Nutrition/Diet advice?

To give a little background, I'm a university student in the UK and looking to get into gymnastics seriously. I'm looking to stay lean and both gain strength but also basically sort my diet out. I'm about 5'11"/6'0" and 160ish.

The problem is that as a student I've let myself slip into pretty standard habits of drinking and don't have the luxury of a great spending budget for particularly brilliant food/supplementation.

I've read the stickies, and have a good idea of of general dos, don'ts and guidelines for pre/post workout nutrition, however I'm looking for more specific advice, particularly from anyone based over here, on cheap readily accessible foods options, especially transitioning from my fairly healthy diet (for a student), to that of a more serious athlete. I'm sure many of you know what it's like juggling studies, socialising etc, and could just use the benefit of your knowledge.

Also on a side note, a while back I changed from regular semi-skimmed milk to soy, but after a quick browse of the boards and some searches on google it seems that the verdict is to avoid soy, however no recommendation for what milk (if any) to drink.

Any advice is appreciated.

Don't have the same boring "healthy" diet that like 95% of all people who are trying to have good eating habits have. Here's what they eat:

Oatmeal

Yogurt

Chicken breasts

Broccoli

Protein shakes

Eggs (maybe the yolk, maybe not)

Turkey sandwich

*snores* There's nothing wrong with any of the above, but good grief, that shit annoys me because people have no imagination. No wonder they can't stick to their boring diet.

Here's what you need to do. Get some tasty cook books. Learn how to cook. Plan your meals for the week from the cook book. Make a grocery list where you ONLY buy the stuff on your meal plan. This will save you money because you won't waste food. When the womenz find out that you can cook a VARIETY of delicious and healthy meals you will be fighting them off with a stick. Trust me bro.

You could find a good base by looking up Paleo. A good portion of people here use it. Simply taking out potatoes, sugars, and grains while replacing them with meats, healthy fats, and veggies is one of the best training tips out there. Ido wrote about that in a post on this forum. For me, I have also found that less expensive than eating loads processed food. You'll get more nutrients and won't be near as hungry with enough protein. A little more expensive than the dollar menu at McDonald's? Yes. Less expensive than boat loads of processed junk? Probably. This helps me a lot as well with my food budget.

In terms of milk, a lot of people are intolerant to some degree. Even without intolerance, it usually isn't optimal. Soy is something to definitely avoid but some people recommend things like goat milk or grass fed milk. I myself occasionally drink almond milk. No lactose and it doesn't upset me. I doubt its completely optimal though, but probably better than normal.

Finding a diet is about researching and seeing what works for you. When you find something that increases your performance, makes you look better in the mirror, is good for your health both short and long term. and don't think of it as a diet anymore, you're on a good track.

Thanks for the replies.

-trianglechoke:

I'm well able to cook, perhaps I should have included that in my first post (?) and really don't need to be fighting off any extra womenz, that was never the issue. The turkey sandwich is about the only thing on your list I don't eat (Ok maybe broccoli I guess), my issue was more specific things I can go for, if anyone knows any particularly cheap products/meals/tips. But I do appreciate your reply.

-PHILIP

Paleo sounds interesting. I've never been much of a potato eater (or bread for that matter), but I'll admit I'm a big fan of Rice/Pasta, dinner without one of the two feels sort of wrong. I did read Ido's article, and found it very useful, but felt that there's no harm in making my own thread, and getting more personalised and tailored responses like yours would be helpful. On the subject of potatoes etc, any suggestion for a good replacement? I must admit that though I love my meat, it might take a while to completely switch to fruit and veg, so any suggestions for other things to replace pasta/rice would be good.

Oh and you'll be pleased to know I haven't eaten McDonalds (barring the occasional ice cream perhaps every few months) since I was about 11, a healthy hatred for fast food and big corporations is helpful sometimes I guess

As for milk, I have no intolerances, though dairy isn't exactly helpful for phlegm, however I am a huge fan and it's a pretty useful little drink so I'm not keen on giving it up in all forms.

I appreciate you guys' input, tailoring an optimal diet I realise will take time and thought, so your advice and experience is really helpful.

