"But today, in a period when employment and earnings are vastly better than what they were in 2010, the delinquency rate for student loans is more than 11 percent..."
Scott has some really weird alt-right tendencies that make me pretty nervous.
Rationalizing xenophobia as doing what's best for America (with absolutely no evidence to back up his actions) isn't, 'wanting to be right'. I mean, you can demonstrably show that immigration to the US has done this country a lot of good.
Trump's entire platform is completely devoid of evidence-based decision making and is much closer to that of a temperamental child who wants to just go with his gut at every turn.
In the extremely unlikely event that CA actually attempts to secede from the States, I'd say there is a non-zero chance that WA and OR will probably come with.
That ends up being about $3,000B of GDP lost, and more importantly, it means that the US no longer has a west coast. The implications of all that go well beyond that as well. I think there is a very real chance that a second civil war would break out as a result. The States wouldn't want to lose the West Coast and it seems super unlikely that they'll just let it happen without some kind of intervention.
All this is contingent on CA actually making a move to leave the Union though, which by itself is very unlikely.
I guess we said that about Trump presidency a year ago as well, but here we are...
It's great that a wealthy family tries to instill good values into their kids, but the idea that this kind of model could translate to everyone is a prime example of socio-economic ignorance.
The thing that actually sets kids up to succeed are a stable home life and financial security as a family. 'Doing Chores' and focusing on education and extracurriculars is nice, but there are a couple really important things:
Being able to focus on education and being able to encourage your kids to do extracurriculars is a privilege that is borne from money in the first place. If you can't afford extracurriculars and the various expenses they incur, or you don't have time to monitor and enforce a 'no TV/Computer/Games' time because you have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, then I guess you make a sacrifice there. If you don't live in a neighborhood when your kids can safely go outside unsupervised, then that's a sacrifice there. In a lot of places, community support services don't exist.
This shit right here:
"When the kids turned 16, we bought each a car....Here are the repair manuals. Tools are in the garage. I will pay for every part, but will not pay for LABOR.”
A garage, a manual, tools, any kind of car, the parts. This is a ton of money for one kid, let alone several. To think that this somehow teaches anyone a lesson about the real world is the definition of socioeconomic privilege. That is an entirely insurmountable expense for most people.
This entire article is just that though: It's a wealthy baby-boomer piece written from the stance of someone who's never wanted or struggled for anything. Their idea that you can project their methods onto other kids is unbelievably ignorant of the economic climate of working class America and is so disconnected from the real world as to be painful to read.
You want to raise kids that can pay for college by themselves? Be wealthy in the first place and reap all the implicit rewards that come with it.
> the idea that this kind of model could translate to everyone is a prime example of socio-economic ignorance... It's a wealthy baby-boomer piece written from the stance of someone who's never wanted or struggled for anything.
Nowhere in the article does he claim any such thing. It's just a guy telling how he raised his kids up. What's bugging you?
actually, I think a lot of the points he makes about raising kids are applicable to less-fortunate families. Doing chores, their approach to schooling, food, family vacations, community service, backpacking and camping and in general self discipline do not require having lots of money. It just requires that parents be attentive.
> actually, I think a lot of the points he makes about raising kids are applicable to less-fortunate families. Doing chores, their approach to schooling, food, family vacations, community service, backpacking and camping and in general self discipline do not require having lots of money. It just requires that parents be attentive.
What?
In what world do Vacations and Backpacking and Camping require little to no money? Those are expensive activities in both time and raw cash. When you don't have a lot of money, food is also not something you get to be picky about because you don't have a choice -- You can eat what's on the table or you can literally starve. That is the real circumstance for people living below the poverty line in this country of which there are plenty (http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html).
What bugs me is there are a non trivial number of people, yourself included, who are entirely blind to the circumstances of the poor and struggling. These are the people who insist that if you 'just work hard' you can make it, or that education is some kind of great equalizer. These are the people who also generally have a lot of influence in politics, both locally and otherwise, and proceed to campaign against what little social safety net we have because they couldn't be bothered to give up a fraction of their disposable income so millions of people could have food to eat and running water.
