So many memories… Thanks !

Placing orthotics bellow your arches is very harmful in the long term. In general you shouldn’t prevent your foot doing what it is designed to do (big heel drops, fat soft shoe soles, orthotics) unless there is a problem (read injury) and only temporarily (until you recover). So are narrow toe-boxes in shoes, your toes should be able to move freely and naturally. If they can’t, the restriction will create irreversible (read: even surgery won’t completely fix what they cause) problems, that mess up all the bio-mechanics of the leg. I wish I knew this when I was younger, working 8-10-12 hour shifts (yeah, I know), as a waiter/barman.

Btw, it might sound counter-intuitive, but proper running, relaxed and a little each day (even as little as 10 minutes) can help getting your legs stronger, relieve stress, restore fascia (without stretching, static stretching never ever worked well for me) and keep it flexible and strong, reset nervous system firing patterns on your shoulders (moving your hands like you do in running with the proper form is way more effective than PT exercises like trap-3-raises for the traps) to counter balance the amount of time you spend looking down, help re-align your spine, and pretty much invigorate your whole body.

But most importantly, rest and eat well. This will be the defining factor on whether your body will adapt and get stronger or not, and how long it will need to do it. We are supposed to be standing all day (not facing downwards though), your feet shouldn’t be the issue here, your neck & shoulders are the part that is assuming the unnatural positions for extended periods of time, so as often as you can break them and do some gentle full range of motion movements (a.k.a dynamic stretching) the better.

Regardless, good luck with your new job! :-)

I see most of the comments discussing efficiency, the inability to have your own garden, or other limiting factors. And I believe all of them are missing the point. There are many and good reasons to shorten your food chain, and efficiency is not one of them. I would expect to at least see some people (there was one exception) considering the value of doing so in their lives, but nope.

So… Not very long ago, most of the people were actually living as farmers. Eric Hobsbawm, in this book, has done a great job describing what it took for the shift to happen, during the industrial revolution. For the people to actually be forced to abandon their land and start accumulating in urban environments where having your own garden is practically impossible for most of them. And it was not good. Child labor, people starving to death, extreme poverty, extreme exploitation of human labor. Many things changed, and most of them did not actually benefit the majority of the people who were forced to abandon or sell their land in order for people who could actually afford more efficient farming approaches (through machines) to replace them while accumulating wealth in an unprecedented manner. Maybe it’s worth examining this shift. Both the argument of efficiency and limiting factors, are not exactly new and are not exactly serving most of us either.

Besides the historical aspect, the how did we get here, of the long food chains. There are other aspects that make them harmful. The ones that allow for a term like “banana republic” to exist, when most of the people who use it don’t pause and think what it actually means for so many people that actually get exploited so they can have their bananas, cheap and available all year (as if potassium is not abundant in every single plant food). The ones that allow for people to have access to food without actually moving at all during the day (CVD, obesity, cases where being inefficient, like… spending energy to live your life, actually improves your health, like walking, carrying some weight, cycling). The ones that allow for food to be consumed weeks, months or even years after it is produced, dramatically reducing it’s quality while actually raising the cost (storage facilities, freezers, transportations through various environments).

But still, most comments at the moment and upvotes are not about those things. Except one. Interesting…

Great topic! Looks like a very fun book to read too. So do the Sapiens books mentioned in the article. Nice.

In this scenario, “Bob” is a hypothetical guy who believes that a woman has cut in front of him in line at the supermarket checkout. He and the woman get into a brief shouting match before she informs Bob that she’d just ducked out of her spot in the line to replace a carton of eggs that turned out to be cracked. He apologizes, and that’s the end of it—except someone recorded the incident on their smartphone, then uploaded only the shouting match, reading all kinds of deplorable motives into it. “The video need only include a hint of cultural asymmetry,” Rose-Stockwell writes:

It may be seen as an angry outburst by a man (Bob) toward a woman (the other shopper). Or a Democrat (Bob) toward a Republican (the lady). Or any heightened reflection of their implied group identity. It can be repackaged as an example of a troubling trend in society. People who feel this way who see the clip now have an opportunity to explain exactly why it’s offensive. They can link it to a larger narrative that may have nothing to do with the actual event itself.

That outrage is often stoked by journalists, who, Rose-Stockwell notes, “are shockingly susceptible to reporting on this kind of thing,” furthering what he calls “trigger chains: cascades of outrage that are divorced from the original event.”

This is so common… And not only with incidents where a part of them can be taken out of context and used to evoke emotional response related to rage.

