Unless the meat is extremely fresh, yes. As for multi-vitamins, they should have no cells in them, whatsoever.
The nutritional value is due to the following:
Two-year-old vitamin tablets might not be the same, chemically, as some right off the assembly line, depending on storage. The vitamins have chemically degraded.
Nutrients have to stay in the foregut long enough to be absorbed. A bolus dose of vitamins could theoretically shoot through your innards too fast to be successfully absorbed. Food takes longer to go through you (unless you absentmindedly eat half a head of cabbage in one sitting).
Now, fresh spinach is better than two-year-old spinach because it also hasn’t had the time to degrade.
Meat is an excellent source of sustenance, if one is looking for the nutrients in meat. It definitely has much more immediately available protein and iron than do plant products. One can coax the protein out of beans, but that takes more work (fermenting, long cooking, etc.)
The idea that meat is automatically inferior to plant as food is more political than scientific.
The majority of an apple will be rotted away long before there is any seed germination. Indeed, all the flesh of the apple will be long gone. Only what is specifically in the seeds would be used by the embryo.
So why do fruits have all that flesh? Current theory is that it encourages animals to grab the fruit and thus accidentally spread the seeds.
That’s not true. After an apple is picked, the fruit tissue continues to respire. It takes in oxygen and continues to metabolize carbohydrates. This is a process of living cells, and accounts for the further ripening of the picked fruit. Commercial apples are stored in a reduced oxygen environment in order to slow their metabolism, and the consequent ripening. Respiration, and life, continues in all fruits after picking.
So, if the average meat in the store and multi-vitamins have no living cells in them, I am eating dead cells? What happens to these dead cells once they enter my stomach and then bloodstream? Isn’t it live cells that are healthy and promote healthy cell division to help prevent aging and such? Aren’t dead cells a sort of poison to the living cells?
How can eating dead cells be just as healthy as eating living cells?
I didn’t mean to put multi-vitamins into the first part of that paragraph. I’m pretty sure vitamins don’t ever have cells, let alone dead ones, even inside a living apple, correct?
No cells will be living by the time they get to your intestines for digestion. Protein consists of amino acids, and your digestive system digests protein into the amino acids of which the protein consists. Your body then reassembles these amino acids into new and possibly different proteins, by a process which involves DNA, RNA, and ribosomes. But that’s another story.
Vitamins are chemical compounds/molecules. Living cells have vitamins, just as they have other chemical compounds they need in order to survive. It is possible to create multi-vitamins that don’t have any cells on it (although I’m not sure if cells are used to obtain the vitamins or if the vitamins are synthesized). Living or dead cells have vitamins, since the living cell once used it in metabolism.
Live cells only divide healthily themselves, they won’t help in the cellular division of other cells (I think for the most part), and they sure won’t help in the cellular division of another specie’s cells (again, for the most part). Like barbitu8 said, any cell that reaches the intestines is already dead. Proteases, enzymes that cleave proteins, work in the stomach to break down the proteins present in the cells.
Oh, no full foreign cell enters your bloodstream from the digestive system, unless it’s pathogen. Cells that you consume to obtain nutrients (like those in a cooked hamburger), are broken down by the time they enter the intestines.
Ok, i understand much better about cells. But specific to the above post: WHat specifically do you mean by “efficacy”? What exactly happens to the vitamin that makes it not as healthy?
Why don’t you try a dictionary? http://dictionary.reference.com/ is one of many on-line. I only just made the point about digestion recently since I assumed you knew that. I don’t want to sound like a wise guy, but I would recommend that you do some basic research before you post questions. I never said they were “not as healthy,” only that they lose their efficacy. I don’t believe any vitamin causes deleterious effects after time. It was once thought that vitamin C might, but studies establish that it does not.
