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For reasons that really don't bear rehashing, I spent the last two years getting told to go on diets. Every kind of diet. No "nightshades." No acid. No gluten. No dairy. Low-FODMAP (bans dairy, gluten, soy, legumes, and half of all fruits and vegetables.) Low-fat. "Eat nothing but bone broth that you made yourself, and if you don't simmer it for six hours, it's no good." "Microwaving food destroys its nutrients." At one point I had successive doctors tell me to go on a low-fiber diet and a high-fiber diet.
Every single diet-pusher, whether doctor or rando, said or implied (usually explicitly said), "If you don't do this, you'll never get better. Don't you want to get better?"
This was especially infuriating given that I was so underweight that I had symptoms of malnutrition. And also that in two years of dieting, there had never once been any indication whatsoever that my illness was caused by diet or that changing my diet was helpful. I eventually came to the conclusion that Americans are fucking insane about food and that a primary manifestation of sexism is controlling women by controlling what they eat.
Anyway, I am not dieting now. But now that I am slightly less likely to hit NEON RAGE APOCALYPSE at the word "diet," I clicked on a link and fell into an internet rabbit hole of diet advice. Like the evolved forager that I am, I bring you my findings for amusement, analysis, and mockery:
- A comparison of wild fruits and vegetables with cultivated ones, concluding that eating fruits and vegetables is unhealthy because they are unnatural and not what the cavemen ate.
By that reasoning there is literally nothing we can eat unless we get air-dropped into some untouched stretch of rainforest to forage for wild bananas.
- Eating fruit makes you fat.
- Humans did not evolve to eat fruit.
We're PRIMATES.Monkeys love bananas.
- Corn causes Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
- Corn causes ADHD.
- Corn causes autism.
- Corn causes cancer.
- Broccoli causes cancer.
- Hot water causes cancer.
The last one, from a study saying that drinking hot beverages can cause cancer, had the best response: David Spiegelhalter, a professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Britain's University of Cambridge, said: "In the case of very hot drinks, the IARC concludes they are probably hazardous, but can't say how big the risk might be," according to the Australian Financial Review. "This may be interesting science, but makes it difficult to construct a sensible response."
- A Breatharian – as defined in the book A Year Without Food – is a person who chooses to live mostly, or completely, from Pranic nourishment. Israeli author Ray Maor claims that once Breatharians have trained their body to absorb this energy from the air and sunlight, they are no longer dependent on food. Many of them continue to taste food for enjoyment, but do not need it for survival, he says.
Umm.
- Brian J. Ford has suggested that ketosis, possibly caused by alcoholism or low-carb dieting, produces acetone, which is highly flammable and could therefore lead to apparently spontaneous combustion.
The Atkins diet will make you burst into flame!
- Our ancestors NEVER ate a carb. They ate meat and fat and that was it. On that diet, they grew, improved their lot, invented the wheel, survived in caves and hinted in groups.
Bad history aside (even in the Arctic, people ate seaweed and lichen), anyone who's ever lived in a small town or attended school knows that a major human activity is indeed hinting in groups.
Every single diet-pusher, whether doctor or rando, said or implied (usually explicitly said), "If you don't do this, you'll never get better. Don't you want to get better?"
This was especially infuriating given that I was so underweight that I had symptoms of malnutrition. And also that in two years of dieting, there had never once been any indication whatsoever that my illness was caused by diet or that changing my diet was helpful. I eventually came to the conclusion that Americans are fucking insane about food and that a primary manifestation of sexism is controlling women by controlling what they eat.
Anyway, I am not dieting now. But now that I am slightly less likely to hit NEON RAGE APOCALYPSE at the word "diet," I clicked on a link and fell into an internet rabbit hole of diet advice. Like the evolved forager that I am, I bring you my findings for amusement, analysis, and mockery:
- A comparison of wild fruits and vegetables with cultivated ones, concluding that eating fruits and vegetables is unhealthy because they are unnatural and not what the cavemen ate.
By that reasoning there is literally nothing we can eat unless we get air-dropped into some untouched stretch of rainforest to forage for wild bananas.
- Eating fruit makes you fat.
- Humans did not evolve to eat fruit.
We're PRIMATES.
- Corn causes Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
- Corn causes ADHD.
- Corn causes autism.
- Corn causes cancer.
- Broccoli causes cancer.
- Hot water causes cancer.
The last one, from a study saying that drinking hot beverages can cause cancer, had the best response: David Spiegelhalter, a professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Britain's University of Cambridge, said: "In the case of very hot drinks, the IARC concludes they are probably hazardous, but can't say how big the risk might be," according to the Australian Financial Review. "This may be interesting science, but makes it difficult to construct a sensible response."
- A Breatharian – as defined in the book A Year Without Food – is a person who chooses to live mostly, or completely, from Pranic nourishment. Israeli author Ray Maor claims that once Breatharians have trained their body to absorb this energy from the air and sunlight, they are no longer dependent on food. Many of them continue to taste food for enjoyment, but do not need it for survival, he says.
Umm.
- Brian J. Ford has suggested that ketosis, possibly caused by alcoholism or low-carb dieting, produces acetone, which is highly flammable and could therefore lead to apparently spontaneous combustion.
The Atkins diet will make you burst into flame!
- Our ancestors NEVER ate a carb. They ate meat and fat and that was it. On that diet, they grew, improved their lot, invented the wheel, survived in caves and hinted in groups.
Bad history aside (even in the Arctic, people ate seaweed and lichen), anyone who's ever lived in a small town or attended school knows that a major human activity is indeed hinting in groups.
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Hah! Yes, this.
Every nation has its own neuroses, of course; the Germans are no less neurotic than US-Americans. But...not quite that food-related, thankfully (I'm a lot more US-American than my countryfolks in that regard, though I try to relax).
Speaking not of women but of controlling other people's bodies, one of the things that drove me batty as a teen was folks telling me about my acne, "Just cut out chocolate, sugar, and fats!" And I did manage to not speak my mind and say, "FUCK YOU THERE IS NO SCIENCE SUPPORTING ANY OF THIS CONTROLLING BULLSHIT." But it was a close call.
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I got told that too when I was a teenager! And I sometimes tried telling people that there's no evidence for that. They never, ever believed me.
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The funny thing was I wasn't actually trying to do that, they had just revealed that they Thought A Wrong Thing about how acne worked and I needed to educate them. >.>
This is why I had no friends as an adolescent.From:
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Oh, that nonsense again! >.<
The only food-related thing that did a whit to my acne was dealing with my food allergies better. (It turns out that if you aren't getting skin reactions and hives your skin is happier, what a surprise.) And no one else I know has seen any benefits from this advice either.
And still it gets trotted out constantly.
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But it did always seem suspicious that sugar, fat, and chocolate were the things (female) people weren't supposed to indulge in on pain of being a total glutton, so.
(One thing that apparently makes my acne worse even now, though, is lots of sun. Which my GP did mention when I was like 14, and I was deeply skeptical. Heh.)
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