How do you get your food-based micronutrients?

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(Laura) #1

I’m pretty low on vegetables if I’m keeping carbs under 20. No more wild rice, beans, peas. Few mushrooms.

How do you all get your micronutrients? I’d prefer food-based to pills.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #2

Since the human race evolved eating almost exclusively meat, it makes sense that meat contains the micronutrients we need, and often in more bio-available form than the versions in plants. In fact, certain B vitamins are found only in meat.

(Central Florida Bob ) #3

The most direct answer I can give is that if you want to eat veggies there are many kinds you can eat. You can eat any non-starchy veggie and low sugar fruits. Dr. Westman says, “above ground vegetables” to get around potatoes, but that leaves corn, peas and a few others. We have salads regularly, and a cooked veggie with dinners. Something like a half a peach is a once a week treat, though. There are lower sugar fruits like raspberries and some other berries that are OK in moderation. Nuts are another option.

I think most people are familiar with the idea of biological accumulation. I think the most familiar example is how mercury can get picked up by small fish and the bigger fish that eat them accumulate and effectively multiply the concentration of mercury.

The same thing happens with trace minerals and some other micronutrients. It was probably Dr. Ballerstedt who pointed out that when they first were researching how much vitamin C was in different foods, those tests were expensive so they never tested beef for it and that’s why it doesn’t show up as a good source.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #4

Eating whole fruits, as opposed to fruit juice, is in fact endorsed by Dr. Robert Lustig, on the grounds that the fibre in whole fruits slows down the absorption of the sugars to a rate that the body can handle without ill effects.

(Joey) #5

I struggle to answer since - unlike macros - I’ve never closely tracked my micronutrient intake.

Even when logging every morsel of food eaten for almost a year (CarbManager), I never felt motivated to look at collected data beyond carbs (gross/net), protein and (various) fat sources.

Are there particular micronutrients of concern? (I could dredge up stored CarbMgr data and check)

But the short answer is:

  • Green salads (wide variety of “above-ground” stuff)
  • Daily meat of every sort (beef, pork, chicken, fish)
  • Eggs, butter, cheese

Hopefully this combination is providing me with sufficient micronutrients (?)

I daily supplement with D3 (and get decent sun), large dose of K2, and salt/magnesium in drinking water.

#6

What about cabbages, cucumbers, zuccinis? I don’t take beans and peas, too, but I do take pills: magnesium, zink, iron, vits A, D, C, B2, B6 and so on. Because I don’t think it’s possible to get everything from food, especialy if you have leaky guttery and intolerance to a bunch of foods

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #7

I’m with @PaulL on this one. Our (Pre-)Pleistocene ancestors adapted to eating almost exclusively meat and fat simply because they had no alternative. Once our ancestors gave up the big guts necessary to process plants the die was cast. They were healthy enough to survive for 3+ million years so my bet is they got what they needed. As Michael Eades has demonstrated multiple times, the Pleistocene/Holocene transition from hunter/gatherer eating mostly meat/fat to farmer eating mostly plants is what started the decline of human health that continues. I think it rather ironic (or simply ignorant) that we think we need to ingest micronutrients from plant sources when eating plants is what got us into the mess we’re in. Just my humble opinion.

#8

Animal products do contain a fair amount of micronutrients. Eggs, meat and seafood are all good.

You can eat vegetables too for micronutrients, albeit the non-starchy ones with none/near-zero sugar content. Cauliflower, radishes, broccoli, aubergines, zucchinis, green beans, mushrooms, leafy greens, roasted seaweed are good low-carb ones. A bit of tomatoes, onions, ginger, garlic is ok too.

Low carb fruits can be good sources of micronutrients. Avocadoes, coconuts, some berries.

Nuts are good too for micronutrients. Brazil nuts especially for Selenium. However, nuts are generally high in Omega-6 which are inflammatory.

Cocoa (100%) is a good one too at about 1.4g carbs per 10g serving.

That said, some it may be difficult to get the RDA for certain micronutrients depending on your overall diet. You could try tracking what you eat for a week (say, using the Chronometer app) and see if you are consistently falling short on any micronutrients.

If you are falling short on a few, try to see if you can get it by adjusting your diet. Alternatively, you could consider adding things like Nutritional Yeast (non-fortified) which is very nutrient dense and kinda tastes like cheese.

But don’t worry too much if you are not hitting 100% off all micronutrient RDAs everyday. In my experience, eating a well rounded diet will usually be sufficient.

(Joey) #9

Excellent guidance above.

I’ll just note that my suspicion over the accuracy/science supporting the official RDA levels has grown exponentially in recent years… both because so much of government-sponsored nutritional advice is industry-driven, and because when one eats minimal carbs, I imagine the “normal” RDA levels to need significant adjustment as one’s metabolism undergoes transformation (versus a high carb, low fat WOE).

Eat wisely, and see how your own body performs over time. Ultimately, that’s the “end” toward which the “means” are aimed.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #10

Can someone please inform me just how the following is a ‘Healthy Eating Pyramid’? Most of the stuff in the Vegetables & Fruits - Healthy Fats/Oils - Whole Grains level didn’t even exist a few thousand years ago. And in the case of most current vegetables and fruits and seed oils didn’t exist even a couple hundred years ago except in their fibrous, almost inedible ancestral forms. Don’t tell me about ‘healthy’ and/or ‘low carb’ vegetables and fruits. If this is a ‘healthy eating pyramid’ why are obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular and other metabolic diseases a nutritional pandemic as we speak? And also don’t tell me it’s SUGAR and processed food doncha know. I think this diagram would be better labeled The Unhealthy Eating Pyramid.

pyramid2
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#11

Getting everything you need from food is almost impossible unless you eat really weird meals and in many cases massive amounts of certain things. There’s whole food based multivitamins.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #12

Yeah, such as avoiding sugar, refined grains, and starches, which is just too weird for words! :rofl:

But of course keto is unsustainable and will kill us!

