# Healthiest diet choice?



## Tad Cooper (Apr 10, 2010)

I was wondering if anyone knew out of the various vegetarians, vegan, pescatarian, or omnivore, which was the healthiest?


----------



## Red Panda (Aug 18, 2010)

Japanese and Mediterranean diets are the best for cardiovascular health and cancers. 
Mediterranean diet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
DOWNLOAD THE NEW MEDITERRANEAN DIET PYRAMID | FUNDACIÓN DIETA MEDITERRÁNEA
Mediterranean diet for heart health - Mayo Clinic


* *


----------



## MidnightPicnic (Dec 14, 2013)

I am pescatarian, wishing I was vegan though. I was vegan temporarily, for well over a year, and never felt better, physically, mentally and emotionally. ^_^


----------



## Tad Cooper (Apr 10, 2010)

Red Panda said:


> Japanese and Mediterranean diets are the best for cardiovascular health and cancers.
> Mediterranean diet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> DOWNLOAD THE NEW MEDITERRANEAN DIET PYRAMID | FUNDACIÓN DIETA MEDITERRÁNEA
> Mediterranean diet for heart health - Mayo Clinic
> ...


Thanks, do you think that those are feasible on a student budget? I was curious about the Japanese diet, but some of the food seems hard to find.



MidnightPicnic said:


> I am pescatarian, wishing I was vegan though. I was vegan temporarily, for well over a year, and never felt better, physically, mentally and emotionally. ^_^


Oh cool, how different is pescatarianism's effects compared to veganism? dont you feel you lack protein as a vegan? (just curious)


----------



## Red Panda (Aug 18, 2010)

tine said:


> Thanks, do you think that those are feasible on a student budget? I was curious about the Japanese diet, but some of the food seems hard to find.
> 
> 
> Oh cool, how different is pescatarianism's effects compared to veganism? dont you feel you lack protein as a vegan? (just curious)


I have no idea about the Japanese as it's completely foreign to me, however the Med diet may be feasible but that depends on the prices of the products in your area. It's basically 
-low on red meat (cheap), 
-higher in fish (preferably oily - eg. small: anchovies, sardines, big: salmon, tuna, trout - price depends on your country, I imagine you can find big fish like the latter cheaper, here we eat small ones). Always prefer the small ones as the big ones are higher in mercury.
-higher in legumes (cheap here, could be expensive there), 
-high in olive oil as basically you cook everything with it-even fried foods, (buy only EXTRA VIRGIN - probably expensive) and 
-high in vegetables as well, and always prefer produce IN SEASON, as well as fruit, nuts and seeds. It's quite common here for people to go and just cut some specific wild herbaceous plants from the ground and cook them. Even here in the capital which is a metropolis, I live on a hill and I've seen people go and search for plants to cut and eat. And lots of them grew on our orange tree orchard and our neighbors begged us to take them (we did too - but I didn't like them).

Med Diet is the closest to vegetarian without it being vegetarian - high consumption of plant products and just enough meat to give the abundance of nutrients. The most basic premises of Med Diet is locality, diversity and plant foods as the basis, but it's obviously not local for someone in other countries than the Mediterranean and more specifically Crete so that's why it will likely be more expensive for you. But, it's okay you don't have to follow it to a T, just as much as you can. It's funny (but sad) though that I read somewhere a study where kids in Sweden followed the Med Diet more than kids in Greece. 

----


----------



## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

US News and World Report ranks diets each year. Many disagree, but I don't think one can disagree about something like the DASH diet being good.

Top-Rated Diets Overall | US News Best Diets

They also break them down by section.

Best Diets 2014 - US News


----------



## Promethea (Aug 24, 2009)

Different 'diets' work for different people. I think it depends in part upon ancestry, then a nutrition science major I knew said that was actually a popular theory currently in nutrition science. So, I dunno.. try different ones and see how they make you feel. The same thing doesn't work for everyone maybe.


----------



## Fern (Sep 2, 2012)

Just eat a ton of vegetables and make sure you're getting every kind of protein.

The rest is all a matter of taste and/or snobbery.


