Moderately amused at the quote "We are ending the war on protein." In my experience, every single brand in recent years has been coalescing around the idea of making protein bars, drinks, prominently labeling the amount of grams of protein are in items, etc.
I'm not opposed, as protein seems to be a good target to prioritize, but claiming there's a war on protein just seems so out of touch to the point of absurdity. It's practically the only thing that people care about right now.
Yeah, (1) there is no "war on protein," (2) you do not need to eat very much protein unless you are trying to build muscle and you already work out a lot.
The normal recommended daily intake for protein is 0.8 g/kg. 1.2-1.6 is silly; that's a recommendation for athletes.¹
Starches have been a dietary staple in pretty much every society forever. Sugars have not. It's silly that they treat grains as a "sometimes" food.
There's also the weird boogeyman of "processed food." Almost all food is processed to some degree & always has been. We've been cooking, baking, juicing, fermenting, chopping, grinding, mashing, etc. long enough that it influenced the shape of our teeth. Certainly we haven't been making Pizza Pockets that long, but the issue there isn't processing, it's ingredients. And the reason people buy Pizza Pockets isn't that they think they're healthy—it's that Pizza Pockets only need to be microwaved, and cooking a real meal takes time that a lot of people just don't have.
Starches are basically glucose. They have a massive insulin response -- often even worse than sugar (because you eat starches in a much higher volume since they don't usually taste sweet).
It's very hard to overeat protein naturally. It's very easy to overeat starches and other carbohydrates naturally.
With regard to "processed" food, it's not a great label. I would use this metric: could you conceivably produce this in an average kitchen with the raw materials? If you can, it's probably safe, if you can't, it's probably something you shouldn't eat. For instance, processing often means "partially hydrogenating" a fat, or milling grains into a fine dust and bleaching them. Sometimes chemically produced oils are deodorized, because they would otherwise smell very unpalatable. You generally should not want your food to be bleached or deodorized..
I don't think you do eat starches in a higher volume. The associated fibre and resistant starches lead to many starchy foods being quite satiating—potatoes, oatmeal, and whole grains in particular. Moreover, the relevance of insulin response is unclear; low GI diets have been found to do nothing for obesity.
To reiterate, starches have been a dietary staple in pretty much every society forever, whereas meat has been relatively expensive and rare. The obesity epidemic, which began in the 1970s, did not correspond with the invention of flour or rice.
> I would use this metric: could you conceivably produce this in an average kitchen with the raw materials?
This is completely arbitrary. Why is "milling grains into a fine dust" proscribed, when blending soup in an average kitchen's food processor is fine? We've had mills for millennia and food processors less than a century. Plenty of raw foods smell unpalatable; that doesn't mean the cooked version is secretly smelly or whatever. Besides, what is and isn't a "raw ingredient" is itself arbitrary. I can't make any type of vegetable oil at home, deodorized or otherwise—I don't have an oil press. I can make lard, but that doesn't mean it's better for me.
You're talking about the vibes given by various foods here, rather than their actual health effects.
Assuming that "chemical modification" is when you modify something by adding a chemical reagent to it, milk is chemically modified to create cheese curds, sugars are chemically modified to create vinegar and alcohol, and breads & cakes are chemically modified when they rise.
However, this definition of chemical modification doesn't really include hydrogenated vegetable oil. Industrial hydrogenation is done by raising oil to very high temperatures in the presence of a nickel catalyst & then adding hydrogen. We modify it on a chemical level, but primarily by heating it, not by adding reactive substances. And if that counts as chemical modification, then so does cooking!
Anyway, no—people generally used "processed" to describe a particular vibe they get from certain foodstuffs whose production seems too industrialized. There's no rigorous basis for determining what is and isn't "processed" because people use it to describe their feelings about food, not any underlying property of food.
If you search a simple question like "is bread processed," you get a bunch of articles saying "well, since there's no agreed-upon definition for processing and the definitions we do have aren't particularly clear, there's really no answer to the question. But don't worry, because (given the overwhelming vagueness of the category), it's also impossible to say whether processed foods as a category have any health implications, so you shouldn't worry about it."
