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.
On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 5:14 AM, RickS <rstewart@iaff.org > wrote:
I can't find the article now but I believe that yes, it can dilute stomach acid. Good point about the vinegar. I just gave up shampoo and conditioner and started washing my hair with baking soda followed by a conditioner of apple cider vinegar. The idea is that you shouldn't put any chemicals ON your body that you wouldn't put IN your body. So far so good. ;)
How does giving up the BAS change my gut flora?
-Rick
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