Category: Diet

Saturated Fat

The great dividing line in nutrition is over the issue of saturated fat. There are those who think it is causal and highly correlated to heart disease, and should be avoided or minimized to the extent possible in order to keep one’s ticker going along smoothly. And there are those on the other side of that dividing line who think this assertion is nonsense, and saturated fat is no more harmful than any other fat. Where you align yourself on this critical issue has a major impact on the type of diet you carve out as prudent relative to your health.

There is no question that I align myself with the former point of view, and go to great length to see that I consume as little of this dreaded substance as possible. So far, I haven’t had any heart issues at all, and think my dietary choices may be responsible.

It is interesting to me and perfectly understandable that Beyond Meat goes out of its way to emphasize their products have seriously less saturated fat than actual meat, and that their goal is to minimize saturated fat to the extent possible, which tells you which side of the dividing line they are on.

Fruit

Nutrition Chaos

If you read widely in terms of nutrition, you see every claim made by a particular group will have counter claims made by opposing groups — each group having a set bias in terms of advocating a specific diet. So it is much like a war of competing claims. Therefore, there is little doubt that as a science, nutrition is perhaps the most controversial area of study, given this background of competing vested interests.

But there is little to doubt on one point that has been proven over and over again with statistically sound evidence from large-scale experiments — that the vegan, plant-based diet is the healthiest relative to longevity and overall health, and this by a large margin when compared to any other sort of diet.

So if you want to live a long life and in good health, the choice to do so — to the extent you can influence it — is absolutely clear.

Sadly, relatively few people make that choice because they don’t want to give up the foods they have come to enjoy — despite the consequences. The vast majority of people make a compromise with the devil sacrificing their health for pleasure.

Diversify Your Diet

Mushrooms, To Your Health

Netflix has an interesting documentary about mushrooms and other fungi called “Fantastic Fungi”. Not sure many people realize that mushrooms are technically not plants but, instead, their own separate class of organism: fungus, which live off of and decay dead organic matter.

Mushrooms have been getting a lot of recent attention by nutritionists and other scientists relative to their beneficial effect on the human body — Lion’s Mane for the health of the brain, Turkey Tail for fighting cancers, Chaga and Reishe to support the immune system, Cordyceps for the respiratory system.

The above types of mushrooms are just not available to me locally, but their mushroom powders are all available to me online, although expensive. But if their benefits are half as good as what is claimed, they are worth it.

Best Philosophy

48 Hour Fast

I ate quite a bit of food at the end of this fast, in a very short amount of time. I wonder if that is typical — overeating at the end of a longer fast? I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I took that first bite, and then food craving kicked in big time. So now I’m thinking the next time I do 48 hrs., I’ll try to limit the amount of food when the fasts ends. Seems counterproductive to do a long fast, and then eat an enormous number of calories when it ends.

Relishing Food

Back to Veganism

If you want to go back to being a vegan or want to try it for the first time, start by going meatless just 2 days a week, but pick specific days, like all Mondays and Thursdays. And after you’ve done that a while, expand to 4 days a week, etc.

There is no question that vegans live the longest — by far — and that a diet that includes meat, particularly one with heavy meat consumption, is much more correlated with both heart disease and cancer, which has been known now for decades, ever since the seminal China Study. If you want to live long and without the two biggest risks to your health (heart disease and cancer), then veganism is a no brainer…if you can manage to do it.

Relishing Food

Weight Control

Not weight loss but weight control — what can you do to stabilize your weight, not to lose weight per se, but instead to help ensure that it doesn’t creep back up?

One thing that I do is once a week, on a designated day that I know I’m obligated to use for that purpose, I have a low-calorie day. I shoot for 550+ calories lower than what I usually eat (Cronometer helps a lot with this). Tuesday is my low-calorie day, and I usually eat the same assortment of foods, which tend to be very low in fat calories. But there are little nuances on that particular day that help me get to minus 550 calories. For instance, instead of my usual 3 prunes I only have 2, instead of 2 figs, just the 1. Instead of my usual mouthful of walnuts, I’ll skip nuts entirely, and have an extra slice of lean turkey. With enough of these nuances, it is surprisingly easy to have such a low-calorie day — and you don’t feel deprived.

Having such a lean day one day a week means that on those other days when you inevitably go “over budget,” sort of speak, it all gets compensated for in the end — and the weight stays amazingly stable, no longer so erratic.

Omega 3 Fat Hurdles

Omega 3 Fat Hurdles

Food in general has to go through quite a thicket of hurdles before its nutrition can actually be used by the body. First, there’s digestion that begins in the mouth, accelerates with the acid in the stomach, and really takes off in the small intestines with digestive enzymes and all those critical bacteria doing their thing, but then the nutrition that the small intestines admits into the body must first pass muster with that filtration system of the body, the liver, before it finally gets admitted to the blood stream and can actually be used by the body. Any inefficiencies in any of these processes along the way and that means the food you think your body will take advantage of — because you did eat it — won’t actually be fully utilized by the body but, to the extent it was not properly “processed,” instead passes right through you with no benefit.

This brings us to what many nutritionist speak about constantly — the all-important ratio between the very valuable Omega 3 fat and the commonly overconsumed Omega 6 fat. Why is this ratio so important, you may ask? It’s important because both fats use the same digestive enzymes in the body, and therefore compete for their use. And there is a finite number of these specific digestive enzymes in the body at any given time, (although the healthier your diet, the greater the number). If the ratio between Omega 3 fat and Omega 6 fat becomes too skewed in favor of Omega 6 fat, then the Omega 6 fat utilizes a disproportionate amount of those limited number of digestive enzymes, and the Omega 3 fat gets left out in the cold, so of speak. So this skewed ratio, which is very common in the SAD diet, produces a huge inefficiency in digestive processes mentioned above relative to the Omega 3 fat you ate versus the Omega 3 fat that the body actually ends up using.

They think the modern contemporary diet can be become as skewed as 1:16 when our caveman ancestors had a diet that was 1:2. Exactly what ratio is the ideal ratio is a controversial subject, but there is no question that the SAD diet is hopeless skewed in favor of Omega 6 fat, and therefore those people who have this skewed ratio in their diet may think they are getting enough Omega 3 fat in their diet, but because of their warped Omega ratio, are in fact not fully utilizing the amount of Omega 3 fat they eat, perhaps to an alarming degree.

And so it is not enough to know how many grams of Omega 3 fat are in your daily diet — you have to also know your ratio.

Omega Ratio

My Almost-Vegan Diet