Healthiest Fruits to grow

I have read it. Prior to this study no one had presented any coherent idea as to why humans allegedly needed fiber. It was simply a much repeated myth. Now they know why mice need fiber. Mice in the natural world eat a diet rich in fiber. It makes sense that they have evolved to depend on fiber.

Human beings are not mice. Most humans living in the natural eat a lot less fiber than mice as a percentage of their diet. We know that some of the longest lived human beings in the world eat diets high in fat and low in fiber. We also know that some some types of fiber are really not good for human beings at all. I guess you havenā€™t read this-

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Iā€™m interested more in mainstream scientific consensus. Outliers sometimes turn out to be right, but not usually. There is much more money in being a contrarian when you are selling books and charlatans tend to reign supreme. What in this manā€™s biography makes him a believable source of info?

I tried to find other reviews of this writer or his work, but he appears to be unpublished in any scientific journals so his ideas are not widely reviewed.

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On the island of Malta unless you get a burger or a steak the meal is secondarily meat, and there they also have 3 or 4 course meals which does not include the dessert so even if you had a steak it could still be a small part of the meal. Once I was in a restaurant in Malta at a place that had 3 course meals one of the food items was chicken on the bone, it was so big that even if I eat nothing else I still could not finish it.

India is the same way, as far as I can tell meat is never the main item of the meal and southern India is almost vegetarian, only some of their food has meat in it, a lot does not have any.

for short chain fatty acid production in situ. Even though I ingest a lot of them, through ghee and coconut oil, they donā€™t make it to the large intestine and colon. Those are parts of the human body where the blood does not go (if you eat tripe, you know there are no veins), and their sole nourishment is SCFA absorbed directly through the wall. That part of the human body is also 90% of your immune system, and mediates the absorption of many nutrients. Note that other mono-gastric animals, such as gorillas or pigs, derive approximately 2/3 of their calories from SCFA, through fermentation of much larger amounts of fiber in their much larger/longer guts.

This guy does not seem to distinguish between fermentable and non-fermentable fiber. He is completely wrong that italian, french and japanese eat a fiber-free diet, and I spent years in those countries. Grains are an average source of fermentable fiber, and all those populations eat substantial amounts of high quality fiber through beans (best source) and root vegetables (potatoes close to best, but all very very good). Ancestral carbohydrates, things such as chestnuts, acorn, breadfruit, squash, also are tops, and I note that chestnuts are ubiquitous in all those countries.

I may agree that fibrous fiber, things such as the long fibers in celery, are totally unneeded. But fermentable fiber should be considered as the fourth macro-nutrient. Not only for SCFA, you will never get enough K2 or endogenous B vitamins without, and mineral absorption will be vastly reduced.

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I make beef/broccoli a lot and i load it full of broccoli but the beef has to be in there.

I eat about everything, but usually in moderation. Anything i grow i consider healthy.

I have cut back on my fruit eatingā€¦i shoot for more veggies/fats/moderate amts of meat. Things like ginger, tumeric, lots of black pepper ā€¦ we eat a lot of sourdough (local stuff)ā€¦awesome bread. I work out a lot so i try to keep my protein/calories up.

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Do you have research based info to confirm a high protein diet helps form big muscles? The average American diet has so much more protein than we need from what Iā€™ve been reading recently that Iā€™m just curious.

My nephew made me feel like a fool a few months ago when I insisted his vegetarian diet was probably lacking in enough complete protein- he did a quick search on his phone and showed me some contradictory research to my long debunked assumption. When I got home I delved deeper and it appears you could double your protein needs with very little effort and without eating much meat.

I remember when I was younger I heard that the body will use protein for the most important things first, people who do way more than the average muscle building, the ones you see in muscle building competitions need way more protein than someone who does muscle building much less aggressively. That has been my understanding, the human body if fed healthy still may not have enough nutrients if the body needs more than usual. Like when people hike aggressively they need more nutrients than a person who does light hiking. The problem with studies is that they do not test every important scenario.

One of my life lessons is what use to be correct is now wrong. Wonder how many foods being promoted today will not make the the approved list ten years from now. I see so many commercials on TV that most likely could not pass even a smell test.