Simple solutions:

At night, place as many eggs into a pot and cover with water. boil. generally i can fit 6-8 eggs in a pot which is enough for 1-2 days.

Make meatballs. however, no matter how much of them I make, I realize they can go insanely fast.

Of course! The forum is here to help. As for what to replace them with, I like to buy big bags of spinich personally. I eat them raw and much on them whenever I need a quick snack. There are also lots of nuts like almonds and walnuts you can buy to replace the rice. If you really are a huge pasta fan, you can usually use something like zuchini noodles or some other kind of noodle like that. Taste the same. I have also had pancakes made from almond meal. Some of my clients have made almond bread too. Or even creamed califlower (ends up turning into mashed potato kind of consistancy). Taking out that processed food is really going to do a lot for you. With that good base, you'll be able to detail your diet even more to your needs.

Blairbob, what happens when you do that to eggs? It sounds delicious. Off to trader joe's I go.

First, this is only from my experience, I do not claim to have a thorough understanding of scientific literature that may support my suggestions. However, based off of advice gleaned from reading posts by Ido and books by Sisson, Wolf, and the Jaminets, I would advise the following:

-No more grains (this is non-negotiable) with the exception of rice, which should be slowly eliminated or at least greatly limited to meals following training.

-Vegetables are cheap and can be prepared in ways that taste good if you cannot stand them raw, they are a vital source of nutrients and should be a large chunk of your diet.

-Meat quality and quantity are important, this would be a good time to play with both. See how little you can get away with before you start loosing muscle and performance worsens, and thats your baseline. Adjust accordingly to maintain or improve performance and muscle mass. Quality meat isn't necessarily expensive, you don't need steaks, I live off of stew-meat which is as cheap as ground beef.

-Don't drink anything but water and coconut milk, coffee and tea if you must.

-Eggs, nuts, and sweet potatoes are toss ups. Try going with and without them to see how you feel and perform.

This should give you a good structure to think about what foods you will want to include in your diet and how you will prepare them. Remember that the information I have posted is not exhaustive, and is based SOLELY off of MY experience. If you have any other questions go ahead and ask, I could even provide my sample meal plan if you would like to see one way of structuring a weekly diet.

Keep in mind that the vast majority of your body's protein need is based around physical activity levels AND when you exercise. You don't need hardly any protein outside of the 3-4 hours surrounding your workout. You can eat it, and it can make you feel good if you like that, but you body will simply convert most of it to glycogen because the vast majority of muscle damage gets repaired in 2 hours. Titin proteins, which are what you damage the most in eccentrically focused exercises, takes around 7 days to regenerate, but that is a very slow process (obviously) and does not require large amounts of protein at any one time.

I am in no way discouraging eating a ton of meat, I love to do that myself. However, I have been discovering that as long as the majority of my protein and food is consumed around the workout time it really doesn't matter what my protein intake is the rest of the time: I get bigger and stronger regardless. This is good news because I am super poor and can not afford much of anything.

As for eliminating rice, meh. Now, one thing that IS true is that you should rinse your rice with FOOD GRADE hydrogen peroxide. That is not the stuff you buy at kroger or the drug store! You want to dilute it down from 33% to a 3.3% solution by doing a 10 parts water to 1 part H2O2 solution, and then mixing one part of that into every cup of water. That is enough peroxide to destroy potentially "dangerous" natural carcinogens that hang out on the rice. You let that soak for a few minutes and it's all good. The one very, very minor potential problem with rice is now effectively dealt with. It is true that you'll be better off with brown rice than white, but as long as your rice is unbleached and not enriched I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

Rice breaks down into pure glucose. You do not need to worry about becoming a fatty off of it unless you are eating way outside the caloric load your body can handle both at any one meal and over the course of a day. You can become fat off of anything with sufficient caloric value if you eat too much of it, but as long as you're placing severe controls on fructose you will be FINE.

