I love the "throw some fat on them veggies" stuff. Got all these macho people carrying boulders through the forest but you ask them "Are you capable of eating an unadorned carrot?" and the answer is "No man, that's way too hardcore for me."
What the hell if butter is good enough for coffee it's good enough for vegetables.
Of course the alternative suggestion currently coming from "science" land is to adorn the veges (or maybe the child) with a "sugar mist". Choices...
Meanwhile a study from someone's sensible granny points out that mere COOKING of veges renders them more palatable to uncooked tots. More digestible too, one would think. Yay for fire.
The fresher the veggies the better they taste. I ate veggies as a kid like they were candy, because I got them out of my grandmother's garden. Once I got away from that and ate stuff from the store via the "fresh" produce aisle, frozen, and canned, I started to lose my taste for veggies. The next best thing to growing your own would be to hit the Farmer's Market. Problem solved. Next mystery of the universe please.
Ugh these fad diet people really don't get it. "My kid won't eat veggies." Probably because they aren't fresh and don't taste good. "How can I get them to eat veggies?".."I know I will teach them my eating disorder and everything will be good in Happyville once again."
Kids dont eat veggies because veggies aint proper food.
Since we are all using non-industrial cultures to guide us as to what we should or should not be eating, I noticed the Hadza had weren't getting any "leafy green vegetables".
Kindke, I think you speak the truth. In fact you said something I didn't have the courage to. It's such a bizarre and counterintuitive thought, too. The Hadza's favorite food, both sexes, is honey. Don't have time to look at the study you provided or provide the URL to the study I am referring to but it's on Pubmed.
Also, fruits and vegetables are NOT nutrient dense. They are only nourishing in very large quantities. Kids maybe have a gut wisdom we don't. Maybe mommy & daddy should feed them butter & ditch the veg? (Evelyn: these are growing kids I am talking about, not lardass adults.)
But yes I agree fruits are real , whole foods. Ned Kock had a good post on this, the basic idea being that fruits have been purposely designed by plants to be consumed by animals. And since dead animals dont eat and disperse the plants seeds, it stands to reason that fruits should be relatively wholesom nutritious foods. "relatively", as soon fruits are straight up toxic to certain species of animals.
But veggies?
Veggies aint real food for humans. This highly infectious meme of "leafy green vegetables" being the holy grail of nutritious food needs to be eradicated. Its just dumb.
Pretty sure @PALEO_HULK is actually @Paleo_Bruce_Banner.
Kindke: Whether the Hadza or any other hunter-gatherers eat leafy green veggies has absolutely no bearing on whether they are a valuable source of nutrition for billions of humans today.
I only use veggies as a garnish: maybe some salsa every now and then, or some onions in my scrambled eggs. Most taste horrible, and I never felt any different when I was eating 5+ servings a day or zero servings per day.
Red from "That 70's Show" put it best: his wife handed him a large salad, and his response was: "That's not food. That is what food eats!"
Travis, I agree that "the Hazda do it" isn't truly logical reasoning; we sometimes use shortcuts on blog comments. Saying that the Hadza's favorite foods are honey and meat (in that order, both sexes), is my way of saying "evil capitalism didn't cause people to like sugar. People like sugar." I've already provided the URL's for these studies many times; they can be found on Pubmed.
As to the vegetable issue specifically, whatever the Hadza or whatever remnant group of HG people do, the fact is that, by every objective standard, green vegetables aren't nutrient dense. I like them, I eat them, I guess I am just brainwashed, but you have to eat an awful lot of them to get much benefit, if any. Whatever is in green vegetables can be found in meat, more densely - why not just eat meat if you can? And isn't growing vegetables an incredible waste of land, and water?
Back when Julia Child was fighting the good fight against the anti-fat Hizbollah, she could have pointed out that nutritionally speaking, eating 2 cups of properly cooked broccoli wasn't much different than eating 1 cup: that is, very little nutrition, so why not concentrate on the pleasurable aspects of eating vegetables rather than the health?
@Unknown, "Much madness is divinest sense." What a great idea! Asparagus tips in chocolate ice cream. (My personal preference would be vanilla, but most kids would probably like chocolate.)
I think vegetables are good for people who want to lose weight, or for people who are constipated. But if you are physically active and you need a certain amount of calories just for maintenance then when you crunch the numbers you arrive at a "You can't there from here" situation. It simply isn't possible to get the required calories from vegetables.