Iā€™ve been studying the research of various ā€œnutritionistsā€ for forty years (since Adele Davis), and the only thing they all seem to agree on is to stay away from processed foods: Some will have ā€œscientificā€ studies that claim a high meat and no carbohydrate diet is the healthiest, others have data that supports the oppositeā€¦a high carbohydrate and no meat diet is best. Bluezone.com looks at spots around the world where people live the longest and healthiest (over 100). The only diet thing that seemed to correlate was diets that included beansā€¦The rest boiled down to having exercise as a part of their daily routine and a active and happy social life.

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And olive oil!

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Beans are very good foods but thatā€™s not the essence of a blue zone diet. They eat plant based diets, little to no red meat, and no processed foods. At least thatā€™s my understanding.

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I know the diet of Sardinians intimately, and they are quite the omnivores. The Blue Zone authors lose much credibility when, at the beginning of that chapter, they go visit a very active 75-years old and they find him inside a steer he has just butchered, trying to scrape out the last gut remnants. The steer is for his household and his three children families. Then at the end the authors stress the little to no red meat angle. It boggles the mind.
They eat plenty of offal, cheese, and bugs. Having spoken to older Barbaricini (the exact county which the authors visit, province of Nuoro), they also say that in the old days the fat of choice was lard, not olive oil.

I think there is good evidence that vegetarian diets lead to longer life spans, compared to the 300+grams/day of meat that many Westerners eat. Besides the higher intake of some nutrients cmp to the general population, most likely low protein diets suppress the mTOR hormone and that leads to enhanced repair/recycling in the body (autophagy). But this says nothing about 100 grams being better or worse, choosing grass-fed offal versus CAFO chicken breast, what is the optimal meat intake in the presence of intermittent fasting (which promotes autophagy independently), and it says nothing about animal fats. Vegetarians are, after all, a malnourished bunch. If you show me a starved African child i will show you a vegetarian.

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That only proves that meat is the most expensive source of calories. I know plenty on well nourished vegetarians and the idea that flesh derived protein is essential for a fully nourishing diet has been debunked completely by millions of healthy vegetarians right in this country and also a good bit of research. Becoming a vegetarian - Harvard Health

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it is a risk you are taking, and anyway these vegetarians tend to be young, and taking pills because by itself the diet is insufficient. Not in macro-nutrients but choline, chondroitin, carnitine, B12, often K2, B6 if you donā€™t absorb it well from veg foods, ditto for retinol (in my case, I have poor conversion of beta carotene), Omega 3 fats (we only have a few% conversion of ALA into DHA/EPA, declining with age), zinc, copper, iodine, and often selenium and iron.

In aminoacids, glycin is always lacking (as is lacking in the meat eating population, since they eat only muscle - the same is true for chondroitin which comes from cartilage) but no one notices because everyone is deficient. Taurine is an issue too, although again you will get plenty only with offal.

When I was in my 20s i could survive and even thrive as a vegan, amongst other things because i was motivated to eat beans and vegetables instead of pasta. now I would be a larva and i see it the numerous blood tests that I have been doing online (I do get help from an alternative doctor who is a near vegetarian). I greyed early due to my avoidance of supermarket meat (actually, in 8 years from about 41 to 49), and my hair color (as well as other things) stabilized only after we bought a freezer and then a grass fed steer with other families.

There is also an undercurrent in veg*anism of avoidance of fats which is totally wrong, and also vegetable fats will never be as healthy as animal fats. For one thing they tend to be less saturated and therefore more reactive in the human body. No doubt "plant-basedā€™ web guys like Greger get a lot of funding from Big Pharma.

I note that the two best sites in the Blue Zone, Okinawa and Sardinia, both have an average intake of about 200 grams/day of meat, with lard being the fat of choice (little fish, surprisingly). Sardinians also eat a lot of sheep dairy. I am sure the ideal meat intake could go down if we were to switch to more nutrient dense animal foods (bugs and shellfish), but until then, our guts are quite small and do not have the processing power needed for a nutrient-sufficient vegan diet. The ā€œexpensive tissue hypothesisā€ is basically this. We have big brains and small guts, and nutrient density matters.