I'm with you mkautzm. During my upbringing I went on holiday twice, we simply could not afford it. My Dad worked so many hours including weekends in a physical job, and was exhausted when he got home, being attentive was not really an option. I spend all the time I can talking to and playing with my kids, but it is at a real premium, so I don't waste it running a stupid rulebook.
Growing up we used to service cars ourselves but didn't have the kind of tools to do major jobs, as they cost money. Nobody bought be a car neither.
Personally I would never make 3 year old do cleaning jobs. I think the guy in the article is weird. I also didn't see where he actually paid for college.
Btw I don't have a weird feeding regimen for my kids and they eat just fine. In fact he youngest massively prefers fruit and veg. Perhaps I should force feed him meat because I have a puritanical rule book.
The implication is that this is the way to go as a parent. The underlying thesis is that if you don't do things like this as a parent then you cannot complain about how your kids turned out (exaggerated paraphrase)
It's like if I wrote a post saying "How I started a company, grew it to $10 million and sold it in 3 months" and it started with "I put in my $5 million trust fund as capital for this company". As a story it might be interesting. As an entry in the "advice post" genre (hinted at by the title), not so great
I knew the top rated comment would be something like this.
You completely skip past the family's achievements, ascribe some agenda that was not stated anywhere in the piece, and immediately start ragging on about privilege and focus on the most unfortunate people in society (cause they're the only ones that should be talked about, right?).
The family's achievements are 'having lots of generational wealth'.
If you are suggesting that having a lot of money growing up, whether or not you have direct access to it, isn't a Very Big Deal, then I will gladly present you an endless body of research that suggests otherwise.
Edit: Just to be totally clear, the biggest determinant in financial success for an individual is their parent's wealth. This isn't an opinion -- This is a well-studied fact. It is of critical importance to understand that the way my mind works is one that is based on evidence and study. I do not sacrifice my research rationale at the alter of bootstraps.
I think I understand now why this type of article hits such a nerve with people like you. The idea of personal responsibility and individual decisions leading to better outcomes is anathema to your politics. You dismiss the achievement of a 16 year old girl fixing up an old car from the scrap yard and put everything down to "generational wealth", apparently not drawing any connection between the family's ethos and parenting and said generational wealth. But you might want to ask yourself if you've gone too far when you attack an article like this which does nothing except offer some guidelines (backed by real experience) which at least millions of parents could consider.
If you think 'millions' of parents have that kind of wealth, you are sorely ill-informed of what the socio-economic state of the country is.
What irks me, like I said before, is that so much of this is attributed to 'individual decisions' and 'responsibility', and no doubt a non-zero amount of one's 'success' is determined by these things, but the political agenda I push is one of rationalism.
Consider this: Imagine a olympic athlete -- This person has been training since a very young age, has had private lessons and has competed all around the nation in top teams. Some would say this person is truly 1 in a million because of the talent they demonstrate, but I ask you, "how many people have the resources to even realize that kind of potential?"
The lessons, the travel, the time parents need to take to ship their kids to these things and competitions. The costs of coaching and training. These things are all very expensive in terms of raw money and time. To say that everyone has access to them, or even 'a lot' people have access to them is mistaken. The truth is, that only families with wealth have access to the kinds of resources that give a person the best chance at being a world class athlete.
This applies to nearly every aspect of life -- Whether it's a sport, or career, or an extracurricular in some other field, if your family has the resources to commit to your success (time, money, connections, 'i know a guy who...), then you are more likely to succeed there.
There is a comic here that explains the idea much better than I ever could:
The median household income for white families in the US is $60k. What parts of the article do you think describes activities not possible for the millions of families above that threshold?
The type of success that the author celebrated was things like raising healthy children, having them earn good degrees and start a good career, be financially independent, finding a spouse they deserve etc. Things which millions of parents surely feel is within reach, or even expected (but not guaranteed). It's not about raising an Olympic medalist. Trying to draw that equivalence is just an excuse to dismiss good advice/ideas.