The irony is everyone already seems obsessed with protein these days, which I guess plays nicely with meat lovers / producers. The last thing Americans need is more encouragement on the protein front IMO. Suddenly everyone thinks they're a body builder when it comes to food.
The few friends I've known were attempting ketogenic diets over the years kept focusing on the protein side when the actual diet is supposed to be dominated by fat. They've all experienced kidney problems of one sort or another, surprise surprise!
Potatoes are the most satiating food at 323% that of white bread.
The second is Ling fish which is a source of protein, but another one of my assumptions is that when you say 'protein' I am doubtful you mean 'ling fish'. So assuming you mean a 2026 American definition of 'protein' you're probably referring to cow flesh (beef) which is only 176% of white bread, almost half of potatoes.
So, in the future I would suggest spreading the word and correcting your comment by saying "I mean potatoes do fill you up faster"
> I mean protein does fill you up faster and better with fewer calories which is good for weight loss or management.
Thank you for exemplifying the problem so clearly - conflating protein with fat when we're really talking about a simple carbohydrates issue of high energy density with negative satiety.
Excess protein is excreted renally, it's easy to overdo and can cause serious problems.
Protein is actually pretty hard to overdo naturally. If you've ever tried to follow the high protein guidelines and you're a taller or broader shouldered person you'll find that getting that amount of protein requires supplementation or a lot of focus on lean meats. I'm not saying everyone needs to go "high" protein, I'm just saying that worrying about the amount of protein you're eating is probably not worth doing. You'll feel pretty full if you eat a lot of protein.
Keto is not just "high fat" though. Keto is about producing ketones, and going too high fat can actually be counterproductive there, at least for weight loss. (You want to be liberating fat from your storage, not getting it from external sources)
A hypothesis with zero supporting data and primarily argued in a couple pop culture books is not something you should give any weight.
Scientists do not write books when they have actual, meaningful findings.
You've made this claim all over this comment section, so it's pretty frustrating to find it comes from a pretty awful source.
I promise you, it is trivial to overeat protein. Americans love their 16oz steaks, and yet one pound of steak in a single meal is almost certainly "Too much" for a non-athelete diet.
Meanwhile, simply look to every eating competition which uses a meat. There does not seem to be any natural limitation to overconsuming meat.
Hmm, how do you figure? Just about every source I can find shows slow burning carbs, fiber, and protein rich foods blow fatty foods out of water in terms of satiety. (if you are using a metric other than satiety to represent "fills you up", feel free to correct me)
Not to mention, that refined proteins don't have well balanced amino acid profiles and the lack of well balanced essential fatty acids to go with them is also a serious issue IMO.
UK supermarkets these days have a high protein version of just about every single product on the shelves. It's bizarre, and I'm guessing something to do with more protein being the advice when you're on GLP-1 drugs. The one that makes me laugh the most is "high protein" peanut butter.
Whey used to be a waste product of the dairy industry, now you sprinkle 20gr of it on anything and you can sell the product with a 50% markup as "high protein XYZ"
The establishment guidelines on protein intake for decades (since the 80s) have been very minimalist, only looking to balance nitrogen -- leading to guidelines in the 0.8g/kg range. This is what they're referring to. Yes, it's still hyperbolic. But they're not talking about a relatively recent popularity/marketing swing. The new guidance of 1.2-1.6g/kg is 50-100% higher.
The market has clearly moved on, as you've identified, primarily due to bro science. Meanwhile, the medical establishment still thinks protein is going to kill you.
> On the flip side, I firmly believe a lot of the issues that we are having societally with regards to hormone imbalance, mental health and fertility issues really comes down to insufficient intake of essential fatty acids which include some saturated fats.
Why werent those issues in the late 19th century? We certainly ate very, very little meat and didn't have any fertility issues.
I'm saying that, but even nowadays, the countries with the highest fertility are those where people eat the less meat.
People also seem to forget the impact of lead on society just a couple decades back, and how we are probably going through a similar event now with microplastics. Not to mention many artificial sweeteners, ultra-processed foods, preservatives, etc. as well as widespread use of industrial chemicals.
Plus, it's amazing how collective stress can warp a society over time.
