Hello, I’ve researched diet for over a year now. I realize that there are lots of vitamins in different foods that we must eat to ensure good health.
Is there any diet plans where it says for example on Monday you eat avocados and other types of foods, same goes for every day of the week but with different foods so you get the maximum vitamins and have literally the most perfect diet possible.
If not, why not create one?
Hello, welcome to the forum! How about an app that just tells you to eat avocados every day. They’re yummy.
Actually it is not 100% clear what is the healthiest diet though I will grant you that there are the vaguest glimmerings of a consensus around a Mediterranean-style diet, with emphasis on nuts, whole foods, vegetables.
There are quite a few apps that track diet. The ones I am familiar with have an emphasis on calorie counting which feels a bit discredited by recent research. So I agree there might be an opportunity for an upstart to find a niche in there not filled by the big players. Lots of work to build your own foods DB, barcode scanner, rules engine, etc.
Does anyone know if myfitnesspal or other offer an API that would make any of this easier?
MyFitnessPal does have an API (but I can’t vouch for it): http://www.myfitnesspal.com/api
And yes, avocados are indeed yummy!
Thanks for the help. I don’t know much about this forum. I’m a nutritarian, transhumanist and I think the quantified self concept fits into them 
I’m also 16. I would love to know more.
Awesome, so here’s 1 way to know more.
Read some books on the subject! Here are some of my favorites
Eat to Live
Why We Get Fat
The China Study
In Defense of Food
Here are a couple I plan to read
Fat Chance
Salt Sugar Fat
You can listen to these books on audiobook while commuting, running, self-tracking, etc.
To me healthy eating means eating plenty of whole grains, lean proteins, vegetables and fruit, and eating food that is mostly in it’s natural state, and never something developed in a lab. Here’s what I ate today:
Breakfast: 1 cup Kashi Go Lean cereal with 1 cup soy milk, raspberries, along with a slice of honeydew melon.
Lunch: A little garden salad with grilled chicken, green seedless grapes, along with a handful of mixed nuts.
Snack; A slice of wheat grains bread with peanut butter and an orange.
Dinner: Wheat grains pasta in a red sauce, with sauteed vegetables, ground lean turkey and part-skim mozzarella cheese.
Desert.: Light Key Lime Pie yogurt
Today would be a good day. I don’t always eat this healthy, but it’s about balance. Sometimes you may want a slice of pizza or some chocolate cake and that’s fine, as long as you balance it with healthy food.
I guess we can all agree to disagree about what defines a “healthy” diet. But if what you currently eat keeps you “optimal” then more power to you!
Personally, seeing things like wheat (any gluten), soy, and proteins that lack healthy saturated fats makes me cringe. But that was exactly how I ate up until about 2 years ago when I dug in and tried to figure out why, although I looked completely healthy/physically fit, I was constantly tired and worn out. Cutting out gluten, sugar, and adding back in lots of “healthy” saturated fats brought me energy, mental sharpness, and got many of my biomarkers back to optimal levels.
And while avoiding lab-created/processed food is great, you also need to pay attention to the sources of your non-lab food (especially proteins - are your poultry and eggs pasture-raised and not fed grain? Grass-fed/finished beef? Wild-caught fish and not farm-raised?)
InsideTracker can compute a diet plan to optimize one’s health and fitness. Here’s my review of InsideTracker.
The problem of such a diet would be the individuality. I am a 30 year old, 108kg weighing, fat adapted Crossfitter with my focus on speed and martial arts as sports. I did some disgusting things to my body on a cyclical ketogenic diet (high volume interval training on empty stomach and carb depletion). Hence my needs are quite different from most of other people.
If you compare myself to a chemist, who is standing 14h in the lab and working or a shift worker, you would get quite different diets.
There are a lot of different food religions out there, yet it’s becoming clear that there is no one perfect diet that works for every person, given the interactions between our own unique genetic backgrounds and our own individual microbiomes. There seems to be an emerging theory that human diets and microbiomes are optimized for each other, so foods that are traditionally eaten by a population are optimal for the microbiology of those groups. When you start to get people eating in ways that don’t sync with their gut microbes, you see problems and these probably can differ from population to population. There is so much we don’t know in this area! You can’t even culture a lot of the bacteria that live in the gut so genome sequencing is one way this is being studied.
As far as individual optimization, I think the upshot of all of this uncertainty is that what works for you diet-wise may not work as well for the next person over. I really believe the n=1 that you should care about understanding is you. Unless you are already nutrient deficient or experiencing a lack of energy that improves when you change your diet like others noted above, it may not be worth the time you can spend trying to optimize all the foods in your day or week.
For me personally, I have found out I am best off figuring out what works for me, getting my blood levels of various vitamins checked yearly, and enjoying all the food I do eat, which includes daily chocolate. I do eat a lot of veggies and some fruit, plenty of dairy and not too much bread because it’s calorie dense and I can live without it. We buy certain things organic and grass fed but it’s more of a “reduce the antibiotic load” and a taste liking thing than a food virtue thing. When it comes to food, we’re all a victim of marketing about what’s tasty or “right” to do wherever we turn. Just my 2 cents!
I agree… we have to accept bio-individuality. While some people do very well on vegetarian diets, others need a Paleo approach. What seems to be working for everyone is to avoid processed modern foods our grandmothers would not recognize. In addition, we have to know how the person’s system is working and where it’s breaking down. You cannot just look at the foods you are eating but how you are digesting them. If you are not digesting your proteins and fats to nourish your cells, diet is really pointless. I like to do a thorough evaluation of the person’s system before recommending any specific diet.
Do any of these books include the best vitamins to consume and the timing of which to do so? I’ve just started researching intake of certain supplements and vitamins and know that you’re not to take some with others. At the moment, I’m finding myself more and more unorganized and having all the information in one book or app would help!
Thanks!
Let’s create your own perfect diets everyday! Because each person has different favorite taste. You may like avocados, but I don’t. Fortunately, there is a diversity of high vitamins foods, especially vegetables and fruits. I like parsley, guava and moringa (drumstick tree). Moringa leaves are excellent source of vitamins and minerals including vitamin B6, vitamin C, iron, vitamin B2, vitamin A and magnesium. https://wikihomenutrition.com/moringa-health-benefits/
I would also add The Perfect Health Diet to the books to read about diet.