Whole dietary patterns vs. reductionist approach

Quoted message said:

So, we should rather focus on the research of complete dietary
patterns, which is a way to get a very good overall picture about a
healthy diet. This is a way to get a solid basis on which you can
build on. Fortunately there are already results of this kind of
research. It has been found from the Nurses' Health Study and the
Health Professionals' Follow-up Study that the prudent dietary pattern
is characterized by vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grain, fish or
omega-3 oils and olive oil. The western dietary pattern, which
shortens life and increases the risk of heart disease, consists of
meat, processed meat, refined grains, full fat dairy, butter and
potatoes.

I think you have forgot omega-6 PUFAs and fructose/sacharose in the
western dietary pattern.

They contribute a very large portion of calorie intake. And they are
perhaps the most dangerous.

Mirek

[email hidden] (Jan) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

When reading often fanatically presented views in these pages it comes
to mind how easily people are led astray in nutritional matters. That
happens very easily if you focus on single dietary factors as the
reductionist research does. As you might know reductionist approach
means that parts of the diet rather than the whole are studied. This
kind of research has dominated because reductionism has been the
dominating epistemological approach. However, there are a number of
reasons why the reductionist approach is not accurate. One is that it
has been narrowing the perspective. It does not notice the fact that
diet consists of a mixture of foods, and those foods are composed of
multitude of chemicals. And as a result of this, there are
combinational effects, such as synergisms and antagonisms, that
explain a proportion of the whole not being encompassed by examining
the parts.

So, we should rather focus on the research of complete dietary
patterns, which is a way to get a very good overall picture about a
healthy diet. This is a way to get a solid basis on which you can
build on. Fortunately there are already results of this kind of
research. It has been found from the Nurses' Health Study and the
Health Professionals' Follow-up Study that the prudent dietary pattern
is characterized by vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grain, fish or
omega-3 oils and olive oil. The western dietary pattern, which
shortens life and increases the risk of heart disease, consists of
meat, processed meat, refined grains, full fat dairy, butter and
potatoes.

Maybe you should follow your own advice and indeed look at complete
dietary patterns and do it of a wide range of population groups with
different diets and in different time periods in order to truely
single out what foods are healthy and what foods are unhealthy. The
way you lump healthy foods like meat and full fat dairy together with
unhealthy foods and your insistence on referencing flawed or corrupt
research shows how uninformed and blind you are. Many different
traditional populations that eat meat and dairy and other high animal
food diets without the processed junk are very healthy and live long
lives without modern diseases and with that your "picture of a healthy
diet" is shown to be very flawed. Now correcting you is getting
tiresome so please do some real open minded comprehensive research on
diets and nutrition before you post your ignorant uninformed
statements.

As I said before it is not hard to get accurate information. Start
with the books "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" and "The
Cholesterol Myths" if you really want to educate yourself. After all
the more information one has the better.

"Mirek Fidler" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

So, we should rather focus on the research of complete dietary
patterns, which is a way to get a very good overall picture about a
healthy diet. This is a way to get a solid basis on which you can
build on. Fortunately there are already results of this kind of
research. It has been found from the Nurses' Health Study and the
Health Professionals' Follow-up Study that the prudent dietary pattern
is characterized by vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grain, fish or
omega-3 oils and olive oil. The western dietary pattern, which
shortens life and increases the risk of heart disease, consists of
meat, processed meat, refined grains, full fat dairy, butter and
potatoes.

I think you have forgot omega-6 PUFAs and fructose/sacharose in the
western dietary pattern.

They contribute a very large portion of calorie intake. And they are
perhaps the most dangerous.

Mirek

It seems that you didn't open the second link in my message - they are
there, too. Olive oil, which is mostly monounsaturated, is health
preserving. In contrast margarine (omega-6 oils), desserts and sugar
containing beverages increase the risk of obesity and heart disease,
as you can see from the factor loadings.

But I still stress the importance of whole dietary patterns.

Besides this prudent pattern there is another health enhancing dietary
pattern which hasn't got enough attention, and that is the vegetarian
diet.

