but its easier to think "I'm not going to eat dessert tonight".

I read this book and it totally changed my perspective on food.

If you like the Whole 30 people, It Starts With Food or Well Fed might be good resources.

http://www.amazon.com/Starts-Food-Discover-Whole30-Unexpected-ebook/dp/B008C20TDG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404450579&sr=1-1&keywords=whole+30

When I decided I did not want to be fat any more, because I was concerned about living to see my son graduate from high school, I found a lot of conflicting information.

It's calories. No, it's about carbohydrate. No, it's about refined sugars. No, it's about all monosaccharides. No, it's about processed foods. No, it's about organic foods and endocrine disruptors. No, it's about PUFAs. And so on.

It's simple but difficult to lose weight. No, it's not possible. It's about genetics. No, it's really about epigenetics. No, it's mostly about hormones. No, it's about when you eat. No, it's about exercise.

etc etc.

So I spent a few years trying to untangle it all. And learned before too long that reading blogs, unsourced websites, and NYTimes bestsellers was a good way to confuse yourself.

I will humbly suggest to this person a few resources that will help cut through that confusion:

Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism and good old PubMed. Those sources gave me a pretty good idea how human metabolism works. And 8 years later, the 40" waist jeans are still untouched on a shelf.

I'm still leaner and stronger than at any time in my 20s and 30s (NSFW, boxers!). And I'm very much in agreement with the accepted conventional wisdom in r/fatlogic. Because it's the truth, and it works.

I found this one pretty good.

I liked this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Could-Be-B12-Epidemic-Misdiagnoses/dp/1884995691

also that chris kesser has done podcasts on the subject I believe. He is a good listen...has been on Joe Rogan's podcast a few times.

Dieting is still a form of disordered eating which can be a quick spiral back into eating disorder behaviors. The fact that the brain only functions at 60% if backed by evidence. Its even in my advanced metabolism textbook. What research have you read that supports that its good for people with eating disorders? I can send my grad research if you're interested in reading it.

Did you know Amazon will donate a portion of every purchase if you shop by going to smile.amazon.com instead? Over $50,000,000 has been raised for charity - all you need to do is change the URL!

Here are your smile-ified links:

Secret Life of Fat

---

^^i'm ^^a ^^friendly bot

This one is a good intro into nutrition:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Manual-Nutrition-12th-Department-Health/dp/0113229291

This one is more advanced and goes into mechanistic detail about physiological processes that involve nutrients.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Advanced-Nutrition-Human-Metabolism-Smith/dp/1133104053/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481740086&sr=1-2&keywords=advanced+nutrition+and+human+metabolism

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Food-Science-Technology-InfoTrac/dp/053454486X/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=understanding+food+science+and+technology&qid=1565077187&s=gateway&sr=8-2

This should be a great intro

The Feed Zone series of cookbooks are awesome.

http://www.amazon.com/Feed-Zone-Cookbook-Flavorful-Athletes/dp/1934030767?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00

just curious, what is your source for this number? i have this book and it gives the following values for protein intake:

• estimated avg daily requirement for adults: 0.66 g/kg body weight ~ 0.3 g/lb body weight
  
• RDA 0.8 g/kg = 0.36 g/lb
  
• recommendation for athletes 1.2-1.8 (or up to 2) g/kg; 2 g/kg = 0.9 g/lb

I loved nutrition now by judith brown. You can just get the pdf off of google.

http://www.amazon.com/Nutrition-Now-Judith-E-Brown/dp/1133936539

Yup there is a significant amount of scientific research that links lectin and other anti nutrients in grains to many current western diseases. There are many documented cases where people have cured many auto immune disease by not eating grains, these include lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, cron's disease, thyroid diseases and more.

This is chapter 4 of Robb Wolf's book
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/19/paleo-diet-solution/

A post on lectin with cited references
http://www.krispin.com/lectin.html

A paper from a UCLA Prof
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~regfjxe/Arthritis.htm

A good paper from vrp.com with 30 cited references dating back to the 70s
http://www.vrp.com/digestive-health/lectins-their-damaging-role-in-intestinal-health-rheumatoid-arthritis-and-weight-loss

A paper in the British Medical Journal
http://www.bmj.com/content/318/7190/1023.full

There are a lot more.
Generally there is nothing in grains that we need, they are low in fiber compared to vegetables which I am sure you know, and they cause us to be fat.

