Thanks for taking the time to write all of that out. I have noticed that I lose weight faster when I eat BASs with balsamic vinegar.
There is more to the story about the sailors though that doesn't usually get told. For centuries the English provided jerky as the staple food on their ships. Sailors got on just fine eating jerky and fresh water. As a cost cutting measure they decided to stop providing jerky and start providing bread and fresh water. Sailors began getting scurvy. Surgeon James Lind found that adding lemons and limes to their diet kept the incidence of scurvy down and since bread and citrus were still cheaper than jerkey, sailors got to eat bread and limes. Many phrases came from this period like, "Man cannot live by bread alone", "Scurvy dogs", and our referring to the English as "Limeys". So the citrus was really a bandaid for poor nutrition brought about by financial decisions to get rid of meat and institute bread instead.
American Indians would go on hunts for weeks or months and eat Pemmican, which is mammal fat mixed with ground dried meat, with no adverse effects. I think there's something in grains that increases our requirements for vitamins and minerals. Something to do with phytates. I'm currently researching all of this now but I don't know enough to go into detail.
-Rick
--- In fast5@yahoogroups.com, Heather Twist <HeatherTwist@...> wrote:
>
> The BAS contains polysaccarides. Polysaccarides are "sort of" digestible ...
> that is, your body doesn't actually use them directly, but they feed the
> bacteria in your lower gut. Those bacteria produce butyrate which does 2
> things: 1) Kills colon cancer cells and 2) Nourishes the gut cells (they
> prefer butyrate for fuel).
>
> The only way to get butyrate to the lower gut is to eat polysaccharides. It
> *can* be produced from fat, notably butter, but normally the fat is absorbed
> before it gets to the lower gut. And if you eat butyrate ... it's in some
> foods, but it stinks ... then it gets absorbed in the upper gut and doesn't
> reach the colon.
>
> So the best way to get butyrate is to eat polysaccharides. Polys also change
> motility and absorption in the gut, so food gets absorbed over a longer
> stretch of the gut, which means it might get absorbed better and it's easier
> on the gut (and you stay full longer). Polys can also chelate heavy metals
> and various toxins.
>
> Salads also typically have vinegar on them: the acetate in vinegar affects
> digestion a lot. I don't know exactly why: in studies they find it makes a
> big difference, but they only guess at the mechanism. Cider vinegar has
> malate and acetate, and both of them are substances used a lot in the body
> and affect metabolism.
>
> As for minerals that are in salad and not in meat: the one that comes to
> mind the most is potassium. There is potassium in meat too, but the meat
> usually contains a fair bit of sodium, and not all that much potassium. I'm
> not all that much up on the exact mineral contents of the various foods
> these days though. I DO know that I operate a whole lot better when I get
> vegies. There are hundreds of compounds in vegetables that aren't in meat,
> and there really isn't a culture in existence that eats ONLY meat. The
> sailors tried that and got scurvy. They might have been able to get away
> with it if they had eaten raw meat or more organ meats, but the Inuit who
> are said to be "only" meat eaters, actually ate a lot of raw fish, whole:
> and fish guts contain vegetable matter from seaweed and plankton. The plains
> Indians ate buffalo a lot, but they also apparently loved buffalo guts (full
> of half-digested grass) and gathered many kinds of wild vegies and fruits.
>
> The reverse is true too, of course: there is no culture that eats ONLY
> vegetable matter, and feeding a child a purely vegan diet ruins brain
> development. The healthiest peoples on earth seem to eat a combination of
> seafood/eggs/poultry/pork/milk/beef (in that order, roughly) and various
> plant materials, including rice and beans. The most unhealthy cultures
> appear to be the ones that rely on wheat/beef/sugar/certain oils for most
> of their calories.
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