ThePythonicCow
8th October 2023, 21:08
The more I study most things, the more I conclude that common "mainstream" teachings are usually more suited to herding and harvesting humanity by some others that go by many names (I sometimes call them the 'elite bastards'), than these teachings are suited to the betterment of us humans and our civilization. This is certainly the case with the following topic.
What should we eat?
But I won't try to directly answer that question here, at least not initially.
Rather I will take a step back and consider:
How is our food digested and where is it used?
In other words, what is the supply chain of nutrients, within our body, from mouth to health?
This is one aspect, though of course not the only aspect, that we would do well to understand, when going back to first principles to improve our diet and well being.
We have three DNA/genetic pools in our bodies:
"Our" own DNA, inherited at conception from our two parents,
Our cell's mitochondria, from our mother's egg, and
Our gut bacteria, built up over time, especially from breast feeding and eating various fermented foods.
We need to feed all three of these pools.
The essential vitamins, minerals, proteins and fatty acids that are the primary focus of most nutritional recommendations and teachings, in our "modern" times, focuses on pool (1), above.
This area of nutrition study is perhaps an easier pool for "modern nutrition science" to focus on, as there is more often a direct connection between an excess or deficiency of a particular nutrient and a particular marker of health or illness that a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial can track to find a statistically significant result supporting a publishable research paper. Unfortunately, such research funding is more commonly focused on herding humanity and harvesting their energy and efforts than it is focused on improving the lot of us humans and our civilization ... but I'm repeating myself with that complaint.
Our small intestines are the primary organ responsible for extracting these essential nutrients from our food, after our chewing, stomach acid and bile juice have broken down some of the more complex structures.
A few specific nutrients, and a good supply of oxidizing and reducing nutrients, are used by our mitochondria, of pool (2) above.
These nutrients are used by our mitochondria to fuel the electron transport chain and proton pump to produce our cell's primary fuel, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and a good abundance of oxidants and reducers (anti-oxidants) are needed to clean up the "smog", the electron-stealing (ROS - reactive oxygen species) by-products of this process and to repair and regenerate our mitochondria.
Our gut bacteria, of pool (3) above, like the bacteria in healthy soil and good compost, come in a great variety, with many hundreds of different kinds of such bacteria in a healthy gut.
Most gut microbes live in the large intestine, where they help the body absorb nutrients and protect the intestinal lining from harmful substances, among other things.
We have more DNA, of greater variety, in our gut bacteria than we have in our "own" body's cells.
Each kind of such gut bacteria specializes in one or a few related biochemical process(es), such as making a particular molecule that our bodies will find useful. In return for these useful substances, our bodies provide our gut bacteria with a nice warm well fed home.
Unlike our bodies, which rely on all these other DNA specialties (mitochondria and gut bacteria) to handle specialized processes, each bacterium in our gut is self-contained, depending only on what it can obtain from the environment around it and what it's own DNA knows how to do. Therefore each such "gut bug" needs more DNA than our own cells, as each "gut bug" has to do it all, unable to farm out special processes like our own cells do.
When our mother's (if they understand food at a "gut" level, which I know from personal experience that not all mothers do) tell us to "eat our colors", they are guiding us to feed our gut bacteria a variety of nutritional substances that various gut bacteria might selectively find useful.
When our culture's traditional diet include fermented foods (cheese, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, tempeh, ...), they are not just storing healthy food without refrigeration. They are also selecting for bacteria that will be healthy immigrants to our gut.
Our appendix stores a reserve of gut bacteria, to help repopulate our gut (lower intestine) if we eat something we shouldn't have that wipes out most of the bacteria there.
Our small intestine extracts most of the "essential vitamins, minerals, proteins and fatty acids" that our body wants from our food, then our large intestine provides a home for our gut bacteria to poke through what remains, to produce various more exotic molecules that our body (hopefully) finds useful, and to help further process and evacuate some harmful toxins. The appendix connects right below the small intestine, above the large intestine, where it can inject a fresh supply of gut bacteria into the large intestine, if its current population got wasted. Our large intestine is not just a sewer pipe. It's also home to hundreds of kinds of gut bacteria, making a living for themselves by producing various molecules for us.
