Thursday 29 March 2012

Fit = NO FRUITS! Lolwut?!

Yeah I hate lolkatz too!




Following is a discussion I had with a few people,  some asking whether or not Fruits are a good wholesome food and then some "what-if's" about Fruit.
But I feel its better to eat fruit bowl / assortment of fruits / banana/orange etc during evening instead of junk like maggie.
Surprisingly to most peeps, even Fruit is a restricted food if you want to lean down, and a miserly given/eaten food on a gain. Point is fruits are considered to give essential fibre and multivitamins and even some minerals. Well the truth is Fibres you are supposed to get in from your veggies, and if and when you do, fruit fibres are negligible compared to vegetable fibres. Then comes the vitamins and minerals. These are super trace amounts! Really, having one apple or banana or anything will not give you enough Calcium and Potassium that your body desires, rather just add in other extra unwanted calories. For the multivitamins and minerals and antioxidants we just take over the counter pills, which give you EXACTLY what you want from the fruits, and you can have it in the EXACT QUANTITY for your body. No calories.

Another big red sign with fruits is that fruits are high in Fructose. Fructose is one sugar, that is processed in the liver. To greatly simplify the situation: When too much fructose enters the liver, the liver can't process it all fast enough for the body to use as sugar. Instead, it starts making fats from the fructose and sending them off into the bloodstream as triglycerides. Also Fructose is a very significant cause for high Uric acid levels. Fructose is also available in quite a few ketchup type sauces, so please be careful the next time you are going to go purchase some in the store!

Fruits gonna F**K U UP!




@newuxtreme
You're technically correct about fruits and it is true that for people planning to lean down, fruits are kinda discouraged. But I'm totally against that philosophy. I'd rather eat all the fruits I want and do something extra. For eg, a couple of more sets in each workout I do in a day or a couple of extra kilometers in my jog. That's the kind of suggestion I'd expect you to be giving. I hope you weren't suggesting people planning to lean down to cut down on fruits. And pills to replace nutrients obtained from fruits? Very inspiring :|
I totally get where you're coming from, and I can under your shock/hesitation for the same, specially since I recommend taking pills/tablets or powders, considered 'artificial/synthetic' substances over 'natural'. Our psyche is partial to natural substances.

Let me just try to explain again and underline WHY I say what I say. Before anything else however I would like to clearly announce I do not have any hand in the supplement market of any type. No endorsements, no advertising one over another , I don't get a better deal if I push one supp over another or anything. I do not let my understanding & education of nutrition sciences get corrupted by supp company politics and money.
Taking a simple example. You are hungry. You try to abide by a fit/healthy lifestyle. One option is having a Domino's Pizza. The other is a home cooked meal with veggies, good source of lean meat and some good carbs(roti/chapati). Which one would you choose?
The healthier option.

Let me try to explain with the help of the generic protein example. 1 Egg contains 7gms of the highest class pf proteins ever (BV 100) & ~7gm of EXCELLENT fat. 1 cup of Dal contains 7gms also but of a very low class (BV 35), but contains 20+gms of protein & I don't even know how much fat and whether or not it is good.
Of the above two which one would you choose as a source of your protein and when you need MAJORTIY protein compared to anything else? I eat 10 whole eggs everyday as a minimum, to give 70 gm highest class of proteins and fats (which do not make me fat) vs I can't eat 10 cups of dal in a day to give me 70gms of bad protein, and 200gms of carbs!!! (Carbs make you fat vs dietary fat making you fat I hope I mentioned that earlier.) Calorie count over the roof, calories supplied by bad source of food, and worst source of protein!

I'll explain this again and try to go in a bit more of detail this time, please read and understand this, if you do so you can get exactly what I meant and why I said what I said.

