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Deep Nutrition
Feb. 19th, 2012 12:17 pmAs most of you know, I read about nutrition sometimes. The most recent read to convince me of a few things is a book called Deep Nutrition. I've been leaning more paleo over the last year or so anyway, and, well... Deep Nutrition hits hard in that direction. It starts off talking about epigenetics and what pretty people look like. Very gentle, very nice, alluring, although it turned me off at first because it was talking about making beautiful babies and I am not planning to make any.
Then it talks for a while about things that have been common in pretty much all old, traditional diets (is there some exception in India, where vegetarianism has been a big thing for a very long time)? That was cool and all seemed to have some reason to it. Meat cooked on the bone so that nutrients from many parts of the animal make it into your system. Organ meats and other animal bits that contain things that our eyes and joints and organs can make ready use of, but that we don't eat much anymore. Fresh, raw plants, maybe making up a large portion of the diet. And lastly, fermented foods (sure, who hasn't heard about the benefits of miso and yogurt and kimchi and limited alcoholic drinks? but there was stuff I didn't know. Like, tofu was traditionally fermented, but the stuff we buy today is not. Same with pickles. Hey, really?)
Finally the pleasantries ended, as it came down hard on sugars, carbs by extension (in excess), and vegetable oils. That last one was a surprise to me, and the premise is basically that non-saturated oils can't stand up to the heat used in cooking: they react with oxygen and turn into trans fats when heated, in a way that doesn't happen to the sturdier saturated variety. Saturated means "way less chemically reactive". What's on the label is not what we end up eating.
One thing I liked a lot was the talk of some parts of food being used structurally in the body. I've long been interested in this. Some of what we eat is burned for calories, but some of it is simply taken and used to shore up our structures instead. Especially omega-3s, which are high calorie -- but so what if they're not preferentially used for calories? Nobody knows quite how much of each process happens. And we know that ingestion is not the same as absorption: a diabetic might eat the same meal I eat, and a different hit of nutrition will make it to my cells and to their cells. Signals get lost, cancelled, amplified. Food gets wasted or used. Fat-soluble vitamins may or may not make it across the intestinal border, depending on the company they keep.
So, I've been slowly stretching in a different (and more carnivorous) direction after reading this book. It's been pretty easy to make and eat soup made from bone stock, which is highly recommended; I can buy local chicken bone stock just down the street. Yay for glucosamines. I've also found two local places that I can buy beef marrow bones, which I could use to make my own broth but I haven't gotten that far yet. I've started ordering my Friday burger medium instead of medium well, following the discussion about gently cooked meat being more nutritious -- these things are baby steps that don't seem like they'll hurt, and could help a lot if the book is mostly right.
I have not really succeeded in stretching out into organ meats unless you count the foie gras at an expensive restaurant. I have found some fermented, non-pasteurized miso to try making soup out of though. And the local butcher does sell chicken livers, which I got some of (quite a lot for a dollar, actually), and I plan to put in this weekend's soup in small amounts to see if it's edible that way.
I haven't found non-pasteurized milk yet, and this is one of the things I'm most interested in, after reading about the intricate and clever structure of raw milk and how that's largely destroyed by cooking.
It's so much easier to act on positive recommendations than on negative ones. I've been avoiding starches more, sure, and TRYING to cut out things that are fried in vegetable oil or made with cooked vegetable oil, but that last one is really hard. The stuff's in everything.
Then it talks for a while about things that have been common in pretty much all old, traditional diets (is there some exception in India, where vegetarianism has been a big thing for a very long time)? That was cool and all seemed to have some reason to it. Meat cooked on the bone so that nutrients from many parts of the animal make it into your system. Organ meats and other animal bits that contain things that our eyes and joints and organs can make ready use of, but that we don't eat much anymore. Fresh, raw plants, maybe making up a large portion of the diet. And lastly, fermented foods (sure, who hasn't heard about the benefits of miso and yogurt and kimchi and limited alcoholic drinks? but there was stuff I didn't know. Like, tofu was traditionally fermented, but the stuff we buy today is not. Same with pickles. Hey, really?)
Finally the pleasantries ended, as it came down hard on sugars, carbs by extension (in excess), and vegetable oils. That last one was a surprise to me, and the premise is basically that non-saturated oils can't stand up to the heat used in cooking: they react with oxygen and turn into trans fats when heated, in a way that doesn't happen to the sturdier saturated variety. Saturated means "way less chemically reactive". What's on the label is not what we end up eating.
One thing I liked a lot was the talk of some parts of food being used structurally in the body. I've long been interested in this. Some of what we eat is burned for calories, but some of it is simply taken and used to shore up our structures instead. Especially omega-3s, which are high calorie -- but so what if they're not preferentially used for calories? Nobody knows quite how much of each process happens. And we know that ingestion is not the same as absorption: a diabetic might eat the same meal I eat, and a different hit of nutrition will make it to my cells and to their cells. Signals get lost, cancelled, amplified. Food gets wasted or used. Fat-soluble vitamins may or may not make it across the intestinal border, depending on the company they keep.
So, I've been slowly stretching in a different (and more carnivorous) direction after reading this book. It's been pretty easy to make and eat soup made from bone stock, which is highly recommended; I can buy local chicken bone stock just down the street. Yay for glucosamines. I've also found two local places that I can buy beef marrow bones, which I could use to make my own broth but I haven't gotten that far yet. I've started ordering my Friday burger medium instead of medium well, following the discussion about gently cooked meat being more nutritious -- these things are baby steps that don't seem like they'll hurt, and could help a lot if the book is mostly right.
I have not really succeeded in stretching out into organ meats unless you count the foie gras at an expensive restaurant. I have found some fermented, non-pasteurized miso to try making soup out of though. And the local butcher does sell chicken livers, which I got some of (quite a lot for a dollar, actually), and I plan to put in this weekend's soup in small amounts to see if it's edible that way.
I haven't found non-pasteurized milk yet, and this is one of the things I'm most interested in, after reading about the intricate and clever structure of raw milk and how that's largely destroyed by cooking.
It's so much easier to act on positive recommendations than on negative ones. I've been avoiding starches more, sure, and TRYING to cut out things that are fried in vegetable oil or made with cooked vegetable oil, but that last one is really hard. The stuff's in everything.
