The idea of complete protein was tossed years ago in studies of societies, religions and other areas where vegetarianism is practiced either exclusively due to religious dietary restrictions (Hindus, 7th Day Adventists, others) or culturally.

While the research may change or tweak certain aspects, I hope that more people will become familiar with peer-reviewed, first source data rather than what is printed by the media.

I have to agree with SLCCOM that this article is a great example of science via anecdote, which is helpful to no one.

Yes, eating healthy and exercising are good for you. Will it keep you from getting a cold? Very doubtful.

So..eat well, move every day, keep stress down, and remember that no one gets out of here alive.

In terms of diet studies, there are very, very few that are actually studies that generate potentially useful results. The Framingham and Nurse’s studies are about the only two that have the number of subjects or the duration. What they don’t have is a reliable information base. The bucket studies, where what you eat is also put into a container for chemical analysis, and captive in-patient studies involve people who are imprisoned in the facility for dietary monitoring, are the only times when researchers actually KNOW what people are eating. Every other diet study is suspect on those grounds. And as Dr. House says, people lie!

Another issue is the correlation is not the same as causation, as you well know. It is never causation. Yes, indeed, correlation is sometimes related to causation. We figured out the whole relationship of tobacco smoking and lung cancer that way. However, researchers did dig deeper, find molecular mechanisms, run animal studies, etc. to find the actual causation. Which chemicals and radioactive elements in the tobacco smoke actually cause the lung cancer have been identified. That is most emphatically NOT happening with diet and exercise and health studies.

The bottom line for me: our life expectancy is getting longer, not shorter. So I am skeptical that tinier and ever more minute exposures to evil “chemicals” that have been used for decades are “killing people.” (BPA is the evil chemical for today.)Sadly, more and more people who know no science are being goaded into spending more and more money to avoid infinitesimal “risks” to their children.

The biggest issue, for me, is the utter ignorance we as human beings have about how our bodies work. We see a lot of correlation. We generally don’t bother to look for causation. My husband has chronic fatigue syndrome. On the bright side, at least some medical practitioners “believe” in it now. Maybe they figured that there really can’t be that many people who don’t know each other all telling the same set of lies while producing “normal” lab results. What causes this set of symptoms? Nobody really knows. And few can be bothered to really look. What infectious organisms might be involved? Who knows? If they don’t grow on blood agar or some other standard medium, they don’t exist as far as our medical industry is concerned.

“Normal values” for blood tests are not the same thing as “optimal values” for individuals. We have no good way to measure how well our mitochondria are working, what may have gone wrong and how to fix it. So people like me, my husband, and many others whose biochemistry has gone haywire are given the brush-off by the people who should be interested in finding out why we are malfunctioning and what to do to fix it. Where does the arthritis pain come from? Why does getting tight control on blood sugar levels for diabetics NOT lead to longer lives? Why does getting cholesterol levels down NOT lead to longer lives? But if you get them down too much, the result is shorter life expectancy. Who knows? Nobody is really looking, either.

We just don’t know. There is room for a lot more research, which simply isn’t happening. What is happening is that those who have the misfortune to have a malfunctioning body that leads to overweight or “obesity” (which has been defined ever lower without any good scientific or medical reason) or exercise intolerance or fatigue end up getting blamed by people who don’t even know how much they don’t know for their poor health.

I can’t think of a scenario much more likely to lead to blaming victims and continued ignorance.

Further, “good genes” is a not a strong argument. Much of our health is based on dietary intake, activity levels, environment (are we next to a chemical factory, etc) as well as age and past history. Even with diseases that we know are genetically based (about 10% of all breast cancers), the genetic mutant can be found in far more people than those that will ever manifest the disease. This is why many researchers still do not recommend radical treatments, like preventative mastectomies. Additionally, many other supposedly genetically related conditions are based on a cascade of events(multiple mutations must occur before onset of the disease).

So please, it would be a far more enlightening discussion if you would keep your “BS” to yourself and, instead, actually discuss and outline the weaknesses of the arguments you are attacking.

Just what we all need!

See here http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899900704001674, here http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/014067369091656U, here http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/707372/reload=0;jsessionid=C7922C32F9442B5B8000C6931E5FD69B, here http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FBJN72_04%2FS0007114594001601a.pdf&code=9a274db6db733bff91f4e05f6aebbcf2, and here http://www.ajcn.org/content/70/3/525S.short.

