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  #46   ^
Old Wed, Jun-12-24, 21:56
deirdra's Avatar
deirdra deirdra is offline
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I can hit 34 plants on a carnivore diet lightly seasoned with the herbs, spices, olive & avocado & coconut oils, coffee & teas in my kitchen. Ha ha!
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  #47   ^
Old Thu, Jun-13-24, 06:58
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Calianna Calianna is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by deirdra
I can hit 34 plants on a carnivore diet lightly seasoned with the herbs, spices, olive & avocado & coconut oils, coffee & teas in my kitchen. Ha ha!


Exactly my point.

For anyone who eats a plant based diet, how could they NOT eat at least 30 plants a week? That's only 4 or 5 plants a day.

Even if they eat plain oatmeal (1) every day for breakfast, a PB and Jelly sandwich (3) every day for lunch, pasta (1) and jarred sauce (tomatoes, onion, garlic, oregano, basil - that alone would provide at least 5 plants) every day for dinner, that's still going to provide a minimum of about 10 plants towards the 30, leaving the need for 20 more to hit 30 for the week... or less than 3 more plants each day. How difficult could that possibly be for someone who only eats plant based foods?
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  #48   ^
Old Mon, Jun-17-24, 19:44
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Bob-a-rama Bob-a-rama is offline
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Plant based.

Isn't that cow a storage system for grass?

If I eat a plant based cow, I feel I'm eating a plant based diet.

Seriously, I think "Plant Based" is merely the new buzz word to get you to eat more corporate, industrial, frankenfoods.

Let me see, I had almonds, pumpkin seeds (roasted in coconut oil), mixed nuts (pistachios, macadamias, pecans, walnuts, cashews, filberts, one Brazil nut, in peanut oil), and ripe olives today.

Oh and coffee, green tea, black tea, and oolong tea. The coffee and tee were sweetened with stevia.

I had some cheese, cream, and bacon too. I ate the cheese with a half lavash (6 net carbs) made with brown rice, flax seed, rice bran, and olive oil.

And I took some psyllium hull capsules to add bulk to my diet. Almost forgot, drank a bit of hibiscus tea, too.

22 plants and only 6 different cheeses, some cream, and some bacon. I guess I'm plant based.
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  #49   ^
Old Sat, Aug-24-24, 07:29
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Calianna Calianna is offline
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Bringing this thread up again, because a couple weeks ago, I kept track of how many plants I ate in a week.

I have a routine where I cook a 4-serving main dish every other day. Then we have leftovers from those the other days of the week, so a lot of the plants in those recipes are repeated during the week.

I also used a lot of the same herbs, spices, and seasonings in multiple recipes, so I could only count each of those once.

That particular week, I had the remainder of a bag of frozen mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries) that I used in my breakfast yogurt, so I could only count those 4 plants on Sunday. When I went back to my usual one type of berry each day (strawberries or blueberries or raspberries) I did not count them again. Lunch was usually the same thing each day, or else the only plant based part of lunch had the same plants as I'd already eaten another day.

I noticed that most condiments are made from multiple plants.

For instance Mustard is made from distilled vinegar, mustard seed, and tumeric, with generic "spices" also listed in the ingredients. Having no idea what the spices are, I only counted that as one plant.

Mayo has multiple plant ingredients: oil (could be soy, canola, or even avocado oil), lemon juice, vinegar (already counted vinegar in the mustard), sugar (technically could be counted since it either comes from sugar cane or sugar beets) and paprika extract.

I had a recipe that week which used Worcsestershire sauce and along with ingredients that repeated plants I'd already used that week, I added a few more different plants: molasses, tamarind, chili pepper.

I started keeping track of the plants I consumed on Sunday morning, and had blown past 30 plants by the end of the day on Monday.

The rules of only counting different plants says you can count different parts and different versions of the same plant since the different parts have different nutrients: so black olives count separately from olive oil, which counts separately from green olives (and don't forget the pimentos stuffed in the green olives). Red, yellow, orange, and green peppers each count separately, as would green chiles and jalapenos. Three different recipes called for onion: one had yellow onions, another had red onions, and the 3rd had green onions.