2-3 pieces of fruit belong in the first meal of the day and after workouts. Outside of that, you don't want to consume too much, especially if you are trying to lose weight. Most vegetables, unlike most fruits, have very low fructose counts and are not an issue. I understand that this is getting nitty gritty, and the basic truth is that if you are having a random piece of fruit as a snack you are going to be fine, but doing that quite a lot throughout the day is not idea. As always, moderation is the key.

Outside of that stuff, the grain thing is up to you. True, real bread that is made from grain flour (preferably sprouted grain as the germination process destroys virtually everything in grain that harms us), yeast, water and perhaps a touch of glucose is one of the most amazing food items out there, but you will be best off sprouting your own grains and making that yourself. The crap on store shelves is just an abomination by comparison, both nutritionally and in terms of how you feel when you eat it.

I have to go, perhaps I will revisit this later. There is good advice in this thread, simple and effective. It is nice to see the growing awareness regarding nutrition!

If only there was a "Thanks" button I could press on all of your helpful posts, guys!

blairbob:

Mmm... Boiled eggs. Great idea.

I'll look into a good meatball method too, haven't tried making them before but I hear they're not too hard.

PHILIP:

Spinach sounds good, never thought of it as filling, but boiled is great. Definitely need to up my intake.

I'm a huge fan of cashews, almonds I eat in small doses, but have never really liked walnuts, but I'll certainly take that advice.

Zuchini noodles I know nothing about but I'll look into.

The rest... I may try, no promises, you really like almonds though eh?

BILL:

What're we counting as grains? I have a fair idea what you mean, but just want total clarity here. I know I sound stupid, but hey, I've just never really thought "what is a grain?"

Just because you're posting experience as opposed to "science", I'm interested in your personal opinions and why you say sweet potatoes are a "toss up", and any thoughts on good and more importantly versatile vegetables. I have a few of my own, but two heads are better than one.

slizzardman:

Your thoughts on protein are akin to my own. I had a feeling protein only really matters when you're working out, but like you, I love my meat haha. But it is good to know if ever I can't afford much meat, I know where to cut corners.

Also, you've given me a way to keep rice in my diet without stressing, I'm in your debt, thanks!

Your information on fructose is new to me also, which I'm grateful for, and though I'm not concerned with losing weight (I imagine I could stand to gain some), I'll still be taking heed of it.

And lastly your thoughts on bread are certainly interesting. I'd imagine I won't be doing much bread making (unless you're interested in offering cheap, easy and not very time consuming suggestions/recipes), but are nonetheless useful to have.

Lastly guys, thanks for all your advice.

Continuing on, does anyone have any more thoughts/advice/opinions on milk?

I mean dairy vs soy vs rice vs almond vs ???

Almonds rock if you feel like you are missing something. If not, even better. Milk here in america isn't much except processed white water. If you can find grass fed dairy, it would be better. But milk isn't exactly optimal. Soy milk should just be avoided. The hormones can be similar to taking the birth control pill. Almond milk is better I believe, but another opinion would be good here.

It's probably important to understand how I view food when considering my response and suggestions, since you may be of a different viewpoint. At this point, food has simply become fuel to me, nothing more. Some people like to romanticize it and dry to make healthy versions of pizza and cookies and pancakes so they can feel like they are eating normal. If that's you, no problem, enjoy it, it makes eating food more interesting. I still enjoy eating food very much, and every meal I make tastes amazing, but I know that it's just fuel. Thus, if food makes me feel anything other than hungry or full, I avoid it. I don't think food should make someone feel: gassy, bloated, sleepy, energized, constipated, upset stomach, headaches, congested, etc... Maybe this is just me, but any of those feelings are unacceptable to me. If I am hungry I eat, and when I am full I do not, that is my relationship with food. I want to be in and out of the kitchen in 30 minutes.

So with that in mind, my definition of grains might as well be anything that isn't a vegetable, a fruit, a nut, or meat. Breads/cereals/flours/rice/oatmeal all make ME feel less than perfect, so I do not eat them. I consider sweet potatoes a toss up because if I eat too much I don't feel perfect. The poison for many things is in the dose, so while YOU may be able to get buy with more bread and rice, any amount feels like poison to ME.