With fruit it is less of a problem, but even the 30BAD guy admits that his diet results in his having to crap in the woods on a frequent basis. You can't eat 6-8 pounds of fruit and vegetables a day without having an "Oh crap" moment every once in a while.
People talk about the vitamins and minerals in the leafy green vegetables but I have never been ill due to a lack of vitamins and minerals, I did get to the point where I was so sedentary that it effected my health, but I doubt that eating more leafy green vegetables would have cured that, I went with the MM approach.
Leafy green vegetables seem to be a feminine thing. I don't know why consuming Swiss Chard makes a woman feel better about herself, but for some reason it does.
Don't get me wrong, I love the Hadza. Marlowe's book was extremely fascinating. Not only do they prefer honey over meat, but they prefer people the most who are good at sourcing honey, then meat, then everything else. That we're wired to desire sweet tastes is beyond dispute.
I don't know what nutrient density metric you're utilizing, but something like spinach is tremendously nutrient dense per calorie. I won't bother appropriating stale vegan arguments about wasted land/water here, but it's obviously more efficient to produce, for example, folate via spinach than beef.
Your broccoli example is absurd as well. You could not have ever actually researched the nutrient content of various foods to say something like that.
Adjust the amounts to where the calories are the same (1 oz of top round and 1 small stalk of broccoli). I was even generous and used a lean cut. The beef doesn't come close.
I eat at least a pound of beef a day, however I also eat a lot of spinach. They are complementary and both nutritious. Stop allowing your carnivory fantasies to cloud your judgment.
"Kids dont eat veggies because veggies aint proper food."
I wont go that far, but I have seen a trend for kids and people in general to be more finicky when it comes to veggies. I ate veggies as a kid and liked many of them, as did a number of people I knew/know. Going into proper food or what is or isn't food wasn't my point. I save that argument for the people who like to split scientific (possibly pseudo-scientific) hairs.
My point was that there are plenty of vegetables out there that taste good, but it really boils down to personal taste as well as quality. Farming Native Americans grew plenty of vegetables. As far as whether or not vegetables are useful to the body and nutritious the argument can be made to starchy vs plant. I have read on here that the starchy root vegetables are digestible by the human body, hence we receive the benefits of the vitamins and minerals. Where as the leafy greens and other plant cellulose vegetables are mainly passed through the body with very little absorption.
Kurt Harris was the person who informed me of this and here is the link he gave me: http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2011/2/28/william-munny-eats-his-vegetables.html
I'll make sure and check out the link you posted as well.
Actually I think they are just more honest than we are in terms of what they like and don't like. I think its just a simple expression of "this tastes like sh*t and I don't want it" more than "gut wisdom". Not sure what "gut wisdom" is, sounds like something a diet guru would run with though, not saying you are, just reminds me of the kind of phrases and terms I hear thrown around in the pseudoscience world of nutrition.
I Agree Travis. If fruit and vegetables aren't nutrient dense (what scale is being used to measure that) then what should we eat to get our nutrients? Steak? Eggs? Forget all veggies and just eat meat. Tried that for a year and had a terrible time with it. The only other option would be to spend money on supplements, which is not going to happen for me. I wont demonize fruits and veggies, I wont go there again. I learned the LC/Paleo debacle and enjoy eating fruits and veggies and am doing great with them.
I love using spinach and cabbage with stir fry....can't be beat. Well they can, roasted asparagus with sea salt is divine!
Travis, I admit, folate isn't my strong point. It's hard to compare foods, such as liver, with vegetables.
But none of this really gets to the essence, which is that ALL agriculture is extremely wasteful of two precious resources: land and water. It's too complicated to go into in a little comment, and I'm not interested in engaging in one of those long drawn out blog-fights, but I would suggest you read Richard Manning's GRASSLAND.
Read up about the Dust Bowl, an entirely man-made disaster.
But I do see that broccoli has a lot of folate! I wonder how much of it is leached out by Julia's parboiling method? And I'm the kind that really can't eat this stuff without a nice blob of fat on the stalk.
Anonymous said…
And isn't growing vegetables an incredible waste of land, and water?
Yes, but the long term repercussions are incomprehensible. We should just let a portion of the populace perish and let the rest of the master race survive pastorally rather than listen to those morons at The Guardian parrot all this pro-agra--because that's what it is--woo.[/sarcasm]
I just ate salad consisting of mini cucumbers, tiny tomatoes, a bit of chopped shallot, lots of chopped dill, feta cheese, oregano, black olives, olive oil and honey vinegar. So refreshing!