What should we eat?
But I won't try to directly answer that question here, at least not initially.
Rather I will take a step back and consider:
How is our food digested and where is it used?
In other words, what is the supply chain of nutrients, within our body, from mouth to health?
This is one aspect, though of course not the only aspect, that we would do well to understand, when going back to first principles to improve our diet and well being.
We have three DNA/genetic pools in our bodies:
"Our" own DNA, inherited at conception from our two parents,
Our cell's mitochondria, from our mother's egg, and
Our gut bacteria, built up over time, especially from breast feeding and eating various fermented foods.
We need to feed all three of these pools.
The essential vitamins, minerals, proteins and fatty acids that are the primary focus of most nutritional recommendations and teachings, in our "modern" times, focuses on pool (1), above.
This area of nutrition study is perhaps an easier pool for "modern nutrition science" to focus on, as there is more often a direct connection between an excess or deficiency of a particular nutrient and a particular marker of health or illness that a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial can track to find a statistically significant result supporting a publishable research paper. Unfortunately, such research funding is more commonly focused on herding humanity and harvesting their energy and efforts than it is focused on improving the lot of us humans and our civilization ... but I'm repeating myself with that complaint.
Our small intestines are the primary organ responsible for extracting these essential nutrients from our food, after our chewing, stomach acid and bile juice have broken down some of the more complex structures.
A few specific nutrients, and a good supply of oxidizing and reducing nutrients, are used by our mitochondria, of pool (2) above.
These nutrients are used by our mitochondria to fuel the electron transport chain and proton pump to produce our cell's primary fuel, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and a good abundance of oxidants and reducers (anti-oxidants) are needed to clean up the "smog", the electron-stealing (ROS - reactive oxygen species) by-products of this process and to repair and regenerate our mitochondria.
Our gut bacteria, of pool (3) above, like the bacteria in healthy soil and good compost, come in a great variety, with many hundreds of different kinds of such bacteria in a healthy gut.
Most gut microbes live in the large intestine, where they help the body absorb nutrients and protect the intestinal lining from harmful substances, among other things.
We have more DNA, of greater variety, in our gut bacteria than we have in our "own" body's cells.
Each kind of such gut bacteria specializes in one or a few related biochemical process(es), such as making a particular molecule that our bodies will find useful. In return for these useful substances, our bodies provide our gut bacteria with a nice warm well fed home.
Unlike our bodies, which rely on all these other DNA specialties (mitochondria and gut bacteria) to handle specialized processes, each bacterium in our gut is self-contained, depending only on what it can obtain from the environment around it and what it's own DNA knows how to do. Therefore each such "gut bug" needs more DNA than our own cells, as each "gut bug" has to do it all, unable to farm out special processes like our own cells do.
When our mother's (if they understand food at a "gut" level, which I know from personal experience that not all mothers do) tell us to "eat our colors", they are guiding us to feed our gut bacteria a variety of nutritional substances that various gut bacteria might selectively find useful.
When our culture's traditional diet include fermented foods (cheese, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, tempeh, ...), they are not just storing healthy food without refrigeration. They are also selecting for bacteria that will be healthy immigrants to our gut.
Our appendix stores a reserve of gut bacteria, to help repopulate our gut (lower intestine) if we eat something we shouldn't have that wipes out most of the bacteria there.
Our small intestine extracts most of the "essential vitamins, minerals, proteins and fatty acids" that our body wants from our food, then our large intestine provides a home for our gut bacteria to poke through what remains, to produce various more exotic molecules that our body (hopefully) finds useful, and to help further process and evacuate some harmful toxins. The appendix connects right below the small intestine, above the large intestine, where it can inject a fresh supply of gut bacteria into the large intestine, if its current population got wasted. Our large intestine is not just a sewer pipe. It's also home to hundreds of kinds of gut bacteria, making a living for themselves by producing various molecules for us.