This is my most recent grocery list for non-meats: spinach, kale, avocados, mushrooms, squash, brocolli, brussel sprouts, asparagus, sweet potatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, garlic, frozen berries and macadamia nuts.

And no, you don't sound stupid you sound interested, most people just nod and go "thanks for the advice" when I tell them anything related to THEIR health. I challenge you to really pay attention to how foods make you feel, don't just chalk up a runny nose to a change in season; be dilligent about how foods affect you and you will be able to answer all your questions for yourself.

I love Bill's last post, because it embodies something very important: the individuality of diet. There really are some people who do not feel at their best or perform at their best when they eat tons of meat, but I am one of the ones that do. There are others who do not feel at their best if they do NOT have some grains in their diet. I can go either way on this one, but they do not affect me negatively, at least as far as I am able to measure.

Just as Bill has pointed out that what HE does may not be applicable to me or you, it is important to realize that how I work may not be how YOU work. There are certain basic rules like avoiding excess fructose and all hydrogenated or trans fats that seem to apply to everyone, and then there are concerns about lectins that apply to many people, and there are other issues like higher fat vs higher carbs or higher protein that may just come down to what you like, what you can afford, what is available in your area or how you personally process foods. Personal experimentation is a very important part of determining what dietary factors YOU need in order to feel good and achieve your goals. Just like there are infinite intermediate positions between a tuck and a flat tuck, there are infinite degrees of moderation between one diet and another. Don't be afraid to find your ideal spot and to make tiny adjustments instead of jumping straight from one end of the spectrum to the other!

Milk is something that is either more or less important depending on a variety of factors. One is your goals. If you aren't trying to gain maximum muscle or anything, you can go ahead and consider milk to be less important in your diet. Milk is a very powerful growth factor (due to the fact that it CONTAINS many growth factors inherently and causes our bodies to produce others, like insulin) and when one is trying to gain weight milk can really, really make a big difference. Obviously there are lactose intolerance concerns for some people unless they use lactase enzyme tablets or lactaid milk, and some people just don't feel good when they drink milk. Personally, I do very well on milk. I have gone on and off of milk several times for prolonged periods of time and I do just fine either way as far as performance goes.

One thing to keep in mind is that milk is one of the most concentrated natural sources of calcium. Calcium, if you didn't know, is the primary blood alkalyzing agent in our bodies. Blood has to stay in a very narrow pH range and if it gets out of that range we die horribly. Simply put, you NEED dietary calcium. If you don't get it, your body starts leeching calcium from your bones and teeth. That is the start of osteoporosis and, believe it or not, to some extent osteoarthritis in some people! According to a large body of research, dietary calcium does not seem to cause calcium deposits. Rather, the levels of endogenous calcium (calcium that is already IN the bones and teeth) that are being used for neutralization of lactate and other acids in the blood seem to be a notable risk factor for calcium deposits in soft tissue, which is the beginning of osteoarthritis for some people. Obviously there is a lot more going on with arthritis than just this, but it is worth noting that low dietary calcium levels can actually be a risk factor for this as well as bone weakening. Milk is nowhere near as bad as some people try and make it out it be, even the crap that's on the grocery store bargain shelf. Yes, grass-fed VAT pasteurized, non-homogenized milk would be far far better, and straight up grass-fed raw milk would be the absolute best, but hey... buy what you can afford and what is available.

It is very easy to find what foods work for you and then head over to allrecipes.com to learn some awesome recipes so that you have restaurant quality taste all day long! That's what I do and it's super cheap as well as very healthy.

Thanks again guys.

PHILIP:

Thanks man, the more opinions the better.

Why exactly isn't milk optimal, out of curiosity. Not sure about the quality of milk over here in the UK but I'll look into it.

BILL:

Not much to say, haha, other than thanks for your post. Your opinion was pretty interesting man, and that little shopping list will definitely be interesting and useful. Honestly appreciate it.

slizzardman:

Have to agree with you about how great BILL's post was.

What's the big deal with avoiding fructose if you don't mind me asking? I saw it mentioned in an earlier post but have never actually read anything myself about it being bad. Obviously, too much of anything is bad, but I wonder do you have any basic facts or links for me here?

