Common sense? Stating the obvious? I would think so, but it's easy to let slide. I admit I did it only casually for the longest time if that and it's so easy to think "I don't eat that bad, it's not like I'm eating fast food every day or chugging down sodas." Then I took a closer look and bumped it against the recommended daily max for such things (esp salt, sugar and saturated fat)...advertising and marketing people are REALLY good at making things sound better than they are, esp with terms like "organic" or "all-natural" or "fat free" etc. Don't be fooled, read the labels. A 20 lb sack of sugar is "fat free" - that doesn't mean it can't cause you to gain a lot of weight and be bad for you in other ways. And things that don't seem so bad on a glance can be. The good news is it can go both ways; sometimes things aren't as bad as they can be made out. For example, I found that (generally speaking), crackers, even those considered somewhat "healthy," are often no worse than potato chips for salt and fat content. So I chose crackers more carefully and didn't stop eating chips (just not as often or as much). Another example: frozen meals. These are often blasted as so horribly bad, and some are...but some are not. They vary, a LOT. I have these for lunch at work sometimes and the diff in them can be massive. So I'm just careful which I buy.

In general I found I could made a huge diff in getting better at reading labels and noticing how much the bad stuff could sneak in there, yet still could enjoy things like chips and desserts and whatever, as long as I was aware how much of this or that they had. And again common sense...eat "bad" things sparingly, not frequently, and be careful of amounts.

I don't know if this has any value to anyone but FWIW. Read labels on basically everything, know how much is considered acceptable for a healthy diet, and it can make a big diff.

If man made it, don't eat it. – Jack Lalanne

Words to live by.

That's certainly a good start. Not counting my unfortunate Dorito habit, I try not to eat much that comes with a label at all.

I'll just add (since I'm bored as hell right now) that a lot of what we choose to eat really should depend on what we 'burn' as well, and not only that but timing matters.

It's one thing to eat a bunch of carbs during and after a big dinner, being a couch potato in general, and then just lie on the couch until you fall asleep.. like, several nights per week.. And it's an entirely different thing to chug a soda with plenty of sugars during a 14-mile run or a 50-mile bike ride, or eat a bowl of pasta after... Same with fats and protein... Timing matters, 'burn' matters.

Worth noting, and I've never seen this stated explicitly anywhere but I've seen these facts in isolation. When you join the dots it's pretty startling. And by startling I mean horrifying:

• The average American eats approx 22g of added sugar daily.
• It's estimated that humans, for most of our history, ate in the region of 20g of added sugar yearly.

To spell out the implications: The average American is eating roughly 400 times more added sugar than we evolved to ingest, every single day.

On the other hand life expectancy is way up. So, you know... 'whatever'...

You think the attitude of "whatever" is what has raised life expectancy? Cool story bro.

Something I found very informative, if not very fun: by mistake, I licked off a spoon that had wet cat food on the bottom. No salt. So I reached down and munched a kibble or two. Also no salt. The dog kibble, ditto.

Turns out that if you read the labels, they all do actually have added salt, but in amounts so small that it appears way, way down in the list of ingredients. But still, compared to what we "intelligent" creatures are used to, practically nil.

Might give you pause the next time you're about to toss a sliver of ham in Fido's direction.

lol...

Seriously though: Evolution is indifferent to anything but the survival of genes. So while it's possibly bad for the individual relative to the alternative, we're still individually living longer than before.

And 'yeah', obviously a "whatever" attitude isn't going to make anyone a surgeon or 'whatever', so clearly there's the argument that that's not a great attitude for our species... but then again, apparently enough of us homo sapiens manage to do enough for the rest to increase life expectancy and arguably quality of life.

I'm full of'em. Let me know if you want more ;-)

PS: I rode 110+ miles on my bike Sunday, and I don't really exercise for less than an hour per day even if it's just commuting, so when I say that we can time consumption of these 'added' sugars I really mean it.

I know you weren't trying to be literal per se but ham in fact can be harmful to dogs, and for some breeds fatal. Only the most mindless of idiots thinks food is good or bad for pets in the same ways as people, and shouldn't even be allowed to own a pet (unless you count rocks).