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Tons of research although I have none at hand. I consume about 1 gm of protein per pound of body weight while Iā€™m bulking these days. Some advanced lifters consume even more. Youā€™d be hard pressed to reach that amount with any regular diet. Unless you consume a ton of calories.

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Seriously!!! In this day and age!!!

I am kicking myself for starting this thread! This is a forum for growing fruits! We have gone way off topicā€¦ Diets are a very delicate topic to discuss. Opinions even among nutrition experts are extremes! I know folks who look great on a high meat diet, also others who look great on a whole foods plant based diet!

Well said! One thing for which there is plenty of scientific evidence and consensus across the board - avoid processed foods.

Try this experiment to decide for yourself whatā€™s best for you!

  • Get your baseline blood work done.

  • Eat whatever you think is healthy in large quantities for the next 6 weeks - Olive oil diet, Healthy animal fat diet, High Carb Low Fat, High Fat Low Carb, Grass fed meat, All real foods no processed foods, Junk food vegan, Whole foods plant based vegan, whatever else you fancy!

  • Get your blood work done again in 6 weeks.

Your test results will tell you if your right or wrong! Iā€™ve done this testing for a few of the options above. I am not going to share the results here :wink: but will tell you and the results were shocking. Find out for yourself. Everyone needs to figure out for themselves what choices to make. There are also other aspects to take into account than just health ā€“ ethical/environmental/etc

Every industry (meat/dairy/egg) funds millions to promote research to show their products are good for you. The fruit and veggie industry is so poor, they cant!

Fruit and Vegetable industry donā€™t fund Dr. Neal Barnard, Dr. Colin Campbell (China Study), Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Dr. McDougall, Dr. Kim Williams - but all these doctors ask you to eat more fruits, veggies, beans, whole grains!

Some choose to die of cancer, some of heart disease, some of obesity, some of type2 diabetes. I like to think I choose to die of old age :slight_smile:

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That is totally false I used to be on the most part vegetarian for years, occasionally I had a weakness and Iā€™d go out and eat something I crave, like Chinese food, or a burger with fries. I felt way more energetic and healthy than I did before that point in my life. Meat is not actually needed at all. That is why one of the food groups called the meat group has nuts/seeds in it. I did a lot of checking of labels, itā€™s easy to get high protein without meat. Then I did not take anything vitamin like. I consumed a gallon of milk in 5 days, I pigged out on peanuts at one time and a few times I bought so much yogurt at a huge discount that that was my main diet for weeks.

Lets see in Africa they starve due to a lack of food, many of them drink dirty diseased water, and in some parts there are high rates of disease and little to no medical treatment.

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Crazy, Iā€™m very sorry if you are upset about this thread going off topic, but that is generally tolerated on this forum, especially after the main point of the topic has been thoroughly explored. Scott has mentioned that the e-mail notifications can be annoying when it is really no longer your topic and there is some way to stop this as I recall.

Iā€™m a forum member that loves to argue, but it is not an activity to everyoneā€™s taste and I certainly respect the gentler folk on this forum. Give me the word and I will not post any more non-healthy fruit comments on what was originally your thread.

As the husband of an Ethiopian, I feel duty bound to say that many people in and from African countries resent the ā€œstarving Africanā€ stereotype. Peasants who do subsistence farming facing drought and areas torn by civil (usually tribal) war are prone to famine, but starvation is not the norm and most Africans have never experienced famine.

Incidentally, extreme poverty in Africa has been reduced by over 50% in the last 20 years while poverty in the U.S. has grown during that time, so nourishment in Africa as a whole is rapidly improving while in the U.S., not so much.

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There isnā€™t tons of research on this based on a search I just did- research is quite limited for this group (and no wonder, who would pay for it?). Hereā€™s something I found Should one gram per pound be the new RDA for bodybuilders? | Examine.com which seems to indicate about 6 ounces of protein a day is the max requirement for men weighing around 200 pounds when engaged in ā€œbody buildingā€.

Based on this, you are correct- that is about 4X current recs for the average man and double the intake of the average American man. However this is from a publication that serves the nutrient supplement industry which makes lots of money selling various forms of protein supplements.

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