Some issues take effect or only become seriously problematic over multiple generations. It's also a matter of proportions... at what point does a lack of testosterone become an issue in men? Do you necessarily notice?
There's also the confounding factor of birth control and other measures reducing the noticeability of decreased fertility.
Since pretty much the beginning of agriculture until very recently (and with some localized exceptions on some coastlines, depending on the available fishes), fatty acid just werent available. "Margarine" isn't coming from nowhere, and it is _very_ telling that it was "invented" (or rather, re-discovered) during the first industrial revolution. A vegetarian today will eat overall more saturated fat and animal proteins than the vast majority of people in agrarian societies pre-1950.
Over way more generations.
In any case, i think its the reverse actually. Plants bio-accumulate way, way less than animals, and eating to much fish or meat leads to issues with lead accumulation, or hormonal imbalance (which is less of an issue in europe, since we don't allow growth hormones in our meat). Since animal protein are sightly more bio-available, i also think vegans are foolish, and the truth is clearly in the middle, and you should eat both animal and vegetal proteins (as long as you don't follow the US government guideline on protein intake: the values are what my sister recommended for semi-pro athletes when she worked as a nutritionist).
There are an incredible amount of contaminants and disruptions in today's society. There are far too many possible causes for us to be sure, without process of elimination, that lack of fat of all things is the central cause of the problems you have listed.
Also, I'm not sure if a vegan hurt you or something, but yes in fact there are many of us who believe today's meat farming industry is nothing short of barbaric and extremely damaging to the environment. But believe it or not, most vegans understand protein better than the average person, and make sure to get fats and complete proteins from a variety of sources which don't require industrial-scale torture of helpless animals.
industrial-scale torture of helpless tasty animals.
I did this in jest, but I think this is maybe the main barrier to pulling back on meat consumption. It tastes too damn good.
I am well educated, and would perhaps like to reduce my meat consumption. Until I realize that nearly 100% of my favorite dishes contain meat. And if we expand to milk or eggs, that list expands to 100%.
Food is weird because it sits in an intersection of physiological need, pleasure, craft, and culture.
I like cooking, but many days I wish I could just eat a daily nutrition block and go back to my business :)
And I totally feel you on the taste thing. Meat tastes good, and we're used to it!
I'd recommend looking at some dishes from various Asian cuisines, for example Indian food. The problem with American cuisine is that we've been conditioned to expect meat as part of every meal, three times a day. Even just reducing your meat intake by one meal a day, or even just a few meals a week, can make a massive difference collectively.
I was a vegetarian in my teens, but I suffered from frequent fainting (this had been going on both before and after I was vegetarian, it was just worse during that period), sometimes at really unsettling moments like while shaving my face. I eventually seemed to grow out of these fainting spells, but I went back to eating meat for years.
And the entire time, I recognized the taste of meat as my main barrier to giving it back up. I finally made progress by removing or heavily reducing consumption of one meat at a time. First pork, then beef and other things, and then finally chicken.
Even today, I am a pescatarian and occasionally eat a little fish, shellfish and dairy. I also eat a lot of eggs. Dairy farming still involves what I consider torture however and I have worked to significantly reduce my intake. I really don't mind vegan cheese or even just shredded cashews as a replacement.
I don't feel bad eating mussels, oysters, etc. so I don't think I'll ever stop eating those, but I have significantly reduced the amount of fish I eat as well. I get nervous because I don't want to start fainting again, but I just track my protein and try to get it wherever I can, for example sprouted protein bread, eggs, whey, hemp and pea powders in smoothies, etc.
I am allergic to legumes... as are a lot of other people... so when vegans talk about outlawing meat, you're literally talking about killing me.
I'm fine if YOU or anyone else wants to live without meat... I'm even fine with improving quality of life for farmed animals... but I draw a hard, firm line at outlawing meat.
Nothing in my comment addressed outlawing meat. It's especially absurd to think that any sane person, vegan or not, would want to prevent someone from eating meat if a medical condition limits their options.
What you're doing is projecting an insecurity you have that vegans want to outlaw meat onto my comment, and I'm not even a vegan. This creates a straw man, and now we are off-topic, discussing something I never proposed.
