healthiest food that is not a fruit or vegetable?

May have already been mentioned, but walnuts. Best EFA ratio of any nut, followed by macadamia nuts. Flaxseed oil is good or chia. Check out Udo's oil. I would say high quality olive oil is #1, though, as it comes from olives, it fails to meet your criteria. Same with high quality, organic red wine in moderation, gurgling in the throat since that is how the resveratrol is best absorbed.

Ammagamma wrote:

Brian wrote:

fructose, which your body cannot convert to glycogen and treats like a poison, processing it in the liver like alcohol, which it is more chemically similar to.

Where do you people get this shit?

Fructose is indeed metabolised in the liver . . . the products are intermediates in the pathways of glycogen, fatty acid, and triglyceride synthesis. You're just plain wrong.

You are wrong. Fructose never becomes glycogen (this is why diabetics can eat it without causing insuling problems - but the byproducts of it actually can help cause the obesity int eh first place). Where did I get it from? From, among others, Robert Lustig, the head of pediatridcs at UCSF:

Fructose is not treated by your body the way glucose is. Fructose also doesn't trigger satiety hormones. People eat less fat than they do 50 years ago when the were leaner, but far, far more fructose (the average American eats 400 calories a day in fructose alone.)

Green Leaves wrote:

Brian wrote:

Of my 3500 calorie a day diet (which keeps me at 152 at 6'4" at 80 mpw) perhaps as much as 1000 are from cashews and almonds. Any food that is calorie poor is more or less wasted and a large enough serving of vegetables ro provide calories will have an ass exploding amount of fiber.

Green drinks contain very little fiber and are very easy to digest.

Cashews are surrounded by an extremely acidic gel. They cannot be eaten without first being processed. I like cashews, but humans did not evolve to survive on them.

What do you feel the beneficial qualities are of cashews and almonds besides calories?

Your stomach acids are more acidic than anything you could possibly eat. Of course people evolved eating nuts. The benefits are a moderate amount of protein and lots of unsaturated fat, which is a good fuel for humans. We didn't evolve burning all that much glycogen for aerobic energy. The problem with modern meat is that it is corn, rather than grass, fed, from a fat-type point of view. Food with unsaturated fat is very good for running.

Brian wrote:

You are wrong. Fructose never becomes glycogen (this is why diabetics can eat it without causing insuling problems - but the byproducts of it actually can help cause the obesity int eh first place). Where did I get it from?

"fructose never becomes glycogen" ?? How about, almost immediately in non-obese people? Fructose will get converted to glucose, which will then be converted to glycogen in the liver and muscles. Doesn't sound like "never" to me. In fact, after exercise, fructose is superior to glucose in restoring liver glycogen, an important part of recovery.

Brian wrote: People eat less fat than they do 50 years ago when the were leaner, but far, far more fructose (the average American eats 400 calories a day in fructose alone.)

So where does the overall increase of about 25% more calories and being more sedentary fit into that picture? Very largely. People eat more of just about EVERYthing than they used (except fruits and veggies of course). Yes, overall sugar consumption has increased (remember, both HFCS and sucrose contain about 50/50 fructose/glucose ), but not enough to explain our obesity epidemic. ADDED fats and sugars (to all foods, but especially in the form of cookies, cakes, candies, pastries, etc) has increased a lot.

ammagamma wrote:

Your body does use calcium from bones (among other things) to maintain blood pH. Your body does this so effectively that that your blood pH will never stray far from 7.4.

That doesn't mean you need to eat "alkaline-forming foods" to prevent your body from being in an "acidic state." It just means you need enough calcium in your diet.

Source: I'm a real live scientist!

Hey real live scientist, is there any truth the the following?

"...it would appear you would be better off eating whole grains to get calcium, iron magnesium, and zinc. Wrong. Whole grains contain numberous substances called antinutrients that can impair nutrient absorption or adversely affect health in a wide variety of ways. Phytic acid, otherwise known as phytate, is an antinutrient found in all whole grains and legumes that binds calcium, iron, magnesium, and zinc and severely inhibits their absorption. Whether whole or refined, grains are an inferior food when it comes to vitamins and minerals. Do yourself a favor and get the bulk of your carbs from fresh fruits and veggies."

Brian wrote:

Of my 3500 calorie a day diet (which keeps me at 152 at 6'4" at 80 mpw) perhaps as much as 1000 are from cashews and almonds.

You're 6'4" and 152 pounds?

Listen buddy, You are very determined to attack.First off you are ridiculous to try to evaluate the validity of those authors based on my (poor) undertanding and (poor) ability to explain what I'm reading. I may completely misunderstand what I've read. You're preaching about the scientific method - and you're trying to draw conclusions based on what I'm trying to regurgitate? Ha!Those authors had no vested interest in pushing a particular method. Both are/were competitive athletes and coaches. It is only after getting results did they come to believe in that method.Lydiard tried all kinds of different training methods. On himself. Then later on his athletes. By your definition, that is "pseudoscience". Only much later, after good results and gold medals did the scientists come along. Too bad you weren't there to give Arthur an education and give him Shermer & Sagan's books.Second, you did not read the books I mentioned. Until you do, you are tying to form conclusions off of what? What I have tried to explain? The one reference I pulled out of 2 different books that are full of references and statements like "may" and "possibly"? I'm sure I'm butchering the explanation. Attack me as much as you like, but you really are wasting your time. And mine. For someone so scientifically-minded, it is amazing that you have been able to determine that I am experiencing a placebo effect. How exactly did you reach that conclusion? And why no placebo effect in my past "experiments of 1"? I tried another approach 2 years ago, and felt tired a lot of the time. So I stopped it. It's amazing that the placebo effect didn't kick in there. I was just as willing to give that approach a go.And yes, if a person didn't know anything about Kansas, the "go try it before buying" method would be an effective way to determine you and your ocenfront property were full of it. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

lol lol lol lol wrote:

It's a complete fraud. The actual study on which the book was "based" shows associations essentially OPPOSITE to what T. Colin Campbell claimed.