As for changing up diets, I've no intent on a drastic change, but thanks for the advice.

Milk I'm good with, just not a fan of getting congested as a result of dairy, and that's about it. The rest of that milk info wasn't exactly what I was looking for, wasn't really concerned about the calcium deposits etc, but now I've read it it was pretty interesting so may look into it more. Was hoping SOMEONE would tell me milk's not as bad as people like to imply, so thanks.

And that recipe site should be helpful. Thanks a lot.

Thanks to all of you in fact, really interesting.

Oh and one quick question.

In terms of supplements, I recently got a discount on Maximuscle supplements (I know I know overpriced) that gets me £15 off (they start around £30 for anyone not over here reading), so I can get a kilo tub for about £15-20. To be perfectly honest, I'd rather pay less than that even, and Impact Whey on MyProtein.com is about £11 for the same amount.

My question is whether as a one off the folks here think the extra £5-10 is worth it for a tub of Promax or whatever (recommendations welcome) since I've got this offer, or should I just stick with the basic Impact Whey, and grab something else with the extra £5-10.

I'd say go with the basic whey and try to score some sort of a digestive aid supplement if they have it. Try out that combo for a little to get a feeling for your reaction to it, than switch it up to the more expensive if you so desire, and compare results. I hate to sound like a broken record with this, but advice will only get you so far before you have to just try something out yourself and see how it goes. I've spent big bucks on supplements, and no bucks on supplements. For ME (is this getting annoying yet?, haha) I've found real food to be the best bet. Supplements should be exactly what their name implies, supplementary to your diet. I have a shake with whey right after a workout because it satisfies my hunger and gives me another hour before I have to cook a full blown meal.

So short answer, the more expensive product MAY not be worth it right now. If you feel fine on the cheaper one, and switch to the more expensive one and feel the same, never pay more for that product again.

The deal with fructose is that your liver is the only organ that can process fructose. There is a special blood vessel that takes fructose straight to the liver instead of circulating it around the body for that reason! Anyways, fructose is fantastic when your liver is glycogen depleted. I'm not talking about your muscles, but your liver. The rest of your body is fueled and/or supplied with glycogen by the liver. If the liver is full or only slightly depleted (normal state) and you take in large quantities of fructose (consider more than 3-5g a "large" quantity for one sitting) your body will not hang on to the fructose until it needs it. Instead, if it does not need to be used for liver glycogen replenishment the fructose will be metabolized into very small cholesterol particles and fatty acids in the liver. This leads to fatty acid deposits in the liver, which get moved into the abdominal cavity if it isn't happening too quickly. Either fate is bad. There are other bad health effects such as cirrhosis(I am totally serious), hypertension, and insulin resistance to name just a few. When you drink a non-diet soda, you consume 25g of fructose. 8 oz of orange juice (or any other juice) has 15-16g. Either way that is a lot for one sitting, and the majority of that will be metabolized into fat and cholesterol regardless of whether you are calorie deficient or not.

There are two basic times when your body will make good use of the fructose: after a long workout and first thing in the morning. Any other time, you want to make sure that your fructose is coming from fresh fruits (which would be idea even at these two times, but if you're going to eat crap those are the times where you will suffer the least from lots of fructose) because they have enough fiber to slow down digestion to the point where your body will absorb the fructose at a pace that will allow most or all of the fructose to be used for glycogen replenishment instead of slowly making yourself fat and horribly unhealthy. To be safe, 15-20g of fructose should be the limit at those two times. Of course if you know the math and can figure out how much liver glycogen you have depleted then you can be more precise, but that is a huge pain in the butt to do.

You can search for fructose metabolism just about anywhere and you will get a ton of good info.

Slizz whats your comment on the fact that protein synthesis is elevated for up to 2 days after a workout? In regards to the 3-4 hour feed window that you mention. I'd think that one would be at an advantage if consuming more protein for the next two days.

BILL (btw what is the 2nd character in your username, I assumed it was a capital "I" or small "l" or "|" but can't seem to find it haha)

I'm mostly familiar with protein, creatine, BCAAs etc, but have never really thought about digestive aids. Any info, links you can point me to or even some good keywords to quicken my searching would be a real help.

