To not understand why my healthy (I think) way of eating isn't making me feel energetic and fabulous

[LindyFoo]

AIBU to consider this is a healthy daily diet (not looking to lose weight as already a healthy weight). I want to feel more energetic and fabulous :-). Don't eat meat or drink alcohol. In my 60s, fit and well, very minimal stress.

AM
Smoothie with banana, kale, milk, peanut butter, avacado, skimmed milk powder, greek yoghurt
SNACK
Sourdough bread with peanut butter
MIDDAY
2 egg with onion, peppers, cheese and a mixed salad with olive oil dressing
5PM
Salmon with salad or brown rice with prawns and lots of vegetables and spices

What is missing? Or not helping?

What is the difference, nationally, between carbohydrates in grains and carbohydrates in vegetables?

Again, grains are not a naturally occurring food. There is nothing even remotely similar nutritionally to grain as you know them that grows without human agriculture. NOTHING. I don't mean 'natural' as in grown in a field not made in a lab. I mean natural as in has existed in a way that could have shaped our digestive system via evolutionary force. Yes I KNOW cooked meals as we have them aren't 'natural' either. But the CONTENT - the protein, fat and vegetables are comparable to what we evolved to eat. The grains are not.

This is a really, really crucial point. And I feel it's where I'm failing. I wish I could put it better.

@guestsareinvited You're failing because you're tying yourself up in knots trying to justify a series of outlandish claims. Pages and pages of waffle don't make your points any stronger. You haven't yet cited one single reputable source for your claims, to which we can now add the claim that the body doesn't need glucose, which is again untrue.

I said 'It's not massive slabS of meat'

It's ONE AVERAGE STEAK!!!! And that's the only meat all day. With a whole plate of vegetables! That is not excessive by any measure!

I'm quite surprised at the fibre myself. How much do you eat? And how would you add more? Because the brown rice everyone says is so high in fibre would have added 2.4g. That's not exactly a game changer. And if I swapped it for the broccoli (which is the only practical way, I think. I couldn't eat both.) I'd gain exactly 0.1g of fibre and about 5g of protein I don't need. And nothing else but 200 calories I also don't need. I'd lose a lot of vitamin c as well. I can't see how that's helping here AT ALL?!

What would you like me to cite a source for?

What does the body need glucose for?

Yes, Neanderthals ate grains, along with various other plant foods, demonstrating a much more diverse and sophisticated diet than previously thought. Evidence from fossilized teeth and dental plaque shows they consumed, cooked, and processed starchy plants, including wild barley, legumes, and roots, challenging the idea that they were purely carnivores.

• Evidence of Cooking: Microscopic analysis of dental plaque from Neanderthal remains found in sites like Shanidar Cave (Iraq) and in Belgium revealed cooked starch granules, indicating they likely cooked plants and grains.
• Variety of Foods: Besides meat, Neanderthals ate tubers, nuts, mushrooms, seeds, and fruits, depending on the season and environment.
• Preparation: Findings suggest they didn't just eat raw plants; they likely ground and heated grains to make them palatable.
• Regional Diet Variations: While some populations relied heavily on meat (e.g., mammoths), others had a more plant-heavy diet based on regional availability.
• Starch Adaptation: Study findings suggest that Neanderthals adapted to eating starch-rich foods as far back as 100,000 years ago

I mean, no doubt you will dismiss this as unnatural but I mean, how far back do you want to go with this?

Have you been upset in your life by a bag of oats falling on your head or something? Has it left you with an unreasonable hatred for the dreaded 'grain' or GRAIN!!!!

Well apparently we are all doing fairly poorly for fibre and should eat 30g a day for good bowel health.

Bowel cancer is increasign particularly in the younger generations.

I have said again and again I'm talking about the carbs in grains. Carbs in vegetables are not all the same, and not present in anything like the same quantity when they are the same.

