More physiology than nutrition, but I always found it fascinating that the majority of biomass from nutrients we consume is expelled through breathing rather than feces. Unless you’re just eating a shit ton of fiber.
I learned that potatoes on their own are actually pretty calorie efficient and filling, it’s primarily what you add to them that gives them their fattening properties. For example, a 1 pound white potato with the skin is 318 calories according to my first Google result.
Overall health and how you feel starts in the gut and with the gut bacteria. Healthy gut bacteria is achieved, more than any other method, by eating large amounts and large varieties of pre-biotic fibre.
If you aim to eat 10+ different fruits/vegetables/plants daily, your gut bacteria and overall health will be set up for success.
That magnesium is used for 300-350 different chemical reactions in the body as a cofactor (like an assistant).
It is easily depleted by meds especially blood pressure meds and heartburn meds and birth control pills
It can be challenging for people to get enough through food just because of the food sources (think seeds, legumes, dark leafy greens)
But you can get it through Epsom salt baths as it is a magnesium salt and is absorbed well through the skin.
Studied benefits include:
Improves blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugars, sleep, anxiety, PMS relief, muscle cramping, constipation, bone health, helps the body to metabolize foods and produces energy (needed in mitochondria for ATP production if I remember correctly)
Get your magnesium people!!
Cheddar cheese is orange now because it is dyed, with annatto.
The orange color became associated with cheese because a long time ago some cow’s milk had a slight tinge of orange from grass with beta-carotene. This got associated with high quality cheese, so other cheese makers starting coloring their cheese to give that high-quality look. When it came to the US, they wanted a uniform color, so they color their cheese with annatto to give us the color we now know.
My mind was blown when I learned that every single fruit and vegetable contains every single essential amino acid. Sometimes it only contains a little bit of one aa but always contains them all. Also, that our liver has an amino acid pool to hold extra of something so we don’t need to specially combine our foods to get a “complete protein” as long as we generally get them all throughout a few days
I watched Alone. The show that dropped ppl off in the arctic circle and they had to be completely self sufficient building their own shelter, catch their own food, etc. Catching enough food to have enough before the harsh winter was the biggest daily struggle. One guy killed a moose and was ecstatic! So he had plenty of meat for like months, but moose are very lean animals. Even though he had plenty of meat to eat, he was losing weight rapidly because he wasn’t getting any fats. He kinda laughed in an ironic way saying “all this meat, yet I’m starving.” He had to tap out shortly afterward
For the vast majority of people there is no way to exercise yourself to weight loss. Your body adjusts your resting metabolism if you exercise a lot so your daily requirement is approximately the same level. Every one they measured had the same response including athletes, so maybe there are a few outliers. This does not equate to fitness being useless, there are other reasons to exercise regularly.https://www.science.org/content/article/scientist-busts-myths-about-how-humans-burn-calories-and-why
npr interview with author of bookhttps://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/16/1016931725/study-of-hunter-gatherer-lifestyle-shows-why-crash-weight-loss-programs-dont-wor
I heard on a podcast there isn’t meat on on land that you can’t eat but like 99 percent of plants are inedible. Plants are genetically inclined to make you sick as a protection mechanism. This is largely loosely quoted but you get the gist.
Metabolic physiology class blew my mind.
Highlights were the mechanism of insulin release (exactly how the body releases amounts proportional to the blood sugar) and action (signal cascades caused by activation of insulin receptors on cells) and the known mechanisms of insulin resistance.
The most surprising thing about insulin resistance was that it’s mostly got nothing to do with sugar.
The many benefits of occasional fasting. Probably the #1 “nutritional” strategy available to most people in the rich West.
On the flip side, the damage from maintaining a high insulin level all day, every day.
Before learning this, I trained for so many marathons while guzzling high-carb “healthy” snacks and ending with a sugar-blasting Jamba Juice. So very counterproductive.
Fat isn’t bad, it’s where you get it from. Saturated fat still isn’t good for you but animal and dairy fats in moderation (read the label for portion sizes) should be a part of your diet.
Sugar isn’t evil, but too much and bad sources are. Added and chemically derived sugar is bad, fructose is bad so don’t even OD on fruit. You need your sugar to come with the rest of the fruit, not in juice form.
That you can control your hormones by controlling your insulin levels. Insulin is the hormone that controls all the other hormones (for women at least).
If you are also a middle - aged lady on ketobiotic, you will know what I’m talking about.
The FDA allows up to a 20% margin of error on nutrition labels. So if something says it’s 100 calories per serving, it can actually range from 80 - 120 calories. I count my macros and enter the carbs, fat, and protein, enter the serving by the weight and not the container size (i.e. 40g instead of a cup), and it tells me how many calories are actually in a serving.
Alcohol (ethanol) metabolism. 1g of ethyl alcohol has 7 kcal, carbs and protein only has 4kcal and fat has 9kcal per gram. Interesting part is that we can use alcohol as an energy source, but unlike other macro nutrients we have no way of storing alcohol in our bodies, so once liver metabolises it, we start using other nutrients as an energy source, but until then all other macros are being stored in one form or another.