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I'm from a mediterranean country, currently living in London.
It is just my very biased opinion but Brits' diet seems to be one of the causes of why so many Britons dying sooner than expected [0]. The average Londoner eats rather poorly. So many greasy sandwiches and crisps, even their salads have to be all greased up in ways that would make my grandmother cry. Fish and seafood are seen as a "chic experience". Copious amounts of beer. And then all the snacks, munching on stuff the entire day (it says "healthy" in the package so it's good right?). Are we cows to be ruminating all day long? They're not even good snacks like some nuts or whatever. Massive breakfast, then a mid morning break for "coffee" (it's just milk and sugar), then lunch (sandwiches or salads filled with sauces), then midafternoon snack then several pints of lager after work and a dinner to finish the day. It's a lot of calories, and lot of bad nutrients. No wonder so many people are obese, if you don't have a very active lifestyle it's easy to get really fat.
By no means I'm saying my country is perfect, I see there people moving further and further away from what our ancestors usually ate and it shows on obesity rate is increasing, kids are getting more diabetes diagnosis and so on. But here in the UK it's just too much, a walk through Tesco makes me cringe.
The food situation in London is not good, despite having some of the best restaurants and cuisine from all over the world.
A lot of people will eat "meal deal" for launch and that "meal" often means a pack of crisps and a soda. The better ones are usually a greasy sandwich or salad and bowl of fruits.
Before getting my first white collar job in the UK, I worked for a few months as a waiter in 5 star hotels and upscale restaurants and I actually had much better food than the average white collar worker since being fed a proper food at job is part of the deal. I got in shape in those 3 months(good food + no sitting at work), only to ruin it once re-joined the laptop class.
The meal deal is a tragedy, the bottom and the top of the pay-grade eats much better at work.
Oh, also being poor or rich helps with the food at home too. Cheap neighbourhoods with lots of immigrants have excellent street markets with good quality vegetables and immigrant shops directly importing good quality Mediterranean stuff like olives and cheese. The more well off neighbourhoods have all that too but its "gourmet" or "speciality", the neighbourhoods in the middle tend to have only Tesco/Sainsbury's/M&S and the vegetables sold here tastes dull and everything is packaged for longevity of the product.
The amount of crisps the average Brit eats per day blows my mind. In no other country is potato chips part of every workday lunch.
As the East coast of the United States wakes up and checks in, yeah... this place is, for too many people, a food desert. The amount of doughnuts, sweets, chips eaten in my workplace boggles my mind.
I shop at costco a lot.
I have been working pretty hard to improve my diet and now mostly eat vegetables and meat. Very little processed food, and we prep our food daily.
The last time I was there for some reason I started looking at what everyone else had in their cart. 90% of people just had straight garbage. A lot of snacks, processed foods, almost no vegetables. I never really paid attention to it.
Maybe it is caused by two parents working and just not having the energy to prep food? Social media and shorts stealing free time? Or poor education?
Very common in Ireland too
i don't even keep snacks in my house ... none, just meals
Thank you. Echoes my thoughts completely.
The UK is a food disaster, and is the reason so many people here are overweight and obese (64% of adults) and die early.
The meal deal is the staple of almost any office workers lunch, and easily packs around 1000 calories in the form of a sandwich (400-600), pack of crisps / chocolate bar (300) and drink (up to 200).
Anecdotally, from what I experience in my office, home-made lunches aren't much better. As you stated, it's always washed down with a pack of crisps and soda (or multiple). When people do cook, it falls under the British triumvirate of home cooking:-
- Spag' bol' (pasta, beef mince and sauce) - Stir fry - Pasta bake (pasta with sauce and cheese and things thrown on top)
Where I live, and when I go to the gym, I see Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats delivering constantly. All high fat, high calorie, salty and oily fast food (eg. McDonalds) or standalone takeaway joints (arguably worse). There's a huge trend in my city (Leeds) for people to eat lunch out, which is not only expensive, but calorie expensive too.
Supermarkets are 80% junk food. Do we really need 100 types of biscuits and cakes? Take a glance at the basket/trolley of the people around you, and there's typically a lot of crap in there.
You also tend to see a lot of fat kids (22% age 4-5, 37% age 10-11) everywhere. High school kids flood the supermarkets after school every day, eating huge packs of crisps and cakes (designed for multiple people and portions), and university students (from what I remember at uni) seem over-reliant on takeaways and ready meals.