-Jan

[email hidden] (Wolfbrother) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (Jan) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

So, we should rather focus on the research of complete dietary
patterns, which is a way to get a very good overall picture about a
healthy diet. This is a way to get a solid basis on which you can
build on. Fortunately there are already results of this kind of
research. It has been found from the Nurses' Health Study and the
Health Professionals' Follow-up Study that the prudent dietary pattern
is characterized by vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grain, fish or
omega-3 oils and olive oil. The western dietary pattern, which
shortens life and increases the risk of heart disease, consists of
meat, processed meat, refined grains, full fat dairy, butter and
potatoes.

Maybe you should follow your own advice and indeed look at complete
dietary patterns and do it of a wide range of population groups with
different diets and in different time periods in order to truely
single out what foods are healthy and what foods are unhealthy. The
way you lump healthy foods like meat and full fat dairy together with
unhealthy foods and your insistence on referencing flawed or corrupt
research shows how uninformed and blind you are. Many different
traditional populations that eat meat and dairy and other high animal
food diets without the processed junk are very healthy and live long
lives without modern diseases and with that your "picture of a healthy
diet" is shown to be very flawed.

We don't have to focus on American population only to find evidence
for these kind of results. World's longest lived people live in
Okinawan Islands where there are more centenarians than anywhere else.
Their diet has been studied extensively and it consists mostly of
vegetables, grains, tofu, fish and green jasmine tea. Their diet it
loaded with phytochemicals (which you don't get much if you rely on
animal foods). Okinawans live longer, have less heart disease, less
cancer, are less obese and have less diabetes.

Traditional Mediterranean diet is another diet where very little meat
or animal fat is consumed, and as the Lyon Diet Heart Study shows, it
is very heart healthy. No evidence seems to be enough for you,
Wolfbrother.

-Jan

Jan, what a pleasure to read some sense here at last.

Wolfbrother, you certainly can't argue your case without being rude and
agressive. Did you know that there's quite a few studies linking agression
to a poor diet - probably too much meat.

Tim

"Jan" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

When reading often fanatically presented views in these pages it comes
to mind how easily people are led astray in nutritional matters. That
happens very easily if you focus on single dietary factors as the
reductionist research does. As you might know reductionist approach
means that parts of the diet rather than the whole are studied. This
kind of research has dominated because reductionism has been the
dominating epistemological approach. However, there are a number of
reasons why the reductionist approach is not accurate. One is that it
has been narrowing the perspective. It does not notice the fact that
diet consists of a mixture of foods, and those foods are composed of
multitude of chemicals. And as a result of this, there are
combinational effects, such as synergisms and antagonisms, that
explain a proportion of the whole not being encompassed by examining
the parts.

So, we should rather focus on the research of complete dietary
patterns, which is a way to get a very good overall picture about a
healthy diet. This is a way to get a solid basis on which you can
build on. Fortunately there are already results of this kind of
research. It has been found from the Nurses' Health Study and the
Health Professionals' Follow-up Study that the prudent dietary pattern
is characterized by vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grain, fish or
omega-3 oils and olive oil. The western dietary pattern, which
shortens life and increases the risk of heart disease, consists of
meat, processed meat, refined grains, full fat dairy, butter and
potatoes.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11124751

Quoted message said:

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/73/1/61/T1

-Jan

Quoted message said:

We don't have to focus on American population only to find evidence
for these kind of results. World's longest lived people live in
Okinawan Islands where there are more centenarians than anywhere else.
Their diet has been studied extensively and it consists mostly of
vegetables, grains, tofu, fish and green jasmine tea. Their diet it
loaded with phytochemicals (which you don't get much if you rely on
animal foods). Okinawans live longer, have less heart disease, less
cancer, are less obese and have less diabetes.

It is very hard to get any conclusion from this - Japanesse are leading
in tobacco consumption, yet their lung cancer rate is one third of
western countries. So based on them you could conclude as well that
smoking prevents against lung cancer.

Also, speaking about Okinawans, they consume relatively highest amount
of animal products in Japanesse, including large amounts of pork. Very
often these "extensive" studies are written before any study can
actually happen just to prove some point.

Also, I do not see why you should not get phytochemicals while eating
animal foods? Since I gave up grains, potatoes and rice, I tend to eat
significantly more veggies. I do not know what psychological mechanism
is behind this, but almost every low-carb persons reports the same.

Quoted message said:

Traditional Mediterranean diet is another diet where very little meat
or animal fat is consumed, and as the Lyon Diet Heart Study shows, it
is very heart healthy.

Actually, Lyon Diet Heart Study proved that high-fat diet is better than
prudent low-fat diet.

