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lack of fiber is a biggie too. Foods too highly processed. too many oils.

I don’t know. Something about eating a lot of fiber. I cant do it for example. I eat some veggies, but probably not “enough” fiber compared to modern recommendations and i cant process it. I am doing OK without it from subjective perspective. Also i am interested how much nonsoluble fiber did regular people eat before modern vegetable and fruits. Potatoes and cabbage, wheat and some roots and max some berries max.

Like where would the need for the fiber come from evolutionary.


For most of humanity, humans are mostly plants and seeds. Meat was rare, because hunting is hard, and domesticated crops like grain are a new invention. Like, very new - 10,000 years.

All those were very high in fiber. I believe it's estimated paleolithic humans are over 100 grams of fiber a day, whereas I believe the recommended intake today is 35 grams, which less than 2% of Americans meet.

So yes, the Paleo diet is largely bullshit. No, humans did not eat fatty farmed meats. They barely ate meat at all.


I usually stay out of health convos because it's just not my wheelhouse, but I think most people would benefit from extra fiber. It has an obvious direct benefit to your life the very next time you use the bathroom. I don't know if it is the answer to the rise of colon cancer; this is well studied and seems really easy to work with? We would surely know already. But I do know it's worth doing irrespective of that.

Maybe instead of processing food to add more protein into it — even Starbucks sells "protein drinks" now — they should process food to have more fiber instead.

This is my personal bet. It's just low fiber diets.

It can't just be low fiber diets - there has to be some other exposures involved.

I mean, there's a well-documented link between colon cancer and inadequate fiber intake.

And it's also well-documented that the average Western diet is highly deficient in fiber and that this is a thing which has gotten much worse in the last 75 years.

There also seems to be at least some light evidence that there may be generational effects - that the starting point of your gut is already bad if your mother's was.


Why?

Apt username from a person suggesting that non edible fiber is the nutrient causing illness and thats the presupposition we should argue against.

Why would more fiber help?


The mechanism behind why more fiber helps is pretty straightforward:

Insoluble fiber speeds up gut motility. Faster gut motility means less time for toxins to sit and absorb in your gut.

Also, fermentable fibers serve as substrate for gut microbes, producing short-chain fatty acids (butyrate is one - a primary fuel source for colonocytes - the cells that line your colon).

It also lowers colonic pH, inhibiting pathogenic bacteria.

Lastly, (although there are tons more benefits I'm not listing), soluble fiber is incredible for people trying to lose weight, as highly fibrous foods increase satiety, keeping you fuller for longer.


Uh, what? I have not made a presuppositional argument (I made no argument at all...). I made a statement about my epistemic state - ie: that I would "bet" on low fiber being the major contributor to colon cancer rates. Someone then asserted that it can't be that, and I asked "why?".

> Why would more fiber help?

Because there is an incredible amount of research into high fiber diets being good for your gut, including reduced colon cancer rates. This is the consensus of various organizations such as WHO - high fiber diets have lower risks of colon cancer.


My comment is that it is not ONLY low fiber diets. There are a lot of other risk factors involved. Will high fiber help - absolutely. Is it the be all end all - no I doubt it.

Western diet collapsed its fiber intake well over 80 years ago - it would have shown up already.


> My comment is that it is not ONLY low fiber diets.

Well, you said "can't" and I asked "why", which feels very reasonable to me. Your argument seems to be that it wouldn't account properly for the data - specifically, you're saying we would have seen colon cancer rates rise earlier.

> Western diet collapsed its fiber intake well over 80 years ago - it would have shown up already.

I don't really buy this for a lot of reasons. Probably the two most important are (a) ability to screen historically and (b) the timing isn't particularly "off" for the fiber argument. We did see it already, we've been seeing increases in color cancer risks for decades.

Now, I'm not married to it "just" being fiber whatsoever, but if I were to "bet" on the major contributing factor, naively, that's where my money would go. I think it's very reasonable to not place your bet there.


Yeah, i wonder what was the fiber i take for someone from egypt or hunter gatherers. I get it that in our modern diet, fiber is better than sugar and plastic stuff made in factories combining oils and sugar into something that looks like food. But if a person is regular and does not have any gut issues, how would more fiber help?

> Yeah, i wonder what was the fiber i take for someone from egypt or hunter gatherers.

Very high.

> But if a person is regular and does not have any gut issues, how would more fiber help?

There is a ton of research about this and it's why WHO and other orgs state explicitly that fiber reduces rates of colon cancer.


99% of humans ate meat, amd fruits occasionally.

Fiber does nothing.


lol this is such utter bullshit? I'm blown away by how confidently stated and how utterly incorrect this is.

1. Ancient egyptians ate fucktons of wheat and barley, lentils, chickpeas, etc. They ate massive amounts of fiber lol I mean holy fuck I just can't believe how wrong you are?

2. Fiber is very, very well understood by ALL health organizations to be preventative for colon cancer.


Ancient Egyptians is less than 10,000 years ago.

Homo genus is 2 million years old.

Repeating "muh authorities" isnt an argument.

Your willful axiomatic dogmatism isnt science.

Cave paintings dont depict agriculture. They depicted hunting and agrarian nomadic lifestyles


You shouldn't feed the trolls.

You should follow the HN rules.

Maybe, but the person they're responding to seemed to be genuine in their question, and I worry that they'll read a statement like "they mostly ate meat" and think it's plausible when it's insanely incorrect.

Should be a betting service for this kind of thing instead of sports betting. Maybe all the men betting sports might read and change their habits based on the betting outcomes (and improve their health).

I would also bet top reason is fiber but it isn't the only reason - multiple factors at play.


I think that's all very fair.

If they need Grammarly... are they even able to opt themselves out?

Yeah, I don't think writing config files for labwc to display polled data from a software defined radio that's snooping on area weather stations is giving me dementia.

Not worried: "Associations between television/computer use and dementia in socially inactive older adults remain unclear, and optimal limits are unknown."


Is AI going to require ambulation to close the sensorimotor loop? Is it possible when their "environment" is just reacting to written and verbal communication?

Only one word in that jargon soup that I have positive feelings about- a class of people who barely even exist anymore.

Too late, it's already in the bloodstream, LLMs will be recommending things to pediatric doctors and families from fabricated archives for years, probably.

That's a serious issue: How could retractions work with LLMs? How could they be made to work?

Accuracy rots over time, and at varying rates. It's not just scientific research.


It’s all an hallucination.

I've been posting vinyl on Instagram for seven years now. I've made some friends and participate in a variety of group posts using hashtags as a signpost. AI search has all but obliterated this system. I can't even find the posts where the themes for our group posts are shared anymore. AI determines whose accounts I see. I now see more ads in the feed than posts by the people I follow. Music discovery is all but impossible the way things have degenerated. I'm now going back to blogs, music label sites, and reading- gasp- magazines. It might have the unintentional effect of a shot in the arm to old-school media and the self-published web. Or it will open the floodgates for slop to slime everything. Hard to tell at this point.


But aren't humans the real priority...?


OK but can't we please try bioplastics for this?


The point is to have a useful way of getting rid of all the plastic waste we already have and will continue to generate. Plastic isn't going anywhere in the near future because it's a byproduct of natural gas production, which is needed for energy.


Well... It is more that a traditional oil refinery has a BTX section

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTX_(chemistry)

which produces an excess of chemicals in the process of improving the octane of gasoline

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_reforming

and that is where you get monomers like styrene and Terephthalic acid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene

is another important petrochemical feedstock which can be made from natural gas or other forms of petroleum.


to be fair, yet another useful and interesting tool exploited into unusability.


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