Top all-time · #4690
Jeff Nobbs
Personal blog · jeffnobbs.com/postshealthscience
Jeff Nobbs's personal blog at jeffnobbs.com covers health and science. Since 2020, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 20 times, most often “What's Driving Chronic Disease? (2020)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (15) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Jeff Nobbs's posts on seed oils, Oatly and cardiometabolic health, mostly as sources for debates about vegetable oils, milk alternatives and chronic disease.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 15 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Entrepreneur and thinker. Trying to solve important problems. Background in tech and food. Writing about life, health, nutrition, and sustainability.
Most-linked posts?
- What's Driving Chronic Disease? (2020)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-06-10
- Death by Vegetable Oil4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-07-04
- Oatly Responds in Defense of Its Ingredients3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-11-10
- /posts/why-is-vegetable-oil-unhealthy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-12-16
- Is Oatly Oat Milk Healthy?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-01-29
What Hacker News says?
Interesting article on Oat milk (specifically Oatly): https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/oatly-responds-in-defense-of...
Comment linking /posts/oatly-responds-in-defense-of-its-ingredients
on “McDonald's is adding plant-based burgers to the menu”Submitted What's Driving Chronic Disease? (2020) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionEdit: reading this back, it sounds somewhat like an attempt to shill a product. So, disclaimer: I have absolutely no affiliation with Jeff or the Cultured Oils, I’m just fascinated by it. Serial entrepreneur Jeff Nobbs recently launched a new product in the food oil space: Cultured Oil* I came across his writings* on the perils of seed oils earlier this year and it radically changed the way I eat. After becoming awa…
Comment linking /posts/what-causes-chronic-disease
on “Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study”Submitted Is Oatly Oat Milk Healthy? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI've seen convincing cases for both. Obesity: https://fireinabottle.net/how-seed-oils-cause-reductive-stre... Heart Disease: https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/death-by-vegetable-oil-what-...
Comment linking /posts/death-by-vegetable-oil-what-the-studies-say
on “Only 6.8% of adults have optimal cardiometabolic health”Submitted Top Flaws in Mainstream Reporting of the Seed Oil Debate – Jeff Nobbs as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> The sugars in oat milk are a bit simpler (primarily maltose rather than lactose), which gives a lower glycemic index That would lead to a higher glycemic index? >> Either way, if you compare them to something like fruit juice or full-sugar soft drinks, the sugar content is still pretty low. From https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/oatly-responds-in-defense-of... : Even with the slightly lower glycemic index for maltos…
Comment linking /posts/oatly-responds-in-defense-of-its-ingredients
on “Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk”Submitted Oatly Responds in Defense of Its Ingredients as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOatly's primary sugar, maltose, has 2.3 times the blood sugar impact as lactose, the primary sugar in cow's milk. Maltose has a glycemic index of 105, compared to 46 for lactose.[1] [1] https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/oatly-responds-in-defense-of...
Comment linking /posts/oatly-responds-in-defense-of-its-ingredients
on “Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk”Submitted Death by Vegetable Oil as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOatly's primary sugar, maltose, has 2.3 times the blood sugar impact as lactose, the primary sugar in cow's milk. Maltose has a glycemic index of 105, compared to 46 for lactose.[1] [1] https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/oatly-responds-in-defense-of...
Comment linking /posts/oatly-responds-in-defense-of-its-ingredients
on “Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk”There are plenty of newer approaches to this, but this older blog post points to some possible reasons: https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/death-by-vegetable-oil-what-... .
Comment linking /posts/death-by-vegetable-oil-what-the-studies-say
on “Global cancer cases will jump 77% by 2050, WHO report estimates”Refined seed oils contain polyunsaturated fats (and more specifically, omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, and more specifically yet, linoleic acid) in far higher concentrations than traditional foods. I believe this is the main thing that makes processed food unhealthy, and, indeed, is the main driver of the epidemic of the so-called "diseases of civilization" (obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc) that most of the world is ex…
Comment linking /posts/what-causes-chronic-disease
on “How processed foods became so unhealthy”Hey yeah Im no expert but happy to share some of the stuff that I've looked at. Glycemic Index - not every gram of carbohydrate is made equal. You can have a drink with fewer grams of sugar but that still has a higher glycemic load. Lactose has a fairly low glycemic index which results in it often having a lower glycemic load of drinks sweetened with lower quantities of maltose/dextrose. In terms of scientific liter…
Comment linking /posts/why-is-vegetable-oil-unhealthy
on “Can dairy farming ever be sustainable?”That hunter-gatherer tend to have very low rates of obesity and metabolic disorders is well documeted, for example https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.12785 . It's also well documented that obesity rates have skyrocketed in recent decades (for example https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-a... ). From this evidence, we can conclude that obesity isn't a purely natural phenomenon,…
Comment linking /posts/what-causes-chronic-disease
on “Goodbye, Ozempic”maybe, maybe not: https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/death-by-vegetable-oil-what-...
Comment linking /posts/death-by-vegetable-oil-what-the-studies-say
on “Milk, cheese and ice cream without the cow has entered the marketplace”> Dietary choices are a personal thing, all the new options are only good for that (not withstanding misleading advertising). I have some bad news about oat milk with regards to that as well. https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/is-oatly-healthy > A 12-ounce glass of oat milk (the amount in a medium latte) has about the same blood sugar impact as a 12-ounce can of Coke. Please do be careful. I am not saying Oatly is nece…
Comment linking /posts/is-oatly-healthy
on “Milk, cheese and ice cream without the cow has entered the marketplace”There is a detailed four article series about this which was recently shared here on Hacker News. The first article is here: https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/what-causes-chronic-disease , but the second and third articles probably address this most directly. >> "the output is novel to humans on evolutionary scale" > > This is true for all oils and all other highly processed foods. That is not true. There is evidence…
Comment linking /posts/what-causes-chronic-disease
on “Deteriorating Mitochondria Linked to Major Depression in Older Adults”The follow-up article https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/why-is-vegetable-oil-unhealt... goes into depth on why the underlying chemistry makes some oils much worse for us than others. Long story short, plants that live where it is cold need to use less stable oils with a lower melting points. These oils lead to our cells being more fragile, and also lead to more free radicals. Particularly if the oil is repeatedly heat…
Comment linking /posts/why-is-vegetable-oil-unhealthy
on “Death by Vegetable Oil”A few weeks ago, I wanted to know whether saturated fat (the kind that makes up most of mammal and bird fat and tropical oils like coconut and palm oil) was better or worse for you than unsaturated fat (the kind that makes up most of fish oil and non-tropical oils of vegetable origin). At this point the evidence strongly suggests that, at least if you live in the rich world, saturated fat is pretty bad for you, and…
Comment linking /about
on “Death by Vegetable Oil”
