Diet, Nutrition and SupplementationPost here for supplement reviews or nutritional advice. If you're trying to get "ripped abz" THIS is where you should be.
I read this book on recommendation of a friend and there are some very interesting concepts. A lot of the same ideas in the caveman diet and other similar diets in that the author believes so much of the food we consume has been altered and had chemicals added that we have lost a lot of the nutritional value.
I think it would be almost impossible to strictly stick to this unless you happen to live next door to a Whole Foods Market, I have been trying to incorporate a lot of the organic and unaltered foods into my diet for the last week. I know that's too early to tell much, but so far I do seem to be consuming fewer calories, but yet I am not hungry.
Just thought it was an interesting read and wanted to share. I will see how long I stick with the program. (those organically grown apples are expensive!!)
I am blessed living in a country where I walk out of my apartment building and there are 10 old women sitting on little wooden chairs selling all sorts of ugly homegrown things that are good for you (like hailstruck apples that look like a Frankenstein type of apple), dill weed, lettuce, vine leaves, wild mushrooms, eggs. We even make our own yogurt sometimes. It is interesting living like that, when I am in the States I literally spend thousands of dollars a month to just eat well. I feel bad for you, but hey, at least you have food labels
You don't have to leave the country to find "organic" foods but you do have to get out into the country. Most of the food that we eat during the summer and fall at least is grown in our garden and we have an orchard with apple and peach trees for fruit. Not as pretty and bug free as the stuff at the grocery store but guaranteed chemical free.
Yep, I have a vegetable garden this year for the first time in several years and refuse to use pesticides. Actually, I believe that garden pests tend to balance themselves out pretty well... with some exceptions... my eggplants have been decimated with flea beetles... but everything else has done well. I have been practically living off tomatoes the last few weeks. LOL.
Trying to shop only at a Whole Foods Market would be out of reach for many/most people's budgets, unfortunately. It would be nice if organic agricultural approaches would become more mainstreamed.
Sometimes you have to make smart picks on where to spend your food money.
I don't eat that much fresh fruit, so I'm not as careful about organic there. I tend to eat a lot of frozen peaches, blueberries, and strawberries in my yogurt. Trader Joe's has organic frozen fruit for only a TINY bit more than the non-organic stuff. Same with their yogurt.
I eat a lot of spinach (cooked and for salads), so I try to get big bags of the organic stuff. Sometimes the frozen is a lot cheaper and if you're going to cook it anyway...
I eat a ton of chicken, so try to make bulk purchases of it when I can. Whole birds and cut them up, using the whole carcass for a variety of things. Homemade chicken soup is pretty tasty, filling, and very easy to make.
Remember that organic free range birds tend to have a better Omega-3 content, so I feel a little easier about eating the dark meat, too.
Forgot. Another decent book is the Paleo Diet, by Dr. Loren Cordain. I heard about it in one of the Berardi MP3s (Interview for Doug Jackson with Dr. Loren Cordain). Berardi Audio
It's got a lot of similar concepts, but it also would be hard to stick to 100%. For instance, he says that we just aren't designed to eat grains. Theoretically, we would have needed to cook them to eat them, and since fire hasn't been around that long, we haven't had time to adapt to them. So, we don't handle grains well. So, don't eat them. Same with beans.
Now, I'm NOT trying to start a religious debate here. You can argue with the "whys" and "how longs" all you want, but the concepts in both The Maker's Diet and the Paleo Diet both have evidence to support that they work.
Both advocate eating more natural and unprocessed foods, and animal products that are more along the lines of what we ate thousands of years ago, higher Omega-3s, etc.. I'd say that the Paleo Diet might be a more extreme diet, though (NO grains and legumes (peanuts, too!).
Each author just has a different take on how these things came to be.
There's also a forthcoming Paleo Diet for Athletes. Due out toward the end of summer, I think.
I'm in (and used to be on the board of) a small organic meat co-op. We get pasture-raised beef and chicken. We use one small family farm for each. The prices are outrageous, but then who would be able to compete with agribusiness' artifically low prices?
Oh yeah, the meat and chicken taste fantastic! The beef actually reminds me of what beef used to taste like when I was a kid (something must have changed in the last 30 years) and the chicken tastes like what you get overseas in the third world where the chicken was alive an hour before it ended up on your plate. For those who haven't tried it, chicken actually has a flavor of its own - it is not simply a blank pallete on which you lay your spices.
Originally posted by galya: If you plant hemp around your vegetables, you won't have pests. I guess it's a question of whether the cops would buy your story.
Yet another advantage of hemp. It's sad that it's not legal.
Just had some organic, free range turkey...OMG what have I been missing all these years eating that crap from Butterball. This is some of the best meat I have ever had, I highly recommend you try it.
· Organ meats- liver and kidneys (I accept that many people find these unpalatable and won’t eat them)
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Although I don't see myself following this to the letter, I do try to center the core of my diet around vegetables, fruits, nuts,lean meat and fish, and eggs. But I do eat low fat dairy every day and also have whole grains every day. And peanuts or peanut butter!
Jeeez - you only live once!
I should post this on the Runner's World nutrition forum and watch everyone go bezerko. [img]tongue.gif[/img]
Interesting reading, BamaDave. He's got quite a few good points, and I agree that we should be concerned with the chemicals we're ingesting; more fruits and vegetables are a good place to start.
But I notice he avoids mentioning a rather important portion of the hunter-gatherer diet: insects. I seem to recall something from National Geographic (I think) that mentioned about 1/3 of the protein eaten by nonfarming societies comes from insects. Admittedly, suggesting that we eat bugs would make this diet a REALLY tough sell to Americans.
The other thing I wonder about is getting enough calcium on this diet. One would have to eat a lot of leafy greens to get enough, I think.
Thanks for the link! I enjoyed reading it.
__________________ The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same. -- Carlos Castaneda
RacerBill, I guess when I go running in the evenings and come home plastered with gnats like the front end of a car, I should just scoop them all off and sprinkle them on my dinner!
I hadn't thought about the calcium aspect -- maybe on the Paleo Diet you gnaw on the bones after dinner?
I agree that the Paleo Diet concept has an interesting basis... although, I don't agree that foods not eaten by early man have to be rejected across the board. Just because early man couldn't eat those foods doesn't mean that some are not healthy or beneficial. I doubt cavemen ate flaxseed, should I stop grinding that up and eating it?? Nevertheless, I do agree with the idea that our bodies are not geared to subsist on a diet comprised predominantly of grain-based foods...
It has many good aspects, focusing on good fats, protein, and nutrient dense foods(fruits/vegetibles) will always be a good plan
I agree aswell that grains should be a small part of our diet HOWEVER these guys sure do hate on grains. Cereal crops were extremely important to the rise of advanced civiliations. Gotta give them some respect for that.
I suspect going cold turkey on the Paleo Diet can be expensive as well. Meat can be expensive. Fresh fruits are expensive. Vegetables can be expensive as well when purchased fresh and in the quantities needed to support a diet around which they form the basis (one of the reasons I buy a lot of frozen veggies)....
I imagine economics are one of the reasons behind promotion of grains as dietary foundation.
Both of these diets seem to diss the frozen stuff. I don't really see a downside to frozen, as it's often "fresher" than the stuff in the produce aisle. I don't understand their rationale.
I can understand the problem with canned, as it's cooked and often high in sodium. But, I'm going to cook veggies anyway and can buy low sodium versions. So, no problem with canned, for me.
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