That's my take on vegetables: they are refreshing and crunchy.
Last night I ate a big salad instead of cooked food. Slept great for the first time in a week. Even if the vegetables contain mostly water and minerals, I think we need them.
Vegetables and soup add bulk and liquid to the diet. They make the caloric and nutrient density lower but it's not like we are all starving to death and are only able to consume a couple of ounces of meat or fish or rice or bread. That wouldn't be terribly satisfying and maybe even constipating.
There was a health report I read a while ago about sweet potato greens. In Vietnam these are considered to be low class food. But the poor people who fed them to their kids did the right thing. Their kids weren't malnourished while those who spurned this humble vegetable had kids with eye problems.
"That's my take on vegetables: they are refreshing and crunchy"
Good point Gabriella and one I completely agree with. Fresh vegetables full of water make for good snacks and liven up meals,especially salads.I love to make humus and eat it with cucumbers and tomatoes.
Interesting report, I never knew there were such things as sweet potato greens. Leave it to people with little to be the most resourceful with what they do have. The French peasant perfected cooking with organ meat, the cuts that were considered inferior to the ruling class. I think Americans in general have it too good and can sit around bored out of their gourd pondering if carrots are really food.
Comments
What the hell if butter is good enough for coffee it's good enough for vegetables.
Meanwhile a study from someone's sensible granny points out that mere COOKING of veges renders them more palatable to uncooked tots. More digestible too, one would think. Yay for fire.
Someone asked Julia Child whether this got rid of vitamins. She said it did. The solution? Eat more of them. Veggies, not tots.
Since we are all using non-industrial cultures to guide us as to what we should or should not be eating, I noticed the Hadza had weren't getting any "leafy green vegetables".
http://www.bioanth.cam.ac.uk/fwm23/tubers_and_fallback_foods_21040_ftp.pdf
Also, fruits and vegetables are NOT nutrient dense. They are only nourishing in very large quantities. Kids maybe have a gut wisdom we don't. Maybe mommy & daddy should feed them butter & ditch the veg? (Evelyn: these are growing kids I am talking about, not lardass adults.)
But yes I agree fruits are real , whole foods. Ned Kock had a good post on this, the basic idea being that fruits have been purposely designed by plants to be consumed by animals. And since dead animals dont eat and disperse the plants seeds, it stands to reason that fruits should be relatively wholesom nutritious foods. "relatively", as soon fruits are straight up toxic to certain species of animals.
But veggies?
Veggies aint real food for humans. This highly infectious meme of "leafy green vegetables" being the holy grail of nutritious food needs to be eradicated. Its just dumb.
Kindke: Whether the Hadza or any other hunter-gatherers eat leafy green veggies has absolutely no bearing on whether they are a valuable source of nutrition for billions of humans today.
Red from "That 70's Show" put it best: his wife handed him a large salad, and his response was: "That's not food. That is what food eats!"
As to the vegetable issue specifically, whatever the Hadza or whatever remnant group of HG people do, the fact is that, by every objective standard, green vegetables aren't nutrient dense. I like them, I eat them, I guess I am just brainwashed, but you have to eat an awful lot of them to get much benefit, if any. Whatever is in green vegetables can be found in meat, more densely - why not just eat meat if you can? And isn't growing vegetables an incredible waste of land, and water?
Back when Julia Child was fighting the good fight against the anti-fat Hizbollah, she could have pointed out that nutritionally speaking, eating 2 cups of properly cooked broccoli wasn't much different than eating 1 cup: that is, very little nutrition, so why not concentrate on the pleasurable aspects of eating vegetables rather than the health?
Kindke, no sarcasm at all.
With fruit it is less of a problem, but even the 30BAD guy admits that his diet results in his having to crap in the woods on a frequent basis. You can't eat 6-8 pounds of fruit and vegetables a day without having an "Oh crap" moment every once in a while.
People talk about the vitamins and minerals in the leafy green vegetables but I have never been ill due to a lack of vitamins and minerals, I did get to the point where I was so sedentary that it effected my health, but I doubt that eating more leafy green vegetables would have cured that, I went with the MM approach.
Leafy green vegetables seem to be a feminine thing. I don't know why consuming Swiss Chard makes a woman feel better about herself, but for some reason it does.
I don't know what nutrient density metric you're utilizing, but something like spinach is tremendously nutrient dense per calorie. I won't bother appropriating stale vegan arguments about wasted land/water here, but it's obviously more efficient to produce, for example, folate via spinach than beef.