Speaking about Mediterranean diet, it is really interesting how
differently it is interpreted. Some present it as low-fat diet full of
whole grains, others like low-carb high fat diet.

Well, for my part, during my visits to Croatia, Bulgaria or Greece I
have never seen any whole-grain or low-fat produc. There is a lot of
veggies, a lot of wine, olive oil, lot of fish and normal amount of
meat. Maybe fish replaces red meat to some degree, but combined fish and
meat consumption is even greater than here (I live in central europe).
So in fact, if anything, I believe they are basically living low-carb...

I have also French relatives - and while on low-carb, I have zero
problem to accomodate meals they prepared for us. They are cooking on
butter, eat full-fat diary and actually never touch anything than even
resembles whole grains.

Mirek

Mirek Fidler said:

Also, speaking about Okinawans, they consume relatively highest amount
of animal products in Japanesse, including large amounts of pork.

This is a mythology. Yes, they eat a large quantity of pork (avg. < 30
g/day) compared to non-Okinawan Japanese, who eat essentially none.
But, the actual amount is very small. Their diet is heavily plant-based,
rich in complex carbohydrate, high in vegetables, and low in fat.

From

http://www.wellnessletter.com/html/wl/2001/wlFeatured0901.html

"The Okinawan diet might well amaze Americans. The average citizen
consumes at least seven servings of vegetables daily, and an equal
number of grains (in the form of noodles, bread, and rice—many of them
whole grains). Add to this two to four servings of fruit, plus tofu and
other forms of soy, green tea, seaweed, and fish rich in omega-3s (three
times weekly). Sweet potatoes, bean sprouts, onions, and green peppers
are prominent in the diet. Vegetables, grains, and fruits make up 72% of
the diet by weight. Soy and seaweed provide another 14%. ***Meat,
poultry, and eggs account for just 3% of the diet***, fish about 11%.
The emphasis is on dark green vegetables rich in calcium"

"In short, the average Okinawan's diet is far richer in complex
carbohydrates and plant-based foods, and lower in fat, than the average
American's. (It's completely different from low-carbohydrate plans like
the Atkins and Zone diets.)"

"It's not so easy, of course, to change to an Okinawan life-style and
consume, say, 20 servings of vegetables, fruits, and grains daily."

-----------------------------------

See also:

Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2001;10(2):165-71.
Implications from and for food cultures for cardiovascular disease:
longevity.
Suzuki M, Wilcox BJ, Wilcox CD.

"A healthy cardiovascular system, with minimal arteriosclerosis, good
endothelial function and well-compensated ventricular function has been
observed at advanced ages, and linked to a healthy lifestyle. This has
consisted of a plant-based diet, low in salt and fat, with
monounsaturates as the principal fat." PMID: 11710359

Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2001;10(2):159-64.
History and characteristics of Okinawan longevity food.
Sho H.
"The Satsamu sweet potato provides the largest part of the energy
intake." PMID: 11710358

[email hidden] (Jan) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (Wolfbrother) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (Jan) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

So, we should rather focus on the research of complete dietary
patterns, which is a way to get a very good overall picture about a
healthy diet. This is a way to get a solid basis on which you can
build on. Fortunately there are already results of this kind of
research. It has been found from the Nurses' Health Study and the
Health Professionals' Follow-up Study that the prudent dietary pattern
is characterized by vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grain, fish or
omega-3 oils and olive oil. The western dietary pattern, which
shortens life and increases the risk of heart disease, consists of
meat, processed meat, refined grains, full fat dairy, butter and
potatoes.

Maybe you should follow your own advice and indeed look at complete
dietary patterns and do it of a wide range of population groups with
different diets and in different time periods in order to truely
single out what foods are healthy and what foods are unhealthy. The
way you lump healthy foods like meat and full fat dairy together with
unhealthy foods and your insistence on referencing flawed or corrupt
research shows how uninformed and blind you are. Many different
traditional populations that eat meat and dairy and other high animal
food diets without the processed junk are very healthy and live long
lives without modern diseases and with that your "picture of a healthy
diet" is shown to be very flawed.

We don't have to focus on American population only to find evidence
for these kind of results. World's longest lived people live in
Okinawan Islands where there are more centenarians than anywhere else.
Their diet has been studied extensively and it consists mostly of
vegetables, grains, tofu, fish and green jasmine tea. Their diet it
loaded with phytochemicals (which you don't get much if you rely on
animal foods). Okinawans live longer, have less heart disease, less
cancer, are less obese and have less diabetes.

