Fruit is sugar with some vitamins and fiber thrown in.
You don’t need fruit, you can get vitamins from a pill and eat fiber from any supplemental plan.
For some reason people think eating fruit your body somehow can distinguish between “good and bad” food and fruit is good food. Like Orange Juice is nothing more than sugar water with some vitamins. But if you’re already taking a one a day type vitamin pill, you don’t need OJ at all.
If you like fruit fine, but you don’t need to eat it for health. Food is nothing more than fuel. And you can get it rom lots of sources. Do you think when we send food aid to Africa they get fruit? No they get a soy based gruel that is fortified with vitamins and fiber and can be mixed with water. This is all they need to be healthy. It’s not the best tasting stuff but it keeps you not only alive, but healthy too
I was taught that nutritionally dense food was merely the opposite of empty calorie foods. So I would agree with the nutrients per kilocalorie definition.
I also know that people tend to confuse this, and assume it is the opposite of calorie dense, as most empty-calorie foods happen to be calorie dense.
My point, therefore, is to say that someone wanting nutrient dense food probably wants the opposite of what Karl and Mark suggested.
The full idea is that the body makes that sugar from the protein already in your body, i.e. breaking down your internal organs. But that’s all I know. I’m sure you guys could make a good thread about it.
No substituting sugar with some vitamins and fiber thrown in is not the same as fruit.
For the full health benefits of having fruit as part of a complete diet you’d need to throw it a bunch of the phytochemicals too, some of which function as antioxidants, some as god-knows-what and some of which we are just discovering and learning about. A related example was how some began to promote supplemental vitamins A, C and E because it was found that a diet of foods rich in those vitamins was associated with lower cancer rates only to find that studies looking at supplementing just the vitamins had no such effect, that in fact *supplemental *“Vitamin A, beta-carotene, and vitamin E may increase mortality.” As part of real foods, no question, increases health. On their own, probably not so much so.
Yup, you can come up with a vitamin fortified gruel that will keep the body functioning, and probably compared to our typical Western diet, high in corn syrup, other simple carbs, trans-fats, salt, low in fruits and veggies, low in seafood and whole grains, etc., is even healthier. But it would hardly be as much fun to eat as real food. Fruits and veggies are a lot more fun to eat than vitamin and fiber fortified gruel.
Not sugar, but ketones. The Atkins theory (from memory) is that when ingested carbohydrate is drastically reduced, the body will use, in order:
Blood sugar
When this is depleted:
Glycogen from within cells
When this is depleted:
Ketones from breaking down fat cells
Continuing protein ingestion keeps the muscular bulk from being depleted, and fat… I can’t remember that bit. But it’s not bad for you in normal doses.
That may or may not be the theory but the reality is not quite the same.
We have strong mechanisms to keep our blood sugar within a fairly narrow range (glucose homeostasis) so you never “deplete” your blood sugar. Indeed you mobilize glycogen stores to maintain your blood sugar level and as those glycogen store are depleted you break down the dietary fat and protein and tissue fat and protein to produce glucose and to a lesser degree energy directly. The process of harvesting glucose and energy from protein produces ketones and ammonia which gets converting into uric acid and urinated out. The process of getting energy from the fat (both ingested and from tissue stores) produces ketones too and those ketones can also be used for energy production.
Ketones floating around tends to make people nauseous and give them headaches so they tend to eat less. It works because people may be allowed to eat high calorie fatty foods but the diet is otherwise so restrictive, and many feel so crappy, that the total calorie intake is less. You must take fiber supplements to avoid constipation and vitamin supplements to at least get the basics (not getting the antioxidants and the other benefits of phytochemicals but hey). But it can result in at least medium term success.
Ya pays yauz money and yauz makes yauz choice. Not for me though.
The presence of ketones may do that to some, but anecdotally I’ve done the diet, lost 30 lbs, and had no ill effects - in fact, I felt better than I had done for years. I had a reduced appetite, but no nausea at all.
Durian tastes like rich, creamy custard.
The experience of eating ripe durian is like eating that custard in an outhouse full of rotten meat.
Since westerners have less exposure to outhouses, they are less enamored, on average, with durian than are locals.
On the fruit nutritional density front: this being the Dope, I’m surprised no one has weighed in to argue for the nutritonal density of those nuts which are botanically fruits…perhaps I missed it or perhaps we are all reformed now and actually trying to answer the OP instead of one-upping the previous poster.
Someone, I think George Orwell, once described the taste as “eating custard in the men’s latrine”. I can tell you that in my first encounter with the durian, I thought a large animal had lost control of its bowels and died in the produce market. I found the offending fruit 50 feet away from where I first detected it.
Due to the repellent taste and odor, and the fact that it has to be imported from southeast Asia, durian isn’t on most Westerners’ lists of “power foods”.
My bag of prunes at home advertises on its package how it’s so much better than other fruits in terms of fiber, Vitamin A, etc. per gram. Which wouldn’t be too significant, except that I’ve heard it confirmed from outside sources that prunes are very, very good for you.