I honestly don't understand where you get the idea from that Tychos post is suggesting anything like this. I don't think the article is all that useful either, but you seem to argue against things that aren't there, using facts nobody has disagreed with (but which aren't the only relevant thing about the story, and don't invalidate it as a discussion topic).
"A garage, a manual, tools, any kind of car, the parts. This is a ton of money for one kid, let alone several. To think that this somehow teaches anyone a lesson about the real world is the definition of socioeconomic privilege."
???
Buying tools for car repairs is a one time cost and these tools would be shared by the kids. Car parts are actually not that expensive (can even be almost free if getting a part from a junkyard), much of the cost is in the labour.
Teaching kids problem solving and how to fix things is a critical skill that is lacking badly in our society and applies regardless of the wealth of the family.
If your argument is that some families are not able to afford cars or garages period then they can teach some other skill to their kids...I really don't see how the author is being ignorant, he's just sharing his experience.
This is what the author wrote in the very beginning. "I have always had a very prosperous job and enough money to give my kids almost anything". Where do I missed the claim it translates to everyone?
The entire piece is structured as a piece to inform. It's not written as a piece to entertain -- That structure would include things like anecdotes, stories, little events that happened that reinforce or express a point, e.g. "This one time Sam really did a bad job fixing his car and...".
The piece is clearly a piece to inform. Yes, he acknowledges his affluence at the very beginning, but that doesn't mean he's aware of what a 'normal' income is and the problems and struggles that entails or his circumstance is wildly different than that of the average family.
Maybe they are writing it for other affluent families? Plenty of affluent families manage to mess up raising their kids, this one seemed to do something right.
> You want to raise kids that can pay for college by themselves? Be wealthy in the first place and reap all the implicit rewards that come with it.
Or be poor and reap all the implicit rewards that come with it. I came from a low-income, single parent household and was a first generation college student. Every single bit of that played in my favor when I applied to schools - from waived application fees to great fodder for compelling admissions essays. I actually had a higher acceptance rate at prestigious schools than state schools due to how under-represented my background is at that type of institution (since so few disadvantaged people apply there to begin with). The bar for being considered "above average" seems to be relative to your peer group, and luckily my socio-economic background played in my favor in that regard too. As a white male who had mediocre grades, decent-but-not-great test scores, no sports, no clubs, and no extracurriculars (except a job), I never would have gotten accepted at many of the places I was had I been from a wealthier family.
And those same prestigious schools all tend to have sliding scale tuitions, where an expected family contribution of $0 means a tuition bill of $0.
> This entire article is just that though: It's a wealthy baby-boomer piece written from the stance of someone who's never wanted or struggled for anything. Their idea that you can project their methods onto other kids is unbelievably ignorant of the economic climate of working class America and is so disconnected from the real world as to be painful to read.
I wouldn't go that far. Yes, a lot of the particular examples he gave came from a position of socio-economic advantage. But there are several that can be generalized and scaled to any socio-economic standard. Instead of getting a car at 16, I was given a junky bike at 10. I got it as cleaned up and working as I could, then made a list of everything that was still wrong with it. My mom took me to the store to pick out parts. She only had $20 we could spend on it, so I picked out innertubes, a chain, and replacement spokes (instead of new rims). It taught me to fix things rather than replace them, and properly prioritize nice to haves vs. must haves. Yes, it was done out of necessity rather than the privilege of artificial and arbitrary constraints (like giving someone a Mustang and unlimited raw materials, support, and tools to fix it). But in the end, it instilled similar habits of appreciation for my belongings, defaulting to fixing things myself instead of replacing them or outsourcing it, and to better evaluate the value in things that aren't readily apparent (i.e. see the bones instead of the veneer). By the time I was 23 I made more in three months than my mom ever made in a year (and raised three children on). And those habits are every bit as translatable to my life now as they were when I learned them before.
