Veggies over fruits?

[proteus]

Be careful eating such foods raw.  They contain anti-nutrients.

From:
http://www.healthy-eating-politics.com/toxins-in-food.html

Hydrazines: volatile carcinogens found in many raw mushrooms, including shiitake and the white button mushrooms common to the grocery store produce section. Mice display a significant increase in the incidence of several types of tumors after they are fed uncooked mushrooms. Cooking the mushrooms destroys a third of the hydrazine compounds.

Spinach is listed below.  Note that the list includes strawberries, pears and peaches (three of my favorite fruits):

Goitrogens: a class of toxins in food which suppress the function of the thyroid gland by interfering with iodine uptake. Long term exposure can cause an enlargement of the thyroid (goiter). Foods containing these substances include soybeans (and soybean products such as tofu), pine nuts, peanuts, millet, strawberries, pears, peaches, spinach, bamboo shoots, radishes, horseradish, and vegetables in the genus Brassica (bok choy, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, canola, cauliflower, Chinese cabbage, collard greens, kale, kohlrabi, mustard greens, rutabagas, and turnips.

Seeds have phytic acid:
http://www.healthy-eating-politics.com/phytic-acid.html

I stick with certain fruits.  Banana, apple, blueberry, grapefruit, etc.

well bananas, apples etc are no good for me - too much carbs.

can you recommend any raw vegan foods that are relatively low in carbs ?

i mean if all you are trying to do is avoid antinutrients you might as well just eat sugar with a spoon.

i do know that spinach for example contains oxalic acid and seeds contain enzyme inhibitors but i am trying to look at the big picture - is it a good food overall ?  if its low in sugar, high in protein, vitamins, minerals ( perhaps EFAs ) then i may be willing to turn a blind eye to some minor imperfection.

what else do you eat besides bananas ?

[magnetic]

well bananas, apples etc are no good for me - too much carbs.

can you recommend any raw vegan foods that are relatively low in carbs ?

i mean if all you are trying to do is avoid antinutrients you might as well just eat sugar with a spoon.

i do know that spinach for example contains oxalic acid and seeds contain enzyme inhibitors but i am trying to look at the big picture - is it a good food overall ?  if its low in sugar, high in protein, vitamins, minerals ( perhaps EFAs ) then i may be willing to turn a blind eye to some minor imperfection.

what else do you eat besides bananas ?

Of course everyone is going to find the foods that work for them and they will probably be different from what I eat. 

The problem I see you facing is that all of the foods that are lower in carbs also tend to be high in antinutrients, such as spinach, which you mentioned.  Oxalic acid isn't so bad, as long as the vegetables are consumed in a separate meal and not mixed with other foods (blocks calcium absorption).  Cooking foods containing antinutrients reduces the antinutrients and makes them more easily digestible.  It is the opposite of meat (which is much healthier raw), generally. 

I don't know what to recommend other than cooking such foods.  Just to get an idea, how much carbs is too much carbs??  For instance, a large tomato only has 7g total carbs:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2682/2

It is a nightshade and contains tomatine, a fungicide.  But you can deal with that by cooking it. 

A large summer squash has only 11 grams of carbohydrates:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2748/2

I am not aware of any toxins in summer squash as well as okra (7g carbs in 100g serving) and cucumber (mostly water!). 

The general rule (of which there may of course be exceptions) is to eat meat and fruit raw, but to cook vegetables and tubers.  But each person usually finds that they need to make some tweaks to achieve what they want to achieve with their diet.

[miles]

Tomatine is a toxic glycoalkaloid found in the stems and leaves of tomato plants, which has fungicidal properties.[1] Chemically pure tomatine is a white crystalline solid at standard temperature and pressure.[2] Some microbes produce an enzyme called tomatinase which can degrade tomatine, rendering it ineffective as an antimicrobial.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomatine

[magnetic]

Tomatine is a toxic glycoalkaloid found in the stems and leaves of tomato plants, which has fungicidal properties.[1] Chemically pure tomatine is a white crystalline solid at standard temperature and pressure.[2] Some microbes produce an enzyme called tomatinase which can degrade tomatine, rendering it ineffective as an antimicrobial.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomatine

Thanks for correcting me, tomatine is not a fungicide, it has fungicidal properties...

[miles]

Thanks for correcting me, tomatine is not a fungicide, it has fungicidal properties...

I wasn't correcting you, if anything Wikipedia was correcting you, I just linked it. That's the entire Wikipedia section on Tomatine. I know nothing about it myself. It says though that it's in the stems and leaves, doesn't mention the fruit. Also I was wondering what's so bad about eating something with fungicidal properties.

[proteus]

 

The general rule (of which there may of course be exceptions) is to eat meat and fruit raw, but to cook vegetables and tubers. 

what are tubers ?

i'm not sure i'm buying this.  apes eat leaves all the time and they don't cook them.

