Green Leafy Vegetables as Staple Food

[FrederickSebastian]

Hi All,

 

Just wondering -- Are green leafy vegetables considered a good "staple" food for CR dieters? I remember posting a question earlier and getting "Sweet Potatoes" as an answer many times... Do green leafy vegetables count as a staple-food?

 

Just Wordering,

 

Fred.

[Michael R]

 

A staple food, or simply a staple, is a food that is eaten routinely and in such quantities that it constitutes a dominant portion of a standard diet for a given people, supplying a large fraction of energy needs and generally forming a significant proportion of the intake of other nutrients as well.

 

It would be physically difficult and extremely time-consuming to make leafy greens a staple food.

[Gordo]

1 cup of spinach=7 calories

If you ate a cup a minute for 2 hours, you'd get 840 calories. I'm sure there would be negative consequences to eating 120 cups of spinach a day too.

[AIL]

They are neat tools for diluting the caloric density of your meals.

 

But my understanding of a staple is something that I can keep very long without going bad, that has a lot of calories per volume.

So of the foods I eat I consider rice and lentils as a staple. Greens are something I buy fresh and use right away.

[Todd Allen]

Greens are a staple for me, especially this time of year.  Most meals I start with a trip out to the garden and greens are the bulk of my meals.  They are my main source of carbohydrates which I'm intentionally restricting.  Most of my calories come from fat.

[FrederickSebastian]

Okay. Sounds good guys... I am going to continue eating lots of green leafy vegetables and try to find some complex carbs to sustain me through the day... Is this a good idea? Do complex carbs have a place in a CR-diet?? I remember learning that they are good for long-term energy in nutrition class in college... My goal is to be down to 1234 cals/day by 2020... I have ate this many calories for 20 days once and never felt better.... Let me know what you think...

[Gordo]

“Do complex carbs have a place in a CR-diet?”

They are the foundation of any healthy diet, especially a CR diet.
Unless you are overweight or a really short person, 1234 calories a day does not sound reasonable at all to me.  Are you trying for:

Edited October 4, 2017 by Gordo

[KenB]

Great picture Gordo, it should go on the home page :)

[Michael R]

“Do complex carbs have a place in a CR-diet?”

 

They are the foundation of any healthy diet, especially a CR diet.

They certainly aren't the foundation of any healthy diet, CR or no: lots of people on CR consume only a minority of their Calories from carbs, complex or not, and a perfectly healthy CR diet could be designed with only 20% carbs. People often shorthand "complex carbs" when they mean "carbs that aren't refined," but remember that the carbs many healthy whole foods are in large part sugars. The carbs in fruits (including culinary vegetables that are botanical fruits, like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants) come predominantly from sugars, as do much of the carbs in non-starchy vegetables.

 

I actually wonder if Frederick may have been engaged in an opposite kind of shorthand that is also common, using "complex carbs" when he actually means "dense, starchy carbs like grains and potatoes." Many CR people do eat significant amounts of these, but many eat little or none, and certainly few CR practitioners rely on starchy carbs for the high proportion of Calories in even healthy ad libitum diets like an energy-balanced Japanese or Mediterranean diet.

[mccoy]

Leafy green vegetables may be a staple (would constitute most of the ingested food) in Joel Fuhrman's ideal 'nutritarian diet'.  We've already discussed that though, a diet based on non-starchy veggies would have such a bulk that not everyone would be able to adhere to it. In my case, after one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of vegetables like spinachs I do tend to get bloated and  my stomach cannot accomodate very much more.

 

That would be the ideal diet for those who wish to loose weight. 

[Gordo]

I'm not convinced that a diet high in fat and/or protein can be healthy long term, specifically in regards to longevity which is the major focus here.  Are there any long lived people groups that get the majority of calories from fat and/or protein?  The top 2 longest lived people groups studied both had protein intakes around 10%  See:  

 

New Horizons- Dietary protein, ageing and the Okinawan ratio

David G. Le Couteur,^1,2 Samantha Solon-Biet,^1,3 Devin Wahl,¹ Victoria C. Cogger,^1,2 Bradley J. Willcox,^4,5 D. Craig Willcox,^4,5,6 David Raubenheimer,^1,3 and Stephen J. Simpson^1,3

Age Ageing. 2016 Jul; 45(4): 443–447.

 

and

 

Dietary Patterns and Mortality in Adventist Health Study 2.

Dr. Michael J. Orlich, MD, Dr. Pramil N Singh, DrPH, Dr. Joan Sabaté, MD, DrPH, Dr. Karen Jaceldo-Siegl, DrPH, Ms. Jing Fan, MS, Dr. Synnove Knutsen, MD, PhD, Dr. W. Lawrence Beeson, DrPH, and Dr. Gary E. Fraser, MBchB, PhDAuth

 

 

Other studies link high fat and high protein diets to higher cancer mortality.

 

For accuracy, I'll rephrase my statement - "A wide diversity of plant based whole foods are the foundation of the healthiest known diets with regard to long life and health-spans"

Is that better?  ;)

[FrederickSebastian]

Alright. I am still a little confused but I am weaning myself onto a CR-diet slowly so I have plenty of time to figure things out... 

