Nutrition attrition

When I see the endless column inches espousing healthy living I understand why they exist, but question whether preaching is the best medium. Can’t we just decide for ourselves? Yes…

…But, a few minutes of research will show you that there is great discord in the many articles devoted to the subject of nutrition in fruit and veg.

The good

Get to know your vitamin alphabet

For example, Food Day compiled a list of vegetables scored against criteria including their calorific value, presence of vitamin K, Lutein, vitamin C, potassium and fiber. Subsequent posts will provide more detail about those (and more) elements. But in brief, those vitamins are of course very important. Vitamin K, for instance, helps us synthesise proteins, process calcium into healthy bones and aids blood coagulation. Wonderful stuff, but also a very incomplete list of nutrients.

The bad

The laggard on the Food Day list is the humble onion, cited in a Buzzfeed spin-off article as “Great for flavor, aroma and pizza, but sadly, not so great for nutrition.” Don’t weep for the onion, if we peel away the facts (bad puns intended), Reader’s Digest has the onion as… drum roll please… no. 1 in its “10 of the healthiest vegetables you can eat” article. 

Confused? Well, Reader’s Digest was focusing on anti-oxidant properties, which they claim makes the onion a cancer-fighting dynamo. 

The essential

It’s not all confusion of analysis, there is some agreement across most of these studies: kale, broccoli, spinach and others things deep green fair generally pretty well, although the articles don’t draw much attention to a key benefit, magnesium, with 56% of the US population deficient in this particular mineral (see Dr Rhonda Patrick's 'Mitochondria with Magnesium' video for more on this).

The issue I have is, so what? Am I meant to now focus on eating kale, spinach, carrot, broccoli and Brussels sprout (Food Day’s top five)? Aside from the challenge of finding those mainly temperate climate foods in equatorial Asia, I might also find myself socially grounded under the no-flatulence zone rules. Should I instead opt for Reader’s Digest’s cancer-busting top five: onions, corns, peas, kale and broccoli? Or how about, and this is revolutionary, looking at my diet in its entirety to ensure it’s balanced. 

What does Big Brother say?

Is Big Brother's involvement in nutrition unhealthy?

Most countries’ governments have published data on what they feel is the requisite intake of vitamins, minerals and macronutrients (carbohydrate, fiber, protein etc.), with associated acronyms (DRI: dietary reference intakes; RDA: recommended dietary allowance, and so on). In the United States it’s the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and your national government will likely have something similar.  The USDA also has a free calculator where you input your age, sex, height, weight, level of activity and it tells you how much of everything you need; but please don't try this at home kids, for further reading on why a lot of very smart people – scientists mainly – feel the USDA DRI guides actually harm help click here. 

Okay, again, so what? If I take myself as an example, the USDA calculator says that I need 67 grams of protein a day. That’s just not true. If I only consumed that – as I did for a month or two, slavishly following my DRI for an experiment – I would lose weight, rapidly. The USDA data assumes a sedentary lifestyle, where for every 1kg of bodyweight you should ingest 0.8g of protein. So for me 84kg x 0.8 = 67g. However, I’m not sedentary. Those regularly engaging in endurance or strength training should opt for 1.4g to 1.8g per kg, or 118g to 151g for me. A big difference! 

Consistently inconsistent

I pick protein purely as an example, and to highlight another argument: picking a list of super-veg is misleading for most of us. Many of us are not vegans, and also eat animal products (including those edible things in fresh- and marine-water). In the veg league tables writers sometimes neglect to mention that other foodstuffs also contain some of the same nutrients. To make the point, let’s look again at lutein, picked by Food Day for its properties helping eyes process blue light and stemming deterioration of eyesight. Well, lutein is also found in egg yokes and animal fats (especially chicken). 

Taking it a step further vitamin D – an important component to aid bone health, among other things – extends the argument beyond the ingestible to the absorbable. Yes, Vitamin D can be naturally sourced from fatty fish, some mushrooms, egg yolks and beef liver amongst others, it can also be absorbed through the skin’s exposure to sunlight. 

All about balance! Don't eat 'em all at once, that would be quite nasty... 

The bottom line: eat balanced

As all this also perplexes us, over the course of the next few months, along with developing growing guides for all kinds of funky things you urban farmers can grow in the comfort of your own home, we’ll be including information on nutrition and recipes so that maybe you can pick the plants that are right for your lifestyle and dietary preferences. Stay tuned! 

Mix and match depending on your lifestyle (ignore the puritanical banning of cake, everyone needs cheat days)...