Healthy eating has been the best investment in my life, even when I cut back on other things. I am not talking about eating high class, but rather fruits and vegetables in fresh form, meat when available and affordable, and as many fish as I can get my hands on.

This diet has helped me even when I have been lacking in sleep, studying too much, etc. I look forward to everything it will do for me in the future. I hope to write a post about this more niche topic of investing in your food and health in my blog. Thanks for the inspiration.

My father was recently diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia, a very aggressive form of cancer. Typically, it manifests as a cold, sinus infection, etc that doesn’t go away. My father had a ‘sinus infection’ for 6 weeks before finally heading to the doctor.
No one in our family has ever had cancer, so this was a shock. The doctors credit my father’s active lifestyle (he walked everywhere, ate well & was a healthy weight) as one of the primary reasons he was able to tolerate the chemo better than average & endured the 4 week hospital stay with minimal side effects. He was even known as the ‘Healthiest Patient on the Leukemia Floor’.

You cannot mitigate the role an active lifestyle plays, with our without good genes.

I figure healthy lifestyle habits are good for me no matter what. If they can keep the bad genes at bay, all the better!

I also have a mixed bag of genes. Paternal side of the family dies before 70, usually in their late 50s. Maternal side dies in 80s, 90s and 100s. But if you look closely at each side, you see that overall, longevity is based on eating, activity and overall outlook. Those that die young in the maternal line tend to live less active lives and eat more meat, sugar and fat. Those in the paternal line that outlive the average tend to be more active, smoke less, etc. Research also demonstrates that even if certain health issues plague a family, these can be ameliorated by overall healthy habits.

Yes, I can point to my aunt who lived into her 80′s and smoked 2 packs a day and probably never ate a vegetable. That is one person out of about 7 in my family that died of emphysema at a much younger age (youngest was 36, oldest before my aunt at 57). Therefore, 86% died before the average life expectancy even though they all carried many of the same genes (three being her siblings).

While we will all die of something, if you look at the current leading causes of death, many of them are preventable. Heart disease is only modestly genetically related. Only certain types of cancer are genetically related. Even those cancers that are genetically related, it will only be a specific form (certain types of breast cancer). There are exceptions. Autoimmune disorders are a combination of genetic and so widely variable, that any one autoimmune disease is likely caused by variations in multiple genes.

To broadly brush this person as basically lucky to have good genes ignores the research evidence to prove that so many things ARE preventable through diet and exercise. While I do not want to see a medical community to become accusatory when people do develop certain diseases, neither do I want us to throw up our hands in defeat. I could play victim while continuing the eating style (southern to the bone and crave anything deep fried on a daily basis)I grew up with while driving the three blocks to the grocery store. Or I could, like everyone here does on a daily basis with wealth accumulation, decide that there are certain things in this world that I can control. I can control what goes in my mouth, I can control how much I move each day and I can control how much money I spend.

I really hope that this did not sound patronizing or hyper-critical. But I have spent years with cousins and siblings that continually eat at McDonalds, are grossly obese, have Type II diabetes amongst a myriad of other ailments and lament their bad fortune. These same people look at me and talk about my “good” genes, even though I was on the same path not 2 years ago when I gave up fast food, dropped almost 100 lbs, made exercise a part of my daily life and made the conscious decision to stop eating certain foods (basically almost anything processed). That was the hardest thing I have ever done. Food choices cause certain neurological changes, so you are not simply fighting habit, you are fighting real connections. So I suppose I am a little sensitive to this issue.

No.

I can’t speak for the others, but my original comment doesn’t stem from my feelings about my lifestyle habits. I’m trained in language, research and analysis so sometimes I pick up on different things than other people do. Doesn’t make me any better or worse, just a different point of view is all.

And I apologize for being blunt, but it’s that kind of attitude I think a lot of people are protesting — that because there is something wrong with us, we must have done something (or are doing something) to deserve it. Environment and genetics can play a bigger role in some conditions than lifestyle choices.

I’m not as active as Louisa because I’m not as healthy as Louisa, not the other way around. She’s right — health is a big business, but a lot of the spending comes from people who are being proactive about their health not just people reacting to a condition. I think she’s an inspiration and I enjoyed her tips, but some of us wanted to present another side to the issue too.