this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
27 points (100.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

45105 readers
1410 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Edit: the hypothetical diet wouldn't be pure skittles, it's just replacing rice/pasta/bread/etc. with skittles and still getting the proper protein and fiber

top 23 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] j4k3@piefed.world 24 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Peanut M&M's would be better. Eating small portion sizes and more often is the main thing. Skittles will likely cause digestive issues because of the lack of fiber. How your body responds to all that sugar is also a long term issue, but age is a factor there.

I started my journey from 350 lbs to 190 lbs on Peanut M&M's, Adderall, and way too much of an internet cafe. I just ate a few when I felt light headed, but was super focused on CS/BF/CoD. I only did that for a month or so after having to move back in with family. Then I started riding bikes a lot, like 400+ mile weeks.

[–] seathru@quokk.au 11 points 2 days ago

Ahh, the good old Jenny Crank diet.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I mean... I wouldn't do this. But millions live on a similar diet every day (minus the multivitamin). Sugary cereal for breakfast with fruit flavored "juice", a fried chicken sandwich for lunch (kudos for the chicken, but then its white bread, white flour, soybean oil, and flavored soybean oil) plus a soda, and finally, say, boxed mac and cheese for dinner with a canned margarita to take the edge off.

Day to day, you will adapt and how you feel on the diet will start to feel "normal". But you will get fat, be at higher risk for any number of health issues in the long term, and will likely feel depressed. But relative to, like, starving to death, you'll be pretty healthy.

Yeah the lack of fiber will do a lot of damage over time too.

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Would you still be eating vegetables? Eating no fiber whatsoever would probably do you in. If you're still eating sufficient amounts of vegetables, you might not need supplements at all.

And definitely do law carb if all your carbs are sugar ...

[–] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 5 points 2 days ago

You'd end up buying your dentist's boat.

My intuition says that I'd wind up having a headache for the rest of my life.

[–] Pogogunner@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 days ago

Over the long term, I suspect the sugar spikes and crashes would cause you to eat a lot more calories/sugar than a normal diet, and likely lead to diabetes.

Multivitamins are useful some a small handful of nutritional deficiencies but wouldn't come close to rescuing this diet.

[–] 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

wtf. multivitamins are largely a marketing scam, most of that shit will just go out of your body anyway, you are paying for enhanced urine. and skittles? food source? really?

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Source on multivitamins being a scam? I'm aware that it is preferrable to get nutrients from whole foods - but also, my bias of "the human body isn't dumb" says that if you are significantly deficient in iron, and take a multivitamin with iron, your body will try its best to absorb the iron and you'll be better off than you would be otherwise. Plus, multivitamins are cheap, which is one of the main reasons I've heard people advocate for them - a days worth of multivitamin costs pennies, so why the hell not? It's a good hedge.

[–] 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 days ago (3 children)

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/is-there-really-any-benefit-to-multivitamins

significantly deficient in iron

if you are significantly deficient in anything, then take whatever your doctor recommends. but this idea people have "oh pop a pill a to get some vitamin c and others, you will be healthy" is just marketing.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I mean, the context I hear the advice in is "yeah, eat a healthy diet. Take a generic multivitamin if you want - you provably aren't lacking anything, but it'll make sure you aren't." For context, I hear this advice given to people who already care a lot about their diet for the sake of athletic performance.

Also, your link didn't convince me of the above claim that you just piss out everything in a multivitamin. It didn't mention that. It just said multivitamins don't prevent heart attacks, which.... I never thought they did.

[–] 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

check the other article i have strategically hidden as reply to myself.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Are people really expecting vitamins to heal disease? No wonder why you called it a scam. I just thought that vitamins would do their nutritional job instead of performing miracles.

[–] 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

there is one that is slightly more in favor. so take your pick i guess

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/should-i-take-a-daily-multivitamin

Most studies have not shown a definitive health benefit of a daily MVM supplement for men like you. However, a recent clinical trial, published online Jan. 18, 2024, by The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests taking MVMs may help delay cognitive decline in older adults.

For the trial, 573 participants were given baseline cognitive and memory tests. Half were given one standard MVM daily, and the other half took a placebo. Both groups were unaware of which one they were given. The study participants were retested again after two years. The people who took the MVM scored slightly higher on the memory and cognitive tests than those who took the placebo.

but also says:

The grocery and drugstore shelves are full of other supplements, which are heavily promoted for all kinds of health benefits, most of which have no scientific evidence to support their use. It's always best to check with the pharmacist or doctor before taking any individual supplement.

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

That isn't really any better than the other link, it's pretty hard to be vitamin-deficient enough to e.g. develop scurvy even if you eat only junkfood (AFAIK even french fries contain some amount of vitamin C, and most burgers have raw lettuce and tomato). Early Sailors ate literally nothing but bread (hard tack), cured meat and perhaps fish for months at a time.

Iron ≠ vitamin. You are really pissing out most of the vitamins in vitamin supplements. And when I say most it's closer to all of it.

And some of them have ridiculous dosages. For example some have up to 10x the recommended maximum daily B12 amount and that can and does cause permanent nerve damage if taken daily for an extended period. My wife caught it early when symptoms hadn't gotten chronic yet, she was lucky.

[–] rowinxavier@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Kind of yes, kind of no.

Short term there is not a huge difference between getting sugar from complex carbs or simple carbs and most vitamins and micro nutrients will be OK with a few weeks of worse absorption and slowly lowering levels.

Medium term this would be bad, but so is the standard western diet. Carbs are not a great source for energy for a number of reasons but one of the key ones can be seen with vitamin C. Why do we not have functional pathways for making vitamin C? Our closest relatives do, the other great apes, and almost all other mammals do too. In fact as far as I am aware one of the only other mammals missing the ability to make vitamin C is the guinea pig which is especially ironic considering it was the aminal selected to understand scurvy, an extreme form of vitamin C deficiency.

We don't need anywhere near the same level of vitamin C if we are not eating sugars, complex or simple. Eating a very very low carb diet, deep into the ketogenic end, reduces the need for vitamin C. Taking someone who has symptoms of scurvy and switching them to a carnivore diet seems to reverse the symptoms fairly promptly and plenty of people eat just meat for decades at a time without developing scurvy, so it seems safe enough.

So if you look at a diet made of highly processed high carb foods like the current standard American diet you would see a measurable but not extreme change in the short to medium term, but in the medium to long term it would get worse. If you compare to a more reasonable diet which doesn't have huge amounts of processed foods or carbs in it then it would be a bigger difference.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No.

you need proteins. neither skittles nor the vast majority of multivitamins contain proteins. And in any case, the vast majority of "junkfood diets" suck for your health. Usually they're a gimmick to teach you about caloric intake for weightloss (and maybe some chemistry.)

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 19 points 2 days ago

OP didn't ask about only eating skittles and multivitamins, they asked about replacing "traditional carb sources" with skittles and multivitamins. Meat, eggs or hard cheese are not "traditional carb sources" by any definition.

[–] pyrinix@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 2 days ago

Call Liberty

[–] disregardable@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

no, you do in fact need grains and fruits.