>(you can only get so big eating potatoes, broccoli and meat, it's the heavily processed stuff that is dangerous).
That's about as handwavingly ignorant as the government nutritional guidelines. You can get as big as you want eating potatoes, broccoli, and meat if you eat enough of it. Likewise you can remain perfectly thin eating only processed food. Portion control and learning how well your body reacts and processes different foods is the best we can tell so far.
Foods high in protein and fat cause you to self-regulate due to feeling more satiated than consuming foods high in sugars and starches. You will never get fat on broccoli.
This is how a ketogenic diet works (high fat, moderate protein, low/no carbs). It is ridiculously effective.
Yes, I'm aware of what a keto diet is. OP never said anything about keto, and you happily skipped over the first item in his list (potatoes) just so you could cram in a spiel about keto.
Edit: Just as a follow-up I seriously doubt we could feed the entire world if we all adopted a keto diet. Carbs are cheap.
Read up on Resistant Starch; nutritionally potatoes can behave more like soluble fiber (eg: indigestible) than they do with wheat and sugar based carbs. Besides not getting digested and turned into glucose, they're also very satiating. That makes it difficult to consume enough of them to exceed your caloric needs.
> Edit: Just as a follow-up I seriously doubt we could feed the entire world if we all adopted a keto diet. Carbs are cheap.
So maybe we need to spend more on agriculture subsidizing healthy foods instead of funding the wrong agriculture subsidies that increase healthcare spending?
And yes, I take every opportunity when its relevant to mention a healthy diet.
>And yes, I take every opportunity when its relevant to mention a healthy diet.
Potentially healthy diet. I don't mean to be pedantic here, and as someone who has adopted a keto diet I think it's far better than the standard american diet. Clearly it stops obesity, we know the body doesn't synthesize fat if there aren't any carbs. But the same thing can be accomplished with some exercise and portion control. Still from mine and others experience it seems to help with issues like concentration and constant fatigue.
But at the end of the day we don't completely know the effects of keto long-term, the same as we didn't really know the effects of a high carb diet long-term, especially in terms of overconsumption. Overconsumption of carbs will definitely lead to obesity and health problems, but it's possible that long-term overconsumption of fats/proteins may have their own effects (though not obesity). We also largely don't know what effects a keto diet will have on childhood development, perhaps there are parts of the brain or body that don't develop as well without a moderate amount of carbs in the diet.
We do know people have adopted keto long-term without any apparent issues (those who suffer from certain types of seizures), but it hasn't been adopted on a large enough scale over time to see the effects on a population like we have from the large scale adoption of high carb diets.
I think there's too much going on between genetics, gut biomes, and lifestyle to really say keto is a healthy diet for everyone. Those promoting keto should be cognizant of our deficiencies in knowledge while still promoting the benefits.
tl;dr IMO it's too early to flat out say keto is a healthy diet, especially when extrapolating that statement to the entire population (though I don't think you were).
That's about as handwavingly ignorant as the government nutritional guidelines. You can get as big as you want eating potatoes, broccoli, and meat if you eat enough of it. Likewise you can remain perfectly thin eating only processed food. Portion control and learning how well your body reacts and processes different foods is the best we can tell so far.