Ranking Vegetables by How Healthy They Are
melmagazine.com
melmagazine.com
That’s disingenuous because 100 grams of spinach only has 23 kcal and 2.9 g of proteins.
To get 1 g of protein per lean body mass, which is about the minimum we need in order to avoid muscle loss or fragile bones, in my case I would need more than 70 g of proteins per day.
If I were to eat only spinach, I would have to eat 2.5 Kg of spinach per day. Can you imagine yourself eating 2.5 Kg of spinach in a single day? You couldn’t, because it’s not possible.
So no, spinach is not a better protein source than beef. And as a matter of fact you won’t find better protein sources than meat.
Beans come closer, the problem with beans being that they are toxic and those proteins won’t get assimilated well.
N.B. calories is a useless metric, don’t fall for it ;-)
> The amount you're talking about is the one commonly used by body builders who are using steroids
Sorry what? Those of us who lift and are trying to grow muscle take more protein, but don't just lump us in with steroid users. https://examine.com/nutrition/how-much-protein-do-you-need/ is an evidence based review on the subject.
I lift and I've found the 1g per lb to be excessive. My point about steroid users is that that's what they eat too.
"Thus, 0.75 g/kg per day (0.6 × 1.25) is the recommended allowance of reference protein for young male adults." [1]
Bodybuilders often do 2x their bodyweight, and more when counting the amount of grams to intake.
Sorry but this is just laughably wrong. Lectins in raw beans are toxic but they are completely destroyed by cooking. The healthiest populations on the planet all eat large quantities of legumes, the protein in which has a number of advantages compared to meat based sources.
So first of all the traditional cooking method for beans is being lost in modern cooking practices. Normally you have to soak the beans for about 24 hours before cooking and the cooking should involve several hours of boiling. With canned beans, which are semi-prepared, or via pressure cooking, which is shallow, the toxicity remains high.
Also speaking from my own experience, there's no other food that gives me an acid reflux or diarrhea faster, or that bloats me any worse than beans do.
Speaking of toxins, lectins aren't the only toxins to worry about. Alpha-amylase inhibitors, which are also found in grains, are another. Phytosterols are another.
Also one example of a toxin that cannot be destroyed via cooking is the amino acid canavanine.
Here's some studies on the subject:
1. "Toxicity of kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) in rats: changes in intestinal permeability": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4018443
This ones claims that kidney beans make rat intestines leaky, allowing bacteria and toxins to enter the body.
2. "Phytohaemagglutinin inhibits gastric acid but not pepsin secretion in conscious rats.": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11595455
This claims that kidney bean lectin phytohemagglutinin (PHA) blocks production of stomach acid. This prevents proper digestion, especially of proteins.
3. "Kidney bean lectin-induced Escherichia coli overgrowth in the small intestine is blocked by GNA, a mannose-specific lectin": https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14973681_Kidney_bea...
This one claims that PHA ingestion “was accompanied by a reversible and PHA dose-dependent overgrowth with E. coli.”
4. "Precocious gut maturation and immune cell expansion by single dose feeding the lectin phytohaemagglutinin to suckling rats": https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...
This one claims that high doses of PHA disturb the mucus and shorten villi.
5. "Inhibition of starch digestion by α-amylase inhibitor reduces the efficiency of utilization of dietary proteins and lipids and retards the growth of rats": https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15416107_Inhibition...
And I quote: As starch digestion . . . was negligible . . . the cecum was practically blocked by solidified digesta. . . . [A]s the distension was not always sufficient, the [intestine] was occasionally ruptured and the rats had to be killed.
6. "Canavanine-induced longevity in mice may require diets with greater than 15.7% protein": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC554090/
This is related to the amino acid canavanine, the toxin that cannot be destroyed by cooking.
The study claims that cavanine can block the synthesis of nitric oxide, an important vascular, immune, and nervous system molecule, can interfere with ammonia disposal, can prevent reproduction in animals and possibly humans.
7. "Effects of L-canavanine on T cells may explain the induction of systemic lupus erythematosus by alfalfa.": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3155617
This study claims that cavanine can induce the autoimmune disease lupus (systemic lupus erythematosus).
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Granted many of these studies have been done on mice, because doing experiments on humans is unethical and expensive and it's pretty obvious that humans aren't mice.
But as you can see, the claim that beans are toxic is anything but laughable ;-)
Also note that the "dose makes the poison". If you're eating beans once or twice per weak, like many of us do, you aren't going to suffer from it. Eat beans daily however and you're probably going to destroy your gut.