I guess I'm in the demographic the article was written for, although my kids and I are a good decade too young to be the parents while also too old to be the children. I read the whole thing and I didn't see where it specified it was advice for working class America. I specifically did a text search on some common words and phrases and still don't see where its being mistargeted. Have to take your word for it, I guess.
I didn't think it would be terribly difficult to switch gears, for example I'm so old we didn't have "Advanced Placement" classes we had an equally trendy older name for the same concept. Likewise as a kid I got worn out yard sale bicycles and an infinite supply of parts and toolbox access. Same general idea. Or both myself and my kids are expected to upgrade desktop computers not cars, although I have no driving age kids (barely, yet)
There are indications that the story is completely imaginary. I never had any trouble affording an old beater of a car as a teen, the absolutely killer expense is insurance, and now that most "teen kid jobs" have been taken over by illegal alien laborers I'm not sure how anyone, parent or teen, could handle the immense cost of automobile insurance for a teen boy.
Likewise you can harumpf and preach all you want about who should pay for what part of school, but financial aid forms used to assume a certain $$$ from the parents and if you didn't get that $$$ you simply didn't go to college, it really is that simple. I had Army GI Bill money, whatever, but most people don't have many options.
Another false aspect is the peculiar sleep schedule of 10-5, that just doesn't sound realistic. Maybe the author was thinking of older teens going on dates rather than little kids. Little kids sleep like 10 hours per day, and their pediatrician thinks nothing is wrong about that.
Paying for weddings also sounds weird, even assuming its a boomer. Everyone in my cohort got married well after leaving the nest and having whatever passes for a career started. It must be very awkward for a older singles to ask mom for money to get married. The days of everyone got married at 18 or 22 seem like WWII generation or even older. The $250K wedding seems very nouveau riche and not really culturally acceptable outside hollywood movie sitcoms, although I suppose it depends where (and when) you live. Generally if it costs more than the divorce will, you're probably living in a hollywood movie.
Yet there are indications the story was written by an actual parent. The old trick of providing the false choice is probably as old as parenting.
The science behind nutrition health is extremely complicated and expecting it to remain constant represent a total misunderstanding of how nutrition research is done and how results are determined.
> The history of medical reversals -- and in this case, nutrition reversal -- shows that the government isn't magic.
What it shows is that nutrition science is hardly 'solved' and you'd be hard pressed to find a researcher in the field suggest otherwise.
> A whole raft of restrictions could be converted to warnings and recommendations, freeing up industry to innovate and consumers to take a little more responsibility for themselves.
The problem with this is that the average consumer is both A) dumb, and B) doesn't know what they need. Alternative medicine skirts very cleanly around FDA regulation by not making any medical claims on it's product. They still market their product as a solution for various diseases and conditions, but they never make a formal claim. It's a $30,000,000,000 industry of people buying stuff that does nothing, or worse yet, can cause potential harm. To suggest their is no value in regulation of the drug markets is to suggest that people's health has no value. The defense of, 'well, people are responsible for their own decisions' doesn't hold any water when we know that the direct consequences of that mentality can be measured in literally tens of billions of dollars.
Federal regulators are not in any way the consumer in this line of discussion, so your comment is a non sequitur. Doctors are not expected to regulate the drug industry, federal regulators are. Please read the comment I was responding to.
Also note that the proposed (and current) alternative is for these consumers to vote for politicians who will make these scientific decisions for them.
The problem with this is that the average consumer is both A) dumb, and B) doesn't know what they need.
Unfortunately, a significant number of bureaucrats and statists would prefer consumers to be dumb (or at least say that they are) in order to maintain power.
Oh and let me guess, you're not one of the dumb ones....it's the other guys right? ;)
For nearly all the products I buy, I'm definitely 'dumb'. I have a narrow expertise that gives me insight into a narrow set of consumer products where I can effectively evaluate product quality and value. For nearly everything else, I'm 'dumb'.
