Food or Rubbish 3
Food or Rubbish 3
[We have looked at food in terms of 'energy' and 'nutrition' and the picture is really not nice. Too much energy (Kcal) is not good for us. Too much of proteins, carbohydrates and sugars, fats, minerals and vitamins and "water" is not good for us either. So we need to learn to have just enough (food sufficiency). Our (every) body is a complex self regulating system. Our body can tolerate and adjust some deviations (deficiencies and excesses) (with liver, kidneys, glands, ... systems). But if we keep on eating "rubbish" (toxic chemicals, too much 'bad' fats, too much 'carbohydrates and sugars' - especially HFCS, too much salt, plastic residues from containers and accumulation in food chain, ...) then our body systems will fail then we become sick and we die from what we eat.
We ask if the food industry is harming our children and us with carbohydrates and sugars especially high fructose corn syrup, bad fats especially 'trans fat' and lot of salt (sodium chloride). We ask if we are harming our children by giving them sweets (cakes, lollies, 'junk food') in reward for doing good.]
Life on Us
We are not alone even whn we are by our individual self. There are 100 trillions (that's millions of millions) other lives living on or in our body. They are micro-insects and micro-flora (microbiota - microbes for short) and... They have been our inheritance from our mother and her mother before her and so on up our ancestral roots and millions of years in our evolutionary paths. They are also in/from 'food' we eat too. No they are not all bad. Studies show our 'gut bacteria' (see Wikipedia: 'gut flora') are helping us regulate our food processing system and our nutrition supply system. The gut bacteria can keep us healthy, lean and strong. They help us fight diseases and bad microbes - even some poisons. Each of us carry a universe of lives on us and researches show that the health of (population) lives on us links tightly with our health. In other words, we live with and depend on our gut bacteria to process the food we eat into the organic compounds that our organs can use to function and maintain themselves.
(Nb. Mitochondria is a wellknown example of integration of bacteia and living cells.
There are claims and sales of bacteria to help you loose weight.)
The Good, the Bad and the Bystander
How can we tell which is 'good' and which is 'bad' microbes (the rest are 'neutral' - they neither help nor harm us human)? Research so far answers this with again with a side stepping: 'enough but not more nor less population in the cosmopolitan of 'lives on us'. Too big a population of any bacterial species can offset the working balance/dynamics of the system - forcing too small population species into exinction in our gut. Diversity (number of species) of microbes is also a factor. Not enough varieties means lesser capability to defend our body system against greater varieties outside our body. But as at today, we don't really have a 'high definition' picture of 'Life on Us'.
(Nb. In general our gut flora are a bunch of good guys. But we - the host may be their worst enemy. We subortage our on food processing system with our ideas of 'good' food (including 'super-foods'), bad food (including low cost, local, wild, ugly, texture, ...) and 'when to eat'. I suggest that 'nutritional food in sufficient quantities for our condition' is good otherwise it is bad - not price, not taste, not look, and so on. In other words 'food that meets our need' is good. Otherwise even the same thing (tasty, expensve, superfood,...) is bad.)
Food for Life on Us
(Let us believe that we must feed lives on us so that in turn we are fed by them.)
We have learned that we can preserve food with (lots of) salt, (lots of) sugar, (lots of) vinegar, (lots of) oil and many other 'preservative chemicals' (-metabisulphites, -benzoates, -nitrates and -nitrites,...). It is again clear that 'sufficient' amount can mean life or death to microbes (that is what 'preservation' of food is about -- slowing or stopping microbial growth). So when we eat salt, sugar (including carbs), oil and preservatives (included in packaged food - thanks to the food industry), we can also upset/offset the balance of our food processing system -- IF we EAT TOO MUCH.
(Nb. yeasts convert sugar to ethanol alcohol which kills some other microbes.
Drinking alcohol has some impacts on the gut flora or the drinkers.
Taking antibiotics effects the general gut flora too not just the infectious invaders.)
How Much Food is Enough for Life on Us?