Traditional Mediterranean diet is another diet where very little meat
or animal fat is consumed, and as the Lyon Diet Heart Study shows, it
is very heart healthy. No evidence seems to be enough for you,
Wolfbrother.

-Jan

These are not accurate descriptions of either of these two diets. You
should be careful where you get your info from.

Do a google search on weston price and read his stuff.

TC

"cde" <[email hidden]> píše v diskusním príspevku
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Mirek Fidler said:

Also, speaking about Okinawans, they consume relatively highest

amount

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

of animal products in Japanesse, including large amounts of pork.

This is a mythology. Yes, they eat a large quantity of pork (avg. < 30
g/day) compared to non-Okinawan Japanese, who eat essentially none.

Do you know meaning of word "relatively" ? 🙂 Or my english skills are
so bad?

Mirek

Just some more comments....

Quoted message said:

times weekly). Sweet potatoes, bean sprouts, onions, and green peppers
are prominent in the diet. Vegetables, grains, and fruits make up 72%

of

Quoted message said:

the diet by weight.

*BY WEIGHT*

I have missed this before....

You can eat 30g of pork and 500g of green peppers and your diet will
still be high-fat...

Vegetables make up 60-80% by weight on my low-carb diet too. Still I get
about 50% of calories as fat (mostly MUFA).

Quoted message said:

Soy and seaweed provide another 14%. ***Meat,
poultry, and eggs account for just 3% of the diet***, fish about 11%.
The emphasis is on dark green vegetables rich in calcium"

Dark green vegetables also tend to be very low in digestible
carbohydrates - averaging at 2.5g / 100g of weight. No wonder they are
healthy 🙂

Quoted message said:

consisted of a plant-based diet, low in salt and fat, with
monounsaturates as the principal fat." PMID: 11710359

Well, in the above list I do not see any significant source of
monounsatured fat. So once again, information seems incosistent.

Also information of salt seems to be incorrect (but I would have to
check out...)

Mirek

[email hidden] (Jan) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (Wolfbrother) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (Jan) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

We don't have to focus on American population only to find evidence
for these kind of results. World's longest lived people live in
Okinawan Islands where there are more centenarians than anywhere else.
Their diet has been studied extensively and it consists mostly of
vegetables, grains, tofu, fish and green jasmine tea. Their diet it
loaded with phytochemicals (which you don't get much if you rely on
animal foods). Okinawans live longer, have less heart disease, less
cancer, are less obese and have less diabetes.

Traditional Mediterranean diet is another diet where very little meat
or animal fat is consumed, and as the Lyon Diet Heart Study shows, it
is very heart healthy. No evidence seems to be enough for you,
Wolfbrother.

(And what do Okinawans eat? The main meat of the diet is pork, and not
the lean cuts only. Okinawan cuisine, according to gerontologist
Kazuhiko Taira, "is very healthy—and very, very greasy," in a 1996
article that appeared in Health Magazine.19 And the whole pig is
eaten—everything from "tails to nails." Local menus offer boiled pigs
feet, entrail soup and shredded ears. Pork is cooked in a mixture of
soy sauce, ginger, kelp and small amounts of sugar, then sliced and
chopped up for stir fry dishes. Okinawans eat about 100 grams of meat
per day—compared to 70 in Japan and just over 20 in China—and at least
an equal amount of fish, for a total of about 200 grams per day,
compared to 280 grams per person per day of meat and fish in America.
Lard—not vegetable oil—is used in cooking.

Okinawans also eat plenty of fibrous root crops such as taro and sweet
potatoes. They consume rice and noodles, but not as the main component
of the diet. They eat a variety of vegetables such as carrots, white
radish, cabbage and greens, both fresh and pickled. Bland tofu is part
of the diet, consumed in traditional ways, but on the whole Okinawan
cuisine is spicy. Pork dishes are flavored with a mixture of ginger
and brown sugar, with chili oil and with "the wicked bite of bitter
melon."😉

(Many have been misled by claims that the diet on Okinawa—where there
are 34 centenarians for every 100,000 people, more than triple the US
rate—is a low-calorie, lowfat diet consisting of "soy, vegetables and
small amounts of fish, meat and rice." This is an example of
dieticians "painting the white roses red" because the earliest article
on the Okinawan diet described it as "greasy."14 Lard was
traditionally used in cooking on the island and although it may not be
used as much today, the Okinawan centenarians were using lard most of
their lives, lives that began long before the USDA decided to tell us
all to eat canola oil.)