After hitting 30 plants on Monday, my plant total inched up slowly the rest of the week because so many of the same plants were repeated in different recipes (and don't forget the leftovers for dinner every other day - couldn't count any of those a 2nd time either), but I still came up with a total of 50 plants for the week.

How strange... apparently being LC means you eat much larger variety of plants than a typical vegan.

Not to mention that you get far better nutrition from animal protein than plant based protein to begin with, so any polyphenols, antioxidants, and pre-biotics in all those plants just add to the complete nutritional profile.
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  #50   ^
Old Sun, Aug-25-24, 04:50
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WereBear WereBear is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Calianna
How strange... apparently being LC means you eat much larger variety of plants than a typical vegan.


We have two local stores that are health food oriented, and stock a lot of vegetarian/vegan products. People buy "plant-based" because they've been convinced it's healthy.

They don't do it for the food. It's all the same food, with all the same added ingredients. I think that's why the vegan search for satisfying food creates an image of demand, but it just won't scale up. People won't eat it!

I have become fond of the raw meat and veggie combo that a local store offers. It's put in the oven season, and even times in the summer when storms come through. The salmon gets the herb butter and is otherwise unseasoned, but the pork medallions and beef cut are over-seasoned with a heavy crust of spice. I wash it off, leaving on the amount I liked, and was glad it was real meat under there.

It's just everything is over-seasoned these days. When spices were like gold dust out of their native area, I can't see traditional cuisine relying so heavily on this much spice. Spicy, sure -- I love real Cuban cuisine. And Buffalo wing sauce.

But I now view most plants as condiments, because at that level, they don't bother me. I have to be careful indulging in fries and ketchup. I had more than a bite or two, this week, and I felt it.

But for people who eat this way all the time, such fine discrimination is not possible. Rather, I think it's an admission the flavor -- how our body gets us to stop what we are doing and EAT -- suffers from such a heavy hand.

That first bite of bare cheeseburger still tastes great. And it wouldn't be the same without the mustard and pickles
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  #51   ^
Old Sun, Aug-25-24, 10:46
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Calianna Calianna is offline
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WB, you definitely have a different/special situation with your severe oxalate sensitivities - but you still manage to get a variety of plants in your diet, even if in small amounts.

Quote:
It's just everything is over-seasoned these days. When spices were like gold dust out of their native area, I can't see traditional cuisine relying so heavily on this much spice.


I do tend to be pretty heavy-handed with the spices and herbs - I grew up with food that had so little seasoning that most of my mother's tiny herb and spice containers in the cabinet were at least 30 years old, because she used them so infrequently and in such tiny amounts on the few foods she seasoned with them.

Once I was out on my own, I went to the opposite end of the seasoning spectrum, because I loved to actually be able to TASTE the seasonings, lots of them! I threw practically everything from my spice rack in some foods, LOL! I ended up with a lot of different foods tasting pretty much the same, simply because of the vast number of seasonings and the amount I was using. (if you use ridiculous amounts of enough different green herbs in a red spaghetti sauce it starts to look more like a murky brown... and tastes like you threw the entire spice rack at it.)

I've cut back on the overwhelming seasoning in recent decades, mostly because I subscribed to a menu service about 20 years ago (I don't think it's available any more) with recipes that called for reasonable amounts of specific seasonings for each recipe. It was almost shocking to me how different world cuisines had different seasoning profiles, and even different seasoning profiles within those cuisines, so that even recipes that shares some seasonings all tasted different because the amount of common seasonings was different, and additional seasonings were different. The recipes call for far more seasonings and in larger amounts than my mother would have ever considered using, but they're still far more limited in just how much and how many different seasonings in each recipe compared to what I had been used to using. I still use a lot of those recipes.

Quote:
We have two local stores that are health food oriented, and stock a lot of vegetarian/vegan products. People buy "plant-based" because they've been convinced it's healthy.

They don't do it for the food. It's all the same food, with all the same added ingredients.
I think that's why the vegan search for satisfying food creates an image of demand, but it just won't scale up. People won't eat it!