To clarify, I have no problems with people who eat meat in general, especially if it’s for survival. I just don’t get the people who also claim to actually like animals, claim to care about animal rights, claim to care about whether the chicken they’d eat were raised in cruelty-free free-range farms, but also don’t see an issue with killing them.

Two of my four grandparents were raised and lived most of their lives in a small village, that didn’t even have electricity until they had kids going to school. Extremely poor with almost nothing of most of what is now common in western societies. So, try to imagine living in a place where absolutely nothing is considered waste. Whatever little objects, their houses, everything they used was made by people who knew how to work with some crude material, whether it was wood or some kind of metal. They relied on animals and small pieces of land to get through each year. Literally zero waste. Composting was not a trend, but a necessity.

Now try to imagine a woman, who had little (no plants, chickens don’t lay eggs in the heavy winter, goats don’t have young ones to feed, so no milk either, no fridges, let alone freezers) food to go through the winter and would rather eat a little less and feed wild birds than watch them freezing to death (most living animals need food to regulate body temperature, among other things). Same thing I would watch her do during all seasons. She would always leave fruit on the trees during spring and summer just so that birds would have something to eat near her house. Fruit that was essential to her nutrition, because it was extremely limited, but she did it anyway.

Now try to imagine this woman, butchering a rabbit or a chicken or a goat. Because she did. Feeling no remorse or any negative emotion. And was pretty good at it. The same person who would get furious if someone mistreated a living animal in her presence.

There is some order in life, which is lost on people who never had a chance to see anything except an urban environment. If you were to meet a person like that, who pretty much embodies the supposed conflict you think exists in this behavior, and you talked in the manner you wrote this comment, you probably wouldn’t even get a response. Maybe a smile, maybe a shake of a head.

If you actually want to get how both those actions (butchering and eating a living animal, and caring for all living animals -even the ones you know you are going to kill and eat at some point in their life) can be done by people in peace with their actions, if you really want to do that, to understand, probably the best way is to find people living like this and spend a month near them. Live and observe.

This comment is not meant to justify all the wrongs of how livestock is treated on large scales in pursuit of profit. Neither people eating more meat in a week than their ancestors probably ate in many months. I am not interested in debating this either. Just pointing out that this was the way of life of most people in the past. How long ago, depends on where you were born on this planet.

Attack the position, not the person is what we used to say in a forum I frequented many years ago. While it sounds simple, it’s quite difficult to do in practice, whether you are the one attacking the position or the one receiving the attack on your positions. Still, there were really very few people who could do this correctly. You would notice new members of the forum, getting personally offended when a position they were expressing was attacked, without actually getting attacked as persons themselves. Very few faced such situations properly. Looks like (and it seems it’s only getting worse as web netizens increase, and commercial interests facilitate shallow exchanges) people have a really hard time separating respect for the position they hold and respect for them as persons. Also, it’s really impossible, there is practically no space for a disagreement to have a productive outcome (even if the difference in viewpoints remains) once personal attacks begin. For that reason I believe we can and we must always respect the person when in disagreement, regardless of how hard it might be.

In the thread @HumbleFlamingo@beehaw.org mentioned, its obvious, at least the way I see it, that it was not the position that was being attacked.

Low intake of saturated fat and high intakes of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, soy products, nuts, and seeds (all rich in fiber and phytochemicals) are characteristics of vegetarian and vegan diets that produce lower total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels and better serum glucose control.

Compared to what though? If you only eat properly selected (fat to protein ratio) meat products (fatty meat, eggs, hard naturally maturing cheese) with a proper selection of vegetables, so that they contain all the micronutrients you need in good quantities, fiber and are low on carbs, the amounts of carbohydrates you 'll be getting will definitely be low enough to have perfect serum glucose -most of your energy will be coming from ketone bodies. You can’t have elevated serum glucose if you don’t rely on carbs for energy. It’s pretty tough to mess up the metabolic pathways related to carbohydrates too with that approach. Which is pretty easy to do if your focus is to just eliminate animal products, since most plant foods are loaded with carbohydrates. When the objective is health, the focus should be proper selection of foods for the body first and then everything else.

Of course vegetables (fiber), fruits (water & fiber), whole grains (fiber), legumes (fiber), soy products (debatable, tofu, tofu skins, tempeh all have low to zero amount of carbs), nuts/seeds (fiber) are handled better as far as their carbohydrate content goes since they are metabolized at a slower pace than white rice or flour products. But it’s not the meat in the burger that messes up your glucose levels, its the potatoes and the bread. And if you don’t match your activity levels with the quantities of -easier-for-your-body- carbohydrate sources from plant foods, you will start having issues too, quantity matters as much as quality in this aspect of nutrition.

