4 replies to this topic

[Chrystoph Kardashev]

My apologies in advanced if this is a redundant question but as a noobie to this lifestyle (that I may at one point adopt) I have to ask; is there any sort of concensus relating to the exact ammount of each nutrient and element one should optimally consume and what exactly compromises every known nutrient and element the body does need and use? Secondly how feasible is it to fulfill that while maintaining a caloric intake of what? ~1800, 2000 calories? I'd love to hear from people who've worked this into their lives; how is your diatery and supplement regiment like? Thanks!

[scottknl]

Basically, the US govt has done some research over many years to  find out what people need to eat to stay healthy.  Unfortunately very few people are able to follow these recommendations.  They've published that research and it has been included in many software applications such as cronometer.com among others.  The default setup of the software includes the basic amounts.  From there you would need to determine how many calories you need to eat to maintain a healthy weight and decide how to allocate those calories to carbohydrates, fats and proteins.  I usually balance my nutrition by the day.  So for every day I try to eat enough of all my calories, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals and water.  

 

In practice how do people manage this trick?  Well, we generally eat lots of different types of vegetables and vary the quantities until we get pretty close to a fully balanced diet, then supplement the 1 or two items that don't quite meet the minimum standards.  Also it's hard to figure out the nutrition properly when you eat manufactured foods since the nutrition printed on the box is often not the full story of what the "food" contains... so instead we tend to eat whole foods that are unprocessed and when foods are combined, they are done in an easy to calculate ratio.  For example if you eat peas and onions mixed together, I would do 50% onions and 50% peas so that I could easily calculate and record the nutrition from the weight of the serving.

 

My own diet is listed here if you care to read about it.  It really is feasible to live on such a diet if you have some willpower and a desire to be healthy.

 

 

[Chrystoph Kardashev]

Thanks for your reply. Thinking about the prospect of quantifying the food I eat is an exciting venture in itself I tell you; I always felt..."wrong" just stuffing matter into my hole blindly. Traditionally my diet is heavily mediterranian and the inclusion of thai and indian cuisine is prominent because I love such things so maybe this is something I can ease into. Meat is something I want to reduce from my diet too but is a little wild game every now and then bad? I ask this because I, on somewhat rare occasions, hunt a wild rabbit or 2 or do some shore fishing. Escargot is a delicacy here and I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't miss eating the mandatory plate of seasoned snails every first rain. Yum!

 

Is there a particular calorie ratio I should be looking at?

[scottknl]

Of course, I agree that it's not a healthy thing to be eating ad-lib  in our modern society with easy access to high calorie foods.  Wild game is some of the healthier meats, but all meat feeds the gut bacteria that produce TMAO which is implicated in heart disease.  Infrequent meat/fish consumption will produce almost no TMAO.  In terms of a calorie ratio, I shoot for 15% of calories for protein, 35 % healthy fats and 50% complex carbs.  In general CRON produces excellent health and energy for daily life.  It's important to not take it too far though with a maximum being a reduction of ad-lib calories around 30% or so.  These guidelines can change depending on genetics, environment, activity level, age and specific health conditions.

[Michael]

I think Scott's most recent comment above is a bit over-hasty in getting worked up about TMAO: despite some somewhat compelling-looking work, it remains the case that meat intake per se is not linked to heart disease, with only a small-to-modest effect of relatively high quantities of red and processed meats specifically. And whatever the TMAO effect, consumption of fatty fish is quite clearly linked to reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. I think most people eat too much meat,  but there are a lot bigger things to prioritize than cutting drastically back on meat intake.

 

On the core question: "optimal nutrition" is a pretty loosey-goosey concept, admittedly. In the rodent studies, they never speak of "optimal nutrition," but only mention in e.g. the introduction or "Methods" section of papers that it's important to provide adequate nutrition, sometimes using phrases like "Calorie restriction without malnutrition," "Calorie restriction with adequate nutrition," "Calorie restriction with adequate provision of essential nutrients" or the like, but never intending them to be a phrase unto themselves.

 

Ben Best first began advocating that people always make this explicit by consistently using "CR with Adequate Nutrition" (CRAN) whenever CR was meant in 1996; this had evidently become fairly entrenched in the Calorie Restriction Society by the time I came on board (1999) -- and see this post by Brian Delaney, who despises it .

 

Later, others began saying that we don't want merely adequate nutrition, but optimal nutrition; this was a mixture of the then-still-widespread belief that the RDAs were grossly inadequate, and more general nutritional quality issues (ie, a proper healthy diet and some "health food," rather than just the equivalent of a Big Mac diet with a Centrum for micronutrients). Hence, "Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition" became a catchphrase in internal discussion and then in the media. I would say we have a pretty good idea of what "adequate nutrition" is: the Institute of Medicine's Dietary Reference intakes, with adjustments for biochemical individuality where they can actually be made (e.g., adjusting B12 and folate intake by monitoring homocysteine and methylmalonic acid; vitamin D with 25(OH)D3; iron with ferritin, etc).

 

I'd say that "optimal nutrition" can be debated, but can be pegged by the stuff on which the public health people and all the diet gurus from Atkins to Ornish basically converge: lots of fruits and vegetables, few to no refined carbs, lean protein, fatty fish or flax oil, a glass or 2 of wine with dinner, avoidance of trans- and minimization (over Atkins' equivocations and many Paleo people's adamant insistence) of saturated fat, use of olive oil as the main fat (pace Ornish and co.), and so on.

 

And, there are nutritional issues that may be specific to CR, such as the possible need for people on CR to keep protein intake down to RDAish levels.

 

The truth, of course, is that we have to be humble about all of this: there is plenty of room for a better understanding even of "adequate" nutrition, let alone "optimal" -- let alone "optimal for people on CR."

 

And, of course, whether CR will work in humans at all.

 

Here is a VERY detailed analysis on this issue if you really want to dig into some of the issues involved:
http://arc.crsociety.org/read.php?2,153892,154218#msg-154218

Edited by Michael, 21 December 2014 - 11:40 PM.