> I'm even fine with improving quality of life for farmed animals
And yes, I've known plenty of vegans who literally want to outlaw meat regardless of need...
As to other contaminants and their effects, of course... but can you honestly say that a half a century of "low fat" and mostly fat sources that are woefully incomplete on essential fatty acid profiles while consuming reduced amounts of fats all around hasn't affected hormone production? Hormone production is directly affected by fat consumption.
> And yes, I've known plenty of vegans who literally want to outlaw meat regardless of need...
Okay, whether or not this is true, projecting such motivations onto me is prejudice. Until you experience it firsthand, you cannot fathom the way American society often treats you the moment you mention you don't eat meat, or advocate for less meat consumption in general.
Everyone's insecurities and prejudices come out, just like now. Lecture after lecture... and then I also have to hear about how non-meat-eaters aggressively push their views on everyone. My experience is the opposite. So let's dispense with the prejudice and graciously interpret each other's comments.
> can you honestly say that a half a century of "low fat" and mostly fat sources that are woefully incomplete on essential fatty acid profiles
This is another straw man. I am not advocating for low-fat products. I am not even vegan. You don't know anything about what I support and are putting words in my mouth.
Americans eat more meat and especially more red meat than most other people on the planet. Why aren't we killing it on hormone balance, mental health, and fertility?
If the claim is that a lack of meat in our diets is what is causing these issues then I'd expect there to be some connection in the data. It is possible that all of the benefit we get from our meat eating habits are overwhelmed by other harmful effects. But if that is the case then surely "change those other harmful effects" is more valuable than "increase meat consumption further."
"Eat Real Food" is that message exactly... Roughly half of people's caloric intake is already meat... this proposal doesn't significantly change that. But it completely eliminates any recommendation for highly refined foods altogether and significantly reduces suggestions for high sugar foods as well.
There is A LOT of evidence that diets high in saturated fats cause heart disease and the whole plethora of metabolic diseases that go with it. It's basically undeniable that red meat is just, like, bad for you.
Not to mention processed red meats are in the same classification of carcinogen as alcohol and Tabacoo. And regular red meat is still higher up than aspartame, aka diet coke.
Meat can be good for you. But it shouldn't take a genius to deduce that a diet of steaks, cheeseburgers, milkshakes, and bacon probably is not.
I don't think that's true. Most of that evidence includes bacon and processed red meats in their studies. We're much less confident that unprocessed red meat is unhealthy.
We are very confident that high saturated fat causes metabolic disorders, and we're more confident that unprocessed red meat causes cancer than we are there aspartame causes cancer. Which is really saying something, because it seems like in the zeitgeist everyone just thinks diet coke is cancer juice.
Point is, health is complicated, and replacing kale and spinach with cheeseburgers and milkshakes is a bad deal. Ultimately I think most people eat PLENTY of meat. But they certainly don't eat plenty of high-fiber foods like vegetables.
> we're more confident that unprocessed red meat causes cancer than we are there aspartame causes cancer.
Yes, I'll give you that, because you're jumping over a pretty low bar.
> replacing kale and spinach with cheeseburgers and milkshakes is a bad deal.
Again jumping over a low bar. Replacing kale & spinach with pretty much anything is a bad deal. Including >99% of all healthy foods.
And cheeseburgers/milkshakes aren't in the list of healthy foods. We can argue whether it's the ground beef patty in there that's unhealthy but there's lots of other stuff in those...
FWIW, raw spinach and especially kale aren't exactly great for you... you really need to at least blanch them to make them more digestible.
Also, I don't see a cheeseburger or milkshake on the recommended list. You also seemed to skip fries... I guess they're okay because they might be vegetarian.
The most significant physical experiment on the issue seems to suggest otherwise. Beyond this, "Kaplan Meier graphs showed no mortality benefit for the intervention group in the full randomized cohort or for any prespecified subgroup."