It's really pretty pathetic that they're using the same base ingredients in pretty much everything - soy beans, pea protein, wheat, seed oils, maybe some chick peas. Add in the occasional beets to make a vegan meat substitute "bleed" like real meat.

With my excessive seasoning assortment, I started out with different base ingredients, then added all the same seasonings so that a beef stew had the same seasoning profile as the spaghetti sauce, etc.

Vegans are starting out with the same base ingredients, then making it into different shapes or adding a few seasonings to make it seem like a different food.

As misguided as my over-seasoning everything was, at least the nutritional value was more well rounded, so I wasn't constantly looking for something different to satisfy the body's craving for a more well rounded nutritional profile.
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  #52   ^
Old Mon, Aug-26-24, 18:59
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Bob-a-rama Bob-a-rama is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WereBear
<...snip...> People buy “plant-based” because they've been convinced it's healthy.<...>


People are herding animals, and they do what they are told. They would rather spend their time knowing which star is dating which other star, or which team is beating which team, or what fashion is in style this year, and so on, rather than think for themselves about what is important.

So the media hammers “plant based” and all their friends start repeating it, and before you know it, to be in with the in people, they start repeating it.

It doesn't matter that the “plant based” was started by the processed food people. It sounded less threatening than vegetarian, and their think tanks brought it forward.

I remember, when I was young, we hippies were going through the zero population growth movement. We were getting in our 30s with no children. The corporations who need constant growth were worried and came up with the solution. (Note if the corporation doesn't sell more than they did last year, the stock won't go up, stockholders will bail, and they will fail. More customers fill that need).

For month after month, every TV drama, comedy, newscast, interview show, and especially media for females, had a woman, telling her husband, “My biological clock is ticking” meaning we better have a child while I still can. 10, 15, 20 times a day it was repeated.

Before long, millions of women jumped on the bandwagon, and the zero population growth movement became another baby boom. And the corporations were happy.

The herd is so easily manipulated, it's actually amazing. Most people would rather follow the crowd than think for themselves.

Mimetic theory: Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.

Today, we bought some keto bread pitas, for those times when you need it. Good balance of carbs and fiber, and on the label, “Vegan friendly”.

I don't know of many breads made with animal products. Soybean oil is much cheaper than lard or butter.

How many products say “Gluten free” when they never had any wheat or other gluten ingredients? People hear the media, and then their friends saying gluten is evil, and putting that on a label of pickles or soybean oil will sell more product because of the phrase. Perhaps 5% of the gluten avoiders have a gluten sensitivity.

We are all like Pavlov's dogs in a way.

Me? Like many others here, I try to do my own research, and think for myself. I know what that so-called doctor in his book or article said can very well be an advertisement bought and paid for by whatever he/she is recommending.

In my life, until keto, meals were always plant based. A starch like potatoes, a veggie, some bread, condiments, dessert, and some animal protein. Seems plant based to me, more variety of plants on the plate.

Oh my dear, the keto people aren't buying our white bread, sugar, and other carb foods, what do we do? Sell them “plant based”.

We are herding animals, and the media has learned how to manipulate the majority of us. Whether it is to buy a product, avoid a competitive product, vote for a politician or political party, buy a particular fashion, or whatever, we are sheep following the leaders. Sadly, all the leaders want is our money.
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  #53   ^
Old Fri, Aug-30-24, 09:17
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Calianna Calianna is offline
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Bob, we're only a few years apart in age, but the only time I recall hearing anything at all about zero population growth was when I was taking a college psych class at a local college while I was still in high school (some kind of special program the county set up to give the kids likely to go to college an idea of what college classes would be like). Anyhow, our lecturer talked some about zero population growth - but that was tempered by the idea of "replacements only". In other words best for a couple to limit themselves to 2 children.

The reasons were varied - decreased infant and childhood death due to the development of vaccines and antibiotics (so fewer children were needed to "carry on the family name"), significantly more effective birth control so there was more of a choice about whether or not to have children and how many to have, the continued shift from primarily rural farm life to city and suburban life meant that for many couples having children was not a necessity, but more like an indulgence, and with more modern farming equipment even those on the farm didn't need as many children to help with the farm work (the Amish still use old fashioned farming ways - they genuinely hope to have at least 6 children (preferably more), so that there are enough to help with all the work on the farm), more possibilities open to women to pursue careers (whether married or not), rather than no real choice but to marry and crank out a baby every year or two.