There is a whole text book on it and other dietary causes of western disease.
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Western-Disease-evolutionary-perspective/dp/1405197714/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

B12 er svært at få, men løses ved at spise en pille. Det er i øvrigt ikke kun veganere som har brug for B12, mange kødspisere får også for lidt, og https://www.amazon.co.uk/Could-B12-An-Epidemic-Misdiagnoses/dp/1884995691 er spændende læsning for alle.

Jeg supplerer min diæt med B-12, carnosine, vitamin D, vitamin A, DHA+EPA og magnesium, det er i øvrigt også anbefalet at kødspisere gør dette.

Meget forskning peger på at de fleste plantespisere får nok og korrekt protein: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/do-vegetarians-get-enough-protein/

I haven't read that many, but these two, I like:

• http://www.amazon.com/150-Healthiest-Foods-Earth-Surprising-ebook/dp/B004R1PZL2
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Starts-Food-Discover-Whole30-Unexpected-ebook/dp/B008C20TDG
  
  And although not specifically about nutrition, this one's in my to-read list:
  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000R4FGP8

Recipes from http://www.amazon.com/The-Feed-Zone-Cookbook-Flavorful/dp/1934030767 seem easy to prepare.

This book: http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Your-Kid-Eat/dp/0915950839 it has saved many a parent from a mentally breakdown at the dinner table.

I highly recommend Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism for these types of inquiries

There's a number of disorders that may be to blame. There are certain genetic defects that cause appetite to soar. The body may be unable to realise that it's had enough calories. Alternately she may be not able to store calories as fat correctly and this may require constant eating. There's also a virus out there(the adenovirus AD36 or other similar chicken viruses) which can cause high appetite. AD36 may be responsible for up to 30% of obesity in the uSA.

I really suggest reading The Secret Life of Fat, see http://thesecretlifeoffat.com/ or https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Fat-Science-Understood/dp/0393244830

The short story is, it's not your fault. I suggest reading that book and seeking out doctors who are experts in metabolism and can do real tests for genes or other issues that may be causing the problem. Then you may if you're lucky have a possibility of seeking a solution.

get this book and then do what it says

http://www.amazon.com/Track-Your-Plaque-prevention-coronary/dp/0595316646/ref=la_B002BLT426_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452556351&sr=1-7

This Dr. uses advanced imaging technology to track plaque buildup, and has devised a diet and supplement regimen that is scientifically proven to cleanout blood vessels

also get some K2 supplements

http://www.amazon.com/Vitamin-K2-Calcium-Paradox-Little-Known/dp/0062320041/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452556943&sr=8-1&keywords=Kate+Rheaume-bleue

Pick up The Feed Zone Cookbook.

Nutrition is a highly personal thing and Reddit is a cesspool of bro-science.

I will say, you're on the right track being concerned about food. Whenever you drastically increase your cycling volume its not uncommon to just get tired of eating so having a plan is helpful.

This leads into an important point; even on rest days you need to stay active (do some light riding) so that you can keep your metabolic systems turning over. Especially when its warm, riding a few hard days then not riding (and sweating), then riding a few more hard days can lead to dehydration and other issues as your metabolic system is stressed and confused.

Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism, while not pocket sized, is perhaps the one of the most important texts and the one I continually refer to outside of ASPEN materials.

• Know Your Fats : The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol ~ Mary G. Enig
  
  A good primer article:
  
  
• There is No Such Thing as a Macronutrient Part I – Fats ~ Kurt G Harris MD

Try this one out. It's a cookbook, but there is a lot of information about why you want to eat these combinations of stuff, and not others. It is specific, for athletes, but plenty of prose in there.

https://www.amazon.com/Feed-Zone-Cookbook-Flavorful-Athletes/dp/1934030767

I think they keywords for this are fat metabolism & weight loss physiology. That being said, Gropper's book Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism might be the book you're looking for if you're interested in a lengthy textbook on human metabolism & nutrition. Conversely, this blog may be of some use.

What you want is this book.

https://www.amazon.com/Could-Be-B12-Epidemic-Misdiagnoses-ebook/dp/B00MERDLOE

Start with some undergraduate level stuff: http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Nutrition-Metabolism-Sareen-Gropper/dp/1133104053

There's a PDF floating around on the internets.