Carbs are of two types, slow and fast digesting. The slow digesting are the one's we always want and the fast the one's we try and avoid. Slow = Low GI, Fast = High GI. All carbs are in nutrition terms labeled as dietary sugars, NOT to be confused with your table sugar.
Glucose is the highest and fastest dissolving carb/sugar, with a rating of 100, it's the comparing standard, much like Egg is for protein.
All carbs are converted into glucose(blood sugars) and the higher the GI the more the amount of sugar released into the blood stream at a time. If the amount of sugar in the blood stream is high, the Insulin hormone is spiked in our body. Insulin has the function of controlling blood sugar and blood glucose levels. That's it's job. It doesn't matter whether it puts it into muscle/liver glycogen stores(which is what you want, also these are small reservoirs or stores) or used up as current energy in the cells, or store it as a source of energy for later use in Fat cells(large reservoir/store).
Insulin sees high blood sugar activity, it panics, and it starts picking up the sugars from the blood stream and start storing them in your fat cells or adipose tissue, which is what you see as fat from the outside. It doesn't matter whether this spike was for 30 seconds or 3 minutes, the point is Insulin goes into survival mode for your body and starts working extra fast to do the same.
You eat roti or chapati or brown rice though... The carbs are low GI, and slow releasing.... Now the carbs that are being converted into blood sugar are giving a slow and steady stream of glucose. No spike. Insulin activity is controlled since it's not a fight for survival now. It will conveniently direct the sugars into your current energy using cells and then to your Muscle and Liver Glycogen and THEN to you fat cells. But it goes every where it SHOULD first, and then proceeds to get into the Fat cells only if there is an excess of sugars left.


BOO!




Now coming to the point of working out more and eating more fruits vs not working out and eating less fruits.

Forget fruits. Let's take it as chicken or egg or fish. If you have enough for your survival and your work, none will go for storage as fat. It doesn't depend whether it's a protein or a carb or a fat. Excess food WILL get converted into fat on the body.
I'd rather eat all the fruits I want and do something extra. For eg, a couple of more sets in each workout I do in a day or a couple of extra kilometers in my jog.
The point is not about working out more or less. What you mentioned in terms of your explanation, wasn't totally correct since you are ONLY thinking in terms of calories.You are not thinking in terms of what happens when you put in different foods, and how different food types behave in the body. Whether you work out or not, will not change the fact how high GI sugars are going to be stored in your body.

I hope you now understood the point I was trying to put across, and I don't seem like a supplement wh0re. It's all about what foods your body needs and which is the most efficient form of giving it.

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Also things are different in different parts of the world. If anyone of use has/have ever been to the US/UK/Canada/Australia or other industrialized parts of the world, where groceries and marketing have been established and refined time and again, you would notice the following things:-
  1. You have probably never seen 90% of the foods that you see over there, here in India.
  2. You were probably shocked the first time you went into a grocery 'shop' which turned out to be bigger than some of our Indian malls.
  3. You were probably shocked at the insane varieties that one can possible create of just one product! Seriously Peanut butter has like over 100-120 varieties. I haven't seen or heard of more than 2-3 here in India. They have at least 30-50 different providers of Bread and different combination of foods in each type of bread. Not more than 4-5 in India.
  4. There is a whole section for meats!!! :wOOtjumpy: Those are bigger than most houses! The amount of meats, red meats , lean meats, varieties of beef, steak, fish, pre cooked, semi cooked, raw, organic, inorganic, chemically fed/chemical, free, pre cut, pre grilled, pre flavoured etc etc etc! In India we have to go to a butcher shop in order to get meat, or in some backstorage or freezer, since having meat in the grocery shops put most Indian religious people off.
  5. I have yet to see Eggnog or egg whites or any form of liquidized eggs being sold in India. whereas the varieties outside are limitless!
  6. We have low fat/virgin olive oil etc etc type of oils in our food trying to make cooking easier and better, outside they have cooking spray. 0 cals, no cholestrol, and non stick as well.
I can go on and on!

People in such places do not NEED supplements the way our Indian society does, since they never have a deficiency in proteins and the like. Every single meal outside is made around a lean source of protein and veggies. We cannot compare ourselves to people living in different countries.

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