Fantastic Voyage Food Pyramind

[Zukin]

What do all of you think of the Fantastic Voyage food pyramid?



It's from the book Fantastic Voyage by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman.

[Uplift]

I mightn't be the one to ask, as I have strong personal views on the general subject, but, as you did, heres my bit. It looks good I guess, I like the no sugar bit. It always makes me laugh though, the whole food pyramid thing. Our ancestors never had anything remotely like it for millions of years, and survived heaps tougher times than us. Imagine the average westerner dealing with something chasing them trying to eat them..."Wheres my mobile, somebody call someone!"

Foods were seasonal for starters, and local. So people had minimal variety compared to us, the most unfit, obese culture ever to walk the planet, and our food pyramids. I know we always quote the lifespan thing, but I have worked in nursing homes and cared for the elderly. More often than not the quality gets pretty dismal. "Would you wheel Mr and Mrs Blogs to the dining room, their wholemeal, fat free scones, with fat free all natural jam, are ready. ####! Whats that screaming! Its okay, Mrs blogs is passing her first stool in 3 days." After that, could you wheel them to the bus, they are going for a drive." I've seen 60 - 70 year old Indonesian men and women walk for days with huge loads on their heads. Or dragging rickshaws full of chubby, sweating, exhausted westerners up hills.

The irony is when their kids adopt our diet, their dads are carrying everything for them, and dragging them around too. I've seen it happen in 12 months. An awesomely fit Indonesian teenager from a remote untouched village, in his prime, lured to work in the tourist zone in Bali. After 12 months of eating like westerners he was built like a flour bag, and incapable of anything remotely like he was previously. And it depressed him greatly, reducing him and his mother and father to tears upon reuniting. Our culture would have viewed him as an average, balanced youth, well prepared for life in chairs, staring at life in screens, chowing down the 'pyramid'.

But we are westerners, the supreme one's, and nature and those other backward cultures didn't have a clue, and don't know whats good for them. Wait till we save them and teach them about our food pyramids.

But if its what you like, my advice would be ignore everything I say.

[Sam988]

It depends, Zukin, on what you want.

If you want to build a lot of muscles and "be fit" then the best diet is the low-carb and high-protein Dr. Atkins diet.

If you want to increase your lifespan, then the best is to go to a diet much like Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman's one that you just displayed in your post. After all, the book Fantastic Voyage is all about how we can increase our lifespan as much as possible with our current technologies. They also advocate on the Calorie restriction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia diet (the best current way to increase our lifespans), right? It's been a long time since i read the book, i don't remember very well.

[bdp]

It's got problems.

Fruit should be much lower on the pyramid.
Olive oil is not a healthy fat.
Animal products promote cancer, heart disease and stroke.
You don't need a "protein" section: everything has protein in it.
The Glycemic Index is largely irrelevant to health.
Supplements do not implicitly promote health or longevity.

A better resource for longevity would be "Eat To Live" by Joel Fuhrman MD. John Robbins also has a fascinating book about the longest living people in the world called "Healthy at 100."

[Sam988]

Originally Posted by bdp

It's got problems.

Fruit should be much lower on the pyramid.

Fruits contain lots of sugar.

Originally Posted by bdp

Olive oil is not a healthy fat.

Where did you get that from?

Originally Posted by bdp

Animal products promote cancer, heart disease and stroke.

The ones that are most prejudicial are animal foods like red meat. That's why it's the one that Ray and Terry recommend the least.
White meat doesn't promote what you just said. Far from it.

Originally Posted by bdp

You don't need a "protein" section: everything has protein in it.

Yes but some things have more and some have less protein. They recommend us to take foods that have protein yet are very healthy also, like fish.

Originally Posted by bdp

The Glycemic Index is largely irrelevant to health.

Again, where did you get that from? Of course the glycemic index is relevant. Why do you think that people who have diabetes have to eat low glycemic index food? Obese people eat mostly low glycemic index foods to lose weight, and so on.

Originally Posted by bdp

Supplements do not implicitly promote health or longevity.

No they don't, no one could prove or disprove their effectiveness. So in the state of doubt, some people prefer to take supplements still. If they end up being proved to promote health/longevity, great; if they don't, then at least they tried

Originally Posted by bdp

A better resource for longevity would be "Eat To Live" by Joel Fuhrman MD. John Robbins also has a fascinating book about the longest living people in the world called "Healthy at 100."

"Eat to Live"? Is this one of those books "you can get a lot of stuff, as long as these things are healthy and are one of X categories"?




The best and only way to increase lifespan is to take a calorie restriction diet, where you cut 30% of what you eat daily. For more info :Research that will change your life! | CRS

Other diets, although they make us healthier, they don't increase our lifespan, they just increase the quaility of our current lifespans.

[cdn2wheeler]

I prefer the Canadian Healthy Food Guide. There are 4 groups: hamburgers, fries, coffee & donut. Entire police forces follow this regime closely.

[Rose of Cairo]

I agree with uplift

There are plenty of theories about what is healthy/unhealthy, about what we need and where to get it. There is the calory approach, the carbohydrates/protein/fat approach, the traditional chinese medicine approach, and many others. To every opinion you will find the opposite somewhere, and all of them based on "science". With science you can prove anything and everything. There's always an experiment showing exactly what you want to prove.

Uplift is right, despite of all our brain masturbation about health and food pyramides, we're the unhealthiest civilization ever

Might sound radical, but I say: forget about all theory and listen to your body. But first go back to natural, unprocessed foods, so that your body is able to react naturally without being confused by tastes it wasn't designed for. And then listen to your instinct. What's good for you might not be good for your neighbour. People are so different. You know what and how much of it is good for you when you listen very carefully to the reactions of your body. It will give you plenty of feedback. Just make sure you're not being biased by some theory.

[Jennihul]

It's way better than the old food pyramid.

Especially if you do the Blood Type Diet, like me, and are type O.

Jennifer