 

 

I actually wonder if Frederick may have been engaged in an opposite kind of shorthand that is also common, using "complex carbs" when he actually means "dense, starchy carbs like grains and potatoes."

I was told in nutrition class in college that whole-wheat pasta is a complex carb (not sure if this is correct) and I wanted to make a pasta salad with whole wheat pasta (rotini -- though I know the shape doesn't matter -- just saying it FYI)... I want to mix the whole wheat pasta with some natural kind of salad dressing from whole foods market, cherry tomatoes, chopped asparagus and fat-free cottage cheese... Is this a good idea? Vegetables are just healthy, whole-wheat pasta for long-term energy (vs. simple carbs for short-term energy) and fat-free cottage cheese for protein to maintain muscle mass. I am most comfortable at about 8% body fat with 8-pack abs... I need to have them for life, since I feel embarassed taking off my shirt without the washboard abs. I wanted to have a spinach salad with sesame oil on the side (sesame oil is a fat I absolutely cannot give up --> it is my favorite fat/oil)... Are these two good options??? Honest opinions?

[FrederickSebastian]

“Do complex carbs have a place in a CR-diet?”

 

They are the foundation of any healthy diet, especially a CR diet.

Unless you are overweight or a really short person, 1234 calories a day does not sound reasonable at all to me.  Are you trying for:

The only reason I thought of 1,234 calories a day is because: Yes, it is 1,234 and I like the number sequence. Also, becuase my lowest healthy BMI is at about 100 lbs (I am short) and also because my BMR at 100 lbs. is about 1200 calories so it would just make sense for me to eat this little. I am not thinking of being anorexic or looking like that, but I do feel better when I eat less... That is the only reason I was thinking of eating so little... I am not 100 lbs right now, btw, I am 220 but working on losing weight slowly... I hate being overweight and have been thin most of my life, and want to get back there...

 

"[Complex carbs ] are the foundation of any healthy diet, especially a CR diet." --> Good, I like complex casrbs and feel better when I eat them...

 

Thanks for your help... And no, again, I don't want to look like that... Does CR only make you live like 3 more years? Seems like it's not worth the effort. I'd rather just eat more and exercise more if that's the case...

[Saul]

Hi Frederick!

 

"I was told in nutrition class in college that whole-wheat pasta is a complex carb (not sure if this is correct)"

 

No; it's junk food.

 

By "complex carbs" most mean hi fiber vegetables, low in starch and sugars ("simple carbs"). Pasta and potatoes are very high in simple starch.

 

Your college nutrition course was lousy.

 

-- Saul

[AlPater]

"The standard usage, however, is to classify carbohydrates chemically: simple if they are sugars (monosaccharides and disaccharides) and complex if they are polysaccharides (or oligosaccharides)."

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate#Classification

 

Carrots have much more (50% of carbohydrates) sugars than even white wheat pasta.

Edited October 6, 2017 by AlPater

[Saul]

Hi again Frederick!

 

Al Pater's definition of "simple" vs. "complex" carbs is technically correct -- but misleading, in advising

a beginner such as yourself.

 

The "simplest carbs are monosaccharides, such as glucose and fructose. Two monosaccharides are connected by chemical

bonds to form disaccharides, such as sucrose (common sugar). Al are calling all monosacharides and disacharides

"simple carbs" -- well and good. More "complex" carbs consisting of very long chains of monosacharides, connected by

chemical bonds, indeed exist. Dietary fibre is an example; they are much longer polysacharides, and conributes

many fewer calories than simple carbs (soluble fibre contributes a few calories, insoluble fibre near zero).

Most fruits and vegetables are a very good source of dietary fibre; the digestion of fruits and vegetables is

slowed down by the presence of fibre, reducing glucose spikes in your blood.

Carrots contain a lot of fibre -- when you juice a carrot, the complex carbs in the carrot are separated into much

simpler carbs, resulting in a huge increase in the amount of glucose that your body absorbs.

 

That is what Al is talking about (or should be talking about).

 

-- Saul

Edited October 7, 2017 by Saul

[AlPater]

Saul: The USDA data says 100 g raw (not juiced) carrots have:

 

Carbohydrates

Amounts Per Selected Serving %DV

Total Carbohydrate 9.6g 3%

Dietary Fiber 2.8g 11%

Starch 1.4g

Sugars 4.7g

Sucrose 3590mg

Glucose 590mg

Fructose 550mg

 

Juicing does not hydrolyze complex carbohydrates. It does make simple non-starch sugars more quickly absorbed.

 

Whole grain pasta has about as much fiber as carrots on a calorie per calorie comparison.