I haven't looked it up, but I'd wager the average British energy intake is around 3000 calories, despite most people living completely sedentary lifestyles.
I've always received weird responses to eating fish (unless it's battered and served with chips, in which case it's a national delicacy), and people seem to make out as if it's something fancy, despite the fact we live on an island.
This, coupled with lack of exercise, is a ticking time bomb for our country. Everybody is just slowly killing themselves with various beige-coloured food.
On of my first story submissions [0] (way before covid, 2 points only) was about how fastfood could prime the immune system for an overreaction.
Reduction or even prevention of systemic/chronic inflammation should be the prime goal of any diet and all the rest ((mental) health, weight, ...) will follow automatically. I guess a lot of research is still needed but a mediterranean diet is at least a small step in the right direction.
That sounds disgusting.
I would note that nobody is forcing anyone to eat like this. Perhaps the root problem is one of self-control and health awareness. Also see: smoking.
>from what our ancestors usually ate
Whatever they could find so not to starve.
The idea that people in the past had a diet they could keep to is completely laughable the second you start reading the accounts of the number of famines _in the 19th century_. This gets progressively worse the further back you go.
That does not mean however, that their "diet" cannot coincidentally have been healthier than what some people eat today. They surely ate food back then, that was less processed and less unnecessary stuff added to it. Eating whatever you can get your hands on in a less developed time, can mean, that people ate healthier, at least when they had something to eat and did not starve. There does not have to be a nutrition expert around at the time or any intentional process by people to "keep a diet".
My Portuguese grandfather used to say: the secret to longevity is onions, tomatoes, and olive oil. He and my grandmother both lived past 90.
People in the southern Europe also like to gather and talk a lot, so I suspect that might help too (the article mentions it in the final paragraph).
So you live in a beautiful country, you eat well, you interact a lot with your friends and neighbours; you don't need much else.
Then you also have the salty water and air PLUS no need to exercise too much because you can always take a quick swim.
I would also add garlic to your grandfathers' list.
There are people who have lived past 90 who have smoked. Anecdotes like this do not work.
a bit more detail on what a mediterranean diet is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_diet
It's not necessarily the modern diet of mediterranean countries, but it is inspired by the local traditional cousine.
> It's not necessarily the modern diet of mediterranean countries
Yep, they eat the same shit as everybody else does these days: https://ourworldindata.org/exports/share-of-adults-who-are-o...
One of the few science based non-fad "diets".
Simply take a look at this table (the map is silly) and take your conclusion.
https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/alzheimer...
My conclusion is (1) god this map is terrible. My eyes, dear god. Why is the clear button blinking? But on a more serious note
(2) there isn't really a conclusion to be drawn from this map. Correlations are all over the place. Some western countries are high, but others are low. African countries are mostly high (because green is second highest for some reason). This map also does not correlate with age. I'm sure countries with a longer average lifespan have higher rates of Alzheimers/Dementia deaths. E.g. Russia has a lower average lifespan and a low rate of Alzheimers/Dementia deaths. That may be correlated.
No, I only wanted you to look at the mediterranean nations BUT on the table, not the map.
Clearly much lower than
UK, US, Finland.
That is enough for me.
Bulgaria and Albania at completely opposite ends of the table with a 50-fold rate difference between them makes me go "hmm".
Or Singapore being right at the very bottom, 40 times less that Malaysia, and 20 times less than Japan.
It feels like this might be a table of countries that do and do not often include dementia as a cause of death.
Well, looking at extremes is not the best way to analyze general data.
This may be very silly question, but does one die from Alzheimer's and dementia? Sure they make life miserable, but cause of death?
Edit: I did look it up. It seems that this is indeed the case.
I really do not know. See
https://www.healthline.com/health/dementia/can-you-die-from-...
but I do not have a truly reliable source.
Omg fresh olive oil, cheeses, tomatoes, salads and other legumes + some fish or chicken.
Yes, I do like some pork grease or beef but that's if I'm planning on drinking some heavy liquors.
Many Hindus adopt a vegetarian diet (details in scriptures and Ayurveda), I remember when I was younger I'd be asked but how do you get your protein? :D
Many vegetables have large amounts of protein (i.e, lentils, and other legumes), which is where animals you eat get it from.