Also, your personal opinion is what I really like. As you said, advice is only advice, but information I can get with enough searching and it's just general facts. Personal accounts are more diverse and IMO more valuable, so please don't feel like you're being boring or whatever. And I totally agree, supplements should be as their name suggests, I hated the thought of them until I was about 18, but have no intention on living off something created as an EXTRA to my diet.

slizzardman:

Wow... I'm a big fan of juice, soft drinks not very much but I love my juice, to think I'm doing myself that much damage is an eye opener.

So your advice would be to basically limit myself to about a glass of juice in the morning, and maybe post workout.

Thanks for that man.

Razz:

Hadn't thought of that, thanks for helping expand on the topics in the thread, that will be helpful.

The fructose comments are interesting! Fortunately, I have been drinking 90 percent water but I do know some people who would (or would't) enjoy to read slizz's comments.

I don't think milk is horrible. Just not optimal. In terms of body composition mostly. For gains from workouts, it works well. I prefer to find other methods though as my goals are to not only get stronger but also to lose weight.

The general theory with digestive aids, as I understand it, is that due to poor diet, many people have less than optimal digestion. You may not notice it, because it's not something one would notice unless they were tested, but the result of this issue is that you do not get all of the nutrients out of the foods you eat. Obviously, if you're buying and eating a pound of meat but your body only is able to digest 1/2 a pound, that is an issue (and a waste of money). There are protocols to correct it, but without any experience with it myself, I cannot recommend or comment on them.

What I have done, after hearing all the above information, was buy a supplement (Poliquin has one called Digest Force, and theres one from Now Foods called Super Enzyme) and take it until the container ran out. Nothing fancy really, and unfortunately I was not diligent enough in tracking how I felt to give any concrete answers on whether it worked for me or not. My feelings though are the following; I trust the people I got the information from, I trust that it's an issue, the supplements were cheap, so for the chance to correct digestion I don't think it would hurt to supplement with this for a month or two to try and balance stuff out.

All I am able to do here though is pass along information I have read or listened too, if you want to hear more about the "whys" behind some of this I suggest doing a search for user name "Ido Portal" on this forum and start reading. Robb Wolf has a great website with weekly posted audio answering peoples questions, there is just a ton of info over there. Also I recommend the Perfect Health Diet website and book, the book goes very thoroughly into supplementation, and has been one of my favorite reads so far.

Bill was already taken as a name, so the second letter is just a lowercase "L".

Razz said:

Slizz whats your comment on the fact that protein synthesis is elevated for up to 2 days after a workout? In regards to the 3-4 hour feed window that you mention. I'd think that one would be at an advantage if consuming more protein for the next two days.

Well, you probably would be better off, but that tends to depend on what your training goals are. If you are trying to get bigger OR need absolute maximal strength without regard to body size, that is an issue and over the long term will most likely make a huge difference. For whatever reason, it seems that relative strength athletes simply do not need as much protein to make optimal gains. Fred Hatfield is one of the powerlifting greats as well as a highly educated man, and he says the same thing. You are always going to need a reasonable amount of protein for maximum results, but the training effect you are shooting for will influence how important these factors are. Regardless, the 50-60g per day USFDA and typical RD(registered dietitian) recommendation is nowhere near what you need unless you're 100 lbs if you are a strength athlete.

I believe that none of these studies are done with this anabolic window being the primary time of nutrition, and to be honest I have no idea how that would affect things. It could be that protein synthesis is elevated because the body simply did not get what it needed during that critical window, and now it is simply trying to do the best that it can to heal with what it is given. It could also be that this is simply a timeframe that will continue to be advantageous for protein utilization and that with regard to athletic performance combining ideal PWO nutrition with a higher overall protein intake will produce better athletes than either methodology on its own. I would not be surprised if that latter was closer to the truth. Keep in mind that those titin proteins are not fully repaired for a week, but titin protein damage is heavily influenced by how much eccentric work is done and how FAST the eccentric work is. I am simply not familiar enough with the research in this area to make any more statements at this moment.

