So you have precluded seafood entirely from your list of food to eat.

And I bet that if the proteins and carbohydrates and the nutrients that you are banging on so much about were actually listed in full on the packaging, then your assertion not to eat anything you can't pronounce would also be invalid.

See, this is where people's assertions, shot from the hip, become invalid.

What if you're simply not familiar with the food listed on the ingredients?

For example, we're venturing into Indian food. I really like Palak paneer, but I had to look up paneer to discover it was a cheese.


Yes, what about sea food?


:lol:

Swank's research went on for 50 years, I would consider this a long term study although MS is still a disease that baffles the best and brightest although we know it is primarily a western disease and that early diets may preclude one to developing MS.

A lot has changed since that early research, especially the food most people eat; they are more processed, higher in sugars, and loaded with all kinds of chemicals.

MS is one disease where our higher fat / lower carb lifestyle may not benefit us but in other respects, the science is pretty clear that eating less carbs and more fat is not detrimental, more and more all the signs are pointing to massive sugar / carb consumption as the cause for most of the diseases and conditions that are causing such problems.

Today I ate a lot of greens and fresh vegetables, had fresh mozza, a little bacon, some almonds, and a little handful of tortilla chips with home-made salsa, as well as my bulletproof coffee in the morning.

Calories are calories. Calories are simply a unit of measure.

As for the salad vs Big Mac ... yes indeed 3000 calories of salad does indeed equal 3000 calories of Big Mac.


It's the old question ...

Which weighs more ... 1 ton of feathers or 1 ton of iron?


But if you burn 1500 calories just existing and doing the basic stuff, and that's all you do for exercise, then you consume 3000 calories of salad every day ... you will gain weight.

I'll break from the mainstream and side with what is generally an Atkins/Paleo stance:

Yes, a calorie IS just a unit of measure (like a watt or an ampere).
But, how your body processes that calorie DOES change things:

For example: Eating 2000 calories of table sugar in a single sitting (gag!) would have very different consequences from eating 2000 calories of fruits and vege's spread throughout the day.

In this case, the flood of sucrose is quickly broken down into glucose & fructose in the system, and the effect on enzymes, hormones, organs and the overall system would be quite different. And, not to pick on carbs: the same could be said if the 2000 calories were ingested of either all fat or all protein.

While that is an extreme example, it plays out in lesser but similar ways when you gulp down a 44ounce Coke or protein supplement or a chunk of whale blubber... The body adjusts its enzymes, hormones and processes to fit the occasion. Heck, over an extended term, the microbes in our gut even change based on what we are eating and, as we are just now learning, those little buggers have profound effects on our body -- including things like heart disease and the brain...

While the human body CAN process that stuff, it shifts its processing to different pathways (each of which are incredibly complex) -- and then we get into the endless discussions over the detriments & benefits of each of those pathways.

Conversely: If we eat the same stuff in same the quantities and with the same frequency, day after day, then yes, a calorie is a calorie. If we shift the equation by changing the nutrients, the quantity or the timing, then there is more involved than just caloric intake.

thanks, i think you folks are a bit nuts who keep arguing. I farm, i grow food, does this make me an expert? does reading papers and getting a phd in nutrition while never growing food make you an expert? disconnect a bit? geez. you guys can argue my points, or try them if you do indeed seek better health.

or you can keep arguing to me that i will get fat on 3k calories of my homegrown lettuce just the same as a big mac, hahahahahahhahahaaga.

if you are eating feathers and iron, you are doing it wrong. i know what calories are, but they are not equivalent across the board and they do not measure how nutritious something is.

PS, a big mac is hardly food by my definition.
and to whoever brought up coffee chocolate and beer as supplements, you have a different definition than me of supplement. i define all those as foods, supplements are non natural forms of diluted nutrient aimed to "supplement" food

now i'm out. ive been flamed for truth long enough. you guys keep arguing over something me and the French have already sorted out.

i hope one of you changes your mind about nutrition, then i did my job.