Carbs in grain are 'starch", and however complex they start out, they are long chains of sugar. Your body digests them back into sugar. The sugar is then used for energy, processed and stored in the liver or converted to stored fat. your blood gets 50g of sugar to deal with for every cup of brown rice. However slowly, however much it flattens the peak, it's 50g of sugar in a cup of food.

Some of the carbs in vegetables are starchy, especially in squash etc, but some they are wrapped up in cellulose in the form of insoluble fibre. We can't digest cellulose. No animal can. (animals that eat grass have bacteria that do it for them in their guts. We don't). It there to be measured but your body can't actually get at it. It passes right on through, undiegested. So although you have to count it in MFP, it's not getting into your body. Your bloodstream doesn't get sugar.

Of those 66g of carbs, you can take off the 15g of fibre to get actual digestible carbs. It's still very low carb. (MFP suggests a daily goal of 175g) Not enough to give your blood a hit of sugar. And not all in one go. (And a lot mine of are from milk. I love a latte and it makes my life worth living). The rest are from vegetable starches and sugars. So yes vegetables are carbs. A cup of onions has 12g of net carbs (sugar) and 34 calories. But a cup of brown rice has 47g of net carbs (sugar) and 248 calories. You just can't GET that without farmed grains. Because they aren't designed to deal with it. That's the difference here.

I know what carbs are and how they work. I eat slightly lower carb myself. But I wouldnt describe myself as 'not eating carbs' which is what you did and what Im being pernickity over

I disagree entirely with your position that grains are bad for humans.

If we're worried about not being adapted to 'recent' additions to the diet, all that dairy should go long before the grains do.

And the carbs in milk are entirely in the form of simple sugar.

Are you for real? I've listed your claims already. Just properly sourcing any one of them would be a start.

As for the body's uses of glucose:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK545201/
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/preventing-problems/low-blood-glucose-hypoglycemia

I love carbs. They just make me feel like crap. And I'll admit to being a carb nerd. I should write a book and get paid for it. I can call it 'Against the GRAIN!'! 😂

That looks like AI - AI is a great tool. But it doesn't weight answers by source, just volume. So I don't know its from a reputable source. But let's take it as fact, because it's like the case. People ate what there was, so they'd have eaten grain if they could. They are referring to wild grains. I know they weren't sitting down to Kit Kats and cornflakes, but the difference in nutritional content would have been vast. Processing grains is SO MUCH WORK. (I've done it). To get the modern equivalent of a cup of brown rice, takes all bloody day, and that's with some help from modern tools and I grew them in a patch in the garden, all together. I didn't have to gather it wild - Those folks were nomadic. They weren't gardening. They were picking (and probably eating) as they walked. And they likely walked all the time.

However they got their grain, it would have been autumn only. They weren't storing and carrying them before they settled down to agriculture. It would have been such a small part - Cordain et al (2000) estimates 25% of modern day hunter gather diets are made up of ALL plant carbohydrates, fruits vegetables and grains, and that would vary seasonally. Most of the time there would be no grain! 50% of their calories came from fat, the rest from various proteins, which would also have varied seasonally.

That's a low carb diet

Otzi the iceman (who got preserved in glacier) had a meal shortly before he died. It did contain grain, completely unmilled. Rollo et al (2002) found Ibex and deer meat, bracken, fungal matter and unmilled einkorn wheat. And stomach contained 46% fat. The carbohydrate content isn't determinable, but his stomach also contains dried meat, so there will be a significant protein content. It's not definitely known if Otzi was from farming background or not - the presence of wheat suggests so, and agriculture is thought to be have developing in the area around that time. He also had quite a variety of different species of animal represented in his artefacts, so if his people did farm, they extensively hunted as well. And his diet that day was nearly fifty percent fat from multiple animal sources, (so significant) protein and what can only have been minimal carbohydrates.

That's a low carb diet

We don't vary diets seasonally. We mainline carbs all year round. We don't walk all the time and eat as we gather - so we don't use those carbs as the glucose hits our systems. And we don't stop eating at night. Or at all, in lean periods. We are saturating our systems with glucose in a way that it copes with. Just.

