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Comparison of food from the best to the worst - with a couple of intermediate steps
This is designed to show that while a complete food like beef may equal the number of kilocalories in a nutritionally void food like sugar, the nutrient requirements can be satisfactorily met by one but not by the other. They may both provide the same amount of energy but the body will have to continue to signal that it needs more if you feed it plain sugar. Man cannot live by bread alone, but he can live by beef. Putting it another way, if you can get the full complement of essential amino and fatty acids, as well as all the essential vitamins and minerals, from a food like beef by eating around 2000 kilocalories a day, what then is the effect of eating say half your energy needs in beef and half in bread (or sugar)? Wouldn't you potentially be diluting your food, making it less nutritious while still meeting your energy requirements? Won't that then cause your body to seek the missing nutrients and then cause you to overeat in order to get them? |
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I contend that in a natural animal, energy balance will be maintained if it eats its 'species appropriate' food - what it would normally eat if left to its own devices in the wild. On the other hand, if you feed a ruminant an unnatural food (such as grains), you will cause it to overeat as it seeks its nutrient balance, thereby fattening it up.
I further contend that the 'species appropriate' food for humans is animal-based and that plant-based foods are less than optimal in terms of nutrient bio-availability. No plant that grows naturally can supply a full complement of nutrients for humans, nor is it easy to put together a batch of naturally occurring plants to achieve that end collectively.
On the other hand, most animal sources of food provide the nearest match to our nutritional needs.
Current guidelines, suggesting particular levels of nutrients as RDAs, are based on examination of diets that are comparatively recent in terms of our evolution. They are skewed to what we have found possible deficiencies in, based on the foods we currently eat (or are recommended to eat). It seems that no recognition is given to the fact that there are anti-nutrients in plants that bind to some of the divalent, positively charged ions such as iron, calcium, magnesium, zinc and copper, thus interfering with our taking up of these minerals.
I further contend that the 'species appropriate' food for humans is animal-based and that plant-based foods are less than optimal in terms of nutrient bio-availability. No plant that grows naturally can supply a full complement of nutrients for humans, nor is it easy to put together a batch of naturally occurring plants to achieve that end collectively.
On the other hand, most animal sources of food provide the nearest match to our nutritional needs.
Current guidelines, suggesting particular levels of nutrients as RDAs, are based on examination of diets that are comparatively recent in terms of our evolution. They are skewed to what we have found possible deficiencies in, based on the foods we currently eat (or are recommended to eat). It seems that no recognition is given to the fact that there are anti-nutrients in plants that bind to some of the divalent, positively charged ions such as iron, calcium, magnesium, zinc and copper, thus interfering with our taking up of these minerals.
Counting calories is not enough to manage appetite and body weight. In the western world, where food is abundant, if you reduce your calorie intake but fail to reach your protein target you will find it hard to resist hunger pangs.
Calories-in-calories-out, substrate cycles and diesel engines
Professor Richard David Feinman
Professor Richard David Feinman
Discussions on energy balance and diet have not improved over the years. Most of social media and even the medical literature pretty much conform to what is called, in communications, half-duplex, and tends to generate, as they say, more heat than light. What remains interesting, however, are the scientific points associated with metabolic inefficiency,
