soldehierro's comments

> canyoureadthiseasily?ididn'tthinksoeither.nobodywriteslikethisinenglish

This is very legible for a native english speaker

Believe me, the organic transition had nothing to do with agricultural practices and all to do with economics, with the logic being that fertilizer was an expensive import, and by banning fertilizer they could hemorrhage foreign exchange reserves a little less. Of course, they also earned a lot less because the bone-headed transition lead to a marked reduction in yield, only worsening the forex problem the ban of agricultural chemicals was meant to solve.

This is posturing, 100%. The OAS is a useless hindrance to the project of American integration, but AMLO doesn't really care about that, he's just following the populist playbook of making ever more absurd public statements as a façade for policy failures at home.

Can you provide an example of one of these counties and why you consider they are undergoing "degrowth"? Degrowth is usually conceptualized as an intentional process, rather than economic decline.

I really appreciate HN for providing a refreshingly healthy, intellectually stimulating forum for discussion. In fact, as someone who is decidedly outside the tech-space, I mainly come here for the articles and discussions that have nothing to do with technology. At the same time, I think HN prides itself on being different from the myopic hivemind typical of other social media outlets - anecdotally, this something that I haven't found to be entirely accurate. (See anything about STEM vs. non-STEM education, medicine or biotechnology for an example of what I'm talking about).

> Lighter regulation around rare "small market" diseases might save a lot of lives. And money.

Orphan drugs for rare diseases are already subject to less regulation.

Not at all. While animals can be pastured, most of the livestock in developed countries is reared in grain-fed CAFOs. These are, in most cases, grain that is suitable for human consumption or could be made so. Moreover, almond milk is still ecologically preferable to cows milk.

I'm gay and I don't find it obvious or convincing that it's about societal homophobia. Moreover, that wouldn't explain the gap between straight and lesbian women, either.

Part of the issue is that the so-called "Standard American Diet" is so bad in the first place that any deviation from it can produce encouraging results.

I tend to agree, however, that a Mediterrean-patterned diet is definitely in the right direction based upon the weight of nutrition literature.

This is unfortunately the status quo of nutrition research; A long-term RCT is the "gold standard", but it is exceedingly difficult to recruit subjects and ensure their compliance over meaningful periods of time. Which is part of why constant flip-flopping about whether something is healthy or not is almost a trope in journalism. Nonetheless, a few principles have been well established: vegetables are good, fruit is (mostly) good, refined grains and free sugars are bad.

The issue with personal experiments is often that they are just as biased and cannot be conducted over meaningful time-scales. As an anecdote to illustrate this, I am significantly more productive and energetic when consuming a single sugary, chocolately coffee, but it would be foolish to conclude over such a short period of time that my personally ideal diet should include sugary coffee. I'm not deluded that this is a healthy practice, however; free sugars, fructose in particular, are demonstrably a major factor in the pathogenesis of lifestyle-related diseases.

Neither poster makes convincing arguments; you can find anecdotal reports of nearly any diet producing seemingly miraculous results, but any consideration of one's eating patterns should be based off peer-reviewed research.

It's not, that's what a review is.

I understand your gripe about inconsistent spelling, but what do you have against diacritics? Diacritics typically serve to make orthography more consistent in some matter, typically more phonetically consistent.

I've got to say, I'm shocked to see this piece chock-full of fallacious logic in the Guardian.

> Is mother nature a psychopath? Why would she design foods to shorten the lifespan of the human race?

Mother nature isn't an anthropomorphic being and "she" doesn't design anything. There are plenty of poisons found in plants and animals.

> “Base your meals around starchy carbohydrate foods” – another nugget of government “healthy eating” advice that is contradicted by robust science and well overdue for a rethink. In February the Pure study, which followed 148,858 participants in 21 countries over nine years was published. It concluded that: “High intake of refined grains was associated with higher risk of mortality and major cardiovascular disease events.”

Government authorities typically recommend against the consumption of refined grains. So, the author is actually citing evidence against this argument.

> Fruit contains lots of sugar. A small banana has the equivalent of 5.7 teaspoons of sugar, whereas an egg contains none.

A cup of canola oil doesn't contain sugar either. This makes the mistake of conflating all simple mono and disaccharides as "sugars" without consideration of the context. A cola and a piece of fruit both contain sugar, true, but the fiber in fruit slows absorption and moderates spikes in blood sugar (this is why fruit juices are almost as bad as sodas). Dairy also contains sugar, which makes it even more strange that the author would target demonize the sugar in fruit but ignore it when praising dairy.

I could go on.

I'm not going to make the claim that this article is sponsored by some lobby, but it certainly reads that way.

I don't understand why people are looking to insects over legumes for protein. Legumes are widely cultivated and socially and culturally acceptable. Protein is pretty much a solved problem.

> they tend to seek part-time employment arrangements

Do you have a source for that?

"Latin American" and "Hispanic" aren't race markers. They're a regional identity and an ethnicity, respectively, which exist alongside race.

The food prices link seems to be for Namibia, not Germany.

There are plenty of vegans who don't regularly use meat substitutes. Imo, it seems like most of them are more directed to curious meat-eaters rather than vegans.

Not OP, but I don't think this is such an irrational point of view. We're already seeing the effects of climate change; it's no longer the looming danger in "the future", it's something we deal with today. It's not so much that we can't do anything to try, technically speaking, it's that we most likely won't, for two reasons in particular. Firstly, we're trading a short term loss for a long term benefit. At a societal level, organized around quarters, financial years and terms of office, this is a hard sell. It's quite literally evolution. Some people alive today will never see the benefit of combatting climate change, so why should they, in their rational self-interest, support any action against climate change? Secondly, climate change is a global problem that needs a global solution. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything unless everyone everywhere does something, but it is essentially the diplomatic equivalent to the prisoner's dilemma. No nation wants to make the hard sacrifices necessary alone, which would only put them at a severe disadvantage, possibly for no benefit at all. It's also something that can be infinitely postponed into the future until one day it's too late.

In summary, climate change is a human problem, not a technological one. Technology has changed a lot and continues to do so, but the fundamentals of human psychology haven't really changed. We know of the problem, we have the technology to solve it, to the extent that it can be solved, but not the will and coordination to do so. Yet what reason do we have to believe that this will change in the future?