Well of course its AI, no one talks like that and I put it in italics so its clear its not me saying it

You're veering from extreme to extreme

Eating the odd bit of rice and pearl barley is not the same as 'mainlining carbs' all night.

I'm not worried about recent additions to diet. I'm saying that the reason grains cause problems is that is we aren't well adapted to cope with them and that their modern availability and quantity are significantly more different from any changes in modern proteins and fats.

Why shouldn't I eat it, nutritionally speaking? (I know people don't, but I've not looked into why. I'm not giving it up, though!)

I'd be looking at other causes of fatigue, if it was me. Like sleep or exercise levels. I doubt it's your diet. You've had some weird comments on the thread, but in the real world, most people would think it's amazing.

If you want diet advice though, I'd post somewhere more nutrition-focused than AIBU. People will say any old thing on here 😂

Only that I'd be crucified if I'd have posted anything by AI. I don't think it matters for your point, though.

We don't eat the odd bit of barley. We eat grains all day and well into the night.

👊🏽

Well the actual subject of the discussion, the OP - remember her? - doesnt eat grains all day and well into the night

It was your post replying to her that set this part of the conversation off, you saying she horrifically was eating so much carbs she might just explode.

people are exploding from eating carbs now

I know you have. But you must acknowledge it's unreasonable to expect me to write a fully referenced course. Most of this is pretty well established knowledge, and can't all be new information for you.

Your sources detail glucose metabolism. They show how humans metabolise glucose. I have never said we can't, and I know we do. I said we don't need to.

Hunter gatherers evolved to eat what we would call a low carb diet, without significant glucose content. Otzi did. Modern hunter gatherers do. The evidence is above. Do you accept those citations as valid, or do I need more to establish that low carb diets are a pre-historical norm and are viable in modern populations?

Do you accept that modern day human metabolism is the same as pre-historic people and modern day hunter gatherers, or do you assert that our metabolism is fundamentally changed?

I know I am. Im just about to force myself off the sofa and get some chocolate.

If you dont hear from me again, it was nice knowing you all.

Hunter gatherers evolved to eat what we would call a low carb diet, without significant glucose content.

That's not true... up to 80% of kcal come from honey in peak honey season, more like 15-20% of their calories if annualised (from honey alone) in hunter-gatherer societies. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248414000815

If you're passionate about hunter gatherer eating then Fibre is what you need to be promoting: not carbs vs. protein www.visitnatives.com/post/5-eye-opening-facts-about-the-hadza-diet-and-what-hunter-gatherers-can-teach-us

No, I don't want you to write a bloody course (please, no). I am just asking you to provide a reputable reference for any of your claims.

Did you see the part where one of my sources said: "Carbohydrates are ubiquitous energy sources for every organism worldwide and are essential to fuel aerobic and anaerobic cellular respiration in simple and complex molecular forms."

Or the bit that said: "Glucose is essential for the proper functioning of every organ system."

Or what about this bit: "Mild-to-moderate low blood glucose can be easily treated. But severely low blood glucose can cause serious complications, including passing out, coma, or death."

Oh look what's that? It's another good bit: "If you don’t eat enough carbohydrates or skip or delay any meals, your blood glucose level could drop lower than what is healthy for you."

Unless he's done a really good study to prove that these sources are actually false, I don't give a shit about Otzi the Iceman.

Poor Otzi.

Its well known he was on his way trudging to remote communities to study their dietary intake.

It not as well known that he was found with a portfolio of their grain intake. They kept that information from us in the documentaries.

My thought would be that its high in fat, especially breakfast.

My diet today has been no breakfast, lunch was a small bowl of branflakes with skimmed milk, afternoon snack an hot cross bun, a handful of mixed nuts , and a few grapes. Dinner was a mixed bean soup.

You need to remember that your body is a system and different parts need different nutrients.