[b[barbitu8**, i am thankful for your help so far. But, come on. To take the time to post a link to a dictionary??? I didn’t ask for a definition, i asked what you meant by saying it was less effective. As in, what physically happens to the vitamins to make it less efficable. Then, i assumed you meant less effective for health purposes, so i asked about healthiness, since that is the effect vitamins have on a body. I wasn’t trying to put words in your mouth. For a person in my position right now, it’s hard not to sound demanding…
I already apologized for my lack of background, but why spend hours (that i don’t have) figuring out the way cells work in order to answer my small question? It’s easier to ask here and it gives you guys a chance to make some conversation about one of the most important things to us… nutrition. My questions are very straightforward and all of them have gotten very good acceptable answers so far. As a last question, i just wanted to know what happens to vitamins over time. I know there is a very simple answer to this question.
Yes, you are eating dead cells when you eat most meat. If you eat ANYTHING THAT IS COOKED it will be “dead cells”–or not even whole cells at all.
The exact same thing that would happen to live cells you eat. They are broken down into component molecules and then processed in your individual cells. Live or dead cells eaten is irrelevant.
No. No. No. No. And what comic book did you get this out of? Great day in the morning! Who is teaching this tripe to people?
The thing is, the answer isn’t always simple. What happens to vitamins over time? That depends on the vitamin. If the molecule is water sensitive, and is stored in a humid area, then perhaps the water will cleave the vitamin molecule in half, and make 2 other compounds which cannot be used by the cell in the same way that the original molecule was intended to be used. The cell cannot put the two halves back together due to a bazillion reasons involving why it needs that molecule, what it wants to use it for, and what the cellular concentrations of various compounds, ions etc are. Or perhaps the vitamin was stored in too much direct sunlight, which causes an important part of it to change to something else, and that original part was needed by the cell to identify the vitamin so that it could be used. Now the cell can’t, and it can’t change it back. Or maybe its heat sensitive…you see, there are a bunch of possibilities.
Not all cells make all types of vitamins, which is why we need to eat (consume) certain types. We get vitamin C from fruit, K from veggies, B12 (IIRC) from meat - this is because our cells cannot make them, and needs them for various complex metabolic pathways. If humans eat meat (which is, as you know, dead cells) it can further take the dead cells and break them down and extract whatever vitamin that might be in it that it can use. IT will do the same thing for proteins, which our cells will break down and use again to make new ones in order to say alive. It’s all part of metabolism, and there are people who spend lifetimes trying to learn how it all works.
Why are multi-vitamins “healthier?” Because they are a massive dose of needed vitamins, basically ensuring that your cells get what they need without having to consume the natural sources of it. This is why multi-vitamins are recommended for people who have odd dietary needs, or who just aren’t eating well enough to provide themselves with all the vitamins they need. If the vitamins are degraded (see above) then you need to take more for the same effect - therefore they are less efficient. The vitamins in the multivitamin and in a dead cell (meat) are chemically identical, and over time the vitamins in the meat can degrade in the same way as those badly stored in a bottle. Part of the rotting of meat is the degredation of proteins and vitamins - if you leave a steak out in the sun, it will degrade much much faster than one in the fridge, but over time, they will both rot away.
My recommendation? Pick up a basic biochemistry/cell biology book and read through it, especially the section on metabolism. You seem to have a bit of cunfusion about how cells work, so the rest of the book should be a worthwhile read for you as well. Cells are incredibly complex, and we are no where NEAR being able to understand everything there is to know about them, but there is a lot we DO know.
Well, thanks dogface, but I gathered as much from all the posts before your last one.
Karl Grenze answered my question, but i am sure someone could tell me what “other chemical reactions” are and how long it’s takes these “other chemical reactions” to occur. Also, in what atmosphere they occur (such as leaving apples out in room temp. instead of keeping them in the refrigerator for example) The key here is to answer with “practical” information, such as Karl’s second-to-last post.
Very good answer mnemosyne. It is a good idea to bone up on this stuff, but right now I got a whole bunch of Finance to learn because I am graduating in 2 weeks!!! Finals
