FOOD AND NUTRITION

Interesting developments that I missed. I'm not much of food science guy so it was never a staple of my reading. There's an interesting book review about a book written by a vegan/vegetarian who fell off the wagon recently and wrote an in-depth book about the diets of people.  The quote below was taken from the comments section between Rob and Paleo Huntress and is part of her response to his arguments about Okinawa diet featuring carbohydrates.

“A point worth making is that people die for other reasons than health. For example, people die because of car accidents and violent crime. A few years back, Robert Ohsfeldt of Texas A&M and John Schneider of the University of Iowa asked the obvious question: what happens if you remove deaths from fatal injuries from the life expectancy tables? Among the 29 members of the OECD, the U.S. vaults from 19th place to…you guessed it…first. Japan, on the same adjustment, drops from first to ninth.”

Earlier, The Clinical Nutritionist chimed and set the record straight with this gem:

Ok here is your proof. As a matter of fact there is NO proof from a bio-chemical standpoint that we require carbohydrates at all, but we do, however, REQUIRE essential amino acids from protein and essential fatty acids from fat.

“Essential” means that your body can not make it. You must get it from your food. There is NO SUCH THING as essential carbohydrates.

Yes, yes, I'm sure these things were well known to my astute readers but I haven't seen either of them anywhere else before this. I mean this is truly dangerous knowledge. You wouldn't want your minor children finding out that there is no dietary excuse for strained carrots or any vegetable once it is known to them that there really is no valid reason to eat them.