Your broccoli example is absurd as well. You could not have ever actually researched the nutrient content of various foods to say something like that.
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2357/2
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/beef-products/3563/2
Adjust the amounts to where the calories are the same (1 oz of top round and 1 small stalk of broccoli). I was even generous and used a lean cut. The beef doesn't come close.
I eat at least a pound of beef a day, however I also eat a lot of spinach. They are complementary and both nutritious. Stop allowing your carnivory fantasies to cloud your judgment.
I wont go that far, but I have seen a trend for kids and people in general to be more finicky when it comes to veggies. I ate veggies as a kid and liked many of them, as did a number of people I knew/know. Going into proper food or what is or isn't food wasn't my point. I save that argument for the people who like to split scientific (possibly pseudo-scientific) hairs.
My point was that there are plenty of vegetables out there that taste good, but it really boils down to personal taste as well as quality. Farming Native Americans grew plenty of vegetables. As far as whether or not vegetables are useful to the body and nutritious the argument can be made to starchy vs plant. I have read on here that the starchy root vegetables are digestible by the human body, hence we receive the benefits of the vitamins and minerals. Where as the leafy greens and other plant cellulose vegetables are mainly passed through the body with very little absorption.
Kurt Harris was the person who informed me of this and here is the link he gave me: http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2011/2/28/william-munny-eats-his-vegetables.html
I'll make sure and check out the link you posted as well.
Actually I think they are just more honest than we are in terms of what they like and don't like. I think its just a simple expression of "this tastes like sh*t and I don't want it" more than "gut wisdom". Not sure what "gut wisdom" is, sounds like something a diet guru would run with though, not saying you are, just reminds me of the kind of phrases and terms I hear thrown around in the pseudoscience world of nutrition.
I love using spinach and cabbage with stir fry....can't be beat. Well they can, roasted asparagus with sea salt is divine!
Anyone who has followed my comments here would have to laugh at that. I'm too tired to say anything right now other than 'LOL'.
Later.....
I was comparing two cups of broccoli to one. If you weren't such a hostile hothead (like everyone in the nut-rition world), you'd have seen that.
But none of this really gets to the essence, which is that ALL agriculture is extremely wasteful of two precious resources: land and water. It's too complicated to go into in a little comment, and I'm not interested in engaging in one of those long drawn out blog-fights, but I would suggest you read Richard Manning's GRASSLAND.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2006/03/70445
Read up about the Dust Bowl, an entirely man-made disaster.
But I do see that broccoli has a lot of folate! I wonder how much of it is leached out by Julia's parboiling method? And I'm the kind that really can't eat this stuff without a nice blob of fat on the stalk.
No.
The Credible Hulk: You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.... Because I always back up my rage with facts and documented sources.
http://imgur.com/gallery/KLlgo
I just ate salad consisting of mini cucumbers, tiny tomatoes, a bit of chopped shallot, lots of chopped dill, feta cheese, oregano, black olives, olive oil and honey vinegar. So refreshing!
That's my take on vegetables: they are refreshing and crunchy.
Last night I ate a big salad instead of cooked food. Slept great for the first time in a week. Even if the vegetables contain mostly water and minerals, I think we need them.
Vegetables and soup add bulk and liquid to the diet. They make the caloric and nutrient density lower but it's not like we are all starving to death and are only able to consume a couple of ounces of meat or fish or rice or bread. That wouldn't be terribly satisfying and maybe even constipating.
There was a health report I read a while ago about sweet potato greens. In Vietnam these are considered to be low class food. But the poor people who fed them to their kids did the right thing. Their kids weren't malnourished while those who spurned this humble vegetable had kids with eye problems.
New Zealand lamb is good too. There's natural grass for pasturage. And they are not feedlotted like beef.
There are anorexics who just eat salad and nothing else. Then their hair falls out. Ouch.
Good point Gabriella and one I completely agree with. Fresh vegetables full of water make for good snacks and liven up meals,especially salads.I love to make humus and eat it with cucumbers and tomatoes.
Interesting report, I never knew there were such things as sweet potato greens. Leave it to people with little to be the most resourceful with what they do have. The French peasant perfected cooking with organ meat, the cuts that were considered inferior to the ruling class. I think Americans in general have it too good and can sit around bored out of their gourd pondering if carrots are really food.
Post a Comment
Comment Moderation is ON ... I will NOT be routinely reviewing or publishing comments at this time..