A more systematic way to rank vegetables is to look at the fiber content per 100 calories. You generally want this to be high, because a typical modern diet has too little fiber. USDA is a helpful source for this: https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list.
For example, Asparagus has 10.5 grams of fiber per 100 calories. That's indeed very good. Sweet potato has only 3.5 grams of fiber per 100 calories. That's much less, though still better than you'll get from most grains.
By this metric we should all eat grass.
The article mentions 'inulin' - it's a form of carbohydrate that alledgedly doesn't cause the same spike in blood sugar levels as starch. With a family history of type 2 diabetes, I have thus wondered about growing Jerusalem artichokes (sunchoke) as an alternative to potatoes.
We're not ruminants. The amount of fiber in food can't possibly be a prime criteria to assess the quality of food. Fiber is, after all, not digestible by definition. It is absurd to think that can matter much.
I've also lately been drastically decreasing my fiber intake. To my surprise, it did not make my digestion worse (though I must say it has never been great).
Your saliva is full of enzymes to break down starches. Why would that be the case if carbohydrates aren’t meant to be part of our diet.
Got a source backing up your bold assertion that 'fiber is extremely important to long term health"? Because its not true at all in my understanding, or experince.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...
https://www.jillcarnahan.com/2017/11/06/oxalates-101-oxalate...
I also like to cook it from freeze-dried (which I buy from northbaytrading).
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181221123810.h...
I haven’t done the math in how much lutein is in spinach vs how much we need but to a first order of approximation that’s acceptable.
In the abstract they say they cooked spinach for up to something absurd like 60 minutes. Spinach leaves are cooked within a minute or so in my experience, so not sure why they performed the study that way.
Ranking vegetables by how "healthy" they are is ridiculous. A diet is healthy and is specific to a person, lifestyle, and contains many foods and also how they are prepared. You can't separate it into tiny pieces and sort it into good and bad.
The way I’ve always said it is that individual foods are neither healthy nor unhealthy in and of themselves and our insistence on treating them as though they are is what leads to the ridiculous heralding of new “superfoods” du jour like spirulina, kale, wheatgrass, açaí, chia seeds, ad nauseum.
It’s diets which are healthy or unhealthy, not individual foods. Swapping in kale for iceberg lettuce or açaí instead of blueberries is not going to statistically improve anyone’s health or wellbeing.
Once someone told me:
>"popcorn is healthy"
They read that, and I have, too. It's true. But if your health is sensitive to high-glycemic foods, popcorn is not a good choice.
Actually that person became angry with me. "I read it, I think in the NYTimes!" "It said it right in there. You dont know what you're talking about."
This person had a prestigious degree. Sometimes I wonder about how critical thinking skills and tolerance of dissent is valued today.
I'd argue that it is just as valued as it always has been - not very valued at all except in certain contexts.
Folks didn't want their slave or servant to speak up with their good idea, no matter how much critical thinking they used nor how good the idea was. Tolerance of dissent depended: For example, Don't Be Homosexual lest you get shunned. OF course, there are plenty of examples in science (and other places) of folks going against the accepted theories and getting shunned even though they were correct.
It is really easy to think this is a modern problem, but i*m pretty sure it isn't.
But decades later I encountered facts which challenged everything I (and I bet most people) knew about it. It is arguably the most dangerous and expensive manned launch vehicle in history. It was not a technological leap forward in really any way. It arguably was guilty of negligent manslaughter. It was probably doomed from the start by the bureaucracies, political incentives, and groupthink which controlled it.
Feynman ended up speaking out against it. But so few people are willing to be a Martin Luther or Thomas Paine, even in science and engineering! Crazy.
Got a link to Feynman speaking against it? I am genuinely curious.
It would be great if people were inclined to, when presented with evidence or arguments which disagree with their worldviews, to examine the evidence themselves. In this case, it would even be really convenient (and fun) to do that. But I know most people aren't like that, and are more likely to rely on their prejudgments and say, as you did, "that's a rather slanted view." It's very common, even where it should be nowhere to be found, like in science. Reminds me of the famous quote by Planck:
>A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
You may be aware of some other more-famous mismanagements in the space industry like the Pioneer Anomaly being difficult to study because no data was retained--same as with most all of the work done in the Apollo program.
The problems were of groupthink, and authority/hierarchy. The shuttle was chosen by Nixon over Von Braun's plans because of those reasons. The military industrial complex was involved, as well as the intelligence agencies, and they tranformed the shuttle into something other than what NASA originally designed. And nobody really knows why he chose the side-grouped design, many speculate because Nixon thought it looked cool.
