Do you have a calorie or nutrition based diet approach to weight loss?

Calories today just aren’t what they used to be… So you need to be careful when planning a calorie- or nutrition-based approach to weight loss.

Humans generally eat “foods” from 3 categories: plants (fruits and vegetables), animals (beef, chicken, eggs, etc.), and man-made synthetics (aspartame, saccharin, olestra, butylated hydroxyanisole, and all the other ingredients on the list). that you can’t pronounce!)

Today I would like to talk about the calories we get from vegetables and how they are not what they used to be.

In my last article I mentioned that calories serve 2 purposes: 1) they provide energy and 2) they provide the vehicle for nutrition.

The US and Canadian Food Guidelines are quite similar, recommending that the average person consume 4 servings of vegetables and 3 servings of fruit in a day. For vegetables, a “serving” is made up of 1 cup of raw leafy green vegetables or ½ cup of cooked or chopped raw vegetables or ¾ cup of vegetable juice. For fruit, a serving is considered 1 piece of fruit (apple, orange, banana, pear, etc.) or ½ cup of raw or canned fruit or ¾ cup of fruit juice.

These are not random recommendations. They were made because these foods are meant to provide the majority of the absorption of vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

But here’s the problem with serving recommendations: They’re assuming the nutrient count in the fruits and vegetables you eat is at optimal levels. They measure the fruit in the same way that car companies measure the gas consumption of their vehicles. My Honda Civic was rated for 51 mpg on the highway. And sure it got decent gas mileage, but certainly nothing close to that. It is the same for fruits and vegetables.

These food guides assume that a naturally ripened apple has: 0.26 g protein, 7.86 mg fiber, 0.19 mg vitamin B2, 73.14 IU vitamin A, 9.66 mg calcium, 0 0.05 mg of copper, 0.24 mg of iron, 0.41 mcg of selenium, etc. Do you really think that every apple you eat has exactly the same composition of vitamins and nutrients? Do you think anyone meets all these figures?

Did you notice I said “naturally matured” in the previous paragraph? Most of the nutrition a plant possesses is obtained through ripening “on the vine.” We live in eastern Canada. There is snow on the ground 4 months of the year. Our growing season is 3-4 months long. So most of our food comes from Florida, California, Mexico, Central America, and even now, even China! If these fruits and vegetables were picked after they had ripened on the vine, what do you think are the chances that they would arrive at my grocery store 5,000 or more miles away still fresh and blemish-free?

Let me explain something else… In the “early days”, why did farmers grow crops?

They grew to eat! That seems like the obvious answer, right?

But today, why do farmers farm?

They farm for MONEY!

So how does that difference affect agricultural practices?

In the early days of agriculture, farmers didn’t have access to all the chemicals we have today and they knew that if they wanted healthy food, then they needed healthy fields. Thus, they would rotate crops, even under vegetation, not seed/grow for a season, and allow their fields to remain healthy and vital. By growing different crops, different pressures are put on the soil and a diverse harvest is available to the family. Following these practices ensured good harvests and healthy food for their families.

But today farmers are not feeding their family with their crops, they are selling their crops to earn money for their family. So now, the more crops they sell, the more money they make. There is no need to diversify your crops. If they grow lettuce, then the lettuce is all they plant. If they grow beets, then beets are all they plant. This practice leads to 2 main problems:

The first problem is that if there are no crops in the fields, then no money comes in. So the crops are not rotated and the fields never rest. With no recovery period, all the nutrients are extracted from the soil over time. Fortunately for farmers, all a plant needs to grow is water, sunlight, nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium. Why do you think fertilizers are made up of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium? Given those 5 ingredients, a plant can produce a large, healthy “looking” fruit. But of course, if there is no copper, iron, selenium, etc. on earth there is no way for it to be in the fruit either.

A second problem is that to ensure “healthy” fruits and vegetables, it is necessary to protect them from molds, fungi and insects. Herbicides and pesticides do a great job of that, but while they kill plant invaders, they also kill microorganisms in the soil. These microorganisms are crucial in converting inorganic nutrients (rocks) into organic elements that can be taken up by plants. So even if the soil possessed copper, iron, etc. it would not be available to the plant without the help of microorganisms.

So what does all this mean for our fruits and vegetables?

One study compared the nutrient content of vegetables in 1963 and again in 2000. This study found a 45% decrease in vitamin C in spinach, a 30% decrease in vitamin A in corn, a 51% decrease in vitamin A in % in potassium and a decrease of 84% in Magnesium in cabbages. You can read the findings of this entire study here: http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2001/mar2001_report_vegetables.html

These numbers are valid for both organic and non-organic food sources. “Organic” means that no synthetic pesticides or herbicides were used in the growing process. It certainly does not mean that excessive cultivation of the soil was not practiced.

So when the Dietary Guide says we should eat 1 serving of fruit, let’s say we select an apple. The Dietary Guide assumes that we will consume 340 calories and 128 mg of vitamin C. But the reality, as of the year 2000, is that an apple only contains 89 mg of vitamin C. Similarly, the vitamin A in apples has decreased from 90mg to 53mg. .

Honestly, our bodies today don’t need to consume that many calories. Let’s say you weigh 160 pounds and have a lean body fat percentage of 16%. This means that you carry about 25 pounds of fat. One pound of fat has 3,500 calories, so you have over 87,000 calories of stored energy at your disposal!

What your body needs is nutrition! The problem is, before farming became big business, we could eat a 340-calorie apple and get 128 mg of vitamin C and 90 mg of vitamin A. But now we need to eat 578 apple calories to get the same nutritional content.

Have you ever thought why you feel hungry even after you have eaten? It’s not because your body craves energy in the form of calories, your body actually craves nutrition.

And THIS is why diets that encourage cutting calories for weight loss are not only ineffective but dangerous. Your body NEEDS Vitamin C and Vitamin A and iron and potassium and copper and selenium… Your bodily functions need these vitamins and minerals to function properly and efficiently. Without them, you’re setting yourself up for injury, illness, and possibly even weight gain!

How can you GAIN weight while cutting calories? If you decrease your calories, you will probably decrease your nutrition. When your body lacks essential nutrients, you experience physical stress. This stress activates your immune system, and an overactive immune system causes the release of the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is used to store fat, burn lean muscle and extract nutrients from the bones.

I’ll write more about how your hormones, including cortisol, affect your weight in a future article. But in the meantime, I hope you are beginning to understand that weight loss, weight gain, and your level of health are controlled by a multitude of systems. The number of calories you consume is only a small part of that equation.