The biological clock ticking - yes, some of that was contrived, but go back to the idea of "zero population growth: replacements only" - if a woman knew she always wanted to have a family eventually, but postponed having children through her 20's to pursue a career - and also knew that the possibility of birth defects increases after the age of 35, then she's down to a window of only about 5 years that it feels "safe" to have children. Not to mention that fertility can start to decline at that age too (or be hindered by years and years on the pill), and since she's never had a child, she doesn't even know for sure if she might have fertility issues which could result in it taking years to even become pregnant. So in that sort of case, I can see a woman feeling like her biological clock really is ticking, and time is getting short.


But back to the topic of plant based -
Quote:
Today, we bought some keto bread pitas, for those times when you need it. Good balance of carbs and fiber, and on the label, “Vegan friendly”.

I don't know of many breads made with animal products. Soybean oil is much cheaper than lard or butter.


When I was reading about vegan friendly foods (thinking it was simply a matter of no animal derived ingredients), even some ingredients which are decidedly vegan (sugar, wheat, beans) were listed as possibly being linked to animal harm. One thing mentioned was sugar, and I don't recall what the link to animals was (might have even been something to do with the processing), but they pointed out that unless you knew the exact source of that sugar, they warned that it might have been harmful to animals (even if it was only insects). There were other ingredients in that list too - if you're a hard-core vegan, you'd want to pay attention to every last little detail of how the plants used to make the products you buy were raised and processed.

I don't know how someone how is that hard core vegan could eat... anything at all, because if you get rid of the insects that are in/on the food, then you're harming the insects, and if you leave the insects to be processed right along with the food, then you're going to be eating the dead insects.
Quote:
How many products say “Gluten free” when they never had any wheat or other gluten ingredients? People hear the media, and then their friends saying gluten is evil, and putting that on a label of pickles or soybean oil will sell more product because of the phrase. Perhaps 5% of the gluten avoiders have a gluten sensitivity.



Of course what's important to the manufacturer is appealing to as many customers as possible.

And don't forget that there's a tremendous amount of people who haven't the slightest idea what they're eating. I've known a few over the years who were like that. They weren't about to read the ingredient list on any food, much less every food they buy. If it doesn't tell them something they really need to know in great big letters on the front of the package, they don't care.

The gluten sensitive person may know that wheat has gluten - or they may not know it. They may simply rely on labels that say gluten free because they don't really know anything about where gluten comes from, can't be bothered to find out what the sources of gluten are, so they just rely on the big labels that say gluten free.

Some products that we think of as naturally gluten free, such as pickles - they could have previously had one ingredient in the pickle brine that was derived from wheat (maltodextrin shows up on some pickling products, and maltodextrin can be derived from wheat or other gluten containing grains), or processed in a plant that also processed a product containing gluten, so it's possible that they could have had gluten in them previous to adopting that gluten free label.

Potatoes don't naturally have gluten, but products made from potatoes can have gluten containing ingredients added when processed into potato products. It's a minefield out there for people who have a serious sensitivity, especially if they can't be bothered to take on any responsibility for their own safety. It's why packages of peanuts have a warning label that says "contains peanuts".

Like so much processed food on the market, if you're trying to avoid gluten (or in our case, sugars and starches in general), you need to read every ingredient label every time you buy a product to make sure nothing has changed since the last time you bought it. And far too many people simply can't be bothered to do that - they'd rather file a lawsuit complaining that the jar of pickles didn't mention that there was a gluten containing ingredient in it.

