vegetables

A Pox Upon Thy House: Vague and Annoying Sources of Symptoms
11/19/2010 - 23:48

A commenter writes in:

I have been wanting to increase my [carbs] and veggies as its pretty much zero right now, I have never felt better(though the current state is less than perfect) but meat is not cheap and I want to have a more diverse diet. But it seems that every time I eat something plant based I start getting acne, rashes, asthma, dry skin and other minor annoyances again, lately I tried to eat potatoes and I immediately noticed a minor shortness of breath and it didn't take more than a couple of days before my face was glowing red and I started getting dry flaking skin. You say you eat rice - brown rice?

Yes, this is a real problem. Many of us started paleo because of sensitivities and diversifying our diets can be frustrating. I don't think this was a problem for humans in the old days, but modern humans have a different immunological milleu. What causes it? A major hypothesis is that it's caused by too-clean environment in childhood, which we can't exactly undo now.

Before I started messing around with my diet and going veg*n and then paleo, I never had acne. But since I went vegetarian I've had it occasionally and while paleo has lessened it, it still appears occasionally, usually alongside scalp issues and keratosis pilaris. Today was one of these days.

My diet before vegetarianism was absolutely atrocious, but I almost never ate vegetables and it was fairly bland. Unfortunately, now that I have discovered the deliciousness of hot peppers, I realize they are the probable cause of my skin issues. I also have problems with many members of the cabbage family.

If you are having a frustrating problem like this, I highly recommend checking out the failsafe diet (the site used to have a more awesome name: Plant Poisons and Other Nasty Stuff). The best strategy is probably to introduce families of plants into your diet gradually until you figure out what is making you sick. The author of that site notes that once she identified some problem foods and avoided them for awhile, she was eventually able to add some back in. Interestingly, she also discovered she had thyroid disease.

For me, it seems the reaction is quite complex. I can eat hot peppers sometimes, but if I eat them in the last week of my menstrual cycle that's when they really wreck my skin.

As far as starches, poatoes are known to be a problem for many people because they are in the nightshade family and contain solanine and some potent glycoalkaloids. Yams are much better tolerated and another rec would be cassava, which is prized for its hypoallergenic qualities. Brown rice is full of stuff that can be a problem, white rice much less so.

Comment?: 7
Plant-animal subsistence ratios
08/23/2010 - 21:49

Occasionally people will assert that evolutionary nutrition should involve mostly plants. After all, they read somewhere that the !Kung eat most of their calories from plants. And their nutrition science professor said so. Or some vegan book they read. And it's politically correct, so why not?

Here are some facts

  • Modern hunter-gatherers are not our ancestors. They provide an analogue to study, but most are have been pushed into marginal environments and have had varying degrees of contact with civilization.
  • Some people that are used as examples of hunter-gatherers eating a healthy plant-based diet are not hunter-gatherers per se. Many, like the Kitavans, are horticulturalists.
  • Many of the marginal environments such tribes live in are considered to be suboptimal and probably do not correspond to our ancestor's environments. For example, many of these supposed hunter-gatherers live in forest environments that anthropologists aren't sure can even support true foragers.
  • Methods for measuring diets are often inaccurate. After all, there aren't many nutrition labs in rural isolated Tanzania. Some redos of studies have shown calories from plants were initially over-estimated.
  • There is ample anthropological evidence that hunter-gatherers studied prize meat above all other foods and would eat more if it if they could. Which they often can't because of poaching/overhunting/being pushed into poor environments.
  • EVEN WITH all these major differences between modern hunter-gatherers and our ancestors, a survey of the available evidence done by Cordain shows that "Most (73%) of the worldwide hunter-gatherer societies derived >50% (>=56–65% of energy) of their subsistence from animal foods, whereas only 14% of these societies derived >50% (>=56–65% of energy) of their subsistence from gathered plant foods." Zing. 

I think plant pushers are either trying to be politically correct or relying on outdated info (or sources that rely on outdated info). For example, Boyd Eaton has revised his views on the subject.

Besides, find me a plant food that even rivals the best meat...it's pretty hard. I love vegetables, think they are important, but meat is the core of the paleolithic diet. You can do it with less meat if you want, but don't claim your diet is more authentic or some bullshit.

What did our ancestor's eat? We don't know exactly, but modern hunter-gatherers do not support the notion of a plant-based diet. What does? If you think you have some good evidence let me know, but since it doesn't seem like it makes a difference health-wise, I don't see a reason to advise people to eat mostly plants.

Comment?: 5
Grow Your Own Salad Bowl
04/20/2010 - 22:11

I'm glad I saw this great post about growing your own "salad bowl." A couple of weeks ago I had bought some lettuce seedlings on a whim and put them in a pot on the windowsill. They weren't doing so awesome and I was thinking of throwing them away, but this video gave me hope. A few days later they recovered and tonight I harvested a small salad. It's not a lot, but it was crisp, fresh, and tasty. The plants should keep yielding for awhile if I just pick a few outer leaves each time. Bonsai lettuce...