You still do not get it do you? you throw in two more populations?
When there are hundreds? Many of which live long disesae free lives
on high animal food diets. Not to mention that your claim of low fat
okinawan diet is false. Most studies of okinawans are so flawed and
biased. Acording to real experts like Kazuhiko Taira Kazuhiko Taira,
longevity expert at the University of Ryukyus in Okinawa their diet is
very fatty from the use of pork and pork fat. This is almost always
left out or distorted in any "study" on Okinawan longevity. Sometimes
diet is not even discussed because of this fact. What you must note
is what is NOT eaten in those healthy populations and that would be
modern processed foods like sugar, flower, trans fat, and
polyunsaturated vegetable oils. These are all staples of unhealthy
modern diets like that of the US. Anyone with any sense or
rationality can discern the true cause of poor health and distinguish
healthy foods from unhealthy by looking at the big picture and using
real scientific analasys of ALL the data not just small selected bits
as you do.

Its not that no evidcence is enough its just that YOUR pathetic
evidence is certainly not enough. Why dont you adress the fact that
much of the evidence and studies you provide, like that of Ancel Keys,
is simply a joke??? The fact that you would even assume that all the
so called "evidence" you provided is enough shows your lack of
understanding. There is so much evidence that simply discredits your
absurd theory and you do not seem to comprehend that. What you do not
understand is that it is not the fact that the diets you speak of are
unhealthy it is that there are other diets equaly healthy if not more
so as compared to modern diets. Your narrowminded view and
presentation of "evidence" is far from the whole picture of the
reality of human nutrition and you simply need more information. It
only takes one example of a population that does not fit neatly into
your theory to show that it is flawed and there are MANY examples.
That is how real science is done. What DOES fit into EVERY SINGLE
EXAMPLE is the fact that modern refined foods like sugar flower and
vegetable oils and shortenings are unhealthy and the main cause of
disease. Yet you and others continue to blame animal foods??? Im
sorry but that is simply a biased and flawed conclusion.

"Mirek Fidler" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...
..

Quoted message said:

It is very hard to get any conclusion from this - Japanesse are leading
in tobacco consumption, yet their lung cancer rate is one third of
western countries. So based on them you could conclude as well that
smoking prevents against lung cancer.

A very good point and a good example of the flaws in her narrow view
and interpritation of a small amount of mostly flawed information.

cde <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Mirek Fidler wrote:

Quoted message said:

This is a mythology. Yes, they eat a large quantity of pork (avg. < 30
g/day) compared to non-Okinawan Japanese, who eat essentially none.
But, the actual amount is very small. Their diet is heavily plant-based,
rich in complex carbohydrate, high in vegetables, and low in fat.

Woah now that is a complete distortion if i ever heard one. Just
watch the show Iron Chef if you want to get an idea of what people in
japan eat and how they relish fatty animal foods. You will see styles
of cooking from all corners of Japan and you will learn a lot about
both modern and traditional japanese food as well as food from other
cultures like France and China and see first hand how important animal
foods/fat are. The only mythology is that japanese are vegetarians.
It really is amazing when you contrast it with american food culture
and see all our fat fobia and low fat everything compared to the way
japanese seek out and truely relish the fattiest portions of animals
such as duck, pig, and others to use in their dishes with knowlage
that these are the tastiest and most nutritious parts. If I had to
make a rough estimate I would say a fairly large percentage of
calories in most Iron Chef dishes are from fat.

(One example being the use of a hand made "fat netting" from pork fat
i believe, used to wrap around and hold together other ingredients.
Something like this is just totaly unheard of in the US and would be
apauling to most americans despite our supposed high fat diet and low
fat japanese diet.)

Jan said:

So, we should rather focus on the research of complete dietary
patterns, which is a way to get a very good overall picture about a
healthy diet. This is a way to get a solid basis on which you can
build on. Fortunately there are already results of this kind of
research. It has been found from the Nurses' Health Study and the
Health Professionals' Follow-up Study that the prudent dietary pattern
is characterized by vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grain, fish or
omega-3 oils and olive oil. The western dietary pattern, which
shortens life and increases the risk of heart disease, consists of
meat, processed meat, refined grains, full fat dairy, butter and
potatoes.