I'm a Paleo fan _personally_. But Paleo for me looks like tons of salad with no dressing and maybe low fat chicken breast every one in a while (or _fish_!).

For my dad? It looks like hot wings, steak, _and _a ranch-drenched salad for most meals :wink: :tongue: 
But, then again, he does have manly mussskles to maintain...

Do whatever suits your needs.


----------



## doineed1 (May 25, 2014)

The best diet is... hey a butterfly! I like butterflies!


----------



## Red Panda (Aug 18, 2010)

Promethea said:


> Different 'diets' work for different people. I think it depends in part upon ancestry, then a nutrition science major I knew said that was actually a popular theory currently in nutrition science. So, I dunno.. try different ones and see how they make you feel. The same thing doesn't work for everyone maybe.


You can't really know if a certain diet will prevent you from things like cancer though. That's why studies on cultural diets are very informative and more scientifically sound to call them "healthy". For paleo for example we have no idea if it's a healthy diet because there is no epidemiological information about it.


----------



## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Red Panda said:


> You can't really know if a certain diet will prevent you from things like cancer though. That's why studies on cultural diets are very informative and more scientifically sound to call them "healthy". For paleo for example we have no idea if it's a healthy diet because there is no epidemiological information about it.


I would be weary of any "prevent cancer" diets. But there are diets specifically designed, by health officials/experts/government, to treat/prevent disease, like DASH, which is specifically for high blood pressure, and has been shown in studies to reduce it. It was actually the top ranked diet overall. The NIH put together another good one, that is near the top.


----------



## Red Panda (Aug 18, 2010)

FearAndTrembling said:


> I would be weary of any "prevent cancer" diets. But there are diets specifically designed, by health officials/experts/government, to treat/prevent disease, like DASH, which is specifically for high blood pressure, and has been shown in studies to reduce it. It was actually the top ranked diet overall. The NIH put together another good one, that is near the top.


Have you seen the 7 countries study? It was probably the biggest study on cultural diets that measured the prevalence of many health conditions. So in this basis, yes you can speak about cancer prevention.
Yea, the DASH diet was especially made for blood pressure (it would probably kill me lol).


----------



## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Red Panda said:


> Have you seen the 7 countries study? It was probably the biggest study on cultural diets that measured the prevalence of many health conditions. So in this basis, yes you can speak about cancer prevention.
> Yea, the DASH diet was especially made for blood pressure (it would probably kill me lol).


I don't know if it is the biggest, but it isn't the best, and it has been heavily criticized. And no diet should be able to claim to reduce cancer, because there are too many factors. Some which the study ignored.


----------



## Red Panda (Aug 18, 2010)

FearAndTrembling said:


> I don't know if it is the biggest, but it isn't the best, and it has been heavily criticized. And no diet should be able to claim to reduce cancer, because there are too many factors. Some which the study ignored.


If I remember correctly they used its data again to better analyze it. For example, the study didn't account for types of red meat - processed or not, and the new study concluded that in the Mediterranean diet, those who ate lean red meat had lower cancer rates than processed, mainly in the form of cold cuts which are high in nitrates.
As for the many factors - yes, that's why it's a whole diet and not single ingredients. You can't say that x food reduces cancer, but you can say that a combination of foods (=diet) has lower cancer rates than some other combination. And that seems to be the case with the Mediterranean diet, as they have studied many of its ingredients alone and haven't found any significant results - however the combination works.


----------



## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Red Panda said:


> If I remember correctly they used its data again to better analyze it. For example, the study didn't account for types of red meat - processed or not, and the new study concluded that in the Mediterranean diet, those who ate lean red meat had lower cancer rates than processed, mainly in the form of cold cuts which are high in nitrates.
> As for the many factors - yes, that's why it's a whole diet and not single ingredients. You can't say that x food reduces cancer, but you can say that a combination of foods (=diet) has lower cancer rates than some other combination. And that seems to be the case with the Mediterranean diet, as they have studied many of its ingredients alone and haven't found any significant results - however the combination works.