> A Mediterranean diet of nuts, seafood, whole grains and vegetables
TIL I eat a Mediterranean diet, by coincidence. I just do this because it is the stuff I like though.
where do you live? for me it's local food, mostly raw vegetables, lots of fruit, olive, nuts, figs, dates, clementines, oranges, persimmons, onions, garlic, leek (fermented), rice sometimes, rarely (few times per year, raw eggs or small fishes) as I'm full with fibers. It makes a lot of sense to do that as we don't spend as much energy as our ancestors or wild animals, and the climate is getting hot and dry due to climate destruction
I live in Germany and went vegetarian some 15 years ago. Traditional German food is hardly agreeable with a vegetarian diet, so I learned other dishes. Then at some point, I started eating fish again, and that's where I ended up.
I also came to be on a high fiber diet for a while, as you describe, but I got some stomach issues from it and had to adjust it.
What raw vegetables do you eat? Do you do any prep to them?
PDF of the manuscript available here: https://oa.mg/pdf/mediterranean-diet-adherence-is-associated...
I eat the med diet because it’s much nicer. It doesn’t taste fatty, sugary or greasy: I simply don’t like these tastes and don’t want to eat them. Unfortunately when I travel for work, mostly to uk/us, it is very hard to manage stuff that doesn’t taste like I just at a tub of lard.
Basically anything that isn't the standard western/American diet where "balanced" is supposed to mean: 3 meals, snacks in between, excessive fructose from fruit, excessive polyunsaturated fats from manufactured seed oils, constant eating and all energy coming from at least 60% carbodydrates (primarily processed, pre-digested, pulverized grains with a massive glycemic load).
Anything that is not the above, many variations low carb high fat or carnivore - will make your risks of modern chronic diseases (aka, hyperinsulinemia, diabetes, chronic inflammation, dislipidemia) go down dramatically. Especially if you are strict about your feast and fast cycles.
Humans are not omnivores we are obligate carnivores with a beneficial tolerance for a tiny number of plants. Plants have anti-nutrients that many are sensitive to.
Now bring on the downvotes I know they're coming.
What other apes are obligate carnivores? What carnivores have our dental structure? And what separates "obligate carnivores with a beneficial tolerance for a tiny number of plants" from a facultative carnivore?
I think you're making a logical flaw in saying that "excess {blah} is bad, therefore any {blah} is bad" which is untrue.
Some of the carnivore stuff approached flat eartherism in terms of its denial of reality. Anyone can look into their own mouth in the mirror and see that it's half full or flattened molars, similar to other omnivores. But no, we're "obligate carnivores".
Once I went carnivore, my dental and gum health became perfect. The reason other carnivores don't have our dental structure is that other carnivores don't use fire, and other carnivores use their teeth to kill their prey.
It's funny how well the "seed oils bad" myth infected every diet camp. You see it in every HN thread on diet even though seed oils like canola oil improve health outcomes in humans, especially when compared to saturated fat.
Even my dad randomly started railing against seed oils once the nonsense started popping up on his youtube recommendations.
Fortunately, it's pretty easy to redpill yourself by looking at outcome data: https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-...
I wonder how much of it is "grassroots diet fad" and how much is the meat lobby throwing out FUD to confuse the issue. Having lived through several diet fads already, neither would surprise me.
You're absolutely correct. I preach the carnivore diet as well, and people on Hacker News constantly spew contempt at me for doing that, but the carnivore diet really works. It is practically a panacea.
So do I... There is a (literally) visceral feeling you get when eliminating plants (and frankly, even most supplements except minerals) that the gut is finally at rest / not disturbed, it becomes impossible to ignore that our digestive apparatus is primarily adapted for eating meat. Judging from the many anecdotes I've come across, breakdown of the gut barrier brought about / contributed by most plants is at the root of many diseases. Not the sole cause, I think gut microbiome disruption plays a big part in the bad effects from plants, but that's another story and there doesn't seem to be a solution for that yet (not enough to just chug copious amounts of probiotics).
You realize that you're basically the stereotype of a vegan - preaching the ethical/health benefits of their diet - just with a different dietary preference?
>It is practically a panacea
Biggest diet dogma red flag. It sounds like you might be spending too much time in an echo chamber.
inb4 << a bunch of anecdotes >>
but the article kind of contradicts you in regards to plants. Vegetables, fruits and nuts are the base of a mediterranean diet with a small portion of meat
In mice?
May.
May not.
No one knows.
But let's pretend this is a finding and we haven't just wasted our time.