Veggies are just fibre, vitamins, minerals and water...You can't gain weight just by eating fibre, vitamins and minerals alone.....The only way to gain weight with a 3000 calorie salad is if that salad had tons of nuts, seeds, starchy tubers and a lot of fatty oily dressing on it. There is no way anybody could gain weight just by eating green plants and veggies alone...I don't think any human being can eat 3000 calories of raw veggies alone without getting seriously sick.

You cannot absorb the nutrients in vegetables without fats as those nutrients are fat soluable... without fats you would be become vitamin deficient on a diet of greens.

Those greens are also very nutrient poor and the quantity you have to eat to get enough calories is immense, our digestive tract is not one of a ruminant and is has more in common with carnivores / omnivores. Without supplementation a vegan diet is not sustainable and depending on the type of vegetarian you are, that may also be deficient in a number of nutrients, especially B12.

This deficiency can cause serious adverse health problems, like heart disease and even adding milk and eggs to a vegetarian diet is usually not enough to provide adequate levels of B12. After a person starts a vegan / vegetarian diet they have 4-5 years before a B deficiency will become evident, that is how long we can store B12 in our liver which aids in detoxification.

In the modern day supplements are available and there are accurate tests to check B12 levels... mine are off the hook while a high percentage of people in North America have B12 deficiencies and this includes the omnivores as their diets are lacking.

We have liver once a week... this is sufficient to ensure our B levels are more than adequate and this is the only B12 supplement that has worked for my wife who has struggled with this since she had cancer.

My wife was a vegetarian for many many years and knows lots of rigid vegetarians and vegans who have hit the wall when their diet proved to be unsustainable over the long term.

I'll stick with what I'm doing ... losing weight and feeling great, while eating foods I like ... what more could I want from a diet. :)

If you eat 3000 calories of vegetables you'll gain weight. Some vegetables obviously have a higher energy density than others so 3000 Cals of sweet potatoes would be easier to consume than the equivalent energy amount of lettuce.

I think what you're thinking about is referred to as the thermic effect, in that some foods take additional energy to process so your body doesn't absorb all the calories. This effect is relatively small (on the order of 10%) and is most applicable to protein.

First of all, 3000 calories of salad is a lot of salad because it does indeed contain a lot of water. That was, of course, my point about the ton of feathers vs ton of iron which went right over MZilliox's head. You might be able to consume 3000 calories by eating two Big Macs, but you'll be eating an immense amount of salad to reach the 3000 calorie point.

Here ... a head of lettuce is 54 cal. 3000 calories would be 55 heads of lettuce.
Nutrition Facts and Analysis for Lettuce, green leaf, raw

One large tomato is 33 cal. 3000 calories would be 90 tomatoes.
Nutrition Facts and Analysis for Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, year round average [Includes USDA commodity food A238, A233]

One large cucumber is 34 cal ... 88 cucumbers = 3000 cal.
Nutrition Facts and Analysis for Cucumber, peeled, raw

Mix them all together ... 18 heads of lettuce (972 cal) + 30 tomatoes (990 cal) + 30 cucumbers (1020 cal) = 2982 cal.



However, if you could do that for a couple weeks or a month without becoming thoroughly sick of salad, and if you did no exercise and only burned, say, 1500 calories in a day, you would gain weight.


The whole point being that you can eat whatever you consider to be the most healthy diet you can put together, and still gain weight if you eat too many calories of it.

On the other hand, you can lose weight eating a diet of so-called "bad" foods, if you consume fewer calories than you burn.

IMO the best option for losing weight is to eat a predominantly healthy diet of foods I like, while consuming fewer calories than I burn. :)

When Machka said 3000 calorie salad I was thinking of lettuce, tomato, peppers, spinach,cabbage etc. I just don't see how anybody could gain weight on lettuce and tomatoes alone...Potatoes are in a different category, they are high in carbs/starch and much more calorie dense, eating 3000 calories in potatoes would definitely make a person gain a lot of weight.