Reducing saturated fat can reduce serum cholesterol... that doesn't mean improved all cause mortality or coronary events.
if veganism was a real problem we'd have it made, that's the least of our worries... americans aren't dying at an alarming rate from heart disease because they've been lead astray from vegans
there's been little change in overall meat consumption in the US for decades... and it's actually higher than most places in the world
I don't think veganism is a societal problem.. but I do think it's a personal problem. The vegans I've known that have done it for a long period have had all sorts of weird health issues that could be attributed to malnutrition (if they actually had labs done, which they generally don't). To be a healthy vegan you generally have to take a lot of vitamins or eat an impractically high volume, which to me suggests it's a bad diet (health wise. Ethically, great!).
What kind of weird health issues? in my experience most vitamin deficiencies can be managed with slight effort and a single daily multivitamin. IMO it beats the pants off of being part of the American obesity epidemic that creates problems for 40% of the population.
But, if Americans ate more meat then the people who grow and sell that meat would make more money, and they would spend more of that money to lobby congresspeople to convince the populace to eat more meat so they would make more money so they would have more money to spend lobbying the congresspeople to convince the populace to eat more meat so they would make more money
It doesn't have to be advertising; if policies were enacted to either restrict supply (by making it more difficult to produce in favor of some perceived public good) or to raise the price by reducing (currently significant) subsidies or imposing taxes on the supply chain, that might make your fridge less likely to contain those things.
Policy and advertising both work at the margins; if something affects consumer choices such that they swing 10% to or away from a sector, that has a huge impact on the sector. Can you imagine no changes that would convince you to eat 10% more or less meat?
I am allergic to legumes (the only viable source of vegetarian protein really), as are many others... so fuck you for trying to outlaw my main source of nutrition.
To be clear: I'm not trying to outlaw anything, just demonstrate to the parent how they could be subject to the lobbying/regulation/consumption feedback loop without being susceptible to advertising. I'm sorry if that offended you.
Which meat alternatives can you eat? Most of the current options are heavily processed, small-scale and heavily tied to brands, all of which raise the price. Once we see the commodification and white-labeling that we see in the rest of the grocery supply chain, I'd expect the prices to come down. As an aside: TVP looks to be about $0.04/gram of protein, which is about half the price of a gram of protein in ground beef.
Lobbying is a real thing, propaganda is a real thing, corporate-government collusion is a real thing. The meat and dairy industries are definitely things, and are GIGANTIC, pouring millions and billions into deceiving the public.
If you're looking around the room and don't see the sucker, it might be you.
My clanmates and I noticed that some of the more popular goldfarming hotspots were much less populated that day. Rev caves, Zalcano, etc. Not sure about impacts for the broader economy though. Maybe FlippingOldSchool will release a video analyzing the economic trends over the course of that week? Would be interesting for sure.
Thanks for catching my typo, I hope more people discover their cheese. I love every variety of their cheese, but the Merlot and Tennessee Whiskey cheeses are on another level.
Thanks for mentioning Spider and Web. It's by far my favorite modern take on a text adventure. There were a few moments that really blew my mind when I figured out how to progress.
Highly recommend anyone who is intrigued by the premise to just jump in and give it a go!
I think I may be the commenter you're referring to, and yes, I have used many different VR devices over the years. I've owned at least 3 other headsets and used 5.
My point in saying the usefulness of it being tied to the ecosystem was more of a negative one than a positive one if it wasn't clear. It is personally useful for me because I have a lot of Apple products at home (though I also have PC and linux stuff too), but I wish my primary use-cases for it were more platform agnostic.
I'm also very in support of aggressive anti-trust legislation and it's probably my biggest point of contention with Apple.
Despite all that, I still like the Vision Pro and think it's an incredible piece of tech that blows every other headset I've tried out of the water for the things I like to do.
I won't be upgrading from the M2 model, but I still get a lot of value out of mine simply using the Mac Virtual Display with my Macbook Pro. Of course there are other benefits (gaming w/ ALVR and a PC, watching movies, reading comics) but it makes video editing workflows much nicer for me because I can set the resolution to ultrawide and have much more real estate for Davinci Resolve.
It never really leaves the house, and I get why a lot of people don't like it, but personally, it's one of the coolest pieces of tech I own and I get a ton of value out of it. The value is just tied to being integrated into the apple ecosystem more than it being a standalone device, which is a very Apple thing to do.