[magnetic]

I wasn't correcting you, if anything Wikipedia was correcting you, I just linked it. That's the entire Wikipedia section on Tomatine. I know nothing about it myself. It says though that it's in the stems and leaves, doesn't mention the fruit. Also I was wondering what's so bad about eating something with fungicidal properties.

I don't know much about the toxicity of fungicides, it may pass through the human digestive system with no effect, or it might interfere with digestion, or enter the bloodstream and bind to cell receptor sited where it shouldn't, I haven't found much information yet.  But until I do find information one way or the other I personally will avoid it.  The fact that something is a fungicide means it is quite bioactive, and I don't want some strange bioactive chemical entering my body. 

Let me know if you come up with anything.

[magnetic]

what are tubers ?

i'm not sure i'm buying this.  apes eat leaves all the time and they don't cook them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuber

Well, it is a matter of quantity.  You can certainly eat small amounts of vegetable leaves in meals and be okay (that is, relatively unaffected by the antinutrients).  But human digestion is different from that of apes:

http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-2a.shtml

Humans are not vegetarians, humans are descended from vegetarians.  So it makes sense that we can eat and digest raw leafy greens, to an extent.  I am not saying that we can't digest it, just that we have evolved a digestion that exploits certain foods more optimally, such as meat and fruit. 

And leafy greens have very little calories.  As such, I am assuming that when you argue for including them in the diet, it is in a significant caloric amount, like 25% of calories.  But this would be an enormous amount of vegetation.  For me it would be, for instance, over 2 pounds of kale in one day.  Or over 4 pounds of spinach.  Lots of vegetables means lots of antinutrients, as far as I can tell.

I am not against putting a spinach leaf on my plate for presentation, but it is a waste of spinach (and money or time) to buy it or grow it just to use a few leaves.  Also, I mono-eat, so my choices are going to be either a bunch of fruit or an enormous amount of vegetation or vegetables.  My instincts and my patience both choose fruit.

[proteus]

humans are descended from vegetarians

can you be a bit more specific ?  who/what are these vegetarians that we've descended from? 

[magnetic]

can you be a bit more specific ?  who/what are these vegetarians that we've descended from?  

If you trace the evolutionary lineage back far enough, some creatures that eventually evolved into H. Sapiens Sapiens lived in trees and ate lots of vegetable matter.  You just have to go back 4 million years or so.  See:

http://www.pnas.org/content/97/25/13506.full

At that time the only source of animal foods was probably insects.

From the paper:

"This suite of traits is distinctive of australopithecines and suggests a dietary shift at or near the stem of hominid evolution. Their thick-enameled, flattened molars would have had great difficulty propagating cracks through tough foods, suggesting that the australopithecines were not well suited for eating tough fruits, leaves, or meat. "

[proteus]

If you trace the evolutionary lineage back far enough, some creatures that eventually evolved into H. Sapiens Sapiens lived in trees and ate lots of vegetable matter.  You just have to go back 4 million years or so.  See:

http://www.pnas.org/content/97/25/13506.full

At that time the only source of animal foods was probably insects.

From the paper:

"This suite of traits is distinctive of australopithecines and suggests a dietary shift at or near the stem of hominid evolution. Their thick-enameled, flattened molars would have had great difficulty propagating cracks through tough foods, suggesting that the australopithecines were not well suited for eating tough fruits, leaves, or meat. "

well if you look at apes they generally don't eat big animals ( they are no saber tooth lions ) but they do eat insects and small animals, which makes them NOT herbivores.

do cows eat insects ?  i don't think so.  apes are omnivores, just like humans.

[goodsamaritan]

I'd bet more on shells and fish and shrimp on beaches and rivers than insects as human staple food.

[miles]

well if you look at apes they generally don't eat big animals ( they are no saber tooth lions ) but they do eat insects and small animals, which makes them NOT herbivores.

do cows eat insects ?  i don't think so.  apes are omnivores, just like humans.

Cows will sometimes ingest insects, spiders and flies so they must be omnivores too, but It's about morphology not diet. Durianrider isn't a Herbivore.

Different apes eat different things, some are Carnivores and some are Herbivores.

[magnetic]

well if you look at apes they generally don't eat big animals ( they are no saber tooth lions ) but they do eat insects and small animals, which makes them NOT herbivores.

do cows eat insects ?  i don't think so.  apes are omnivores, just like humans.

I wouldn't say "just like humans."  Eating the diet of an ape would be less than ideal, even harmful for many humans.  The fact that an ape diet is 95% vegetation means they are basically vegetarian.  I guess you are using vegetarian to mean exclusively herbivorous.  But many humans eat mostly from the plant kingdom and call themselves vegetarians, even if they are consuming as much as 25% of their calories from meat, fish, eggs or dairy.

[proteus]

But many humans eat mostly from the plant kingdom and call themselves vegetarians, even if they are consuming as much as 25% of their calories from meat, fish, eggs or dairy.

and politicians call themselves honest, that doesn't make constant lying a definition of honesty.  apes are not herbivores.

even if only 5% of your diet is animal say by weight it could still easily contain MOST of your daily protein intake.