This is a book all about the necessity of fat.
The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393244830/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_9PMAybRAZ4JYW

Staffan Lindeberg's book. He's the doctor who did the Katava Study.

Sounds like you're fighting a war on too many fronts. I kinda felt like that when my twins were little. They got easier to care for when they hit about 5yo and then I had time to invest in health issues that I'd let slide while I was in survival mode. That time will come for you too. In the mean time, maybe read this: The Secret Life of Fat and stop feeling guilty about your weight all the time.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0915950839?ie=UTF8&tag=alpmom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0915950839

You're doing exactly the right thing! Please read this book, it's helped so many people I know. And maybe if you can show your mother that you have a plan, and it's researched, she'll leave you the fuck alone already.

Keep feeding her what you're eating, don't make a big fuss of it and give in. Your way will pay off in the end, AND she'll be eating better.

There are no shortcuts.

https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Nutrition-Metabolism-Sareen-Gropper/dp/1133104053

Here: http://www.amazon.com/Could-It-Be-B12-Misdiagnoses/dp/1884995691

This is the book I brouyght that helped me. It does in fact say in that book that even psychosis/manic depression can be a symptom that's why I ask. I displayed manic depressive symptoms but they're weren't quite right. This is why. The B12.

39% of americans are low in B12, because they often have absorbtion issues caused by pollution, smoking, surgeries, radioactive exposure. I take b12 supplements and get my levels checked. I also follow the McDougall diet which shreds the pounds like crazy. More info here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XVf36nwraw ( and don't let the title give you the wrong impression)

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Could-Be-B12-Epidemic-Misdiagnoses/dp/1884995691

Well, a few thoughts...

It does sound like Keto but with a few restrictions. In particular NO ALCOHOL and mandatory veggies (micronutrients) for every meal.

This tracks well with my personal experience.

I have been doing lazy keto with acceptable results, but decided to tweak it in what turns out to be largely the same direction as this "evolv" diet. This largely based on reading The Secret Life of Fat and Always Hungry. My takeaway was that my underlying problem seems to be an accumulation of metabolically active fat, so basically too much visceral fat and possible accumulation of fat in the liver.

Now, I like a drink, and it had turned into my "guilt free snack" on Keto. After all, low or no carbs, right? But if the goal is to rid your liver of accumulated fat, it seems like a bad ide to hit it with alcohol on a regular basis.

Results? Well, I was losing about a pound pr. week before. Now I'm losing 2 pounds pr. week, and feel way less cravings.

TL;DR: For me keto works, but keto with no alcohol and more greens works roughly twice as well. Jury out on whether my metabolism is actually "getting a reset"


EDIT: Perhaps relevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/comments/5ucwts/what_kind_of_fat_goes_first/

> How do you have such an in-depth knowledge on this?

Exam horror mostly.

In terms of textbooks Braunwald's Heart Disease, Gropper's Advanced Nutrition mostly. Though of course also many papers and lecture notes. Nutritionfacts.org is also useful occasionally because they tend to call out the bullshit from the animal industry. They also have an hillarious piece about the DASH diet. Though ignore their stuff on EPA and saffron that's hokum.

> How bad are plant fats and saturated fats from plants?

Saturated fat from plants is as bad as saturated fat from meat. In fact the worst food for your arteries is dried coconut. 91% of its fat is saturated and 82% of its calories come from fat. Which is worse than extra heavy whipped cream.

The difference is plants usually have much less of (saturated) fat and also have fibre and antioxidants which remove cholesterol and reduce inflammation respectively.

This is why processed (plant) food is so harmful. It usually is loaded with coconut oil (91% saturated) or palm oil (51% saturated), salt, refined sugar and usually completely lacks fibre and anti-oxidants. A more artherosclerotic blend doesn't exist.

In general a whole food, plant based, low fat diet is best for your arteries. As long as you get some B12 (as small amounts of meat, or ethically/environmentally preferrably as supplements) that will increase your life expectancy the most. Also sufficient sunlight for vitamin D, some exercise, no smoking, no alcohol, no drugs.

I suffer from B12 deficiency. I was diagnosed like 5 years ago when I failed all my classes, was suffering from a lot of stress, hand shaking, a tiny bit of memory loss, having a hard time concentrating, feeling sad sometimes without a reason, sleeping problems and losing weight.

I started with a shot on a weekly basis for 2 months I think and then once a month for a couple of months or so.

It totally fixed me. I remember I felt the change around the 2nd shot.