We are told that sugar (but not HFCS) can signal our brain to 'stop eating'. But many have developed habit of ignoring the signals. Can our gut bacteria tell us when they have enough? There is no 'published' research on this yet. (Maybe you want to be the first explorer on this frontier.) What we can tell from evidence (actually our own feces or poop) that good stool (colour, texture, moisture,...) means happy and satisfied gut bacteria. Coarse fragments, varied coulors, lumpy, dry,...appearance tells of failures in our food processing system or some gut bacteria population. Perhaps, next time we should have a look before we flush the evidence away, to see (as the supreme ruler of our gut universe) how our subjects are doing ;-)
Microbiotic food
When we think about building up our gut flora, we may think about biotic supplements (that come in capsules or bottles. But really, shrimp paste, fermented/pickled fish, pickled fruits and vegetables, fermented meats, soya sauce, fish sauce, ... (กะปิ ปลาร้า ปลาเจ่า ผลไม้ดอง ผักดอง หมูยอ ซีอิ็ว น้ำปลา...) are all 'good' sources of biota - as good as yoghurt, sour cream, kefir (บัวหิมะ), pre- and pro-biotic meals. Beer and wine also sources of live yeasts. But vegemite only have 'dead' yeasts.
(Nb. Biotic food has been known in many civilizations at least since medieval times. For examples Roman garum or liquamen, Norwegian rakfisk, Swedish soured herring surströmming, Japanese kusaya, Korean hongeohoe and Inuit (Eskimo) igunaq (meats which some proteins hydrolyzed/fermented into carbihydrates), and so on. There is no good reason to discontinue having properly fermented food. Cooking/Heating fermented food over (say) 68 degree C kills all biota and the work they can do in our gut.)
[We will have a break here, to do some exercises (remember "don't sit for more than 1 hour"? ;-) and to read the notes below (remember "Galaamasutta"?).
Notes.
<myNote: Superfood, delicacies and famous food are mostly valued by expectation like land, houses and shares. "Organic", "natural" and "wild" food are valued by perception like beauty, sacred and purity. Marketing pushes the value up for greater profit, though nutritional value (to meet body requirement) may be less than common, local, seasonally available food.
Most food carries with it certain 'interdependent' microbes that process/convert the food into organic compounds (that our body can use). We wash these microbes off and rely on our gut flora to do the same job. But if we don't wash toxic chemicals off, our gut flora and ourselves can be poisoned to death. GMO (Frankenstein) food may have the food-microbes relationships altered. Growing our own food is a good solution. But, market-selection (instead of natural-selection) of food varieties can be an issue.>
***TV documentary "Life on Us" is available ($4.99) from Google Play and iTunes.
...Our health, body shape, mood and even our evolution are determined by the unseen life forms that swarm throughout our bodies. There are worms in your bowels, bacteria in your mouth, fungi in your lungs and even viruses in your DNA.
The combined genetic information of all these bugs is more than 150 times greater than our own genes. Their cells outnumber our own by 10 to 1. This collective menagerie is called the microbiome, and in a very real sense, it is the making of us all.
Though they have evolved with us over millennia, in recent years we have been drastically changing our relationship with our internal microbes, bombing them with antibiotics and an unhealthy diet. The consequence of this war on our bugs is an epidemic of disease. This episode looks at the battleground within our bodies and the remarkable new science that is changing our views about health and disease...
The gut flora as a forgotten organ
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › NCBI › Literature › PubMed Central (PMC)
by AM O'Hara - 2006
The intestinal microflora is a positive health asset that crucially influences the normal structural and functional development of the mucosal immune system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora
Gut flora or, more appropriately, gut microbiota, consists of a complex community of microorganism species that live in the digestive tracts of animals and is the largest reservoir of microorganisms mutual to humans.
www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/news/20140820/yo... 20, 2014 - Bacteria line your intestines and help you digest food. During digestion, they make vitamins that are vital for life, send signals to the immune system, and make small molecules that can help your brain work. “Without gut bacteria, we wouldn't be anything.
How Gut Bacteria Help Make Us Fat and Thin
Intestinal bacteria may help determine whether we are lean or obese
By Claudia Wallis | Jun 1, 2014
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-...
...Throughout our evolutionary history, the microscopic denizens of our intestines have helped us break down tough plant fibers in exchange for the privilege of living in such a nutritious broth. Yet their roles appear to extend beyond digestion. New evidence indicates that gut bacteria alter the way we store fat, how we balance levels of glucose in the blood, and how we respond to hormones that make us feel hungry or full. The wrong mix of microbes, it seems, can help set the stage for obesity and diabetes from the moment of birth...