As for salt, again, it's very simple: read the labels. Taste I've found can be at times misleading; I've had things that didn't taste esp salty that turned out to have plenty, and some things which tasted salty actually weren't all that bad.

? Like? I can't even think of any "man-made" food offhand. It's all either animal or plant in some form.

Except cat food.

Absolutely. But too much sugar or fats (saturated fats at least) are bad for you no matter how much you work out. But yeah good health isn't all about diet, exercise matters of course, but I wasn't speaking to good health in general, just diet...

You think Twinkies grow on the Twinkie tree?

Mhmm, you can burn off ingesting anything within reason. Doesn't make it a good idea or healthy.

And yeah, whatever.

What do you think they're made out of? Plastic? (actually that wouldn't be a bad guess lol)

If the point is eating anything that man "creates" by putting together various ingredients is bad, that's a blatantly silly point.

Well, not trying to be cute, but it's impossible to not agree with the above seeing that "too much" is always, well, too much. Hyperhydration is a thing as well... when you have "too much" water.

Right. My point was just that it's easy to look at these numbers and think that there's this magic number to meet and going above it is overdoing it. My point was just that in some cases you can go beyond what is recommended to the general public considering how poorly exercised the masses are, and you will be just fine.

For example:

When participating in an endurance event ingesting far more carbohydrates than one normally would isn't just acceptable, it ends up being a prerequisite to finish the event without "bonking".

As long as the amount of carbs ingested per hour is not higher than what the body can transport into the blood stream and as long as exercise is in a correct range those sugars get burned pretty much right away. They don't even have the chance to turn into fat. No problem there.

Ditto with ingesting salts (electrolytes really) on a hot day when sweating a lot while exercising. You're absolutely often going to lose more than you gain.

Protein? Depending on the exercise type and intensity and body tendencies a person can actually end up using protein in addition to fat and carbs. If that's the case then adding protein to what one ingests makes sense.

So for example; a recommendation I've seen many times is that a male should get about 60g/day of protein. But that's for a sedentary male that weighs around 155lbs. American males are eating about 50% more than that but are also weighing a lot more in many cases. So then you look at someone that is 45+ years old and doing strenuous workouts on a daily basis, and those numbers change.

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

PS: I obviously don't disagree with the premise of the OP, to take a peek at the actual nutritional contents on packaging... And "fat free" blows...

Alright wise guy You know what I mean (I think/hope).

Sure. How active you are is huge. But that can be a dangerous mindset to get into; people can kid themselves that "oh I work out" so they think can eat anything and it's OK because they'll burn it off. But it's not all about calories and carbs. You can be thin, you even can be active and still have (for ex) high blood pressure and/or high cholesterol levels. Or be vitamin deficient. etc

Of course. I agree.

I think we're both looking for a 'holistic' view on the whole idea of health.

Yeah. But this is about diet. Stop throwing that exercise crap in here.

Christ man... Your diet needs to fit your lifestyle. No exercise = one diet. Exercise = diet changes. 24 years old? Certain things work. 60+? Different diet.

Read labels? Sure. Didn't we all agree on that already?....

I was kidding, easy there Francis

I ate shushi 4 times this week.

It's not a silly point if you're not wilfully obtuse about it and interpret it intelligently. I ask you again, do twinkies grow on fvcking trees?

Thanks for erasing any lingering doubt I had about having a rational, worthwhile conversation about this with you. You could have simply clarified your point, but you've made it clear you either can't or you simply don't have one.

Unless it really is "if it doesn't grow on trees it's bad for you" - which is quite silly, not to mention severely ignorant. Also water is wet.

Not wasting any more time discussing this with you unless you decide to put down the snarky BS and discuss this intelligently. Not holding my breath about it, frankly.

You don't seem to understand the concept of a heuristic.

You're the one who willfully refuses to parse that "man-made" obviously includes twinkies, margarine and partially hydrogenated crackers but not apples or blackberries. If you don't think that indicates either a complete lack of rationale or, a complete lack of good faith on your part (whether intentional or not) then you don't have a very clear view of yourself.