How super are those pricey 'superfoods'?
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For starters I think most people agree there is no need to replace electrolytes during endurance activities that do not exceed 1 hour, oddly the length of time in this study. I’m not sure anyone claims coconut water hydrates better than water, but certainly it’s going to be more beneficial for replacing lost electrolytes. Personally, I’d like to see a study regarding coconut milk vs water and the hydration effects on the intestines themselves, my hypothesis would be intestines hydrated with coconut milk more readily absorb vitamins and nutrients from other foods than intestines hydrated with just water, either way it would be an interesting experiment.
As to chia seeds being compared to salmon, that alone should probably confirm their status as a food rich in omega 3 fatty acids, as salmon is one of the best sources of omega 3 fatty acids. But what’s the use case? As a runner I am more inclined to drink water or coconut milk with a teaspoon of soaked chia seeds rather than run with a belly full of salmon, but for dinner I’d rather have a plate of salmon than a teaspoon of chia seed. And omega 3s are not the sole benefit of chia seeds, As natures form of time release capsules they will provide some degree of continued hydration during long runs from the liquid they were soaked in that salmon will not. It seems they could have measured the hydrating effects of the chia seed vs the salmon, but instead they only seem to focus on the percent of omega 3 obsorption of chia vs salmon, but as I said these were oddly isolated measurements.
I'd love to see the same research, but if you start digging into this subject you will be disappointed in the answers you get.
After researching this stuff as a hobby for some time, I've come to the conclusion that this stuff is not well understood and there is still a lot left to explore.
As technical people, we sometimes look for something along the lines of hey - this is the chemical composition of something, balance some equations and figure out the affect it has on our body chemistry. This is just an exmaple, of course it's simplified and not quite accurate.
Unfortunately it's not that simple and doing this kind of research requires a ton of data and test subjects that just aren't practical in day to day research.
Seems like a lot of peopl end up settling into something like this.
Continue in this thread and you will note comments, for no reason whatsoever, emphatically stating antioxidants don’t exist. But just to preemptively dissuade a dialogue a suggestion people who believe antioxidants exist also believe their consumption will prevent all cancer...somehow no middle ground exists. Such is my experience discussing diet.
I find it’s not just with healthy foods and diets, but one can’t even discuss the correlation of diet and obesity, chronic inflammation, cardio vascular disease, heart disease or diabetes...at least without someone linking to a McDonald’s, Twinkie or ice cream diet where the subject lost weight. In fact I recently had a professor argue with me here on HN that the development of fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes in children (formerly adult onset diabetes) was unrelated to sugar but rather some mystery variable which hadn’t been discovered because children hadn’t been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes prior to the 1980’s and he ate a ton of sugar growing up in the 70’s.
History and entire populace’s of people can serve as the data. Look at the historical diet in Okinawa where they once had the longest life expectancy (but not since the introduction of western diet post WW2) and you will find nutrient/vitamin dense but low calorie foods, foods that are anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant rich, promote healthy liver and kidney function (detoxification). The concepts are not dissimilar to the Mediterranean diet, which also promotes health and longevity, while the foods themselves are dissimilar. It should come as no surprise that these are the same conclusions you and darktree seem to come to with your own experience, only you are focusing more on the macro side of things. I think what you are finding is you are healthy when you maximizie vitamin/nutrient to calorie intake, remove/minimize refined sugar and carbs (both inflammatory and insulin production triggers). Within that framework you can have foods (diets) as diverse as historical Okinawa and the Mediterranean diet, it just so happens food labeled superfoods also tend to (but not always) fall within the same framework.
For me personally, nutrition's been categorized along with politics and religion as topics off limits for discussion in social settings unless I know the people I'm chatting with already.
That's... that's a tall bar. "Provides more electrolytes" than water, sure. "More energizing than water", sure. But hydrates better than water? Though a charitable reading of the fitness buff's claim could be that it's "better for someone working out than water", which, again, is at least possible as there are more dimensions than just "hydration" there.
On a money cost basis, in any place on Earth that has municipal drinking water on tap, drinking that water is the cheapest way to hydrate your body. Whether or not "best" includes the money cost is a matter of opinion, but most people at least include it as a factor.
The same goes for a lot of "superfoods". On a cost basis, whatever you get from 100g of the "superfood" can probably be obtained by eating 200g of something else, sold at a much lower price. Or it's only of interest to vegans, because the "something else" is an animal product. People on western diets just aren't limited by nutrition content. If you eat your normal calorie quota--even a reduced quota from a weight-loss diet--you can always get adequate nutrition from just the normal, healthy, non-"super" foods. There's nothing stopping you from eating a bucketful of broccoli with a bit of salmon, and skipping the wheatgrass-kale-chia-pomegranate super-smoothies forever.
Money quote : “study in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that consuming an isotonic sports drink increased treadmill running time to exhaustion by 27% in recreational runners.”
