Petrarchive – Diet

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No.7538 Anonymous>>7540 2025-09-23 12:24:06
Diet
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I am creating this thread for the discussion of diet, as it pertains to you or to humanity as a whole.

Diet, food, nutrition. All of these things are under scrutiny today, but really have never left the mainstream of civilized topics. Medicine was obsessed with diet for most of its existence, and it has only recently become in vogue to try to ignore it. I think a lot of people think diet to be a fairly superficial thing, for a number of reasons but for only one that I personally think a worthwhile critique (and the reason I find it interesting): which is that it evades any and all concrete scientific inquiry.

I mean, we know vitamins and such to be important. The flora of the gut biome is a new and vital addition to the picture as well. But nobody can prescribe anything except maxims and phrases as "truths" to the dietary science. Headlines and trends are rampant, if they are not actually simply what constitutes the field as a whole. Even with attempts to wrest diet from the hands of political agents (lobbyists, corporations, so on), if that is even possible, there is virtually no agreement.

I find this curious, especially for something as indispensable to life as eating (though I understand that the idea of submitting it to scientific analysis is relatively recent). Anyway, I'm interested in thoughts on this topic, and any whims you might have in the realm of diet. I don't personally follow any real "diets," but I greatly reading about them. I like Peat, because of his extremity, for instance.

I don't want to limit this thread to diet as it pertains to organized systems of eating, but also to the tertiary topics such as agriculture (problems with monoculture, depleting soil contents, etc), etc.
No.7540 Anonymous>>7541 >>7583 2025-09-24 03:43:27
>>7538 (OP)
Diet crystallizes the relationship between insides and outside, between the self and the world. What do you take and refuse from the world, how do you take it?
Orthorexia, the (pathological) fixation on the right way to eat, is an expression of the belief that there is a right way to be in relation to the world and that it can be attained by managing what you let in from the world. Most diets are a play to control the uncontrollable, imo.
No.7541 Anonymous>>7710 2025-09-24 11:22:06
>>7540
I like the outside and inside distinction you make. I guess it aligns with the classic folk wisdom, "you are what you eat".

>Orthorexia, the (pathological) fixation on the right way to eat, is an expression of the belief that there is a right way to be in relation to the world and that it can be attained by managing what you let in from the world.
I would be inclined to agree with this, or affirm that this concept exists at all, if it weren't for the fact that everyone is vying for the "correct" interpretation of diet. If pathological just means something like extreme, like how anorexia is caloric restriction taking to such a degree that it causes harm to the self, then sure. But everyone claims that the other diet is doing some sort of harm to the dieter, or to the world. Vegans say the meat industry manufactures untold suffering. Carnivores claim vegetables will sap your libido, or something like that. And so on.

>Most diets are a play to control the uncontrollable, imo.
Uncontrollable being something like death? Like the claim that the Mediterranean diet will allow you to live the longest? I agree with that, I think. Especially because food is so close to the agent, you literally put it inside of yourself and absorb it, I think it can take on kind of a magical potency.
No.7583 Anonymous>>7710 2025-09-27 01:57:52
>But nobody can prescribe anything except maxims and phrases as "truths" to the dietary science.

I have used diet to regulate and even correct various ailments (to the contrary of >>7540's claim) and what I learned over 15+ years was that each diet must not only be tailored to the individual, but must also change dynamically over time. The individual must be receptive and sensitive to their own body and must make corrections to their diet on the fly based on circumstance and how their body functions. "Diets" are too broad and inflexible to be as truly useful as medicine as they *can* be. They are a legacy of our system where a group of superiors (doctors et al) pass down directions to the rest of us who obediently follow the instructions. It is my belief that in the future this mode of instruction will be seen as outdated as each individual becomes their own fully-realized, agentic master.
No.7590 Anonymous>>7597 2025-09-27 12:48:45
What's with all the twitter nutters obsession over Peat? This has long been a mystery to me, and I did read one of his books over this curiosity, but it didn't help at all, because it turns out they don't actually read his books anyway.
No.7597 Anonymous 2025-09-29 12:56:51
>>7590
I'm only kind of interested in Peat, and more in the spectacle of his fanatics and his own extremism, but I think probably it's because he answers many different questions about the human body in one fell swoop. His theory about energy circulation being the main component behind health (I know that's not totally right) feels intuitively correct and appeals to a certain segment of health overthinkers (ie, lets you feel like you're doing more than you are). I think also his condemnation of very popular food groups and approval of food groups that are tasty also appeal to people. The former allows you a satisfaction in esotericism, the latter gives you your yummy food. Asceticism without giving up anything.

What book did you read, and was it worth it?
No.7598 Anonymous 2025-09-29 13:39:56
>>7853
>The individual must be receptive and sensitive to their own body and must make corrections to their diet on the fly based on circumstance and how their body functions.
Interesting, that's also the impression I've got from having to alter my diet for a GI issue. The whole gastrointestinal system has so many factors that it fails to follow an intuitive cause and effect methodology.

>Diets" are too broad and inflexible to be as truly useful as medicine as they *can* be. They are a legacy of our system where a group of superiors (doctors et al) pass down directions to the rest of us who obediently follow the instructions.
Yeah, I can understand that. If a doctor bothers to even bring up diet, in my experience they usually just hand you a pamphlet. And a pamphlet is very emblematic of the way they think of diet, as something rote to hand off.

I can understand some pessimism in trying to prescribe diet to most people, as they simply won't care to follow it through. The masses are eating themselves to death, in the US anyway. Medicine as it operates now probably doesn't care to research diet, as it makes no money.

>It is my belief that in the future this mode of instruction will be seen as outdated as each individual becomes their own fully-realized, agentic master.
The dietary Ubermensch?
No.7617 Anonymous 2025-10-01 15:56:04
For a lot of years I've had really specific cravings that have been incredibly hard to tame. One of my big cravings has been sweets with specific tart or acidic flavors. I've been so unable to control these cravings for so long that I've tried and given up on most interventions. You name it, I've tried it, and it wasn't sustainable in the face of these intense cravings.

At one point I read Tao Lin's thing on autism and -- whatever you say about the thesis -- I was persuaded by his telling of how glyphosate influences so many systems due to its chemical similarities to glycine. After that, I decided to look into glycine supplements. I'm not really a supplement guy. But at this point I felt an immediate and obvious benefit. So I decided to start taking a multivitamin. More improvements. But I was still battling some very specific cravings.

More recently, I somehow arrived at the idea that I could be consuming much, much more protein. I don't mind drinking eggs, and those are pretty darn effective, so I started meeting the protein levels that lifters say we should be hitting.

Lo and behold, the cravings stopped.

I'm honestly at a weird point right now where I have to give up on a bunch of old eating habits because I don't feel intense cravings anymore. I just eat protein and drink coffee and that basically covers all of my hunger. Everything else I just eat out of habit (bad) or to socialize (acceptable). This is really strange to me. For basically the past 10 to 15 years I've had this monkey on my back and now I don't have it anymore. I barely know what to do with myself.
No.7710 Anonymous 2025-10-09 01:52:20
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>>7583
I agree with you. The pathology comes from the idea that there is a proper way to eat for one individual or population that has to be uncover; while, like you put it, it's a dynamic process; the diet will change overtime.
>>7541
On that outside/inside distinction, Nothomb wrote The Character of Rain, who starts by describing a human being as a long tube, from mouth to rectum (the French title is clearer: Métaphysique des tubes). The tube, despite being inside, is still an outside surface.