This is not a comment to support animal products, just to point out that what messes up serum glucose is improper selection of plant based foods, not saturated fat or meat products in general (probably with the exception of many dairy products).

You can also just as easily find widespread deficiencies in important things mainly or only found in plant-based foods like fiber

There are other deficiencies too if you don’t eat proper plant based foods (again like the ones mentioned in the first quote of my comment), which can be equally important. Easiest example is magnesium. All the greatest sources of it are plant based foods. This metal is also a good reason why legumes/beans are important (apart from the obvious abundance of potassium). Seeds and nuts are a great source too, but cost more (not just to buy them, they take up much more resources from the environment to produce them).

People who rely heavily on meat, thinking this is easy access to full of essential amino-acids protein (which it is, muscle tissue is something of a protein storage for most of animal bodies), won’t be getting magnesium in good quantities unless they start eating proper plants or buying supplements (created from plant matter), since most of magnesium (and many other micronutrients like it) is stored in the bones of the animals (which we don’t eat, and bone broths don’t do much either). It’s pretty funny that many people think they can’t get proper protein from plants, which is untrue, but in fact it’s the other way around, as far as deficiencies go, once you start looking at micronutrients.

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

Took me longer to read the article than it took me to learn how to ride one :P

Nice read though!

I don’t know what eating like a little piggy means in your situation, but in mine, that meant going upwards of 5000 kcal surplus than my normal intake. Still mostly from healthy food (like nuts, I am addicted to nuts XD). Which I never really obsessed about, since I tend to use great amounts of energy some days of the week (cycling alone can go upwards of 3000 kcal some days). I really don’t like diets either. All I 've ever done, and still do, is try to understand what is good for me, why and in which amounts. I find food (all aspects of it, even having pots with the herbs I use most often when cooking) one of the greatest joys of life, along with movement (simple stuff, walking, running, cycling, swimming). And while I find their relation fascinating and I experiment a lot (been on keto for a year or so), I prefer joy and understanding being the guiding forces, not simple discipline and blindly following rules I don’t completely understand towards goals I don’t really care about.

There are a few things I 've learnt over the years that are pretty easy for me to follow, especially since I 've seen how badly they affect my mood when I don’t.

• Super processed foods are not worth it (i.e. energy drinks).
• Processed foods cannot be a foundation for health, but won’t harm me once in a while (i.e. flour products).
• I don’t eat sugar. But I don’t obsess about it either. i.e. prefer water melon to ice cream, but I get the latter a few times in the summer.
• Some carb sources can be very dense in nutrients (i.e. oats & legumes), don’t mess my insulin levels, so they make a good foundation as a carb source. They are also cheap, easy to prepare, and there are so many of them.
• Super easy (takes less 1 minute to prepare), super dense in nutrients daily breakfast with oats, nuts, seeds, cocoa, cinnamon, raisins. It’s packed with things I won’t need to care about later in the day (i.e. magnesium).
• No supplements (part of the “eat real food” axiom).

Even though I can handle carbs well (mostly thanks to decades in different sports and a pretty active life), I like to think that respecting the metabolic pathway our body uses to metabolize them will allow me to keep using it without issues later in life. Besides just feeling better when I do (no cravings, no crashes, no insulin related side-effects).

Overall I have a pretty good sense of what each food I eat contains (in every sense you can think of, macros/micros/phytochemicals/lipid types/amino-acid profiles/energy/water/fiber -its been almost 2 decades I look up every food I introduce) and do 2 simple things. Reloading glycogen stores (slowly) between days of long rides on the bike is ok. No bike or very diminished activity after a few days? Turn to foods that mostly contain fats (which also allow me to skip meals way easier) with fresh vegetables (limited carbs). Which is what I tend to do in weekends.

I enjoy cooking, or even preparing the materials I will cook beforehand. Got my own tofu, which I tend to make close to 3kg (really hard pressed, the way I like it) each time and lasts for a few months divided in portions, in the freezer. My own tempeh and seitan. All low (close to zero) carb/ low energy protein sources. These and eggs, are really easy to prepare in stir fries and can be really delicious.

Btw, I went from 96kg to 84 in 5ish months following the stuff I just wrote. Flat stomach isn’t something you lose or get with one meal, it takes bad habits to lose, and good habits to maintain. And I am not mentioning flat stomach as something related to the image of the body. I am mentioning it as an indicator of health. Having your vital organs take up the space they need to perform optimally, especially during movement, feels great.