These are all great areas for further research. I am starting to keep a log of research ideas so that I can try and start looking onto this stuff at school. Get research partners, get approval, do studies, that sort of thing. I may as well take advantage of all of our brainstorming, right?

That was a great question, and I wish I had a more complete answer.

DannyBoy said:

slizzardman:

Wow... I'm a big fan of juice, soft drinks not very much but I love my juice, to think I'm doing myself that much damage is an eye opener.

So your advice would be to basically limit myself to about a glass of juice in the morning, and maybe post workout.

Thanks for that man.

Yes.

Consider this: 8 oz of orange juice has about 30g of sugar and 100% of your vitamin C for the day according to the label. One small orange(2 and 3/8" diameter including peel) has 90% of your vitamin C for the day, several grams of fiber and about 9g of sugar, approximately 4 of which are fructose. Have you ever made fresh orange juice? Do you know how many oranges it takes to fill an 8 oz glass? I've done that before and it takes a few. So... why don't we have like 400% of our vitamin C in each glass? Pasteurization (heating) destroys most of it, along with most phytonutrients. There are hundreds if not thousands of chemicals in plants that we do not understand. We don't know what they do in the body and we don't even have names for all of them. We do know that most are heat sensitive and pasteurization destroys most of them. There are a lot of studies showing that micronutrient intake (vitamins and minerals) from natural sources requires far less to have the same effect in the body than the isolated chemicals when we take vitamins! it is believed that these phytonutrients have some kind of ability to increase absorption of micronutrients in addition to whatever other effects they have. So it may very well be that even that Vitamin C in the orange juice is not doing us as much good as that one small orange would have. The extra sugar certainly isn't doing us any favors.

That's just kind of how things are. By controlling for disease we are unwittingly destroying the most important parts of our foods. We can't really expect that to change, so we have to be smart and get ourselves the fresh fruits and vegetables. That's pretty important for health. Obviously the more active you are the more fructose you can handle, but it is not necessary and it is easy to have too much. That is why I recommend the fructose intake when I do. Juices made with splenda will be better, but still check the label. There WILL be sugars and you should consider half of them to be fructose.

Also, if you choose to have that glass of juice in the morning don't slam down two additional pieces of fruit! You'd be better off with the fruit and a half glass of the juice. The extra fructose, despite being maybe just 10 extra grams, won't be doing you any favors. Your body won't hang onto it until you need it... if you don't need it in that moment your body will store it as fat and bad cholesterol.

PHILIP:

I'm not looking to loose weight, so I guess I'm safe in my milk drinking ways!

BlLL: (Thanks for the correction, it was for some reason annoying me)

Sounds interesting, I'll have to look into it better but if those supplements are cheap and potentially worthwhile, then I'm happy to follow your lead.

Also Ido's posts were one of the many reasons I joined here, I've read many and they've been very interesting and useful. I shall chase up that book too if I can find it cheap.

slizzardman:

Thanks for the double post! Interested to see where your research will take you.

I must admit I'd always thought fructose would be better for us than sucrose, galactose etc, so your posts have been very eye opening.

Really good stuff.

I think I'll start posting Rate My Recipe threads, haha, give anyone (if there is anyone) less culinarily skilled than I something to look at, and get some feedback on how to improve my recipes in terms of health.

As Bill and Slizz have said, it is your diet. Find out what works for you. When it isn't a diet anymore, congratulations.

slizzardman:

Thanks for the double post! Interested to see where your research will take you.

I must admit I'd always thought fructose would be better for us than sucrose, galactose etc, so your posts have been very eye opening.

Really good stuff.

Me too, me too. A partial truth about fructose, the fact that it does not impact blood sugar levels, is being used to tell the lie that it is safe and healthy to substitute for sugar. That could not be farther from the truth! I just hope no one tries to replace sugar with fructose in processed foods... that would be a true catastrophe.

BlLL's recommendation on digestive supplements is right on. Do your research, as you have said, and you will find out for yourself. They are most useful during meals with more protein.