"any level of any of those substances is toxic imo."
Your opinion is wrong. The dose makes the poison.
so you would have no problem if i put anti freeze in your drink even if it was only a little bit?
for every study that says aspartame is safe there is another one that says it isn't. like i would even trust anything that came from a Massachusetts college anyway. and again what is so horrible about sugar?
"for every study that says aspartame is safe there is another one that says it isn't."
Except that there isn't. The aspartame naysayers have trouble pointing to actual research to back their claims. At best, aspartame may cause headaches in a sub-population. If that's you, then I guess avoid it.
"like i would even trust anything that came from a Massachusetts college anyway."
I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually debating someone or feeding a troll.
"and again what is so horrible about sugar?"
- High-GI
- empty, non-nutritive, non-satiating calories
- Quickly stored as fat if you don't burn it off almost immediately
"and again what is so horrible about sugar?"
- High-GI - so what?
- empty, non-nutritive, non-satiating calories - and aspartame is an emtpy non nutritive non-satiating chemical
- Quickly stored as fat if you don't burn it off almost immediately - define quickly. i doubt there is any evidence or even explanation that if you put a tsp of sugar in your coffee or have a regular mt dew instead of a diet that 30min after drinking it that youll have an extra 100g or so of floating around
"like i would even trust anything that came from a Massachusetts college anyway."
I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually debating someone or feeding a troll.
lol yeah it sure does sound like trolling but i assure you it isnt. studies can always be biased to show favorability towards some agenda. id rather see the results of something that someone has personally done rather than what someone tried to simulate in a lab
Taken from pfsjkd
Is putting your muscles in a catabolic state worth the "cleaing out your system"? Do your body even goes in a catabolic state if you fast for 1 day? Do you actually clean out toxins or just the poop that's been laying in your stomache?
1)There is no way a 24hr fast will put your muscles in a catabolic state. read what I wrote earlier, but i guess since im not a doctor conducting an official medical study that me eating nothing for 30hours and still being able to lift what i am always able to lift doesnt mean anything
2)Very unlikely. Although I have no medical fact to back this up and just my own personal experience
3)Whether you clean "toxins" out or just the old shit (literally) in your stomach and intestines i dont know. Wouldnt getting rid of old shit be good too?
"I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually debating someone or feeding a troll."
This was the expert in nutrition who tried to argue that carbs and protein couldn't be turned into fat, because as "common sense" would say one substance couldn't be turned into another. I wouldn't waste huge amounts of energy.
the "safeness" of something like aspartame, artificial coloring and flavoring is very debatable. it may not kill you the first time you try it like cyanide or arsenic but just because it doesnt kill you or lead to your death doesnt make it safe. according to the FDA, propylene glycol which is what the safe for animals and the environment anti freeze is made out of is safe for human consumption since it is used to make artificial coloring and flavoring. would you drink something if you saw me pour a swig of prestone low tox into it?
But when there are millions of people drinking diet sodas without a single one becoming ill because of it that isn't enough to convince you that diet soda is safe.
There are millions of people who eat mc'd's every day and smoke and drink excessively and never exercise and live to be 65+ before showing any health effects...does that make that stuff safe?
ME: "what about this: apart from the last few thousand years of agriculture, humans have been hunter-gatherers without a guarenteed daily food-source. Therefore we have evolved with periodic fasting episodes, eg. when couldn't find berries, or failed to kill a rabbit one day, etc. So our bodies are designed to function with fasting. By constantly keeping our digestive system working on food, we are operating our system out of design parameters, which is a recipe for trouble"
DOGMEAT: "our bodies were not designed, they evolved via what allowed us to survive. Just because we have evolved mechanisms to allow us to survive extended periods without food does not make it healthy to do so voluntarily. That would be highly flawed logic to assume so without any real evidence to back up such an assumption."
I'm not saying they were 'designed' in the creationist sense. But from the perspective of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, it lands us here with a body that expects periodic events of no-food. Now, I don't know specifically what mechanisms come into play when you get no-food, but it seems reasonable that when something is 'normal' for a body over that time-range, then it is 'good' for a body, and converse is true.
eg. extended close-focusing as children contributes to myopia, over-processed food/flour/sugar contributing to numerous health problems, smoking leading to cancer, et cetera.
Now, I would be perfectly happy to see various studies disproving this periodic short-fasting hypothesis, Can you point me to any? If not, then I assume it flies under the radar or modern medical investigation, but it still seems a reasonable hypothesis. From reading this thread, I've seen mention of 'evolutionary fitness' and 'paleo diet', which I'd guess argue along similar lines as me. Perhaps there are skeptic debunking of these ideas somewhere you can point me to?
Last time i visited pharmacy or health store there were lot of different fasting products. There is lot of money in fasting business.
FRAT
"so you would have no problem if i put anti freeze in your drink even if it was only a little bit?"
I'd drink cyanide if it were a small enough amount. It's all part of the fun of being a mad scientist :) Great party tricks too, like dumping a cup of liquid nitrogen on your hand and screaming. Freaks people out.
I saw an interview with Jack Lalane years ago, in which he was talking about his normal daily training and diet etc. He mentioned he only ate organic foods his words exactly were "if man made I don't eat it", never mentioned anything about fasting. Not saying he doesn't, didn't, just saying he never mentioned it.
So, no one has a refutation for the 'evolutionary design parameters' argument? Ie. if I were an Grey Alien designing my pod-people in the workshop, taking 'the intestinal digestion-excretion unit' off the shelf I'd read the instructions and see that it has always been used under conditions of intermittant food input. It seems reasonable to me that if operating the unit outside of normal operation boundaries (ie. frequent constant eating) problems will be more likely to develop.
