Nick Bain

Buying a juicer and veggies and fruit is supposed to be the best thing under the sun. Can it work for a competitive cyclist? or do we need more than that?

shawmutt

I bought a juicer once...it makes a great dust gatherer. Seriously, those things are so much work to make juice and maintain. Sure, everything just rinses off provided you rinse it immediately--but get lazy just once, I dare you.

v0_boulder

I don't know I would get hungry I can down a chipotle steak burrito and still feel hungry. I would imagine that juice would be a great supplement to a diet but not replace a diet.

megtyler

not efficient and not healthy at all. you need a balanced diet.
remember that when your intestines have nothing to grint, it will grind itself. you will smell bad and you will start looking old because your insides are going to eat itself.
it is better to go on a raw food diet (vegetables and fruits) rather than juice diet

bluefoxicy

I also regularly consume raw meat.

The whole vegetarian diet thing is a horrible waste of time. Some people cannot tolerate red meat--point blank, it will kill them. Chicken and fish are fine. Others--for example, me--can't survive without meat--again, point blank, this will kill me, and it will do so quickly.

Just to get this out of the way, in the case of me, in a few days without any meat intake my body loses its ability to heal. The skin starts to form fissures on its own, cracking open, exposing me to infection. If that's not bad enough, after about a week(...) my immune system fails--almost completely--and I start getting extremely sick. Yeah, broken skin and a failing immune system, who would've thought? Especially dealing with a guy like me--I heal quick and I never get sick.

Obviously, you are not me.

This is key: I've met a few people who would die without meat. People who went on a vegan diet and ate all kinds of beans and rice and soy and vegetables and they nearly died. The cure? Chicken, or fish. I knew a girl that only ate fish or vegetables, because sans fish she will die. She lost most of her body mass too--skinny little stick figure--but she's stable and healthy, not rotting away like some annorexic girl.

Most people will find that they need some sort of mixture. You have people like me who can probably survive entirely on meat, if I got enough fish for a micronutrient base. You have a few people that can live through a vegan diet fine. Some people should avoid meat and eat more vegetables. Others should eat more meat and avoid too many vegetables--yes, there are people that will die not from not enough meat, but from too much plant matter, just like people who will die from eating red meat. The average is a pretty mixed diet, one way or another; the extremes are rare, and even I'm not that far out.


Raw food, on top of it, is a farce. Humans developed largely from the ability to cook, which avoids wasting valuable digestion time. Yes, I know, I like my raw beef and raw fish too; it's probably not healthier for me though. I'm pretty certain a raw fruit/vegetable diet will (nearly) kill me outright, though: I can't digest that kind of stuff. It took me a half a dozen tries before I figured it out, and now I don't go poisoning myself to death anymore (the blockage from consuming too much fibrous plant matter can keep bacteria and toxins in my body when I really, REALLY need them gone... after 5-6 days I start feeling like I'm going to vomit, a lot). But again, that's me.


You had it right the first time: aim for balance. Some kind of balance. What kind of balance depends largely on the person in question, their metabolism, and medical standing.

DataJunkie

Humans are omnivores. If you can't tolerate vegetables, beans, rice, soy, etc you have some interesting issues.
Then again I have issues digesting meat and operate best on these items that supposedly kill some folks.
Anyhow, you really have to play around and find what works for you.
For me: no processed foods, no meat, no refined sugars, and 30-40 C \ 20-30 P \ 40-40 F works best. Even dropped weight without trying.

ericm979

Juice is fine, and juice you make yourself is better than what you buy, but it's only part of a complete diet.

I find it hard to beleive that people will die without eating meat. Having poor nutrition on a vegan/vegetarian diet doesn't mean that they will die without meat, it means that they have a poor vegan/vegetarian diet. Of course it's more effort to get all the required amino acids on a vegan/vegetarian diet, but it's not impossible or even terribly difficult, if you are willing to do a little research and change your diet.

But being vegetarian/vegan in itself isn't going to make you a faster cyclist.

DataJunkie

Eating a crappy vegetarian diet is still a crappy diet. You can eat cake all day long and still be a vegetarian. Likewise with eating meat.

chandltp

This made me thing of the movie "Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead". It proves that juicing can work short term and have health benefits, at least in some people. As I recall, most of the people in the movie were relatively sedentary while on the juice diet.

Nick Bain

yes this is what I watched as well, today the Today show mentioned adding protein powder to the blend.

Six-Shooter

It might be okay if your juice somehow contained the entire array of essential human nutrients and the requisite number of calories, but what are the chances of that? If a diet sounds extreme, unbalanced, or odd, think twice and do lots of research before adopting it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nutrition

Stealthammer

Wow, a rational perspective!!!

BTW: I juice regularly and really don't find it any more labor intensive than fixing a fine meal.

Six-Shooter

No offense meant, but that sounds a bit suspect. Red meat will kill people? If properly cooked for safety and incorporated into a balanced diet, why would meat kill someone one? How can going without meat kill some people, again if they have a balanced diet that supplies the protein, iron, etc. found in meat via other sources.

The symptoms you describe sound like some sort of vitamin/mineral deficiency. When someone removes some/all animal products from their diet, they need to replace the missing nutrients from other sources.

Garfield Cat

I don't recall NPR radio interview, but it was about how man has changed from eating raw everything to mostly cooked food. Over time, the teeth changed and so did the body's production of the enzymes that are essential to digestion. For modern man to go strictly back to raw everything is not a reasonable thing to do, even with a pricey food processor from Costco.

Nick Bain

changed how? for good or bad? you dont recall, then why bring it up? Kind of making a baseless statement there.

anotherbrian

I don't have a steak in the game (pun intended), but this is likely the transcript of that NPR interview, and why going raw might be unnatural:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=112334465

I'm a fan of the Maillard reaction. While I eat fruit and veg for the balanced diet, the raw food I like best is fish-based.

julianfranco

Nick,

If you find the juicer to be too much work, I certainly did, try a VitaMix. It's easy to use, easy to clean, and easy to be able to add in the protein you need, regardless of where it comes from (plants, powders, or even meat if you wanted it!). It's arguably the most frequently used appliance in my kitchen.

Garfield Cat

Here's the link to the NPR interview on raw foods and modern man

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=112334465