longest living cultures + optimal diet discussion

[Cairidh]

Is it good to have some cooked foods in the diet? Some think so. Kinda like Wai saying Munch-foods help maintain the diet. Maybe a little cooked food helps one stay mainly raw...???

Not for me. If I eat a little cooked food it gives me physical cravings for cooked food and makes it really hard to stay raw. If I don't eat any cooked food at all, I don't crave it and have no problem staying raw. Victoria Boutenko said the same thing in 12 steps to raw food.
But it obviously works for Wai and others...

[Cairidh]

? Who looked at mushrooms and said "I wonder if we can eat those, white, space 'alien' thingys?" and then did.

And then he died. And his brother said "guess not. oh well. there are some different ones over there, I wonder if we can eat those?" and then he did.

And he died. And his brother said "guess not. oh well. there are some other ones over there, I wonder if we can eat those?" and then he did.

And then he cried "yummy". And his mother breathed a sigh of relief and said "Thank heavens for that, I'm starving"

[huntress]

So you guys are saying that you agree that fruit (lets also consider all food in general) today might have less nutrition. Do we agree on this? If so, (I'm repeating myself...) wouldn't we need to eat more that at one time when it had more nutrition? If so, there would be extra calories, right?.

I strongly believe in you and second your thoughts John. I can vouch on this from my own personal experiences.

She also believes (if I remember correctly) that today's official vitamin and mineral recommendations are way too high, as they don't take into account our individual differences and that our bodies are capable of producing most vitamins on its own.

Has there been cases where someone died of excess vitamins and minerals? We do produce vitamins for ourselves but is it sufficient?

So if you calorie-wise eat what you body needs, then enter that into the calculator, you can check if you get enough nutrients or not.

How can we 'calorie-wise' eat when the basis to our food intake is based on our nutrient need. And as John said, and even you agreed to that today's food is less nutritious, which causes us to eat more and more hence ingesting more calories.

Not for me. If I eat a little cooked food it gives me physical cravings for cooked food and makes it really hard to stay raw. If I don't eat any cooked food at all, I don't crave it and have no problem staying raw

Same here too.

[huntress]

LOL Cairidh. Trust you to bring some comic relief into this forum.

[Oscar]

How can we 'calorie-wise' eat when the basis to our food intake is based on our nutrient need. And as John said, and even you agreed to that today's food is less nutritious, which causes us to eat more and more hence ingesting more calories.

There are two kinds of nutrients:
1. macronutrients - carbs, protein, fats
2. micro nutrients - vitamins, minerals, trace minerals

Nutrients have equivalent energy, which is expressed in calories (or kcal). I think the body, if in good health, mainly reacts to the amounts of macronutrients it needs, because that's the bulk of the intake, unless it lacks (a) certain micronutrient(s). Then it will give strong signals to remedy that. Nobody actually knows how much of each micronutrient we need, even the databases are an estimate. Wai suggests they might be too high, and that we need less micronutrients than those estimates.

Now let's assume John is right and we would be eating too much, then we would all get fatter and fatter, because the excess calories are transformed into bodyfat.

[johndela1]

Now let's assume John is right and we would be eating too much, then we would all get fatter and fatter, because the excess calories are transformed into bodyfat.

You don't think this is a factor in the growing number of obese people?

[Oscar]

Hehe, nicely taken out of context.

We were talking about fruit, remember?

[johndela1]

Hehe, nicely taken out of context.

We were talking about fruit, remember?

I don't think we have been on the same page. I do mean all food, but the same goes for fruit just the same. i wasn't trying to take your comment out of context. if you look back at my posts I was talking about food in general. Maybe I got off topic.

[Oscar]

I know you weren't taking me out of context on purpose.
I was talking about fruit, in any case.

If we're talking about other diets, then a lot of nutrients are already destroyed by cooking, so the effect of the food itself being less nutricious would be hard to measure, I'd say.

[johndela1]

Here is an interesting article that talks about traditional diets that seem to be very different and produce good results.

http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional ... isdom.html

[RRM]

I mean if you have to eat more sugar (calories) to get the same vitamins you will have exess calories in your diet.

With this diet, its easier to ingest sufficient vitamins and minerals then it is to ingest sufficient energy.
So, with this diet, we dont need to worry about our vitamins / minerals intake, at all. Its more important to focus on energy intake, as we will ingest sufficient vitamins and minerals anyway.

So you guys are saying that you agree that fruit (lets also consider all food in general) today might have less nutrition

No.
But even if you would be right, then still you will ingest sufficient vitamins and minerals anyway, before ingesting sufficient energy. Thats not a guess, but the result of comparing calories to vitamins/minerals in fruits etc.
In our natural foods, energy is more scarse than vitamins /minerals.

if what ever our needs really our are not met by eating over sugared foods than we would need to eat extra calories to get what we really need.

But the whole point is that with this diet, energy is more scarse than vitamins/minerals. You would have to add extremely much sugar and oil to change that.

it's an interesting discussion if raw protein could replace carbohydrates as a more stable source of energy. I believe Oscar is right in that digesting protein and converting it to sugar is a much more energy-demanding proccess than converting carbohydrates, and that it may be more ineffective

Not just more effective. Protein also contains nitrogen, that needs to be converted into ammonium and ureum respectively, while ammonium has toxic properties. This may explain why all longest living animals consume a diet relatively low in protein.