If you show me a rack of food product, I probably can't identify which is the best for a particular person given a set of goals. I probably can't even tell you which ones are 'bad' or 'good', because I don't really know. While food is but one subject, this applies to nearly everything I purchase. Which plastics are the best for a given task? What ingredients in a shampoo would actually give me results I want? What kind of bed or bedding is the best for my comfort? To all these questions: I have no idea. I'm at the mercy of google or a salesman, the latter which has a different motive than me which immediately calls that in to suspicion.
I'd be a fool to say I'm an all-knowing consumer, but so would anyone. Most people don't know what the need. They know what problem they want to solve, but they have no idea what the best product or solution is to solve said problem. Acknowledging this, we can easily see why when it comes to our health, it's probably best to see some regulation lest people do what they do best: make really dumb choices.
Do you just blindly take whatever the doctor prescribes to you without doing your own research? How do you know your doctor is an expert? I'm pretty sure my doctor is not an expert in lots of things pertaining to medicine. He's not studying all the new research. That doesn't mean I can't have a conversation with him, but it's healthy to be skeptical of doctors too...that's why we get second opinions.
I don't have a huge problem with the FDA, but I'd rather have a number of choices of where to get information, and at the end of the day make my own choice on what to consume.
Also if people are so stupid like the OP suggested why not ban a whole plethora of foods like Twinkies, potato chips, soda, etc..?
"Do you blindly take whatever the doctor prescribes to you without doing your own research?"
Yes, and the more serious or painful the issue is, the more likely I am to blindly take the stuff. I'm simply not rational: I know this happens to a few other people as well, who all have migraines. Some folks willingly admit that when the migraine gets bad enough, it really doesn't matter if they overdose on pain medication because that would make the pain stop: I was similar with my gall bladder pain. Didn't care what they shot into my veins, so long as I stopped dropping to the floor in pain.
"if people are so stupid like the OP suggested, why not ban a while plethora of foods like twinkies, potato chips, soda, etc?"
We have to an extent: A lot of schools have taken such snacks out, for example, and some have tried to stop folks on welfare from buying any of it. And we tax it. But the real reason we don't do that is because food carries its own risks that aren't nearly as instantly deadly as drugs.
The main exception is new food products, colorants, and flavors. Now, I'm a little fuzzy on the actual regulation, but there are approved and non-approved things to use for food, and I was thinking you had to prove it generally safe for humans. I could be wrong on this bit, however.
> Do you just blindly take whatever the doctor prescribes to you without doing your own research?
Yes. I'm do not have a medical background and at best, I could gain a surface-level understanding of the drug, which is not useful to determine which drug(s) are best for me.
> How do you know your doctor is an expert?
They went to 10 years of school and several years of residency to do doctor things. These things are also regulated by several boards which have the power to revoke medical licenses if doctors suck.
Basically, yeah. As a general rule, the bigger the change you want to make to existing practice, the better your model for that domain needs to be. (I call that the "if it ain't broke" heuristic.)
Changing the composition of an entire nation's schoolchildren's food supply ... should require something like skyscraper-failure-prediction accuracy.
It's no defense that "science learns and revises". If the learning and revising is still that big, you don't have a basis for telling others to do it your way.
(IMHO, this is, at root, the same mentality as "fake it till you make it" / "all self doubt must be Impostor Syndrome and never an accurate assessment".)
Only through people's incorrect interpretation of reality.
>nutrition science is hardly 'solved' and you'd be hard pressed to find a researcher in the field suggest otherwise.
You'd be hard pressed to find a climate scientist not in agreement with the consensus on climate change, at least one that isn't already promoting book deals on Fox.
That's not at all true, and that level of ignorance is actually quite dangerous.
Scientists in no field are punished for disagreement. Even in really fringe science, disagreement is not only well-funded, but encouraged. A great example is String Theory: It has a lot of supporters and a lot of people saying it's untestable bunk, but research for both sides continues.. Consensuses happen when there is sufficient data to collapse to a consensus, not because 'funding'. Disagreements are extremely common in research and suggesting that the overwhelming consensus on the state of climate change is somehow a conspiracy or due to research pressures (that don't seem to exist anywhere else...) is complete garbage.