...First, they raised genetically identical baby rodents in a germ-free environment so that their bodies would be free of any bacteria. Then they populated their guts with intestinal microbes collected from obese women and their lean twin sisters (three pairs of fraternal female twins and one set of identical twins were used in the studies). The mice ate the same diet in equal amounts, yet the animals that received bacteria from an obese twin grew heavier and had more body fat than mice with microbes from a thin twin. As expected, the fat mice also had a less diverse community of microbes in the gut...
...Gordon's team then repeated the experiment with one small twist: after giving the baby mice microbes from their respective twins, they moved the animals into a shared cage. This time both groups remained lean. Studies showed that the mice carrying microbes from the obese human had picked up some of their lean roommates' gut bacteria—especially varieties of Bacteroidetes—probably by consuming their feces, a typical, if unappealing, mouse behavior. To further prove the point, the researchers transferred 54 varieties of bacteria from some lean mice to those with the obese-type community of germs and found that the animals that had been destined to become obese developed a healthy weight instead. Transferring just 39 strains did not do the trick. “Taken together, these experiments provide pretty compelling proof that there is a cause-and-effect relationship and that it was possible to prevent the development of obesity,” Gordon says....
ความเห็น (4)
มีหนังสือเล่มหนึ่ง (ดิฉันลืมชื่อ และหาไม่เจอแล้ว) กล่าวอย่างน่าสนใจ สรุปความว่า
"...นับตั้งแต่นักวิชาการด้านอาหารส่งต่อความรู้ให้เรามองอาหารในมุม "สารอาหาร" เพื่อให้ "พลังงาน" สิ่งที่เกิดขึ้นคือ เราต้อง ชั่ง ตวง วัด ปริมาณอาหารที่เรากิน และ เรากินอาหารที่หน้าตาไม่เหมือนอาหารมากขึ้นเรื่อยๆ ..."
อาหารที่หน้าตาไม่เหมือนอาหาร เป็นอาหารที่เราไม่รู้จักหน้าตาดั้งเดิมของมัน และมักมีสารปรุงแต่ง สารกันบูด สารยืดอายุ สารเลียนแบบรสธรรมชาติ สุดท้ายเราก็จะลืมไปแล้วว่าอาหารธรรมชาติแท้ๆ เป็นอย่างไร
อาหารหมักดองธรรมชาติที่มีคุณค่าสูง ก็มีสารเคมีมาหมักดองแทน (ดิฉันยังไม่ลืมวิถีชีวิตที่เดินออกไปเก็บผักเสี้ยนมาดองน้ำซาวข้าว หอมชื่นใจ กินอร่อยทั้งเนื้อทั้งน้ำได้อยู่ค่ะ)
ฉลากอาหารต้องระบุคุณค่าทางโภชนาการ ทั้งยังเติม "สารอาหาร" โน่น นี่ นั่น ที่อ่านแล้วคนกินก็ยังไม่รู้จัก
นมสำหรับเลี้ยงเด็ก ก็เติมสารอาหาร เติมวิตามิน เพื่อเพิ่มมูลค่า
คนไข้มาหาหมอ จะกังวลมาก ถ้าพวกเขาไม่ได้วิตามิน ไม่ว่า เราจะบอกเขาอย่างไรว่า ถ้าคุณกินอาหารได้ครบ ๕ หมู่แล้ว คุณไม่จำเป็นต้องกินวิตามิน อาหารเสริม (ที่เป็นสารเคมีล้วนๆ)
เด็กๆ ของเรากินขนมที่ทำจากแป้ง เติมน้ำตาล ใส่ไขมันทราน กันทุกวันๆ ละมากๆ กินน้ำหวานน้ำอัดลมกันทุกคน เด็กๆ มาหาหมอด้วยอาการปวดท้อง ถามแล้วทุกรายกินน้ำอัดลม ขนมถุง กันเป็นปกติ
สมัยสามสิบกว่าปีก่อนดิฉันทำโครงการเรื่องเด็กน้ำหนักต่ำกว่าเกณฑ์ ทุกวันนี้คนที่มารับงานต่อจากดิฉันต้องทำเรื่องเด็กอ้วน เด็กฟันผุ เมื่อพวกเขาโตขึ้นก็จะเป็นพลเมืองเบาหวาน
ดิฉันคิดว่า เราคงไม่ได้กลับไปกินอาหารธรรมชาติแบบเดิมอีกแล้วค่ะ เพียงแต่เราน่าจะต้องรู้เท่าทัน และกินให้ปลอดภัย
Thank you nui: "...เรา(น่า)จะต้องรู้เท่าทัน และกินให้ปลอดภัย..." sums up the reasons why I am writing about "food". Perhaps the slogan is "กินอาหารได้ครบ ๕ หมู่ in sufficient quantities".
