Fruits, Vegetables and Unknown Nutrients

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The following article explains well the issue of unknown nutrients (in fruits and vegetables) and why we can't blindly trust the scientists who are yet to discover these unknown nutrients. Scientists and medical researchers can measure only the known nutrients and hence following a dietary plan with only the known nutrients (like x% carbs, y% protein, or using supplements instead of whole foods, etc), will in the long term, lead to chronic diseases because of lack of the unknown nutrients.

 

Just recently, it was discovered that apple peels contain triterpenoids. If instead of the apple peel, we had used supplements which contained all the known nutrients at that time, we would have missed on this new nutrient. And as time goes, we will definitely find more and more of these new nutrients. The best way is to have the whole foods so that we know we are consuming all the known as well as unknown nutrients.

 

This is not to say that science is waste. Science helps to understand some of these on how things work etc., it cannot be used as the final verdict as it is still in its infancy in understanding the reality. More on this can be read in this long article (

http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=87) by Michael Pollan titled " Unhappy Meals " - refer to the section on " Bad Science " .

 

 

 

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http://www.newstarget.com/022440.html

 

Given the choice between a piece of fresh fruit and the juice from that fruit, the juice is often not the better choice. With orange juice, for example, you get a hefty dose of sucrose, fructose, and glucose without the benefit of the fiber found in the white pulp, which slows down the rate of sugar absorption. The white pulp also contains the bioflavonoids. In the case of an apple vs. apple juice, the skin of the apple is where the flavonoids, including the very important nutrient quercetin, are found (http://www.answers.com/quercetin?cat=health & y=0 & x=0

) . The juice is high in sugar, low in flavonoids, and low in fiber. Goji juice, as I mentioned in a previous article, is not only expensive, but contains lower nutrition than the whole fruit (http://www.newstarget.com/022082.html) .

In some cases, however, juice can be the better choice: when you can't get the fresh fruit

, for someone with gastrointestinal problems in need of nutrition that can be easily and quickly digested and absorbed, for people temporarily avoiding solid foods for detoxification and/or religious purposes, and when a juice combines a mixture of fruits and/or vegetables that would be impracticable to obtain and eat on a regular basis.Just take supplements? " Why not just take supplements? " , some people ask me. Well, I do take supplements, but I have a concept about " unknown nutrients " . When I was a kid growing up in southern California, the absurd Wonder Bread TV commercials claimed to build strong bodies in 12 ways; a few years earlier it had been eight (

http://www.natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic11/wonderbread.htm) . The uncritical child (or maybe even parent) at that time may have believed that those 12 vitamins and minerals were all you needed to be healthy. So, we were hearing about eight components you need to build a healthy body in the 50s, twelve components in the 60s. Our knowledge of nutrition has grown exponentially over the past few years and now a sophisticated multivitamin/mineral/phytochemical mix may contain 60 or more components. But does that supplement contain everything you need to maintain optimal health?

Let me explain: Now we know the great health benefits of resveratrol from grapes, epigallocatechin gallate from green tea, and

lycopene from tomatoes. What was known about them 30 years ago? Do a Google Scholar search of peer-reviewed research papers with those phytonutrients in the title published from 1986-1987 compared to 2006-2007, and you'll get something like a jump from 3 to 653 for resveratrol, 3 to 309 for epigallocatechin gallate, and 14 to 302 for lycopene, a huge increase in research and knowledge over the past 30 years (so the total for resveratrol from 1986 to 2007 is almost two thousand).

Sure, now you can take those nutrients in supplement form, but 10 years from today, 20 years from today, probably dozens of nutrients unknown today will have been discovered, and discovered essential for optimal health. The only way to make sure you get them, now, is to consume real foods, as unprocessed as possible, every day. My motto is " consume every color of the rainbow, every day " .

(Junk Food Junkies, listen up: Going to your local donut shop and saying, " Gimme one with blue icing, one with pink icing, one with green icing... " won't cut it!) These Kagome juices help me do it, and the best part is that they are cheap, about US$2.50 a liter, so I can drink them every day. And I do, about half a liter a day.

All nutrients destroyed?Now, I can hear some raw food proponents saying that this juice is processed, and has had most of the life taken out of it. In the phone call we made, Kagome said the pasteurization used, depending on the specific blend, is 100 degrees Celsius for one to two minutes.

I certainly agree that some sensitive nutrients in fruits and veggies are probably damaged or inactivated by heat, and it would not even cross my mind to broil my broccoli sprouts or roast my Romaine lettuce. However, some vitally important nutrients actually increase in concentration with processing heat. For example:

* Cooked tomatoes have a higher amount of lycopene than fresh tomatoes (

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/04/020422073341.htm)* Upto a certain point, the amount of genistein in soy milk increases with heating (

http://www.newstarget.com/019860.html) .* The herbal blood tonic, see (http://www.newstarget.com/022091.html) and the anti-viral tonic, see (

http://www.newstarget.com/022189.html) , written about on NewsTarget are in fact boiled for 30 minutes and two hours; if processing heat damaged all important nutrients and made the food " dead " , then these concoctions would be worthless; it seems heat processing is necessary to extract some of the nutrients so they can be absorbed and utilized by humans. Thus we can be sure that many of the vital phytonutrients in these mixed juices remain intact and active.

That point made, let me repeat that I do believe some delicate nutrients are lost in the pasteurization process, and I wholeheartedly support the practice of juicing (

http://www.newstarget.com/juicing.html) .None of the fruits and vegetables used to make these Kagome juices is likely organic, and of course organic would be preferable. But, as Jack LaLanne opined in his 2003 book Rejuvenate Your Life, the benefits of eating non-organic fruits and vegetables outweigh the disadvantages of not eating those fruits and veggies because you can't get them organic. You can view another similar quote by Jack LaLanne here (

http://www.quotesandpoem.com/quotes/listquotes/author/jack-lalanne/2) .In a perfect world, I'd live on an organic farm and do my own juicing of a dozen or so freshly picked fruits and vegetables every day. In the real world I live in, these Kagome mixed juices are a practical, inexpensive way to take in a large number of fruits and veggies every day.