Last edited by Calianna : Fri, Aug-30-24 at 13:57.
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  #54   ^
Old Fri, Aug-30-24, 16:07
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Bob-a-rama Bob-a-rama is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Calianna
<…snip…>
When I was reading about vegan friendly foods (thinking it was simply a matter of no animal derived ingredients), even some ingredients which are decidedly vegan (sugar, wheat, beans) were listed as possibly being linked to animal harm. One thing mentioned was sugar, and I don't recall what the link to animals was (might have even been something to do with the processing), but they pointed out that unless you knew the exact source of that sugar, they warned that it might have been harmful to animals (even if it was only insects). <…>


If you are going to be concerned about harming anything, including insects, you are going to have a hard time eating anything. I have no objection to that, but even the plow to grow organic foods is going to kill some of the critters that live underground.

We all have the right to be picky eaters, as long as we don't step on the rights of other humans.

Me? I think carnivorous animals are important for the survival of the herbivorous ones.

Take the Galapagos Marine Iguana. It's the only iguana that goes into the water to get food. At one time in history, it was a land iguana.

But there were no predators, no carnivores, nothing to control the population, so, eventually, the iguanas ate every plant on the island that they could digest and get nutrition from. What to do now? They were hungry.

They started eating seaweed, which used to be close to shore. But without predators, all the easy seaweed was also consumed - hungry again.

The water around their island is very cold, and the iguanas are cold-blooded. As they ate all the close seaweed, they had to dive deeper and deeper to eat.

Now they take the biggest breath of air they can, dive as deep as they can to get one single bite, swim back to land, and lay on a rock until their body warms up enough to take another dive.

If they can't hold their breath long enough, they drown. If they can't dive deeper than the rest, they starve. If they stay down too long, they die of hypothermia.

Instead of predators controlling their numbers, starvation, freezing, and drowning does.

Is that kind to the animals? Which is worse? A quick kill by a predator, or starvation? Or drowning? Or freezing to death underwater?

Mother Nature knows best. There needs to be a balance between predators and herbivores, or the herbivores would have stripped the planet bare, long before even the age of the dinosaurs. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for omnivores and carnivores.

We may eat those cows, but if they weren't a food source for us, they wouldn't be alive today. And they get a safer life than they did before they became domesticated. They don't have to worry about lions on their backs or wolves nipping at their legs until they fall.

Like I said, if the vegans want to be picky eaters, who am I to say "no". But don't tell me what to eat, I'm a picky eater too, I eat low-carb foods, and I have an intolerance to onions and garlic.

I won't go to a bakery for lunch, because I won't expect them to cater to me. So don't go to a hamburger joint expecting them to cater to you.
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  #55   ^
Old Fri, Aug-30-24, 21:14
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Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is offline
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I am remi ded of the efforts at Yellowstone. The big herbivores had changed the landscape, eating everything. No balance. The decision to bring back the wolf was two fold, we'll actually 3. The wolves hunted their prey, culling weak and injured. The herds became healthier. And the land reverted to mixed growth. And of course the wolves thrived. Each now on balance.

I have a nice that only eats veg and fish once a week. She is getting fat. A pretty girl in her late 20s and a gym teacher.

I expect her health to decline. Slowly.

At a recent family event, I made a lovely pasta sauce using no suet to saute the onions. And made meatballs as a side.

And yet no family member has ever considered my keto needs.

I find this vegan, vegetarian business rather one sided...and misguided.
---------

Talked to a woman today that cannot eat real bread because the gluten upsets her Crohns. She hates the no gluten bread yet insists she needs the calories to survive. That was her answer to I don't eat bread. The chips in her cart are apparently OK to eat.

She was very against doing any research on the internet to find better food options. And certainly not carnivore. Beef upsets the works. When other meats suggested, no no no.

I'm trying to learn more about crohn's and does keto help and if gluten is the issue carnivore as an elimination diet might help.

If anyone has info, drop a note in my j.

Last edited by Ms Arielle : Fri, Aug-30-24 at 21:21.
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Old Sat, Aug-31-24, 18:17
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Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is offline
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  #57   ^
Old Sat, Aug-31-24, 19:27
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Calianna Calianna is offline
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I'm not into Doritos, but loved the video! And they certainly look like they'd satisfy a Dorito craving.