[miles]

apes are not herbivores.

Herbivorous apes are not herbivores?

[magnetic]

and politicians call themselves honest, that doesn't make constant lying a definition of honesty.  apes are not herbivores.

even if only 5% of your diet is animal say by weight it could still easily contain MOST of your daily protein intake.

Okay, meat has a lot of protein in it.  What was your point?

[proteus]

Okay, meat has a lot of protein in it.  What was your point?

my point is you are not a herbivore unless you get close to 100% of your protein from plants.  it doesn't matter how much useless filling you consume - what matters is where do you get your actual nutrition from.

[magnetic]

my point is you are not a herbivore unless you get close to 100% of your protein from plants.  it doesn't matter how much useless filling you consume - what matters is where do you get your actual nutrition from.

I don't think we are in disagreement here, we are arguing semantics.  Yes, what ultimately matters is what is consumed, what the nutritional qualities are.  I suppose labels such as herbivore, omnivore, ... can be misleading.  But labels are important for populists who want to make claims like "humans, like apes are vegetarian/herbivore/omnivore" and so on. 

Anyways, the discussion got off track somewhere, we were discussion human evolution and ended up talking about modern apes, which tell us little about human evolution (they are more like "cousins" than "grandparents", to use an analogy involving family ties).  My point was about our ancestors, not our close cousins.  And as miles pointed out, ape species fall into many categories of opportunists, ranging from carnivores to herbivores.

I recall reading that insects made up only about 5% of the diet (by calories) of our herbivorous ancestors, compared to a much larger number of modern humans, and the argument goes that by eating more meat/fish our brains were able to evolve to their present large size.  I am not saying this like it is gospel, don't misinterpret me, I am just wondering if anyone else has heard this and maybe someone could point me to the source.

[proteus]

the argument goes that by eating more meat/fish our brains were able to evolve to their present large size.  I am not saying this like it is gospel, don't misinterpret me, I am just wondering if anyone else has heard this and maybe someone could point me to the source.

i don't buy the argument.  if it were true then all vegetarians would be retards, but i am not aware of any such statistical correlation.

[TylerDurden]

i don't buy the argument.  if it were true then all vegetarians would be retards, but i am not aware of any such statistical correlation.

  No, the point is that the decrease in brain size happens very slowly over many generations, not just over individual lifetimes. It's already proven by studies that the human brain decreased in size by 8 percent since the Neolithic due to a reduction in animal food consumption.

[magnetic]

  No, the point is that the decrease in brain size happens very slowly over many generations, not just over individual lifetimes. It's already proven by studies that the human brain decreased in size by 8 percent since the Neolithic due to a reduction in animal food consumption.

I think there is more to it than more meat means bigger brain, I mean lions don't have huge brains.  But I also think there is some truth to it, I just haven't unravelled it yet.  I think TD is correct though that it takes generations for degeneration to set it.  Omega-3s, for instance, are concentrated in sperm and mother's milk.  But each generation that consumes an omega-3 deficient diet leaves less for the next generation.

[miles]

I think there is more to it than more meat means bigger brain, I mean lions don't have huge brains.  But I also think there is some truth to it, I just haven't unravelled it yet.  I think TD is correct though that it takes generations for degeneration to set it.  Omega-3s, for instance, are concentrated in sperm and mother's milk.  But each generation that consumes an omega-3 deficient diet leaves less for the next generation.

Eating more meat didn't make Homo brains bigger, it allowed Homo brains to become bigger.

So if some Homo sapiens sapiens now doesn't eat enough meat his brain cannot reach its potential as set by his DNA.

If a Lion doesn't eat enough meat its brain and body can't grow to their full potential either.

If a Lion eats lots of meat his brain will still only grow to its full potential as determined by his DNA, even if he's eating enough meat that his diet could support a 10% bigger brain.

[magnetic]

Eating more meat didn't make Homo brains bigger, it allowed Homo brains to become bigger.

So if some Homo sapiens sapiens now doesn't eat enough meat his brain cannot reach its potential as set by his DNA.

If a Lion doesn't eat enough meat its brain and body can't grow to their full potential either.

If a Lion eats lots of meat his brain will still only grow to its full potential as determined by his DNA, even if he's eating enough meat that his diet could support a 10% bigger brain.

Right, there is a programming (DNA) that requires certain inputs (meat, especially raw meat) in order for a certain genetic expression to take place (full potential).  Anything less than what is optimal may result in growth, but the genetic expression will be different, the organism will be weaker or less able to thrive, reproduce, ...

[proteus]

It's already proven by studies that the human brain decreased in size by 8 percent since the Neolithic due to a reduction in animal food consumption.

you seem to live in the fantasy world.  the studies could have proven that the brain decreased 8% but the cause of this is pure speculation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio

mice are herbivores, and have the same size brain as humans relative to their body mass.