Are your a scientist? You seem very naive about the scientific world.
If you haven't experienced the cut throat nature of science or the immensely aggressive politics you may need to reassess your rose colored view.
The mantra, is your haven't heard it, is publish or perish.
Disagreement is well funded? What are your talking about? Good data is well funded. Doesn't matter how much you disagree, if the data is missing or bad you get no money.
Nope, that's not how it works. Do you work in the science community? Many fields of science and engineering are gradually being eaten by politics. Going against progressive politics is dangerous for the career of any academic scientist in the US. This isn't a huge issue (yet) for math or hard physics. It's hard to politicize those fields (not for lack of trying; I could go on a very long rant about how non-scientists are trying to make scientific fields conform to their political expectations), but for other fields like environmental science (which, by the way, is only weakly scientific in the sense that it does not follow good practices for having high predictive power, so it's relatively easy to manipulate) political concerns are very powerful.
This is a bit rambly, but the gist of it is that it's naive to pretend that many nominally scientific fields are actually entirely objective and free from politics.
String theory doesn't, as far as I know, have significant government policy implications, so I wouldn't expect heterodoxy to be stigmatized as much as in climate science.
Carbohydrates are not a bad thing and are indeed an important part of health. The current suggested diet doesn't say, 'bread'. It specifically calls out Whole Grains, which a great deal of evidence suggests are a Good Thing. Suggesting that grains, or even carbs, are somehow worse than literal fat is misleading at best, and delusional at it's worst.
The phrase "literal fat" shows just how successful the misguided low-fat crusade was: they don't even need any modifiers to show that they're "bad."
At any rate, it's very easy to design a diet for humans without grains in it that's healthy and that you can thrive on, but impossible to design one without fat. So in that respect at least, literal fat is better than grains.
It is however hardly possible to design a human diet without carbs where the planet doesn't suffer from a large scale ecological disaster[1] (assuming most of the world's population would adopt that diet), unless unconventional animal food sources, such as insects or krill, become mainstream. I don't see that happening any time soon.
Yes I am in the camp that believe fats and proteins are both much healthier than carbs, and especially refined sugars. The latest nutrition supports low carb diets, as can be seen with Atkins and Keto diets.
Not wanting to blast an entire profession, and I am not even the guy you are talking with...
But to me, PhD in nutrition doesn't mean much, it is like PhD in underwater basket weaving, I am yet to met a single nutrition professional that could help me, and believe me, I looked really, really hard.
In the end the only people that could help me, were endocrionologists, biologists, and other scientists in fields that are not directly relation to nutrition.
And the reason for that, is precisely because of that high-carb recommendation, that is just insane, many cultures on earth lived just fine with low, or even zero carbs (extreme example: north-pole inhabitants, that in some places have diets that are 100% meat, organs included, since "regular" meat lacks some nutrients, like Vitamin C).
In more tribal places (all over the world too, Africa, Asia, Americas...) hunter tribes also tend to be healthier than farmer tribes (but also tend to have much lower population numbers).
And in many places, before FDA push for the vegetable agenda (I am not talking about veganism or vegatarianism, but about FDA constantly defending vegetable based food, including by accepting research that was fraudulent), people would happily eat lots of animal fats and meat, and live just fine. (example: in my country before the 60s, everyone used pork fat to fry stuff, and even make soap, but after vegetable oils became popular, and the government started to give strong subsidies to wheat, obesity, diabetes, etc... exploded, many common people still believe egg and cheese is absolutely evil, and prefer to stuff their faces with artificial sweeteners, soy milk, and salad with enough oily dressing to lubricate a car, than eat some eggs).
> The latest nutrition supports low carb diets, as can be seen with Atkins and Keto diets.
That statement is not supported by any reliable studies.
