Leo, are grains a good choice as part of a nutrition strategy?

[John Paul]

@Leo Gura, are grains a good choice as part of a nutrition strategy? 

If yes, do you know which grains are the least contaminated with things I don't want in my body?

I'm eager to know which foods are the best for me to eat after watching your latest health video (heavy metals).

[ChiLongQua]

brown rice and beans is chi long qua's choice

[Michael569]

@John Paul Why don't you grab a generic nutritional book? A lot of the questions you have could be answered in there and making nutritional choices is easier once you reach a degree of holistic understanding rather than collecting a bunch of facts. No judgement, just thought it may actually be easier. Chances are the person who wrote that book have gone in-depth into the research to answer many of those complex questions. 

[Yarco]

Grains are historically a food reserved for slaves or servants. They'll keep you alive during a time of famine but they aren't the best. 

Use your intuition, look to eat foods as close to their natural state as possible.

You can pick an apple off a tree and eat it as-is. You can't pick a stalk of wheat and eat it, it'll shred you up inside. Even if you pick out the wheat berries they'll be undigestible unless you grind them up into flour. Stuff like corn, your body can't get the nutrition out of without adding lye or other chemicals, even if you make it into flour.

[Michael569]

@Yarco if we would only eat what grows on a tree or is readily available 90% of food would be off limits and humans would have died out thousands of years ago not to mention starve iver winter. Being able to process food through heat and grinding is an adaptation that increased our survival rate not the other way around. Most humans thrive on consumption of whole grains (i suppose we are not talking about white toast) and life expectancy and disease prevention goes up for people consuming whole grains and legumes despite what many quacks would have you believe

[Thought Art]

Personally pro grains

[John Paul]

@Michael569

It's actually not easier...especially when we are at the point where we are calling family doctor's stupid. I'm not looking to become a nutrition expert, just to know what I can't go without (minimum nutrition/supplementation for optimal cognition) and what I definitely don't want to be consuming (foods that are more poisonous than other options, making my detox more or less effective).

I already know which protein I like: grass-fed, organic meat....

Now if I just know which grains/potato if any, and then my favorite/best fruits and veggies, I'm set until any symptoms arise if they do, in that case then I'll dive deeper into nutritional information or more likely just ask the forum about those symptoms.

You can't master everything. i'm hacking nutrition and health so that I can focus on my path, health isn't my path, I want health to be a seamless element in my life.

[Matt23]

2 hours ago, John Paul said:

I want health to be a seamless element in my life.

I'm not saying yay or nay to what you're saying.  

I mean, ya, I want health and all of that stuff to be effortless, easy, and seamless as well without spending lots of time mastery it.  Especially since, like you, I have higher priorities and interests in life as well.  

Just that, it may be worth considering that to get what I quoted above, you may have to master it.  I don't really know much about it myself, nor know your particle body, so I can't say if you need to master it to get what you want or just figure out a few key items that work for you and then you're set.  

But, I guess just maybe think that diet, nutrition, and health aren't just "givens".  That to get them to be "seamless", it may actually take mastery (at least in the current state of things).  Or at least a decent amount of study, effort, and trial and error.  

Just a consideration.

Edited January 30, 2022 by Matt23

[The Zen Viking]

I would research bioavailability and experiment with what food that is handled the easiest by your digestive system personally.

Bioavailability is huge. Eggs for example, has BA of a whopping 91%, grains are around 30%. Not only will eggs give you more bang for your buck, but there is less collateral that ends up as trash and need to be processed out of your body. With high bioavailability the body doesn't have to work as hard to get what it needs and use less time on digesting. Carb-rich foods in general are more "messy" in this way. You'll get something out of it, but end up with more work than the energy you get.

Fermented, cooked, pulverized foods helps the digestion process.

Just an article (references down below): https://www.foodnerdinc.com/blogs/food-for-thought/what-is-bioavailability

Edited January 30, 2022 by The Zen Viking

[Michael569]

7 hours ago, The Zen Viking said:

here is less collateral that ends up as trash and need to be processed out of your body. With high bioavailability the body doesn't have to work as hard to get what it needs and use less time on digesting. Carb-rich foods in general are more "messy" in this way.

While it may seem counter-intuitive, the poor bioavailability of complex oligosaccharides containing carbohydrates is actually their greatest advantage. It means that an abundance of fibre containing chyme is moving into the colon (large intestines) and becoming a feed for the colonies of the microbiota which can then process the undigested fibre and turn it into short-chain fatty acids (acetate, propionate & butyrate) which have fundamental immunomodulating properties and send important signals into the brain. This is the main reason why plant foods that are rich in indigestible fibre are the greatest protection from colorectal cancer...that and being kinda of a "gut broom" accelerating the colonic transit and reducing the chances of toxin recycling and protein purification due to slow motility (common problems on diet low in fibre and high in animal produce). 

it is true that animal products like eggs are the most bioavailable foods we have, agreed! Well, them and majority of processed foods. But eating only a diet high in highly bioavailable foods may cause microbial starvation and them turning on our intestinal mucosal layer as a secondary source of nourishment potentially trigger extraintestinal inflammation and even IBD once they get close to the intestinal walls where they have no business being and start getting picked up by the immune system as foreign invaders

7 hours ago, The Zen Viking said:

You'll get something out of it, but end up with more work than the energy you get.

. Most carbohydrate-rich foods contain an assortment of easily digestible monosacharides & disacharides that are easily turned into glucose e that our body can absorb for energy. The rest was never meant to be used for energy anyway, it was meant to help form the bulk of the stool or to be eaten and fermented by our gut microbiota. 

7 hours ago, The Zen Viking said:

experiment with what food that is handled the easiest by your digestive system personally.

Same argument would go for the majority of processed foods that most people would agree isn't always ideal. I guess the challenge would be "where do we draw the line between good highly bioavailable food and bad highly bioavailable food. 

[Gregory1]

On 29.1.2022 at 0:09 PM, Michael569 said:

@John Paul Why don't you grab a generic nutritional book? A lot of the questions you have could be answered in there and making nutritional choices is easier once you reach a degree of holistic understanding rather than collecting a bunch of facts. No judgement, just thought it may actually be easier. Chances are the person who wrote that book have gone in-depth into the research to answer many of those complex questions. 

@Michael569 great idea.

Can you recommend a book?

[Michael569]

11 hours ago, Gregory1 said:

 great idea.

Can you recommend a book?

Depends on how deep you wanna go into it. It is extremely difficult to find an unbiased nutrition book without an agenda these days. 

Elson Haas' - "Staying healthy with nutrition" is fairly unbiased but it is INSANELY huge so only buy it if you're serious studying this in-depth. It goes beyond nutrition into ethics, ecology, sustainability, life-cycle nutrition, supplements etc. 

Otherwise the Nutrition for Dummies one actually has decent reviews (personally I love the "for Dummies" series)

Other than that pop into your local bookstore and see what resonates with you. But every time a nutrition book has in its title "keto, paleo, vegan, etc that's a red flag for not buying it unless you are already doing that diet. Same if the author is a journalist or an influencer like Josh Axe or Eric Berg. Basically you want some boring vanilla academic books written by a University professor who is buried elbows deep in research 

[undeather]

13 hours ago, Gregory1 said:

@Michael569 great idea.

Can you recommend a book?

This is the book I recommend to my patients if they want an easy/science based summary on healthy nutrition. 
Its not perfect, but one of the best I have personally come across. 



Amazon-link