I see he has a lot of other videos too.
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Old Sun, Sep-01-24, 03:46
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WereBear WereBear is offline
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Since Crohn's is an autoimmune disease, I'd expect Carnivore would help -- it helps with so many others. Dr. Terry Wahls thinks autoimmune is all ONE disorder, expressed different ways.

But there's constant warnings about the deathly consequences of eating a species appropriate diet, so then it turns into dueling quotes.

Low oxalate works well, too, I understand. But vegan for health is a belief system. It has zero basis in science. Even less than you think.

Antioxidants is STILL a theory, and it doesn't work on me.
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Old Sun, Sep-01-24, 03:55
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Kristine Kristine is offline
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OMG, he made Quest chips but way cheaper! Haha, I might try this.
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Old Sun, Sep-01-24, 07:39
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Calianna Calianna is offline
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Quote:
Antioxidants is STILL a theory, and it doesn't work on me.


I read an article about antioxidants and free radicals a while back...

The article is from 2019 - it's from Popular Science though, so one would think that if there's been some big breakthrough in research, they would have updated the article by now.

https://www.popsci.com/what-are-ant...nough-too-much/

Quote:

We’re used to the message that vitamins are good for us.
But actually, the latest news about lung cancer isn’t all that new.

Researchers have known for a while that certain antioxidants seems to increase cancer risk, ever since a 1996 clinical trial had to be halted after patients receiving beta-carotene had markedly higher lung cancer rates. Now, a new study in the journal Cell has sussed out exactly how antioxidants—which most of us think are supposed to be healthy—could contribute to cancer risk.

Even if you’ve only seen the word on the side of a blueberry box, you’ve heard of antioxidants. It’s a lot less likely that you have a solid grasp on what they actually are. The companies selling us antioxidants, whether they be produce distributors or supplement stores, have drilled home the basics: antioxidants help fight free radicals. What are free radicals? They’re bad, and that’s all you really need to know.

Except, of course, that’s not all you need to know, because antioxidants and free radicals are a lot more complicated than most people ever realized. When researchers first brought them to public attention in the 1990s, it was because early evidence suggested that free radicals contribute to everything from hardened arteries to cancer. More importantly, people who ate low levels of antioxidants seemed to be at higher risk for developing those same conditions. The food and supplement industries took that early research and ran with it: we needed more antioxidants in our lives.

But since the ’90s, the actual scientific evidence about antioxidants hasn’t been nearly as cut-and-dry as cereal boxes might lead you to believe. In a lot of cases, yes, antioxidants are a positive contribution to your diet—but it some cases, too many can actually cause the very diseases we’re trying to prevent.

What is an antioxidant?

An antioxidant, at least when we’re referring to the nutritional side of things, is any molecule that can act as an electron donor. Feel like you’re back in high school chemistry yet? It’s not actually complicated: a free radical is just any molecule with a lone electron in an outer electron shell. Bear with us for a second, because yes, this is a lot of chemistry jargon, but it’s important in order to understand what’s really going on inside your body.

Electrons whiz around in little clouds around atoms (which are the little tiny building blocks of matter that make up everything but the void), and they vastly prefer to do that in pairs. Sometimes, though, something happens that takes an electron away from its partner—that’s how you get a free radical. It’s just an atom or a molecule with a lone, rogue electron. The problem is that solitary electrons are incredibly reactive, because they’re constantly trying to get another electron to come join them. They’ll do anything to get a buddy, which means free radicals can do a lot of damage inside your body. Stealing electrons from other molecules, whether they be DNA or proteins, alters those structures and therefore alters their function.

Antioxidants perform the crucial function of donating an electron to a free radical, effectively neutralizing it. Sounds pretty positive, right? And mostly, it is. We’d quite literally die without them. But here’s the thing: we’d die without free radicals, too.

Wait, why do we need free radicals?