The latest nutrition supports a healthy mix of carbs and fats, specifically whole grain and unsaturated fats. Not a monodiet of fat, nor a monodiet of carbs, nor processed carbs, nor saturated fats.
Focusing too much on a fat-based diet causes massive kidney issues, just as a too much carb-based diet causes circulatory issues.
Could you point to the studies that lead you to that conclusion? Meta-studies or similar ideally.
(Not getting at you for your viewpoint - I'm making this comment to a few people in this thread who say that the latest research supports their argument. You may well be right, but I don't know enough about your background to take your word for it, so I'd be interested to see your sources. )
I recently have had to conclude that HN is not the right audience to express this kind of ideas and not be downvoted.
I am fine with people taking "religious" positions when it comes to a text editor or the latest web framework, the problem is that nutritional choices have environmental and health-related consequences, so I would rather them be fact-based.
Also, I wonder what we're going to see next on HN, flat earth? Chemtrails? After a recent submission which was also related to nutritional topics, I have been considering leaving HN altogether.
>Suggesting that grains, or even carbs, are somehow worse than literal fat is misleading at best, and delusional at it's worst.
Carbs/sugars trigger insulin production...fats don't do that. Just look at the Western diet and the substitution of fats with sugars in the food industry in the 70's and you will trace origins of type 2 diabetes that would begin appearing in children - yes, it used to be called adult onset diabetes - now over a million cases.
Carbs are not inherently bad, but there is no doubt way to much in the Western diet and from poor sources.
I think their understanding of nutrition is up-to-date, but focuses on kidney health, not just weight, or the realities of the current American diet.
Whole grains are great and very healthy, and a high-carb diet rich in whole grains and with an appropriate level of calories will be great.
On the other hand, while a ketogenic diet is great for weight control and cardiovascular health, they're probably much worse for your kidneys.
In the US, kidney issues are a problem, but cardiovascular health are a much bigger problem. Perhaps more importantly, people who don't do keto/high-protein usually aren't on a perfect veggie-rich, whole grain diet instead. They're on a diet of refined carbs and excessive calories.
If you're really committed to a super-healthy diet, you should probably eat lots of carbs, but the right carbs--complex and mixed with fiber. If you're an average American who doesn't feel like a diet of veggies and whole grains, high-protein is probably a good route to take. I tend to go high protein (even as a vegetarian) because I enjoy the taste and it fills me up better than many others things I like. It fits my health vs. food enjoyment balance in a way I have the will-power to maintain.
In short, complex carbs are great, but don't make perfect the enemy of the good, and don't set yourself up for failure.
If you're looking to avoid confusion you should refer to them as starches, they are the complex carbs (such as rice, beans, potatoes etc.) that give us energy and should form the largest proportion of any healthy diet.
- These starches should preferably be unrefined (yes, quit that white bread, discover the great taste of brown rice) and eaten alongside some green and yellow vegetables to get extra vitamins, minerals and fibre.
- If you're trying to lose weight faster, avoid consuming oil and fatty foods (e.g. nuts, avocado), use sparingly otherwise.
- Avoid dairy products at all costs.
- Add meat in small amounts if you really can't live without it.
You'll be getting more than your daily calorie/vitamin/mineral/fibre needs, and by not eating a tonne of refined carbs, fats, dairy, and meat you'll be less of a burden on the planet/country/healthcare systems too!
I mostly follow the above advice, but I'm pragmatic when eating out, not everywhere caters to a vegan/plant based diet, or even vegetarian. So while you'll occasionally catch me eating a delicious chicken burger or even possibly a steak, 99%* of the time I eat a plant based diet with zero added oil.
As for the myth of sugar turning to fat: it's a process known as de novo lipogenesis, and yes it happens efficiently in cows, but in humans not so much unless you're eating carbs in greatly excess of your body's energy needs[0]. In 99%* of normal circumstances, the human body will increase its metabolism to cope with the extra calories from carbs. The problem really _is_ consuming too much fat.