I have lots of criticisms too, but overall I really like it. Also converting photos to spatial photos and looking through old memories in 3D is truly incredible. Can't overstate how much I love that feature.
The thing I'm most excited about from this release is the backwards compatible Dual Knit Band, which I'm definitely buying.
I am in a similar boat. I wish they'd gone in to more detail about why this version is different than the existing one - other than "new chip" - because I like mine so much that I want to know how it's improved. I love having a portable, infinite desktop that pairs to my laptop. I have watched movies with it while away, and it's a great media consumption device. It's just cool, and should only get better and cheaper as the tech evolves.
Similar. I use this as a traveling external monitor. I have a face that works well without the face seal and with the old dual band: Counter weighted with the back of my head in a way that floats the headset over my nose/face. Going back to squeezing this onto my face like the old knit band seems like it would go backwards in comfort. How can anyone have this pressed against their face for 8+ hours?
The best is to have a pulley system above your head that removes the weight of it from above. I’d like to see someone implement this via a backpack / should strap for mobile use.
With the inability to counter-balance, with soft straps, I I really wish they would get rid of the metal, glass, and silly front screen. For comparison, Quest 3, with integrated battery, is almost 20% lighter and is possible to counter balance (hard strap), which I think is more important than weight (near zero force on the flesh of my face).
It has comparable PPD, at the center, so works just as well for using as windows/mac virtual screen (mac being my main use case).
As far as I know, you can't have different virtual desktops for each room. The window to use the virtual desktop dynamically pops up over my laptop when I open and unlock it.
I do have a few widgets floating around in different rooms, but rarely use it from somewhere that isn't my chair or bed, so it's mostly a few clocks embedded into my walls to keep track of time, and those are persistent.
The same thing has been happening to me lately too. Someone asked if I really knew and typed the alt-code every time I use it and I replied yes, if I'm on a Windows machine. On the one hand I agree it's often a tell for AI slop, but it's frustrating that nobody seems to dig any deeper than that anymore.
This is pretty obscure, but I've found the more niche, the more I enjoy a blog. [0] It's a series of posts on a blog called Taskerland (written by Moreau Vazh) that do some literary analysis on classic works of horror, specifically, the works of Thomas Ligotti and H.P. Lovecraft.
If you enjoy short form horror stories, and want to read someone's interpretation of the themes and background of some horror with substantial literary merit, it might be worth a shot! It actually encouraged me to start my own blog, doing something similar—though I'm still in the early stages of writing it.
All of the other replies to you seem to give examples of other sandbox games that are successful / fun and suggest that maybe you just don't like the genre, but as an avid fan of sandbox games, and many of the other titles given by other posters, I still agree with you.
No Man's Sky feels devoid of any personality or interesting content in a particularly unique way. No amount of updates will ever fix for me what feels like a fundamental gameplay loop issue.
All of the layers of systems they've added with each new update still just feel __bad__. I'm glad so many have found a way to enjoy the game, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when none of them seem to address the issue of "collect arbitrary resources to build gear to collect other arbitrary resources ad nauseum" in a way that I just find fundamentally unsatisfying.
I still understand that reductive description can apply to many of the other games I actually enjoy (i.e. Minecraft, etc.) but that's what's so strange to me about NMS—by all means, I __should__ like the game. But I still think it's a miserable experience devoid of any real meaning. Even if the point is to find your own meaning in the systems it provides, I can't quite put my finger on it, but it just feels so much worse than any of the others.
Maybe someone else can better articulate why it feels so bad, but to me, despite all of the work they've put on the game, it still feels so devoid of meaning.
I think it is both an egregious example of the "farm this to craft this to farm this..." gameplay loop and that other aspects of the gameplay are too shallow to hold it up once you get bored of the crafting and building loop. And I say this as a fan of the game lol
I wouldn't mind it if building didn't seem pointless. You travel with your ship but build on planets that you are meant to quickly abandon.
The exploration and building aspects are in opposition to each other so you can't really hop in between them when you get bored without starting over next time.
I'm not opposed, as protein seems to be a good target to prioritize, but claiming there's a war on protein just seems so out of touch to the point of absurdity. It's practically the only thing that people care about right now.
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