Those are precisely the same dietary factors identified from so-called
reductionist research.

-Jay

Mirek Fidler said:

Quoted message said:

consisted of a plant-based diet, low in salt and fat, with
monounsaturates as the principal fat." PMID: 11710359

Well, in the above list I do not see any significant source of
monounsatured fat. So once again, information seems incosistent.

They use a combination of low erucic rapeseed and soy oil for cooking.

There is some inconsistency--some values refer only to the diets
of the elders (at 26% dietary fat), while some refer to the population
as a whole. And of course now, the data are not very applicable,since
they are eating at McDonald's and have lost their edge.

But, they are not an isolated case. There are centenarian
populations with even lower total fat and meat intakes.

Chin Med J (Engl). 2001 Oct;114(10):1095-7.
A survey of the dietary nutritional composition of centenarians.
Chen C
PMID 11677774
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11677774

The full paper is here--
http://www.cmj.org/information/full.asp?pmid=2001101095

Check out table 1:

food kcal
dried sweet potato slices 714
cereals 209
beans 118
meats 27
fat 135
vegetables 116
total 1419

total protein grams 39 (11%)
total fat grams 29.2 (19%)
total carbohydrate grams 227.6 (70%)

Also consider the work of Blankenhorn:

Blankenhorn DH, Johnson RL, Mack WJ, el Zein HA, Vailas LI. The
influence of diet on the appearance of new lesions in human coronary
arteries.
JAMA. 1990 Mar 23-30;263(12):1646-52.
PMID: 2407875 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

This study used angiograms to measure development of atherosclerotic
lesions along with dietary recall. This is a more stringent measure
than a change in serum lipid profiles.

"Each quartile of increased consumption of total fat and polyunsaturated
fat was associated with a significant increase in risk of new lesions.
Increased intake of lauric, oleic, and linoleic acids significantly
increased risk. Subjects in the Cholesterol Lowering Atherosclerosis
Study in whom new lesions did not develop increased dietary protein to
compensate for reduced intake of fat by substituting low-fat meats and
dairy products for high-fat meats and dairy products."

"These results indicate that when total and saturated fat intakes are
reduced to levels recommended by the National Cholesterol Education
Program, protein and carbohydrate are preferred substitutes for fat
calories, rather than monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fat."

The actual data from this paper are as follows:

diet intake associations w/ new lesion development
OR 95% confidence interval
total kcal 1.0 1.0-1.0
calories from protein, % 0.72 .57-.92
calories from carbohydrate % 0.98 .92-1.04
calories from total fat % 1.11 1.02-1.2
calories from saturated fat % 1.13 0.95-1.35
calories from PUFA % 1.28 1.07-1.53
calories from MUFA % 1.15 0.97-1.38
calories from alcohol % 0.97 0.87-1.08
cholesterol, mg/day 1.0 0.99-1.0
calcium, mg/day 1.0 1.0-1.0

The paper does not provide details about the diet,
only that the PUFA fraction was mostly from refined
oils high in omega6. But, the results for MUFA are
not good.

Hans Dehmelt has stated:

"Humans should ask themselves how wise it is to deviate widely from a
diet on which the primate line has flourished for many tens of millions
of years *and produced them*."

The diet of a wild primate line with GI tracts very similar
to ours, the howler monkey, is approximately 14% protein,
22.5% fat (comprised of about 30% palmitic, 23% linoleic,
16% alpha linolenic, 15% oleic and 16% other fatty acids),
and largely plant based, lightly supplemented by small mammals,
nuts, eggs, and termites.

Man has displayed the ability to thrive on vastly different
diets. However, it might perhaps be best not to deviate too
much from this base.

The diets of the Okinawan Elders and the Chinese centenarians
in the Chen study are close to this howler monkey base. I know
of zero studied centenarian populations that stray far
from this base.

A total fat intake in the low 20s% is likely to be characteristic
of the paleolithic people as well:

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/70/3/560S
See figure 1.

Suddenly we are supposed increase our monounsaturated fat
intakes to very high levels in order to achieve optimal
health? I think not. Rather, it seems more likely that
elevated MUFA may be a better choice, in the grand
scheme of things, than elevated refined carbohydrate
or elevated saturated or trans fat intakes.