Sometimes, your body has to kill things. Most of these things are bacteria, viruses, and other invaders, but sometimes it also has to take out your own cells. As they divide, cells accumulate mutations and can start to act funny. Ideally, before they turn into something serious like cancer (which is just cell growth gone haywire), your body kills them. The ways in which your immune system attacks both its own cells and foreign microbes are hugely varied, but free radicals are one weapon in the arsenal. Your immune system is essentially harnessing their destructive power for good. When you get a cut on your finger, one crucial step your body takes to prevent infection is to produce more free radicals in the area. Almost all inflammation in your body involves free radical production, which is one reason that chronic inflammation can lead to a variety of diseases, especially cancer. Over time, that exposure to DNA-damaging molecules results in mutations, and those mutations can accumulate to make a cell cancerous. But in small doses, free radicals are crucial.

In fact, there are inherited diseases in which people can’t produce certain types of free radicals, and they’re often diagnosed when young patients keep getting life-threatening infections from seemingly innocuous sources. They can’t fight off the invaders effectively without these reactive molecules.

Because you need free radicals to function properly, your body produces its own antioxidants as well as recruiting some from your food to keep their numbers in check. But crucially, it maintains a balance. A lot of marketing primes us to think of antioxidants like water-soluble vitamins—you can’t have too many, so take ‘em just in case. Early research may have suggested that, but as biologists learn more about antioxidants it’s becoming clear that more isn’t necessarily better.

How can you have too many antioxidants?

There’s still a lot we don’t understand about this field, but preliminary research suggests a few ways having too many antioxidants can hurt us.

One has to do with that balance we talked about: You need a certain supply of reactive molecules in order to maintain your immune system. Plus, researchers are now realizing that some signaling pathways inside cells are only activated by free radicals. If you’re loading up on antioxidant supplements, you might be throwing your body out of whack and preventing it from doing its job.

Increasing evidence suggests that lung cancer and certain types of melanoma are actually made worse by excess antioxidants. That seems to be because free radicals are, in some ways, actively protecting cells from becoming cancerous. If you’ve got too many antioxidants, they start interfering with those anti-tumorigenic jobs that free radicals are trying to do.

Exercise also seems to rely somewhat on some free radicals to induce a little cellular stress. Preliminary studies now show that taking high levels of antioxidants interferes with the health benefits you get from exercise.

If all of this seems incredibly counter to what you’ve just learned, don’t worry—it felt that way to scientists, too. It’s all quite complicated and still poorly understood, but the most important thing to realize is that we talk about “free radicals” and “antioxidants” as big groups, when really they’re quite diverse. There are many types of both molecules, and each seems to act in a slightly different capacity. Vitamins E and C, for instance, are both antioxidants, but they seem to fill different roles in your body. So just getting more antioxidants as a broad category is kind of meaningless.

What’s more, you actually seem to need a mixture of antioxidants, not just more of one kind.

When antioxidants donate that crucial electron, they’re sometimes left with their own lonely electron. Now they can behave like a free radical. Fortunately, other antioxidants can come along to help them out, and then yet more antioxidants can help those ones out, and so on—it’s a cascade in which they can all help stabilize each other.

Whole foods contain that balance of antioxidants, but when you take a pill of, say, vitamin E, you’re only getting that one molecule. That might be part of why taking supplemental forms of antioxidants doesn’t seem to help prevent diseases.

Hold on, antioxidants don’t prevent disease?

We know that people who eat foods rich in antioxidants tend to be healthier, which is where this whole craze came from in the first place. Part of that is undoubtedly that folks who eat lots of fruits and veggies (your primary source of antioxidants) also tend to have other healthy habits (and tend to be wealthier and whiter, both of which are big factors in your health). Plus, those fruits and veggies are good for you for other reasons, like their high-doses of fiber and lack of processed ingredients.

But it’s also true that you do need a certain supply of antioxidants, which your body is excellent at extracting from whole foods. Getting a sufficient amount from your diet is definitely an important part of staying healthy—but that doesn’t mean more is better.

There have been multiple huge studies examining whether antioxidant supplementation was associated with decreased risk of everything from cancer to stroke to heart disease, and they’ve pretty much all found that it didn’t matter. Unless you have a deficiency in a particular antioxidant, taking a supplement doesn’t help you. And in the case of lung cancer and melanoma, it could hurt. Yet again, the truth is that there’s no magic ingredient or behavior that will make you healthy: eating a balanced diet and being as active as you can is the best way to lower risk of disease.
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