#NOTDEADYET

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #13

How did humans survive as long as we have without supplements? It’s simply mind-boggling.

(Bob M) #14

Though I have to say that I take supplements. Mg, K, Vitamin D, sometimes zinc and/or selenium. Only because I can’t determine whether what I’m eating (mainly meat) has these or not.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #15

Chris Kresser has an interesting article about salt. Although specifically about salt, I think we can reasonably extrapolate to other ‘supplements’ as well.

But what about human pre -history?

Despite the human taste and desire for salt, dietary salt intake was likely extremely low in Paleolithic times.

There is no evidence that Paleolithic people engaged in salt extraction or sought out inland salt deposits, and the current estimate of Paleolithic intake is similar to that of chimpanzees. (13) Preagricultural humans are estimated to have consumed only 768 mg of sodium each day (about 1950 mg of salt), which is much lower than our current intake. (14) The mining, manufacture, and transportation of salt originated in the Neolithic Period, when agriculture was developed.

The question is, what drove Neolithic man to begin the inevitable search for salt? Not surprisingly, the move from a hunting-and-gathering diet to one consisting largely of grains and vegetables necessitated the procurement of supplemental dietary salt. (15) Humans, like many carnivores, can meet their salt needs by eating meat and seafood, provided they do not sweat excessively. (16) For example, the Masai, nomadic cattle herders in East Africa, can easily obtain adequate dietary salt by drinking the blood of their livestock. In modern and historic hunter-gatherer societies, it has generally been found that those who hunt do not make or trade salt, unlike agricultural groups, and once humans began cultivating crops, their dietary need for salt increased. (17)

#16

Getting in proper micronutrients and avoiding garbage are two different things.

#17

I want to be optimal, surviving isn’t enough :+1:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #18

Eat whatever you want to eat. I couldn’t care less. But if you really ate optimally you would not require supplements. How does that not make sense? :+1:

#19

Considering people proved it’s quite possible to live on meat…

Meat and eggs seem to work nicely enough for me now, along with tiny others, we will see. I don’t worry, I surely won’t start to try eating leaves or something. I almost never did, never supplemented anything regularly… I actually think the human body is quite tough (not everyone’s of course. my genes are pretty good and my body seems to prefer good food, even when I ate wrong, my food was very nutritious as far as I can tell) and we are fine even if we don’t meet some numbers.
I have NO IDEA about the micronutrient needs of my body. It’s not simple to tell, it changes with various things. I change my woe, skip plants and voila, my vitamin C need drops. Nutrients absorpsion from plants can be complicated too… At least on carnivore we don’t need to worry about that…

Not an easy topic. I focused on my food too much, I just hope for the best now. It’s better than stressing over it, I doubt it would help anything, I am quite okay with my woe now and I can’t really change it in the foreseeable future. I try to learn things and I keep in mind what to change when I can but that’s it for now.
It’s unnatural for me to look at numbers and track everything. Only modern humans do that, tons of animals thrived without anything like that. It’s too complicated anyway. I focus on certain items, it’s nice to know things or think about things but all macronutrients, it’s just too complicated and often plain impossible to meet the theoretical needs.
If I look at Cronometer, I see some awfully off things, I don’t care. Most are fine I think, eggs and meat, that’s not a bad combo. Even if my meat is almost exclusively pork. I can’t help that, it’s still the best woe I can do now.

I don’t and can’t do supplements, I eat a little Epsom salt if I get cramps (rare) and doesn’t forget it, that’s it. My 1 kg Epsom salt will last decades with the speed I eat it.
So I need good, nutritious food but that’s why I focus on meat and eggs.

We will see. I want to live beyond 120 in good health so I surely will think and read about these things in the future… But it’s really not simple.

Basically avoiding plants sounds a pretty good idea in my case so I don’t plan to change that part of my woe.

My body disagrees but I am sure it could handle these things (as it did in the past and still does if I eat fatty protein right after my fruits), it’s just stubborn and hates sugar alone. So I don’t eat sugar alone if possible. Problem solved. The type of fruit doesn’t matter, just the sugar content, I think.
I love fruits, I just don’t need them and I dislike the sugar and the too high level sweetness. They are a bit like good candy. Fun but I should minimize them and avoid them if I can. I consider fruits flavored sugary water in fun, solid form, nothing to do with my nutrition intake. And it’s about right as I eat very little of them. Very often and very many kinds, I don’t see the point to ban any, but little.
We can choose way better food especially when we don’t have a huge energy need to waste on sugary stuff. But it’s individual, of course and to me it’s all about the right amounts… Joy is needed for my health and fruits are extremely good at giving me it. (Even without me eating them, it’s the best part. I have a very very beloved fruit garden.)
Mmmmm, fruits. Big part of my life. Tiny part of my food.
(Why I delete a lot if I just write about fruits again?)

(Bob M) #20

It makes perfect sense…if what you eat has access to what they used to eat.

I’ve seen a lot of arguments saying plants (including legumes and grasses eaten by ruminants, which I then eat) don’t have access to minerals like zinc. Is it true? It’s impossible to tell.

As for salt, I know there are folks, particularly carnivores, who can not eat salt. But if I don’t eat salt, I get cramps.

Now, I take a drug daily that has a diuretic effect, and I drink coffee and tea, which also have diuretic effects. So, maybe I’m an outlier.