jen's everyday blog

What to eat- getting down to specifics

Okay- so I’ve put out some of my general thoughts, but I still haven’t gotten down to specifics. So let’s get down to it. Just to take a really extreme hypothetical situation, let’s suppose I was only able to eat spinach and beef steak. Again, nutrients aside, how much of these items would I have to eat in order to meet my daily fat, carbohydrate and protein requirements (while I’m at it, I’m going to cut back on the grams of protein and pump up the grams of carbs, since apparently we don’t need 30% protein in order to keep our bodies from falling apart). Based on information from nutritiondata.com. I would have to eat 276 grams of beef roast in order to get enough fat in my diet, which would put me a bit over the top for protien at 86 grams of protein. I’d then need to eat a piddling 14 cups of spinach to round out my calory needs with carbohydrates.

Right. No problem. This might explain why the ancestors of humans were into tubers but it also raises a bit of a mystery. According to various sources, we modern humans should be getting roughly 40% to 50% of our calories from carbs. If that’s the case, what were pre-agriculture humans eating to get enough carbs in their diet? I suppose one answer might be nuts and fruits, both of which seem to pack at least somewhat of a carb punch. However, to get enough carbs you would still need to be eating upwards of 8 cups of nuts and fruits each day in the pre-grain era, just to have enough energy to sit around and do not much. So what’s up with that?

Okay- all of this is making my head hurt. Maybe I should just skip to figuring out how much butter I would have to eat every day to get enough fat calories. 5 Tablespoons. Okay. Not that I’m going to take that approach, necessarily. I’m just saying.

posted at 22:25 on Fri, 20 Oct, 2006 | path: /living



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