All those symptoms I mentioned were gone for good. During the next years, when I started feeling funny I get a B12 count in a nearby lab and if I'm low on B12, just do the weekly shot for 1 month or so. It I'm not low it's probably just stress.

So, to answer your question. If you indeed suffer from B12 deficiency I totally recommend it. The coolest part is that if you pee after getting the shot, your pee will look purple-ish. But, if you don't have that problem, I don't see why you would want to get shots.

Go to a lab to get a B12 count, consider if you are feeling symptoms and decide from there. There's a cool book about B12 deficency.

>Name me a moral concept. Or a few. And why are we assuming that nature is non-moral?

That's the thing, I'm saying that there are no distinctively "moral" properties in nature. Morality, defined as "The extent to which an action is right or wrong," is a useful fiction, based on the conventions and designs of other human beings. When someone says that "rape is morally wrong," what they are saying in effect is that its consequences are undesirable, and should be prohibited as a matter of principle. Once enough people come together and reach a consensus on this point, a new moral is born. But the moral itself does not derive its authority from an objective ground of value, which stands above and beyond the practical interests and agreements of human beings.

I'm far more comfortable with using the terms good or evil, just or unjust, equal or unequal, appropriate or inappropriate, suitable or unsuitable, proportional or disproportional, adaptive or maladaptive, functional or dysfunctional, efficient or inefficient. Note that I'm not talking about good or evil in a theistic or moral sense, I'm speaking in purely functional terms. A "good" thing of a certain kind is one which performs its function well. For instance, the function of a knife is to cut: cutting is that which a knife alone achieves, or achieves better than other objects. It is a distinctive quality of a knife that it cut well or badly. To the extent that an object lacks these traits, it will be evil or bad as a result. In that sense, the words that I use are devoid of subjective valuations, there is no expression of liking or prejudice, rather, I'm using these words to point to objective criteria, and as a result the claims are matters for empirical investigation, not what one or another ideology proclaims is right or wrong.

>Humans feel pain and process emotions in the same way that most mammals do.

I never denied that fact. However, I'd characterize the issue differently. As I said before, it is in the consitution of our species that we eat animal flesh for subsistance. Obviously, I'm not claiming that we require a wholly carniverous diet, only that a large proportion of our food comes from animals. The only implication that follows from this is that nature prescribes that lower animals are the proper prey of human beings, and thus it is fitting, appropriate, or suitable to our species. You are the one introducing a moral claim into this situation. And as I said, your claim is groundless as it appeals to an arbitrary preference of subjective taste. It has no moral authority. You also lack the general consent of others, which would be required to turn this into a principle or norm of conduct. So where does that leave us? I maintain that we have a natural right or entitlement to prey on other creatures for the good of our species. This right follows from the fact that we are proportionally superior, in nearly all respects, as it pertains to fitness, which is the only measure of comparison at issue in the final analysis. If you dispute this claim, kindly explain how it is possible for us to fish out entire oceans, or reduce whole ecosystems to cinders to suit our purposes. The suffering of other animals is indeed an evil, but only for those species so unfortunate to become victims of the human appetite.

Here's a small taste of the contradictory evidence you requested.

• Eaton. B. The ancestral human diet: what was it and should it be a paradigm for contemporary nutrition?
  
  
• Milton. K. A hypothesis to explain the role of meat-eating in human evolution
  
  
• Richards. M. A brief review of the archaeological evidence for paleolithic and neolithic subsistence
  
  
• A functional and structural comparison of man's digestive tract with that of a dog and sheep
  
  
• Fox. M. Cancer cells slurp up fructose, us study finds
  
  
• Heany. A. Fructose induces transketolase flux to promote pancreatic cancer growth
  
  
• Gluckman. P. Principles of evolutionary medicine
  
  
• Travathan. W. Evolutionary medicine
  
  
• Travathan. W. Evolutionary medicine and health: new perspectives
  
  
• Stearns. S, Evolution in health and disease
  
  
• Lindeberg. S. Food and western disease: health and nutrition from an evolutionary perspective
  
  
• Nesse. R. Why we get sick: the new science of Darwinian medicine
  
  
• Boaz. N. Evolving health: the origins of illness and how the modern world is making us sick
  
  
• Cordain. L. The paradoxical nature of hunter-gatherer diets: meat-based, yet non-atherogenic
  
  
• Cordain. L. The paleo diet
  
  
• Wolf. R. The paleolithic solution: the original human diet
  

There seems to be a huge amount of unsupported speculation in this thread... Anyway, the answer is fairly simple, it's usually cardiac arrhythmias that kill a starving person in the end.