But, increased intake of unrefined carbohydrate sources,
more preferrably from vegetables than domesticated fruits
or whole grains, in the context of a diet adequate in protein,
possibly with more vegetable than animal protein, rich in soluble
fibers, and adequate, but not elevated, in saturated fats, MUFA,
and PUFA, is likely to be the best choice of all.
(Jenkins et al, PMID 11288049)

Jan said:

So, we should rather focus on the research of complete dietary
patterns, which is a way to get a very good overall picture about a
healthy diet.

Since such an analysis _only_ gives you the overall picture, it cannot
substitute for research on individual foods and nutrients. However, it is
useful both as an exploratory tool as well as a means to confirm that the
so-called reductionist research is valid.

Quoted message said:

This is a way to get a solid basis on which you can
build on. Fortunately there are already results of this kind of
research. It has been found from the Nurses' Health Study and the
Health Professionals' Follow-up Study that the prudent dietary pattern
is characterized by vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grain, fish or
omega-3 oils and olive oil. The western dietary pattern, which
shortens life and increases the risk of heart disease, consists of
meat, processed meat, refined grains, full fat dairy, butter and
potatoes.

Which _confirms_ the results of the so-called reductionist studies, but that's
about as far as you can go with it.

-Jay

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

consisted of a plant-based diet, low in salt and fat, with
monounsaturates as the principal fat." PMID: 11710359

Well, in the above list I do not see any significant source of
monounsatured fat. So once again, information seems incosistent.

They use a combination of low erucic rapeseed and soy oil for cooking.

Still no source of MUFA.

Quoted message said:

calories from total fat % 1.11 1.02-1.2
calories from saturated fat % 1.13 0.95-1.35
calories from PUFA % 1.28 1.07-1.53
calories from MUFA % 1.15 0.97-1.38

Glad to see that SFA is the safest one 🙂

In any case, it was your quote that MUFA should be principal source of
fat.

Quoted message said:

calories from alcohol % 0.97 0.87-1.08
cholesterol, mg/day 1.0 0.99-1.0

Zero association for cholesterol.... direct opposite to what dr. Ornish
tries to say us....

Quoted message said:

But, increased intake of unrefined carbohydrate sources,
more preferrably from vegetables than domesticated fruits
or whole grains, in the context of a diet adequate in protein,

Do you realize how many vegetables you need to eat to gain any
significant carbohydrate calories?

Of course, eating tons of veggies leads to calorie restriction and good
healts and that is a good thing, but if you go on high vegetables diet,
you will automatically cut carbohydrates portion of your diet....

Quoted message said:

possibly with more vegetable than animal protein, rich in soluble
fibers, and adequate, but not elevated, in saturated fats, MUFA,
and PUFA, is likely to be the best choice of all.

....even if you do not increase fat by a single gram, especially when
veggies will be those dark green...

Mirek

Personally I have come to this group to learn more about nutrition and
to find more good sources of information. I am also here to share what
I have learned and understood about different diets. When writing to
this group I have tried to ensure that the information I am sharing is
trustworthy. When it comes to the Okinawan diet for example, I have
read the 484-sided Okinawan Program book by Bradley J. Willcow and his
collegues (Clarkson Potter, NY 2001). The book is based on 25-year
study of the Okinawan elders and there diet. So I should know
something about the subject. But I am not interested about a
discussion where people are just trying to prove that someone is wrong
and that they are right. That is just a childish ego game. I would
like to see people to listen more, to open their minds a little bit
and to appreciate the fellow members little more. Otherwise this is
just futile arguing and makes no sense.

Jan said:

Personally I have come to this group to learn more about nutrition and
to find more good sources of information. I am also here to share what
I have learned and understood about different diets. When writing to
this group I have tried to ensure that the information I am sharing is
trustworthy. When it comes to the Okinawan diet for example, I have
read the 484-sided Okinawan Program book by Bradley J. Willcow and his
collegues (Clarkson Potter, NY 2001). The book is based on 25-year
study of the Okinawan elders and there diet. So I should know
something about the subject. But I am not interested about a
discussion where people are just trying to prove that someone is wrong
and that they are right. That is just a childish ego game. I would
like to see people to listen more, to open their minds a little bit
and to appreciate the fellow members little more. Otherwise this is
just futile arguing and makes no sense.

That was random.

-Jay