I also have a few pots of herbs. In Sweden when I needed herbs they sold the actual plants in the produce section, which would last for a week or more if you took care of them. Here they sell them in cut bundles, already wilting and just as expensive. Good thing growing them yourself is easy, but I guess I'm lucky- some city folk don't have a good South facing window like I do.

Bagged salad isn't much better than those wilted herbs. And who knows where it's from or what kind of fertilizer they used? I took my lettuce leaves, a spring of parleys, and poured melted bone marrow, lemon juice, and capers over them. I sprinkled the salad with salt and pepper...it was delicious!

Comment?: 5
Carbs I Enjoy
03/27/2010 - 16:19

 

Bergen, Norway dinner with mussels, wolf fish, vegetables, and potatoes...the only thing missing was some lamb or mutton

Louisa asked what carbs I recommend. I did low carb when I started paleo to reduce the excessive amount of bacteria that seemed to cause my IBS. But as I got better I added in more carbohydrates. Personally I enjoy life more with moderate carbohydrate consumption and none of my problems returned. I think low-carb approaches like PaNu are a great approach for losing weight, but I don't think carbohydrates are going to make a slim insulin sensitive individual like me fat. I also think many paleo advocates selectively ignore the large amounts of evidence that roots were important to early humans. I think the best blogs that advocate a sensible approach to carbohydrates for healthy people are Whole Health Source(start with his Kitavan posts) and Primal Wisdom(start with Primal Potatoes). 

I do carb cycling. I divide my favorite carbohydrates into rather unscientific categories, trying to rotate them to reduce the odds of me being affected by any antinutrients. My categories are tropical, local winter, and local summer.

The local winter carbs include carrots, squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, parsnips, beets, and other vegetables that grow locally. In the winter I often eat a serving or two of these a day. 

The local summer carbs include fruits, with a basis towards wild fruits, which I particularly enjoyed in Sweden. When I lived there I would often simply go out into the woods in the morning and gather a basket of lingonberries, sea buckthorn, blueberries, or currants. I think berries can be enjoyed daily in season and more domesticated fruits like apples or apricots with more moderation. 

Tropical carbs are more like supplements or treats. They don't grow in New York, but with the Caribbean/SE Asian population in NYC I'd be amiss if I didn't enjoy some plantains, taro, cocoyam, mango, coconut, and other tropical delights similar to what the Kitavans or Okinawans are so healthy eating about once a week or so. Thai coconuts are my favorite because they pack a punch of potassium and it's possible to ferment most of the sugar out of the water. 

Comment?: 4
Woman, the hunter
01/11/2010 - 17:10

This is what you will look like if you eat tasty animals

Some of the most common comments on blogs post related to the NYT paleo article seem to contend that we are idiots because meat was a rare treat in the paleolithic and most of the food came from women who gathered tubers and nuts.

Well, I eat tubers and nuts, but these misconceptions seem to be some legacy of politically correct nutrition education. Modern hunter-gatherers do rely heavily on tubers and nuts, but these populations are not representitive of paleolithic populations. The few modern hunter-gatherer populations left live in highly marginal environments are not models of the stone age. Thankfully, we do have isotopic analysis, which allows us to know that paleolithic humans ate meat and plenty of it.

Anthropologist Richard Wrangham is among the few that believe that tubers were very important in our evolution into humans, but most anthropologists consider tubers and nuts inadequate for providing the nutrients that would support the large human brain.

Gathering was important, but it's also important to remember that what anthropologists consider gathering includes foraging for shellfish, insects, and small game. The misconception that women didn't engage in hunting has led to lots of misguided stereotypes of women meekly digging for potatoes while men roamed the plains with spears.

Humans seem to eat tubers when they can, as they are a rich source of calories, but they are not rich in much else. And nuts make little sense as a food we evolved on considering how rich they are in omega-6 fatty acids, which overwhelming cause inflammation in humans.

In a good environment, even a decent hunter could procure some kind of flesh. Big game might have been rare, but there is no evidence that humanity evolved on a plant-based diet. I don't mean to downplay the importance of plants, as I eat plenty of them myself, but seafoods and meat provide nutrients they simply are inefficient in providing.

I hope to post more about this, as well as the other misguided idea that gorilla diets have much to tell us about the optimal human diet (hint: despite the digestive similarities, we don't have large enough colons to make the conversion of fiber into fatty acids a viable food source).

An Italian reporter asked me if I have a "paleo" boyfriend...haha, I don't and actually my boyfriend is pretty adverse to meat and fish, but thankfully part of the way I eat is vegetables and lots of them! I just try to steer boyfriend away from the most processed frankensoy foods and to my delicious pumpkin bisque and crunchy kale.

 

 

Comment?: 0
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