 

Look, after about a pound of high nutrition food, I am ready for food with less nutrition if it has little bad stuff like saturated fats

Edited October 7, 2017 by AlPater

[mikeccolella]

I use a formula percentage of carbs as fibre and no added sugars/whole foods. Carb to fiber ratio. Broccoli is 50%, kale is 30% carbs from fiber and collards have 60% of their carbs as fiber. Whole wheat pasta is 12% fibre and 88% non fibre carbs. Apple is 20% and potato is 10%

[Gordo]

Hey Frederick, it’s great to see you taking an interest in your health. Until you get down to a healthy BMI it would be completely reasonable to only eat 1234 calories a day. There are some great apps for tracking calories if you feel like being disciplined about it (MyFitnessPal and Cronometer). Being a healthy BMI and eating a diverse mostly plant based whole food diet will give you the bulk of currently achievable longevity gains. It is debatable (doubtful in my mind) that significant additional gains can be achieved by the more extreme forms of CR that some practice (BMI<19). I wish you well on your journey, be sure to take some before and after pics and videos. Those “watch me lose 100 lbs.” videos get millions of views on YouTube so maybe that will be additional incentive/motivation for you. If you don’t already eat nuts, I highly recommend you start doing so, they will help you feel satiated. I’d also recommend a fixed window for eating, like noon to 7PM for example, there are many benefits to time restricted feeding (google it).

[Saul]

I use a formula percentage of carbs as fibre and no added sugars/whole foods. Carb to fiber ratio. Broccoli is 50%, kale is 30% carbs from fiber and collards have 60% of their carbs as fiber. Whole wheat pasta is 12% fibre and 88% non fibre carbs. Apple is 20% and potato is 10%

I think that's a good formula, Mike.

 

-- Saul

[FrederickSebastian]

I'll do some research on what you all wrote and get back to you tonight

 

Fred

[FrederickSebastian]

On 10/8/2017 at 4:35 PM, Gordo said:

Hey Frederick, it’s great to see you taking an interest in your health. Until you get down to a healthy BMI it would be completely reasonable to only eat 1234 calories a day. There are some great apps for tracking calories if you feel like being disciplined about it (MyFitnessPal and Cronometer). Being a healthy BMI and eating a diverse mostly plant based whole food diet will give you the bulk of currently achievable longevity gains. It is debatable (doubtful in my mind) that significant additional gains can be achieved by the more extreme forms of CR that some practice (BMI<19). I wish you well on your journey, be sure to take some before and after pics and videos. Those “watch me lose 100 lbs.” videos get millions of views on YouTube so maybe that will be additional incentive/motivation for you. If you don’t already eat nuts, I highly recommend you start doing so, they will help you feel satiated. I’d also recommend a fixed window for eating, like noon to 7PM for example, there are many benefits to time restricted feeding (google it).

@Gordo I am currently eating 2000 calories per day and cutting by 20 calories per week because I heard that going "cold turkey" into calorie-restriction is not good for longevity. Can you give me a reason as to why I would want to go to 1200 calories/day immediately? I would love to do this to lose weight quicker but am unsure if it's the best option. Can I, say, do 1,234 calories per day until I am down to my goal weight, then find a weight maintenance calorie-per-day at my new weight, stay at that for a while, then wean back down to a lower calories-per-day? Thus, sort-of not going cold turkey? My goal is longevity so I really don't want to mess it up.

[mccoy]

20 hours ago, FrederickSebastian said:

and cutting by 20 calories per week

It is not realistic that you can measure 20 calories per week, that's probably in within the error bar, even if averaged.

Cuts, as I outlined in the other thread, should be done by steps of 300 or at least 200 kcals, that's not considered going cold turkey at all.

[Gordo]

On 1/2/2020 at 10:40 AM, FrederickSebastian said:

@Gordo I am currently eating 2000 calories per day and cutting by 20 calories per week because I heard that going "cold turkey" into calorie-restriction is not good for longevity. Can you give me a reason as to why I would want to go to 1200 calories/day immediately? I would love to do this to lose weight quicker but am unsure if it's the best option. Can I, say, do 1,234 calories per day until I am down to my goal weight, then find a weight maintenance calorie-per-day at my new weight, stay at that for a while, then wean back down to a lower calories-per-day? Thus, sort-of not going cold turkey? My goal is longevity so I really don't want to mess it up.

So for the last 2 years you’ve been cutting 20 calories a week and you’re down to 2000 now? That’s kind of weird and impressive at the same time. I kinda want to see how many years it takes doing that until you reach your goal weight!

[FrederickSebastian]

5 hours ago, Gordo said:

So for the last 2 years you’ve been cutting 20 calories a week and you’re down to 2000 now? That’s kind of weird and impressive at the same time. I kinda want to see how many years it takes doing that until you reach your goal weight!

Lol. No. I have been trying to start a CR diet many times over the years and failed so I decided to start again the beginning of this year, starting at 2000 calories because that is the recommended daily intake on nutrition labels. This is my start. I tried really hard and failed (mostly because getting in 2000 calories per day felt like TOO MUCH, believe it or not)... Right, now I am mainly fasting and eating very little during the day (whatever I crave) and am definitely less that 800 calories per day. I know this isn't the best way to go about it but I really want this weight off FAST. It makes me so depressed and my mental health matters to me too... Hopefully I'll be down to 123lbs by spring...

Fred