Before Challenger killed 7 people, there were engineers that had raised precise concerns of the exact problem, under the exact conditions, which would cause this disaster. Culture and politics had become so bad that detailing the problem was unacceptable. Groupthink and hierarchy developed a culture not tolerant of dissent. That's why Feynman agreed to testify of the problem because he had credence to lend to the engineer's claims. It was negligent manslaughter that killed those astronauts.
Please consider, as I just wrote above, it would be nice if when people were confronted with information contrary to their worldviews, if they would please consider the evidence in front of them, instead of just shouting out their defiance as their cognitive bias wills them to. How else to stop people from being willfully stupid?
1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_...
I'm not sure I agree completely since there probably is content in those vegetables which should be in like 99% of diets out there anyway. Viewed like that, seems reasonable to me to rank corn lower than aspergus, no? And if you're the 1% with an extremely specific diet you already know better than to trust random internet sources anyway.
That being said: the list still is pretty ridiculous in other ways. Like, why is vitamin X more important than vitamin Y etc, how do you balance that out, do all your measurements still count if you kept that aspergus out of the fridge for a week, etc. But the worst part: if you've ever read any proper scientific text, stuff like is loaded with minerals without specifying any quantity whatsoever, not even in respect to other items in the list, nor mentioning a source, should send you away screaming instantly (increases your energy levels is also a good candidate, makes me feel like I'm in an FPS). I get that some people don't care or even know how to interpret numbers so if you target that audience you obviously shouldn't litter the text with numbers but if you want to be taken somewhat seriously and for the sake of education at least give us something allowing further research. And if you don't care about being taken seriously then at least have the guts to mention that whatever you claim is just your personal interpretation and not really based on evidence.
I don't get why Nitrates in beets are a good thing while they seem to be bad in spinach, kale and brussel sprouts.
The really "bad" stuff seem to be Nitrits that are converted from the Nitrites by cooking. That would go for all cooked vegetables, though.
The fact that starch is processed into glucose by the body does not make potatoes sugary.
Lettuce is 95% water, and has almost no calories (Definitely not the best source of nutrients if you live in a cold climate). We can't live eating only vitamins. A human brain needs a lot of sugar to work. Without a continuous supply of sugar our brain would die in minutes.
I am not saying that I am buying his ideas yet, but I find his ideas interesting. I nearly died of gluten intolerance (I had a super rare from that was hard to identify). No, I am not exaggerating. Hence I am interested in foods. I am also a little bit skeptical about wheat in general. I think it may be closely linked to weight gain and may be possibly addictive: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6099562
https://medium.com/@Kahn642/the-plant-paradox-and-the-oxygen...
The healthiest diets on the planet consist mostly of plants. Even common sense exposes the ridiculousness of his claims.
"The healthiest diets on the planet consist mostly of plants. " Historically we ate meat. Lots of it. If I remember right, based on tooth isotopes analysis the Neanderthals for example ate hardly anything but meat. The eating of plants is a relatively new phenomenon, starting with the human civilization. Based on genetic evolution this are not really long terms.
https://www.peta.org/living/food/really-natural-truth-humans...
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancest...
We don't have the physiology of a carnivore at all. We look a lot more like herbivores that may have made some small adaptations to include some meat in our diets if necessary.
This statement is vague. First, it may be _much_ more common than 1 in 100 in white people. Fewer than 1 in 100 may be true if taken the world population into account.
Wheat allergy, Gluten intolerance and celiac disease are actually considered by some to be two different things. See also: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4406911/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-celiac_gluten_sensitivity
Wheat caused DH in me but I am not a celiac. The guy in the blog posts reminds me of that when the only thing you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail.
I was seriously misled as a child by all the kid's books that portrayed Brussels sprouts as disgusting vegetables.
I hope it's "just" breeding that took most of the bitterness out of brussels sprouts, grapefruit and the likes (I personally also do enjoy a stronger bitter taste now and then).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-an...
"Over the last twenty years, farmers have mellowed the "unpleasant" flavor of Brussels sprouts by breeding a vegetable that contains fewer bitter compounds or glucosinolates. So, Brussels sprouts just taste better than they used to when we were kids."
From:
https://www.chiceats.com/recipe/vegetarian-side/how-buy-cook...
Maybe all carbohydrates are basically all the same, but you can't say that about proteins. From them you get essential aminoacids, and even if you can get all/most of them from vegetables, you should be careful to not miss some of them having a narrow vegetables selection.