Nutrition
All the advice I've gathered (mostly from ya boi, Dr Michael Greger) about how to get better health outcomes from what you eat. None of this is about being prescriptive ("you must never eat X"), but about knowing what tradeoffs you're making when you eat something. If smoking a cigarette in the social smokers area of the bar is worth the health costs to you, then do it; if downing a steak is worth the risks, do it. But at least know the risks so you can be informed about your choice. Plus, fried chicken tastes better if you have it less often. 😏
TL;DR: Consume as much of the daily dozen. Eat whole plant foods wherever possible. Think twice about if it's worth it before eating meat, and think like five times before eating processed meat (it's as cancerous as plutonium, and does other awful things too).
Why whole plant foods? So many reasons, but a few are:
- Whole plant foods have way more beneficial compounds than supplements isolating just a few. Often the isolated compounds don't even give you health benefits if they're not consumed with other compounds present in the plant; some health compounds are locks and others are keys.
- Pre-chopped vegetables are less anti-inflammatory. Endotoxins cause inflammation, are produced by bacteria on plants and animal products, and are not destroyed by cooking or digestion. The more bacteria before you eat, the more endotoxins. Whole plants are very resistant to microbial growth, but pre-cut ones are more susceptible. Pre-cut vegetables have less anti-inflammation effects versus freshly chopped ones. Broccoli and cruciferous vegetables are the one exception.
Broccoli and cruciferous vegetables
- Chop 40 minutes before cooking to maximise the content of sulforaphane, one of the best bouncers for your eyes, brain, cell damage, cancer, etc.
- Alternatively, consume quickly-chopped-then-cooked cruciferous vegetables with raw cruciferous forms; for 7 cups or 491 grams of broccoli, you can use half a teaspoon of ground mustard seeds, or a quarter teaspoon of wasabi or horseradish. Basically, a pinch. Heck, you can even just finely dice a tiny amount of the fresh vegetable into the cooked ones right at the end once the dish is cool.
- Specifically, you need something with myrosinase to sit on your not-hot cruciferous vegetables for 40 minutes. This can be in your stomach, hence eating raw cruciferous vegetables (like kale leaves) has a great benefit.
- This applies to frozen broccoli etc too; it probably isn't left to sit before cooking during the industrial process.
- A great staple is broccoli soup; blend the raw broccoli, wait 30 minutes, then cook.
Colours and health
- Often, colours are health; pigments are also phytonutrients, often antioxidants.
- Red peppers are way more nutritious than green ones.
- Red onions are way more nutritious than brown ones.
- Purple cabbages are way more nutritious than green ones.
- Chlorophyll and lutein make things green. [Chlorophyll is great for many things](body odour) like body odour. Lutein is great for many things like eyesight.
- Lycopene makes tomatoes red, and is good for things like asthma.
- If you boil vegetables, consume the water, since antioxidants (AOs) will likely leech out.
- Blending generally increases AO availability.
- Steaming is broadly the best way to maintain or increase AO levels in vegetables.
- Boil or steam broccoli and spinach for more lutein.
- Microwave or grill your mushrooms for more antioxidants.
- Freezing vegetables generally destroys AOs. Cook from fresh wherever possible.
- Kale doesn't give a fuck about any of this; boiling doesn't reduce AOs, freezing, blanching and steaming increases it by at least 60%.
- Super high temperatures destroy most pigments, so deep-frying is probably deleting your nutrition. Use it sparingly for flavour.
Eating meat
- If it's processed, it causes