I think this touches on a larger problem, that corporations have really exploited over the last couple years. People want to solve their problems "naturally". Through diet, and this sort of thing. Nothing wrong with that. But now the momentum has swung to that side, at the expense of the other. So, people want natural cures. Like the supplement aisle at the store. Absolutely huge now. One of the biggest sections. 

One of the problems, is that all these supplements that make health claims --though they do it very precisely, with weasel words. Like, they can't literally say, "will prevent heart attack", so they say, "promotes cardiovascular health" or something of that nature. But these words are very precise, and carefully crafted, to give the impression that they have the effectiveness of drugs.

But they are regulated as foods. Those supplements have as strict a standard, as a loaf of bread. They basically just have to prove they aren't going to kill you, nothing more. They aren't regulated as drugs, like aspirin, allergy pills, and all other drugs. Drugs have a much stricter standard. I remember Cheerios got into trouble with this a few years ago, because they were making claims that their cereal reduced cholesterol or something, and that is a drug claim. And drug claims have to meet certain standards, so Cheerios had to change the wording. They were marketing themselves as a drug.

And drugs actually work. And people who want to focus on "natural", often see it as opposed to drug therapy. 

For example:



> Many Americans do not think twice about taking medicines to prevent heart disease and stroke. But cancer is different. Much of what Americans do in the name of warding off cancer has not been shown to matter, and some things are actually harmful. Yet the few medicines proved to deter cancer are widely ignored.





> Take prostate cancer, the second-most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States, surpassed only by easily treated skin cancers. More than 192,000 cases of it will be diagnosed this year, and more than 27,000 men will die from it.And, it turns out, there is a way to prevent many cases of prostate cancer. A large and rigorous study found that a generic drug, finasteride, costing about $2 a day, could prevent as many as 50,000 cases each year. Another study found that finasteride’s close cousin, dutasteride, about $3.50 a day, has the same effect.
> Nevertheless, researchers say, the drugs that work are largely ignored. And supplements that have been shown to be not just ineffective but possibly harmful are taken by men hoping to protect themselves from prostate cancer.
> As the nation’s war on cancer continues, with little change in the overall cancer mortality rate, many experts on cancer and public health say more attention should be paid to prevention.
> But prevention has proved more difficult than many imagined. It has been devilishly difficult to show conclusively that something simple like eating more fruits and vegetables or exercising regularly helps. And, as the response to the prostate drugs shows, people are not enthusiastic about taking anticancer pills, or are worried about side effects or not really convinced the drugs work. Others are just unaware of them.
> And prostate cancer is not unique. Scientists have what they consider definitive evidence that two drugs can cut the risk of breast cancer in half. Women and doctors have pretty much ignored the findings.





> A few ways are known for sure to prevent cancer; the biggest is to avoid cigarette smoking. That alone would drop the cancer death rate by a third. No other measure comes close.Another huge success, for breast cancer, is to avoid taking estrogen and progestin atmenopause. Sales of those drugs plummeted in 2002 after a federal study, the Women’s Health Initiative, concluded that they did not prevent heart disease and might increase breast cancer. The next year, the breast cancer rate dropped by 15 percent after having steadily increased since 1945.
> The vaccine for human papilloma virus, protects against most strains of the virus, which causes cervical cancer.
> But other measures that are often assumed — and marketed — as ways to prevent cancer may not make much difference, researchers say.
> For example, public health experts for years recommended eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day to prevent cancer, but the evidence is conflicting, at best suggestive, and far from definitive.
> ...


etc etc.


----------



## Red Panda (Aug 18, 2010)

FearAndTrembling said:


> I think this touches on a larger problem, that corporations have really exploited over the last couple years. People want to solve their problems "naturally". Through diet, and this sort of thing. Nothing wrong with that. But now the momentum has swung to that side, at the expense of the other. So, people want natural cures. Like the supplement aisle at the store. Absolutely huge now. One of the biggest sections.
> 
> One of the problems, is that all these supplements that make health claims --though they do it very precisely, with weasel words. Like, they can't literally say, "will prevent heart attack", so they say, "promotes cardiovascular health" or something of that nature. But these words are very precise, and carefully crafted, to give the impression that they have the effectiveness of drugs.
> 
> ...