But this series on food is a part of a big picture (for Thailand). Later (in the next episode) we shallsee that food-related health problems are going to cost us nationally "trillions' of baht and Thais' potentials to live and work in good health. We can agree that spending on sickness is not really "productive" investment. If we can reduce this spending, then we have healthier, stronger and more ready population to go forwards in this 21st century. Later eh? ;-)
Reading ชีวิตที่พอเพียง 2585. กินข้าวเพื่อสุขภาพ..... อ่านต่อได้ที่: https://www.gotoknow.org/posts/600013 sent me back to this blog. Let me show snippets and offer my comments.
From ชีวิตที่พอเพียง 2585. กินข้าวเพื่อสุขภาพ:
[1]...ตีความง่ายๆ ว่า กินข้าวคุณภาพดี ป้องกันโรคได้หลายอย่าง และเราควรกินอาหารเพื่อเลี้ยงแบกทีเรียชนิดดี ไว้เป็นมิตรป้องกันโรค นี่คือข้อสรุปเบื้องต้น อย่าเพิ่งปลงใจเชื่อทั้งหมด...
[2]...หมอก้องเกียรติบอกว่า ข้าวที่มีแป้งทนย่อยในสัดส่วนสูง (ประมาณร้อยละ ๓ โดยน้ำหนัก) คือ ข้าวสินเหล็ก ข้าวลืมผัว และข้าวก่ำ (ข้าวเหนียวดำ) วิธีการหุงและกินข้าวให้เกิดแป้งทนย่อยปริมาณมาก คือหุงเสร็จปล่อยให้เย็น แล้วแบ่งเป็นกล่องเล็กๆ เอาเข้าตู้เย็น ๔ องศา ในกระบวนการเย็นและแช่ตู้เย็น แป้งทนย่อยจะเพิ่มขึ้น ด้วยกระบวนการทางเคมี เมื่อจะกิน ก็เอามาเข้าไมโครเวฟเพื่ออุ่น แป้งทนย่อยจะยังคงอยู่ ...
My comments:
[1] supports theories on feeding our 'gut biota' for our 'health'.
[2] demonstrates that 'food processing' (how to cook/recipe or how to serve) can vary nutrition value of food. (This also implies 'quality' and 'price' of food should be based on nutrition or 'ingredients' and 'preparation' -- not 'amount' or 'place' when food is served.)
(I am finding time to write about 'companion foods'. Some good rains would help. ;-)
It has been nearly 6 years since I wrote about #Food for Life on Us in here. Now we have a study that supports the idea of ‘feeding Life on Us’ (bad news for those who love food by the taste or the flavor). See
Feed our gut microbiomes healthy and they will keep us healthy
“We’ve evolved to depend on nutrients that our microbiomes produce for us,…But with recent shifts in diet away from fiber-rich foods, we’ve stopped feeding our microbes what they need.” …When your gut bugs eat a high-fiber diet, they make more short-chain fatty acids (butyrate), which protect you from gut diseases, colorectal cancer, and even obesity. Butyrate has been shown to increase the gut’s resistance to infections, reduce inflammation, and create happier, healthier intestinal lining cells. …[fermentable] fiber-rich food, beans, leafy greens, and citrus,.. [give us] very healthy microbiomes.
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-eat-more-of-this-carb-even-supplements-make-a-big-difference/ Food
Good thing is Thai food is of the right kinds already. But X-cakes, X fries, X-burgers, biscuits and snacks are not, really!