Finally, if you read this far, don’t beat yourself up! It’s a learning process and it looks like you are doing fine. Don’t rush it either, habits take time to form, but can last a lifetime. The more you develop one good habit, the less effort it requires, freeing your focus to form the next one. Don’t try to change everything at once. And it shouldn’t feel bad, or else it’s not sustainable. Takes time, but it’s totally worth it!

Well, I thought I should omit the first line of the introduction (which contains the number) for the same reason you pointed out in your initial comment. What kind of study has 5 person sample with pretty much no control? I debated myself (english is not my first language) whether I should use the word “study” in the title, or an another word, like observation or something. But they call this a study in their article. Besides, if taken at face value, it’s not prompting people to do something unhealthy (moving a little more than zero), doesn’t push some magic thinking towards a super processed food (or supplement, or drug), so …

Not the 3 am, or stoned or whatever. Most of us have been there :P It’s the “not going past the second sentence but posting a comment anyways” habit that feels bad to me.

what the comparison would be to people who did not go through bedrest and were constantly active through the decades

I am curious too, but the more I look for such studies the more it becomes apparent that I won’t find them. Looks like there is not much motive to study what prevents our health from deteriorating…

Well, at least people living away from urban environments, usually have a few examples of this. Active persons, refusing to remain idle for too long. You know… that person who was still standing, fully functioning (well, with some arthritis :P) and able to tend to a garden in his 90ies?

the potential impact office work will be on a portion of the population

If jobs were good for us, we wouldn’t get paid to do them.

You can work construction, be active all day, but end up with serious debilitating injuries of overuse. You can work in an office, and get all kinds of underuse issues.

As long as most of us have to work, we need to find ways to balance what our kinds of jobs do to our bodies. Long before we go to doctors for fixes, in systems that have already broken down. A very clear (and becoming more and more clear) example of this, is insulin resistance. The liver of an average person can hold something around 120g of glycogen, which is way more than most of sedentary people consume in carbohydrates daily. It doesn’t take much before the system starts saying “no more triglycerides, all vital organs are cramped in here!” and starts doing all kinds of less than good compensations for the extra energy coming in from this metabolic pathway. Our muscles that hold that absorb glucose and turn it into glycogen do not share it with other body cells (like the liver does, i.e. by feeding the brain and all other body cells that require glucose through blood). If you don’t move, they don’t break it down to glucose and use it. If they are full, they don’t absorb glucose from the bloodstream. So, even if they can hold like 500g of glycogen, how many meals of carbs before they are full? 2? 3? 4? Excess carbs from that point on become triglycerides (fat). It’s such a simple concept to grasp…

What is sad, is that while usually kids do not have to work many of them stay inactive anyways…

Tiny indeed, especially if it were to draw general conclusions. But it doesn’t.

I am glad that you wouldn’t get worked up about the fact that one of the most important markers of health of the human body quickly deteriorates when you don’t move at all. I wouldn’t either. The fact is so obvious that it should be common sense.

What is interesting in this study, is the follow-up, on those few people. Not just the very rapid decline of their cardiovascular systems shown initially, but the comparison of the decline shown 30 and 40 years later. Even if those 5 samples are outliers (maybe they are the worst cases, maybe they are the best cases, we can’t know, 5 is too few), the comparison remains impressive.

But maybe its just me.

As a cyclist I have to say, this is so bad and on so many levels that I couldn’t stop laughing. Many bike lanes are made poorly, but this is clearly one of the worst I 've seen.

Besides, if one does not see certain actions, those actions might as well not be happening at all. If only there was a way people who cause the greatest harm to control what gets reported in mainstream media, effectively shifting people’s attention away from the harmful practices of their businesses…

As a tall guy who wanted to read and write poetry and also enjoyed moving my body a lot, which included dancing while being quite shy, I 've been called “closeted straight” when I was young.

I agree with everything you wrote, especially with the books > videos. Beside the space a book provides for the author to express himself clearly, it is also a quite active mode of engagement with content, since in following the narrative, imagining and understanding it, who we are is actually quite important too.

Oh, and Fahrenheit 451… what a great book!

Elon Musk tweeted on his official account on Sunday that Twitter would be changing its logo to an “X”

Am I the only one that thought of house Bolton ?

Do you make yours? If so, what coagulation agent do you use?

@OP, looks great. I usually just pan fry mine with a little olive oil until it gets golden-golden/brown on the outside, which is when I drop the soy sauce. Veggies and spices I stir fry on their own.

Some don’t need the carbs though and that’s not as easy as getting the proper amount and kind of aminoacids when going completely plant based. If you have the time you might find this interesting.. The number of people that have a messed up body when it comes to carbs, is beyond impressive.

I am commenting on the “healthy” aspect. Healthy, sometimes is not just about adequate.