Source? Please.

fact checker wrote:

lol lol lol lol wrote:

It's a complete fraud. The actual study on which the book was "based" shows associations essentially OPPOSITE to what T. Colin Campbell claimed.

Source? Please.

He's just making things up. The China Study is quite credible.

Oh no you dint wrote:

I wrote nothing to suggest that fruits are vegetables. They are not.

Vegetable

any plant whose fruit, seeds, roots, tubers, bulbs, stems, leaves, or flower parts are used as food, as the tomato, bean, beet, potato, onion, asparagus, spinach, or cauliflower.

Fruit

any product of plant growth useful to humans or animals.

Therefore, every vegetable is a fruit and every fruit is a vegetable.

lol lol lol lol wrote:

[

It's a complete fraud. The actual study on which the book was "based" shows associations essentially OPPOSITE to what T. Colin Campbell claimed.

Yeah, this is absolute bullsh*t. If you really look into it, or maybe read the book, you'll realize this very quickly.

Fruits are not vegetables and vice versa. Really, the definitions vary depending on whether you're speaking in culinary terms or scientific terms. Scientifically speaking, fruits are the structure of a flowering plant that contains its seeds. Vegetable has no scientific basis. It's simply the edible, non-fruit part of a plant. Not that it matters one bit.

dictionary.com/ wrote:

Oh no you dint wrote:

I wrote nothing to suggest that fruits are vegetables. They are not.

Vegetable

any plant whose fruit, seeds, roots, tubers, bulbs, stems, leaves, or flower parts are used as food, as the tomato, bean, beet, potato, onion, asparagus, spinach, or cauliflower.

Fruit

any product of plant growth useful to humans or animals.

Therefore, every vegetable is a fruit and every fruit is a vegetable.

FOOD, feel free to chime in on this one too.

Lustig addresses all of your claims. First, if fructose becomes glycogen, why doesn't it trigger insluin? Diabetics can eat pure fructose without insulin issues. He spends 30 minutes on what happens to fructose and what it is broken into in the lecture.

Lustig specifically says that HFCS and sugar are pretty much chemically the same. The glucose ain't the problem - its the fructose. Glocise-only sweeteners like brown rice syrup are fine.

Also explain why fructose doesn't trigger leptin.

I would wager my diet is 40%+ fat (mostly unsaturated fat). I am 6'4" and weigh 152 right this second and just did 50 full pushups (so I am not weak or muscle-less).

I see this kind of stuff come through my Science Daily RSS all the time:

Fructose Metabolism More Complicated Than Was Thought

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081209221742.htm

Peter Havel and colleagues, at the University of California at Davis, Davis, have provided evidence that human consumption of fructose-sweetened but not glucose-sweetened beverages can adversely affect both sensitivity to the hormone insulin and how the body handles fats, creating medical conditions that increase susceptibility to heart attack and stroke.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090420182151.htm

Asian pu$$ycat is by far the most healthy.

Brian wrote:

Lustig addresses all of your claims. First, if fructose becomes glycogen, why doesn't it trigger insluin? Diabetics can eat pure fructose without insulin issues. He spends 30 minutes on what happens to fructose and what it is broken into in the lecture.

You said fructose never gets converted to glycogen, and you are incorrect. In the real world, no one ever eats fructose in isolation. They eat with glucose or other calories that stimulate insulin. Under those circumstances, much of the fructose you consume will be converted to glycogen (after being converted to glucose). Unless....you are overweight, eat too much, and are sedentary. Then it is likely that you've developed fatty liver, and the liver won't process the fructose (or much else) efficiently.

Pure fructose and HFCS is really almost as bad, if not worse for the liver than alcohol, unless you're an alcoholic. If you have an extremely high-resolution doppler machine, like a Vivid 7, and you interrogate fructose in the mouth sublingually, it immediately evokes a bioenergetically negative response on echo in that it lengthens IVRT (isovolumetric relaxation time - the interval between the closure of the aortic valve and the opening of the mitral valve). It is an extremely sensitive and rapid measure, so it's likely measuring S or reactive oxygen species in the Gibbs free energy equation: G = T-HS, wherein G is NOT the same thing as ATP due to enthalpy needed just to maintain bodily function and ROS. I have a biochemist friend who did his entire dissertation on fructose and the liver and continues in that realm, and he told me pure, refined fructose interferes with several enzymatic pathways in the liver. HFCS is what is killing people and our kids.

Brian wrote:

[quote]the gecko wrote:

The most important nutrient a high mileage runner needs are calorie macronutrients. Vegetables don't have enough calories to fuel running (a high fiber to glycogen-producing calorie ratio is very bad for running) and modern fruit bred for sweetness has too much fructose, which your body cannot convert to glycogen and treats like a poison, processing it in the liver like alcohol, which it is more chemically similar to.

Of my 3500 calorie a day diet (which keeps me at 152 at 6'4" at 80 mpw) perhaps as much as 1000 are from cashews and almonds. Any food that is calorie poor is more or less wasted and a large enough serving of vegetables ro provide calories will have an ass exploding amount of fiber.

Brian, your video says fruit is ok. (1:13:43 in the video). Because it contains fiber. Your video guy even goes on to suggest the Paleo diet would cure type 2 diabetes within a week. The Paleo diet for Athletes is exactly where I got my original information, that you seemed to disagree with.