* estimated ;)
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10365981 "Only when CHO energy intake exceeds TEE [total energy expenditure] does DNL [de novo lipogenesis] in liver or adipose tissue contribute significantly to the whole-body energy economy. It is concluded that DNL is not the pathway of first resort for added dietary CHO, in humans."
I won't resort to personal attacks, but I consider this absolutely terrible nutritional advice.
The issue here is "excess carbs" are very easy to exceed consuming grains and sugar.
Carbs (especially sugar) are what most easily gets converted to adipose fat tissue on the body... unintuitively consuming dietary fat is NOT conducive to increasing body fat. Counter intuitive but true.
Consuming a high carb diet, especially if a significant portion comes from high glycemic index sources, will guarantee body fat increase.
Oils, fats, nuts should be primary components of ones diet.
Excess body fat and high carb diet eventually leads to diabetes and metabolic-syndrome, the overall systemic decrease in health and increase in risk factors for other diseases because of being overweight (specifically, over fat).
I could post study after study but for anyone else reading this, you'll have to do your own research and learn from your own experience. Try both diets.
If you've never tried low carb (and high fat.. it's important to replace carbs with fat) then you should do so and observe your energy changes and decrease in body fat. It will happen.
Look at the before and afters, read the experiences.
My nutritional and fitness experience? 5 years Army Special Operations, where diet and nutrition were studied and an important component to unit readiness....and a lifetime of sports and athletics including college football. And then studying the issue quite a lot.
Read the science behind the Atkins / Keto diet. It's not complicated how our bodies store fat.
> Oils, fats, nuts should be primary components of ones diet.
One is not like the others.
Refined vegetable oil is not appropriate for human consumption. Butter and coconut oil are not refined with hexane, or steam deodorized, and are stable at room temperature (and human temperature). Refined vegetable oil can still be used as biodiesel, though.
Small amounts of nuts are okay, but their oils are not exactly stable either.
I'm trying to convince my keto-devoted friend to eat more fruits, to get her metabolism up. She has lost a lot of weight by watching her carb intake. But she's not "well".
I think your advice about oil and fat works well mainly because fat is very calorically dense, and not because there is something inherently wrong with fat. Otherwise fat, fiber, and protein form the backbone of the only meals that I'm sated by, and I get hungry much faster after a meal consisting only of starches and vegetables, which makes dieting by your guidelines very unpleasant.
The results are inaccessible from that link. So I can't tell how hard it is to compensate by reducing greenhouse emissions elsewhere. Also, it's a study about plants vs. animals, mostly focusing on protein. That's not the same thing as an analysis of the cost of a mixed protein/fat diet, sourced from either plant or animal.
The problem I foresee with Thunderbolt 3 is that it's serving a use that few people need at a price that no one wants to pay. The price-point issues might disappear with the USB-C compatibility, but even then, the only time I can ever foresee me actually reaching for Thunderbolt is for a display when DP 1.3 isn't an option or when huge data xfers were commonplace.
Unless it competes on price point with USB, I can't see this being any more popular than previous iterations of the protocol.
Maybe that'd change some if Intel actually put it on the enthusiast chipsets, but even then, I think the price point is a pretty big turnoff.
I don't think it will ever be as ubiquitous as USB, but it doesn't have to be useful. I'm a video editor and thunderbolt has saved me enough time copying files that i'll gladly pay the price. The cost typically gets passed along to clients and at rates of $100/hr or more for a single editor they'll happily pay the extra cost of the drives if it saves a few hours over the life of a project.
4K displays are going to become the new norm over the coming years. In which case those that use dual monitors (many of us) are going to want Thunderbolt 3 to drive them.
Also having multiple ports of the same type on laptops is going to be far better than the current status quo which is a nightmare for many on a day to day basis (you need which adapter for the work projector again ?).
Thinner, easier to use, more flexible laptops that can support multiple Retina displays seems pretty compelling to me. And you can sure as hell bet Apple will be all over this.
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Might wanna check your crystal ball on that one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...