Perfect Health Diet

What Hacker News says

1. ekrDec 2019
   Perfect Health Diet is the best I've read, but the authors seem to be overemphasizing a bit the effect of their diet plans. Diet alone won't cure all your illnesses completely. The sentiment reflected in the book is the opposite.
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2. jvagnerOct 2019
   You might look at a book called "The Perfect Health Diet" which advocates, through nutrition science, for a diet much like this.
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3. jamilbkAug 2018
   I made it through the first few pages and the author seems to treat calories from all sources the same. I wonder what his take on the theory that calories from some sources (e.g. saturated and monounsaturated fats) are generally not translated to fat in your body whereas calories from other sources (glucose, fructose) generally are.

   For example, a tbsp of coconut oil contains 117 calories while the same volume of sugar contains 48. Yet anyone following a ketogenic diet would argue in favor of calories from the coconut oil over sugar any day.

   Another great nutrition book for the analytically-minded among us (not actually a prescriptive "diet" despite the title): Perfect Health Diet http://perfecthealthdiet.com/the-diet/

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4. jamilbkAug 2018
   Where is the literature? Without strong supporting studies, arguments like these have little merit.

   This seems like more of the established argument that saturated and mono unsaturated fats are unhealthy (butter, coconut oil, beef tallow, etc), where in fact polyunsaturated fats are better for you (canola oil, sunflower oil, most fried foods, etc).

   I find this hard to believe. Just a simple common sense analysis disagrees: saturated and mono unsaturated fats are found in higher ratios to polyunsatured fats all over nature in the foods our ancestors have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years. One great example is wild seafood, especially salmon.

   For those wanting an introduction to the literature on this stuff, "Perfect Health Diet" is a great read.

   http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/09/saturated-fat-reduces-r...

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5. blevinFeb 2018
   You may enjoy reading Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet's book _The Perfect Health Diet_. It includes an approachable survey of results for many supplements, as well as a considered take on why multivitamins seem less crucial than advertised.

   One reason: metabolic interactions mean that proportionality matters, for example between A and D. Multivitamins are sometimes optimized for cost and pill size at the expense of this. Another reason is that people have varying baselines based on their diet, as well as how much micronutrient synthesis is happening in their gut. Because each vitamin (aka crucial micronutrient) has a dose-response curve, both too little or too much is bad; the book tries to chart out what is a good range for each and how you can achieve that through diet, lifestyle, and supplements. It is by no means a perfect book, but it is the best combination of approachable, credible, and well-researched information that I've come across.

   The complexity of untangling these kinds of interactions is why nutrition research often seems to yield results that contradict earlier results. Biology is complex, but that does not mean progress in understanding it is impossible.

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6. thomasvarney723Apr 2015
   Except for special occasions: no vegetable oil, no wheat, less sugar.

   I agree with much of the paleo, keto, weight lifting and meditation submissions on here. I would add that I think there isn't much better for you than saturated and monounsaturated fat and that there isn't much worse for you than "vegetable" (industrial seed) oils because of their high (especially omega-6) polyunsaturated fat content.

   Two books I would really recommend are "Perfect Health Diet" by the Jaminets and "The Paleo Manifesto" by John Durant. "The Paleo Manifesto" is a 30,000ft view of health from an ancestral perspective. The "Perfect Health Diet" delves into the chemistry of metabolism and is very interesting in it's own right if you're into that kind of thing.

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