The key to glorifying a questionable diet? Be a tech bro and call it 'biohacking.'

[Demovictory9]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-key-to-glorifying-a-questionable-diet-be-a-tech-bro-and-call-it-biohacking/2019/04/11/12368e2c-5ba2-11e9-842d-7d3ed7eb3957_story.html?utm_term=.52dad7601a4e





One night in college, a member of my four-person study group showed up with a bunch of Snickers bars from a campus giveaway. The only man in the group picked one up and casually read the nutrition label. “Whoa,” he said, “You’d never guess how many calories are in just one of these.” Without missing a beat, the women raised our tired heads from our textbooks, collectively muttered, “Two-hundred and eighty,” and then went back to solving parametric equations.

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I tell this story because on Tuesday, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey gave an interview revealing that he typically fasted on weekends and ate only one meal on weekdays, and that the single meal typically consisted of, “fish, chicken, or some steak,” plus arugula, spinach or “sometimes asparagus or Brussels sprouts” and finally, “I have mixed berries as a dessert.”

And unless “some steak” is a euphemism for “a cow,” I can immediately tell you that Jack Dorsey is consuming fewer than 1,000 calories a day. Which is a diet no nutritionist would recommend.

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Jack Dorsey eats just one meal per day, spends Friday through Sunday staggering around in a foodless stupor (“the first time I did it, like day three, I felt like I was hallucinating,” he said) and suddenly it’s not an eating disorder. It is, as CNBC originally deemed the behavior when the site wrote about Dorsey’s interview, “a biohack.”

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I don’t know why we’re so reverential of the eating behaviors of Silicon Valley executives, except I sort of think I know why. These men completely revolutionized the way we took photographs, paid for services, connected with relatives and moved through the world. There’s something tantalizing in the idea that they also hold the key to revolutionizing our bodies.

And so we get articles in the Guardian about a group of male CEOs who call themselves “Fast Club” and participate in a “5:2” eating plan, in which they eat virtually nothing for two days a week. “The first day I felt so hungry I was going to die,” one was quoted as saying, while simultaneously insisting that this wasn’t a dangerous result, this was just biohacking.

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It's fascinating to watch the language of food consumption mutate as it travels across genders. For decades, "dieting" was the domain of women. It looked like Weight Watchers, it looked like Snackwells, it looked like South Beach, but whatever it looked like, it was always portrayed as something simultaneously necessary, shameful, pride-inducing, hated and ever-present.

[smirkymonkey]

1. I don't get it. What's the point?

To prove how cool you are? This guy doesn't look very healthy. I'm all for cutting back if you need to lose weight, but I don't understand the need to take it to such an extreme. Especially when the results make you look frail and sickly.

[DetlefK]

2. The tech-bros also drink untreated groundwater and think that's healthy bc it's natural.

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/tech-bros-are-spending-dollar12-a-gallon-to-drink-third-world-water

[susanna]

4. That's messed up.

Deleted my initial response because it could be misinterpreted.

Hope this one is not.

Drinking untreated groundwater? NO.

[Wounded Bear]

6. I grew up drinking untreated groundwater....

We called it a "well." They were quite popular amonst rural communities.

That being said, I wouldn't pay $12 a gallon for it now.

[susanna]

7. I have a well.

But the water is treated because of arsenic levels.

My ignorance is due to my own peculiar circumstances, I guess.

Laugh as you like.

[Wounded Bear]

8. It's all good...

It always depends on location, of course. Nowadays, pollutants have spread so far as to be nearly ubiquitous. Can't blame you for having your water tested and taking proper measures. Certainly not laughing at you personally, just at the idea of spending $12 a gallon for well water.

[susanna]

9. Exactly!

I live near the Great Lakes and everyone thinks "fresh, clean water." It's true, for the most part, but there are pockets where we have to treat our water because of the potential for harm from millennia-old underground reservoirs. It's not all roses.

In my original post, I was really just thinking of the same people you're talking about - spending BIG $$$$$ for untreated water.

In other words, it's all good here too.

[susanna]

14. Also, I should note -

the arsenic levels aren''t from pollution; they are from the very source of the water in the aquifers. It's written into your home ownership papers when you buy. I knew what I was getting into, but wanted to make sure people understand that all wells are not the same.

[melman]

5. I saw an article on this a couple of days ago

they had some picture of his food and it wasn't arugula and spinach. It was like chilidogs and fried ravioli and crap like that.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

10. In this country specific foods are either demonized or lionized.

I get so tired of reading bullshit articles about how consuming this particular food will protect you from some awful disease, or this other one will guarantee an early death. In reality, if you actually read the articles, studies show that consuming some food will (supposedly) increase your chance of contracting some already rare disease by less than 10%. So, if you eat that terrible food, your chance of contracting that nasty disease is still less than 1 in 100.

Most people don't understand statistics, even if they actually read the articles all the way to the end.

The current fad for "paleo" diets absolutely begs the question of where in the world are you thinking about for your paleo diet? Because a paleo diet in northern Europe would be a lot different from one in southern Europe and different still from one in the eastern Mediterranean as compared to the Western Mediterranean. And should I even bring up paleo diets any where else in the world?

And the nonsense around gluten is worthy of many paragraphs of refutation.

I will put it this way. No food is poison, unless you happen to be deathly allergic to it. In which case it is poison for you. But only for you. Not for everyone else.

[watoos]

11. Is Glyphosate poison?

I guess you are technically correct, the GMO food you eat isn't poison, but the Glyphosate that is sprayed on the food is. The farmer in France who after 12 years of fighting with Monsanto (Bayer) just won his court case. I bet that Monsanto (Bayer) couldn't prove that the farmer was allergic to Glyphosate.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

13. Is glyphosate a food? If so, how do you prepare it?

As a main? A side dish? Dessert?

I'm talking about the bullshit about gluten will kill you, no one should eat meat, some obscure berry will cure cancer. I'm referring to the nonsense people believe about food. Or spices. There's some crap out there about tumeric being some sort of cure all.

[Javaman]

12. moron ceos with no clue choose insanity to justify their existence. nt