I did a great deal of reading into this in the early 2000s when I was putting together a lecture unit on human starvation. The rule of thumb given in most of the phys literature turns out to be: A starving person will die when they have used up all their body fat or about half their body protein, whichever comes first. And usually the immediate cause of death is heart failure, typically due to ventricular arrhythmias that occur as the heart atrophies. If all fat is lost, the heart just plain and simple runs out of fuel, and heart cells die. If 50% of body protein is lost, the heart muscle tissue atrophies so much that it begins to malfunction. I posted a few cites on this in another comment, but basically the core problem is that the brain always requires a small bit of glucose for fuel. Most other organs in the body can adapt to live entirely on fats (specifially, on ketone bodies). But the brain cannot. Starvation then plays out like a game of Fortunately-Unfortunately:

• UNFORTUNATELY you have failed to find any food and are now starving.
  
  
• FORTUNATELY you have glycogen stores in your liver and skeletal muscles for exactly this purpose! Glycogen is basically a long chain of glucoses. It can be broken down to yield glucose. (skeletal muscles hog all their glycogen for themselves; the liver's glycogen stores are sent into the blood & mostly end up used by the brain).
  
  
• UNFORTUNATELY the glycogen stores only last about 12 hours.
  
  
• FORTUNATELY you have body fat! (Fat molecule = 3 fatty acids + a "linker molecule" called glycerol). The fatty acids can be chopped into 2-carbon units called ketone bodies which can then fed into the Krebs cycle to produce fuel.
  
  
• UNFORTUNATELY the brain requires glucose, not ketones. And ketones cannot be converted directly to glucose.
  
  
• FORTUNATELY the brain can learn to use ketones! Over time it ramps up production of the necessary enzymes. The % of the brain's fuel that is drawn from ketones can increase from to roughly 75%.
  
  
• UNFORTUNATELY the brain tops out at approx 75% fuel use from ketones. For unknown reasons the human brain seems to max out there - it appears to be incapable of living on 100% ketones. It continues to require a tiny bit of glucose per day. It's a tiny bit, but it's critical.
  
  
• FORTUNATELY, remember those "linker molecules", the glycerols? They can be converted to glucose! The liver starts doing this.
  
  
• UNFORTUNATELY this does not produce quite enough glucose for the brain. There remains a tiny, critical, shortfall of glucose that is absolutely required by the brain.
  
  
• FORTUNATELY you can make glucose from certain amino acids!
  
  
• UNFORTUNATELY the only way you can get those amino acids if you're starving is to break down body protein, specifically muscles.
  
  
• FORTUNATELY there's some unneeded muscle elsewhere in the body - skeletal muscle - that can be targeted, right? (PS intestinal smooth muscle is also catabolized, as are several other organs. This leads to a problem when trying to re-feed a starved person who has an atrophied gut.)
  
  
• UNFORTUNATELY the body seems unable to target skeletal muscle effectively and ends up breaking down cardiac muscle as well. There's a small bit of evidence from a Brazilian study that cardiac muscle is slightly spared - the heart seems to shrink in size more slowly than skeletal muscles - but it does shrink. And unfortunately, this is a serious enough problem that it can actually kill you, even long before you actually run out of fat.
  
  
• UNFORTUNATELY, you develop an atrophied, weak, arrhythmic heart and this is what finally kills you.
  
  The #weeks you can keep chipping away at your muscles before you actually die is pretty variable. Obese people often have enlarged hearts to start with, and thus are able to go quite a long time (months even, over a year in some famous cases) before the heart shrinks to a dangerous level. Also, intake of even a tiny bit of protein or carbs can completely eliminate the protein catabolism. There are also some complications regarding malfunctioning of the autonomic nervous system and also certain electrolyte imbalances, which seems to contribute to ventricular arrhythmias. But basically, starved people have atrophied hearts that are not functioning properly. Anyway, the rule of thumb for non-obese people, and most animal species, is that total starvation will kill you in 2-8 weeks depending on fat stores.
  
  cites: All the nutrition texts cover this - see this one. And here and here are a couple cites about the cardiac issues.