The thing about food is that it can never really stay a theoretical debate. We have to eat. And if we have a choice about what to eat, we have to make that choice. My most recent step in an effort to figure out what to eat has involved something I need no great urging to get into- an excel spreadsheet program. Basically, there’s all this talk about x% carbs, and y% protein and so on, but what does that really mean when you are eating food? I mean, if we’re eating anything remotely close to whole foods, we can’t really just eat ‘Carb’ and ‘Protein’ (although, we can come pretty close to just eating fat, come to think of it), because what we eat is food.
To tackle this problem, and get a general feel for the situation, I used the awesome nutrient data site, and went through foods from various food groups. Then I very roughly ballparked the average amount of carbs, protein and fats in foods in each group. Now, perhaps obviously, this is a bit of hack because there’s a wide variability in the food within a food group, but still, there’s a reason they are in the same food group to begin with, and it means that it is at least possible to come up with some numbers that differentiate somewhat accurately between, say, meat and vegetable. Here are the numbers I came up with, for 100g of the food in question:
—DISCLAIMER: These numbers are a ballpark hack, meant to illustrate what I’m up to. Do not use them to plan your diet!!!
| protein | carbs | total fat | (sat. fat) | |
| meat | 50 | 0 | 5 | 3 |
| veg | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| tuber | 0 | 20 | 0 | 0 |
| fruit | 0 | 15 | 0 | 0 |
| nuts | 20 | 20 | 50 | 5 |
| milk | 3 | 5 | 2 | 1 |
| butter | 1 | 0 | 81 | 51 |
| eggs | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| bread | 10 | 46 | 4 | 1 |
| olive oil | 0 | 0 | 100 | 14 |
| beans | 8.5 | 23 | 0.5 | 0 |
Once I had these numbers, I also entered some additional data like the proportion of protein, carbs and fat I wanted in my diet (I was able to change these numbers to see what the effect would be, since no one can seem to come to a consensus about this) and set it up so that I could enter the amount of each food type that I was eating (in grams) and it would calculate the total protein, carbs and fat, and compare this with the recommended amounts, based on the percentage numbers I had entered. And yes- I am a geek. Actually, to (again) quote Stanley Goodspeed from “The Rock”, I’m not a geek. I’m a super geek.
Anyway, what I quickly discovered is that it is pretty hard to get the numbers to work out. Actually, I briefly considered writing a genetic algorithm to come up with the numbers, but even I wasn’t geeky enough to do that. After further experimenting with the numbers, what I discovered is that if you want to solve the ‘carbohydrate mystery’ that I discussed earlier (which was- how did people meet their macronutrient needs before they had access to agriculture) you really need to eat lean meat. Otherwise, there is no way to even get enough protein (let alone carbs) without blowing way, way over your fat requirements. Consequently, the number up there is for lean meats, like turkey, rather than for meats like corn fed cattle factory raised beef, which is high in both total fats and saturated fats.
At
the moment, I’m still playing around with the numbers. However, I have
been observing my eating likes and dislikes since I started this, and
experimenting and I’ve figured out a couple of things. First of all, (I
realize this sounds obvious), even for whole foods that I like, I don’t
really like eating them by themselves, or in large amounts. So, for
example, although (I admit) I really like beef, I don’t really like
eating, by itself, a huge lump of beef. And the same with cheese. I love
cheese, but I don’t really love eating just a huge chunk of cheese, with
no crackers, or chutney, or fruit, or… something! So what this means is
that it’s just not going to happen that I’m not eating a mix of these
categories of foods, one way or another. The second thing that I’ve
realized is that, while I don’t feel like eating huge quantities of them,
I really do like eating bread and rice and potatoes and beans and pasta
and all that agriculture originating stuff, in combination with other
stuff. So, even if it were an option, the strict paleo diet isn’t going to
happen. And that in turn means that I need to figure out how to integrate
these agriculture based foods into my diet in a good way.
posted at 12:45 on Sat, 28 Oct, 2006 |
path: /living
All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.