How fast does the body to evolve to thrive in new conditions? I thought it was something like 10's or 100's of thousands of years. On that scale, we've only been dealing with constant food supply for a very short time, not really enough for our organs to adapt.
The problem there is assuming that intermittent food input is the norm rather than the exception. I don't think this is the case, especially in recent human history.
Regardless, saying we should fast simply because we inadvertently fasted for a long time is a good example of a naturalistic fallacy- turning an 'is' of nature into an 'ought' of behavior.
A better way to look at it would be to simple ask- assuming no exigent circumstances, does the body have any problem with regular and uninterrupted (on the timeline of, say, a day) food intake?
ta for the response Jonwell! However, I'll still contend your points:
the recent human history of regular food supply is not relevant as our bodies haven't (?) had time to adapt to that -- what matters is the norm during the main periods of evolutionary development. I think that anthropologists agree that widespread agriculture is very recent, and so intermittent food input is a good assumption.
your 'naturalistic fallacy' point is interesting. But I'm not sure its relevant. Consider a car -- you can bolt on an NOS system, which will mak the car perform much faster than it normally does. But the engine will also burn hot and rev fast, and so have a much shorter lifespan. So 'on the timeline of a day', yes the car performs great. However, over a longer perspective it is operating outside of design parameters, and there is a price to pay for that.
come to think of it, that reminds me of the well established research that restricting calories great extends lifespan & reduces illness -- they've shown that in loads of higher animals now, i'm sure you've heard of the research. seems relevant eh? ah gotta get to bed, goodnight
I have actually, but the best guess (and it is only at the hypothesis level at this point) is that reduced food intake=reduced free radical damage, which increases lifespan. I don't see this having anytihng to do with fasting, if it's even applicable to humans and not just mice.
Cars are cars, people are people. Bad analogy anyway you look at it. Besides, with a properly built engine and a properly tuned NO system, it will run for a long time with no problems (I used to be a gearhead :P).
Re: recent human history. Take the domestication of cattle, for instance. Our best guess is that the earliest dates for cattle herding are about 10k years ago, which is at or maybe a little after the time some societies developed agriculture. In those populations where cattle were domesticated and remained a source of nutrition for a long period of time, lactose tolerance is nearly ubiquitous (>99% in some northern european populations). In societies that did not domesticate cattle, lactose tolerance is nearly non-existent (<1%).
An adaptation can be a very simple thing or a very difficult thing, depending on the gene interaction that would allow you to cope with whatever is in question. Not sure exactly what we'd gain or lose to help us cope with daily food intake, but with lactose tolerance basically the only change that has to happen is for the gene or group of genes that express lactase to continue doing so into adulthood, which is obviously something that can happen on timescales of very near history.
Also, we can examine the question with living populations- there are active hunter/gatherer societies in the world today. Do they fast on purpose? Are they generally healthier than us? I don't know. It'd be something to look in to.
But, still I think the important point remains that there appears to be no good reason to fast (health-wise), unless you're having bloodwork or a colonoscopy. And I can tell you from personal experience that people who fast because they have to, not because they want to, do not enjoy it :P
i dont remember ever saying "everyone should fast one consecutive 24hr period per week or you will die tomorrow" If you don;t want to do it then don't do it. Noone has really brought up the idea that it is probably a good thing to give your body a rest once in awhile. Acid production in your stomach takes a break, digestion takes abreak so your body can now get out all the old shit that has been sitting around. And I believe the FDA has officially stated that the avg adult does have between 5-22lbs of impacted fecal matter in their digestive system. get rid of some of that and im sure it would have to be beneficial
i know that the analogy between an engine and the body is not always apples to apples but there are many ways that our bodies are just like an engine. think about it, every so often you have to shut the engine off and flush the coolant...why? change the oil and oil filter...why? change the air filter...why? change the fuel filter...why? some people periodically run an engine flush...why? every so often clean out the fuel system and fuel filter...why?
wouldnt the same reasons why you have to do all this stuff to an engine be the same beneficial reasons to do it for our own bodies?
and no matter how well you build an engine it will always last longer N/A than induced or juiced, when driven under the same circumstances
"And I believe the FDA has officially stated that the avg adult does have between 5-22lbs of impacted fecal matter in their digestive system."
If you have a source for that I'd like to see it. I don't even think that's possible. People go to the hospital in intense pain for intestinal blockages a fraction of that size.
"i know that the analogy between an engine and the body is not always apples to apples but there are many ways that our bodies are just like an engine. think about it, every so often you have to shut the engine off and flush the coolant...why? change the oil and oil filter...why? change the air filter...why? change the fuel filter...why? some people periodically run an engine flush...why? every so often clean out the fuel system and fuel filter...why?"
BECAUSE IT'S A FUCKING CAR, NOT A LIVING THING!!!! Your coolant system doesn't line itself with mucous to clean itself, your liver doesn't filter carbon deposits and sludge, your air filter doesn't have cilii to move dirt and bee wings out of itself. No more car analogies, they all suck!
good posts; your lactose tolerance short-term adaptation seems like a great example. I'll accept that by now we could well be happily evolved to cope with frequent feeding. However, I won't be completely satisfied on the issue until I see a study done to examine effect of 1 day fasting per week or fortnight. It'd be interesting to see what turned up, if anything. Cheers
Hm, good luck.. do a search for fasting and every study involving blood tests pops up :P
Did see this though, going back to something mentioned earlier- click