It doesn’t say what journal though. The key also seems to be isotonic drinks according to that article.
Stinging nettles are amazing: 30% protein by dry weight, incredibly dense with vitamins and minerals, stingers contain human-compatible neurotransmitters. Also, the baby plants are most nutritious and can't sting you yet!
Probably not particularly necessary for healthy individuals, but could reduce the amount of work needed to synthesize your own transmitters (few steps rather than 'from scratch'). Perhaps some individuals with neurotransmitter deficits could see benefit.
As I'm sure you can tell though, I'm not a trained neuroscientist.
That makes some sense. By itself, I can't think of how it would benefit a healthy person. I'm not even sure what kinds of unhealthy people that might help.
So, to me it looked like, 'Hey, here are some fancy words! Don't look too deep, because they are mostly meaningless.' No offense intended, that's just what it looked like to a curious layman.
I have a commercial wild blueberry operation so I hear some really, really strange claims. Things like this peg my skepticism meter. No, my blueberries won't turn you into Superman or Einstein. They don't cure cancer, prevent HIV, or give you psychic powers.
Nettles have serotonin, histamine, and acetylcholine. Serotonin could benefit certain mood disorders, and acetylcholine supplementation can reduce certain kinds of headaches.
As with all natural foods/medicines, I think you'd typically see only minor benefits over long-term supplementation. Much less powerful than modern medicine, but perhaps fewer side effects when taken properly.
You're right to be skeptical though, lots of snake-oil salesmen in the natural food space making dubious claims. Blueberries are probably much healthier for you than eating Cheetos, but probably not that different from other berries. I appreciate scientists studying which species have the most nutrition, but variance in freshness and growing conditions are probably the biggest factors in nutritional density. ex. fresh raspberry are probably better than old poorly grown blueberries.
Blueberries contain antioxidants! LOL
Some of us just wanted to drink that because it tastes good...
When you say it's "on your bullshit list" do you mean you don't believe in things like free radicals? Or do you mean that you don't think there's antioxidants in abundant supply in said product?
As far as antioxidants themselves are concerned, if you do go the pills route, be sure it's not too much. High levels are linked to increased cancer risk, which is the opposite of what people are going for. How much is too much? I dunno, but I figure the amount I get from drinking tea isn't going to kill me.
"'The term "superfoods" is at best meaningless and at worst harmful,' said Catherine Collins, chief dietician at St George's Hospital in London. 'There are so many wrong ideas about superfoods that I don't know where best to begin to dismantle the whole concept.'"
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/may/13/health.healthandw...
PS My WIFE says superfood at least 3 times a week and I have a ton of Chia and Quinoa in my kitchen I like the taste of them and my wife feels healthy. I bought them on Amazon in bulk and were super cheap.
Now if I could only get her to stop juicing!!!!!!! UGH that is the worst! Ginger and Prickly Pear with God knows what else!
They pay three times the price and six times the wholesale price. They are the same berries, harvested the exact same way.
You can double the price again, if you have someone hand pick them instead of raking them. Even better, you can charge them about the same price and let them pick the berries themselves.
This comes up with some regularity in my circle of friends. They've been sold the idea that the value of exercise is only measured in terms of calories burned per minute of activity. Not only is this negating 90% of the benefits for exercise, it's also a useless measure because it's impossible to out-train a bad diet and excess calories.
The thing is, this only applies during high-level competitions, and in no way counts for the rest of the time. Nobody can compete at that level endlessly, obvious. More importantly, it doesn't raise their basal metabolism beyond a certain point, and the basal metabolism is what counts in overall long-term caloric consumption.
For regular humans, there's simply no getting around the fact that running a mile only burns 100 kCal or so[1], and it's possible to eat more than 100kCal in seconds simply by eating a single Reese's peanut butter cup[2].
1. http://running.competitor.com/2015/03/training/many-calories...
2. https://www.hersheys.com/reeses/en_us/products/reeses-peanut...
"Anecdotal sources describe coconut water is used in India for the senicide of elderly people, a procedure known as thalaikoothal.[13] In this custom, the elderly person is made to drink an excessive amount of coconut water, eventually resulting in fever and death, the exact causes of which have not been determined.[13]"
It's well-known that green coconut vendors are very common in India (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tender_coconut_vendo...). They have a cart of coconuts, chop the top off of one as you watch, and hand it to you to drink. As a tourist, it seemed to me to be safer than drinking water.
So, to the original point above, coconut water is not waste, and is quite refreshing, and fills a useful niche if you're worried about stomach bugs.
Fresh, for me, refers to having coconut water where the coconut was cut off the tree minutes prior to being opened up. I don't know enough about how Zico and the like are process to speak with any intelligence as to how it might affect the end-product.
EDIT: that being said, I wouldn't pay $6/liter for coconut water. That's overpriced by a long shot, IMO.