That's indeed good examples on how single ingredients don't necessarily work on their own. So what if you eat 5 servings of veggies and fruit per day if you smoke a pack and eat a ton of processed meat, junk food etc? No, recommendations have to be more comprehensive than this, hence why adopting cultural diets that have been studied for their effects as a whole is a better form of prevention through nutrition than just adding things here and there. 
I personally don't remember ever seeing supplements that make such claims here, except omega-3s which indeed help but it's been proved so far that they do help in cardiovascular health (but, again, taking them and doing a thousand negative things might not work in the end).


----------



## doineed1 (May 25, 2014)

Red Panda said:


> That's indeed good examples on how single ingredients don't necessarily work on their own. So what if you eat 5 servings of veggies and fruit per day if you smoke a pack and eat a ton of processed meat, junk food etc? No, recommendations have to be more comprehensive than this, hence why adopting cultural diets that have been studied for their effects as a whole is a better form of prevention through nutrition than just adding things here and there.
> I personally don't remember ever seeing supplements that make such claims here, except omega-3s which indeed help but it's been proved so far that they do help in cardiovascular health (but, again, taking them and doing a thousand negative things might not work in the end).


Smokes a pack a day.. still have perfect blood work.. by the way food is one of the biggest killers around the world. Eating badly is worse than smoking


----------



## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Red Panda said:


> That's indeed good examples on how single ingredients don't necessarily work on their own. So what if you eat 5 servings of veggies and fruit per day if you smoke a pack and eat a ton of processed meat, junk food etc? No, recommendations have to be more comprehensive than this, hence why adopting cultural diets that have been studied for their effects as a whole is a better form of prevention through nutrition than just adding things here and there.
> I personally don't remember ever seeing supplements that make such claims here, except omega-3s which indeed help but it's been proved so far that they do help in cardiovascular health (but, again, taking them and doing a thousand negative things might not work in the end).


Yeah, I am coming from a very American-centric point of view. They are a huge industry here, and make many health claims. Some may even be true. But they don't have the evidence to back them up. The food/drug dichotomy is also how it is done in the US. I can't speak for other places. And it is also being applied to foods. Superfoods and all that. All these fruits and vegetables are all of sudden gonna stop you from getting cancer, and other things. These foods are obviously good for you, but the industry obviously like play them up, and act like they are almost drugs meant to treat these conditions. 

There can also be microcosms with countries. Strict Mormons in the US, have like half the cancer mortality rate of the rest of the population. They generally live a clean life. No drugs/alcohol or smoking.


----------



## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

doineed1 said:


> Smokes a pack a day.. still have perfect blood work.. by the way food is one of the biggest killers around the world. Eating badly is worse than smoking


Tobacco has been the leading cause of preventable death in the US my entire lifetime. Smokers can live long lives, of course. But they are more likely to get cancer, and other things. That's why one can't really say that smoking causes cancer. The way that gravity causes something to fall to the Earth, for example. Smoking won't always give one cancer, smoking makes it much more likely one is going to get cancer. Just like, people can drive drunk all the time fine. But they are still probably more likely to get in an accident than sober drivers.

Also, I've smoked weed like 3 times a day, everyday, for the past 10 years. I eat like a slob, and don't exercise. My bloodwork is perfect too. That's cuz we're young. Smoking isn't gonna do too much at around our ages.


----------



## Red Panda (Aug 18, 2010)

doineed1 said:


> Smokes a pack a day.. still have perfect blood work.. by the way food is one of the biggest killers around the world. Eating badly is worse than smoking


Using personal experiences to form general claims is not very sound, just anecdotal evidence. Many of its effects wouldn't show on blood tests anyway, until it's too late. My mother smokes 2 packs a day, for most of her life and always had perfect blood tests, however her vessels are clogged quite a bit and she has COPD. My dad probably died in large part because of it.
But, smoking has an abundance of very strong _epidemiological _evidence for damaging health, most if not all of its ingredients are basically poisons. There is really nothing good that smoking can do to your body and it's not worth it for the stimulant effect.


----------