How many people can eat 18 heads of lettuce + 30 tomatoes+ 30 cucumbers per day ???...And even if they did, I highly doubt they could gain weight and be able to sustain themselves for very long time without getting sick....Now a 3000 calorie fruit salad is a different story, I bet anybody could gain weight from eating so much fructose.

I doubt anyone would want to eat that much lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers a day ... I doubt anyone could sustain that. Even if you loved salad, and it was your most favourite thing to eat, I think you'd be pretty sick of it within a day or two if you had to eat that much.

Which is why the example provided by another poster: "3k calories of salad does not equal 3k calories of big mac" is rather silly. Really? Who is going to eat 3k calories of salad???


I'm just pointing out how much salad 3000 calories really is.



(And quite frankly, I think if I were faced with the, fortunately, unlikely choice between 3000 cal of salad and 3000 cal of Big Mac, I'd rather go for the Big Mac ... but even so, I'd have trouble eating 5.6 Big Mac's a day at the listed 530 cal each. http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/getnu...itionfacts.pdf

3000 cal of anything is a very large number of calories.)

A more relevant example would be the effect of an extra 300 Cals of salad vs 300 Cals of steak. You'd gain the same if not more weight by eating the extra salad.

Well, if that be true, then it means that steak and other meats are not the real culprit responsible for obesity and excessive weight gain, it's the salads and veggies that are making people fat ??...A lot of overweight people are giving up eating steak/meat and choosing salads and veggies in hopes of loosing weight...I think you may be right about a salad causing more weight gain then steak, the fear of gaining weight from eating steak needs to stop.

You're missing the key word in what gregf83 said.

The key word is not "steak" ... not "salad" ... not "300 cals" ...

The key word is .......... "extra".


Steak doesn't make you gain weight.
Salad doesn't make you gain weight.

But extra steak or extra salad or extra any sort of food does.

I agree: You ARE doing it right... Keep it simple and natural (the real natural -- not the one on the box of processed food).

But, for many of us, we are overwhelmed and confused by the marketing of the processed/fast food industries that masquerades as science and tells us that their toxins are good for us.

And, for myself, having grown up in the 50's & 60's in the era of Twinkies, Wonder Bread and Tang, we really believed that we had found a better way and had actually improved upon what nature has always made available to us and what we have adapted to live on... The advertisements for those products (which were supported by the science of the time) told us that Wonder Bread was more nutritious and better for us than real bread. Most Americans -- all of the ones that I knew -- believed it.

So, for myself, as much as I learn about nutrition, I find that mostly I just have to unlearn the assumptions that I grew up with. Unfortunately, unlike you, I do not have a farm to help teach me.

Plus fat and protein... Not ONLY "fibre, vitamins, minerals and water"

One eating a whole food plant based diet gets all of the macro nutrients needed

I disagree with everything in that post.

"Vegetables are the least calorically-dense foods on the planet. Typically, they range between 14 calories per 100 grams (as in iceberg lettuce) to 86 calories per 100 grams (as in a sweet potato). This is versus the most calorie-dense foods like nuts, which have about 500-600 calories per 100 grams, and oils, which have about 880 calories per 100 grams. - See more at: caloric density | Plant Based Dietitian"

Actually, it would be hard to get fat eating sweet potatoes -- simply because, at under 500 calories per pound, you would have to eat over 6 pounds of sweet potatoes to get to that 3000 calories...
... In short, you would fill up before you would fatten up.

The thermic effect is really a red herring with respect to weight gain. People gain weight when they eat too many calories of any type. It's easy to eat too many calories of calorie dense foods with high fat content because they taste good.

It's true it would be difficult to eat 3000 Cals of veggies but as I said earlier that wasn't the point. The point is there isn't a lot of difference in the type of calories you eat when it comes to weight gain. If you eat an extra 500 Cals of any type of food you'll gain weight. Yes some of those foods might take a little more energy to digest so maybe you'll only gain an extra 400 Cals worth of weight but you'll still gain.

+1

You can eat as "healthy" as you want and still be overweight because you've simply eaten too much "healthy". :)