pondering stuff about food

It isn't really a very well kept secret that I'm sort of focused on food and what the impact it has on the human body, focused on what really is needed, how things can be improved.  Drawing exception to things like a major juice brand owned by the Soda company (minute made, tropicana, coke, pepsi whatever) using Givaudan flavors (naturally derived from oranges sourced somewhere completely different than the juice in most cases) because is it really juice if the primary component of what you're tasting is not from the juice squeezed but from an essence extracted by some means from the perfect orange and the organic chemicals that make up the very specific taste are always combined in exactly the same way, every single time.

No isomers.

If you've had organic chemistry, you may remember that reactions with carbon stuff don't create identical components.  Esp if you let it all go and happen in nature.  Isomers happen.  But in the lab, when you are extracting components, you can't have those isomers in there, you need specifics.

Why choose an analog instrument when a computer and a synthesizer can make a pretty close approximation?

I didn't intend to start off about the infamous twitter juice wars, bringing back that blog post from the summer.

Juice, like sugar, has a place in the endurance (cycling/running for example) athlete's diet, because it offers a super concentrated does of sugar.  The problem is, if you aren't consuming it in a sugar window (using Coach Kurt P's term) you're not doing yourself any good.  Juice as alternative to soda isn't really doing the kids any help either.  "But it has vitamins" yeah so does a carrot.  Juice does basically the same in terms of insulin spike, making them fat, as Coke/Pepsi/soda stuff.   If you strongly believe fruits are the secret, eat them.

Drink vegetable juice (that you made yourself - V-8 is just fruit juice, tomato fruit but same thing).  That Lim guy's pre-race/training juice is a solid idea.

The sugar issue got me thinking...


Bottom line: if you take in glucose, it has three places to go.  #1 energy if there is sufficient glucose in the blood stream fueling current needs the liver begins to process it and covert it to Glycogen.  So #2 glycogen storage. This is where muscle fuel is stored.  You need completely topped up glycogen stores to compete at cyclocross intensities for an hour or any high intensity activity for a reasonable duration.  What happens to all the glucose if #1 and #2 are full? Well your body doesn't want to let that energy go to waste so it puts it on your waist.  AKA it turns it into #3 fat.  And if you aren't active enough to metabolize the fat right away it gets stored.

Starting the day with a big bowl of cereal and little protein or fat. Is pretty dumb biochemically.  Protein is needed for the nitrogen, and for all the amino acids building blocks that are used for cellular repair and signalling.

Easy way to think about it is Fat and Sugar are fuels.  Fat is also structural though so trying to use sugar as a fuel and not eat any fat is pretty dumb.  Protein though is needed.  It seems that (you can do a google scholar search on the subject) protein is a key trigger in satiation.  Which makes sense.  Your body wants to be able to repair.  Keeping cellular function running well is a key to being healthy, fighting disease and repairing damage (like what happens when you train to get faster).

Vitamins and minerals? Well we can't really make minerals so you have to eat that stuff, vitamins? There are different kinds and it is always best to get them from an organism that can make them and stores them more efficiently than you can.  But how much?  So much disagreement.

The cool thing about science is that it is always changing.  It is dynamic.  If you base everything you know from high school nutrition, you're pretty screwed.  Even if you just graduated.

Chemistry and food science are pretty important fields.  I prefer to see them as working to understand the whole system but sadly the focus more on only looking at one single factor in isolation and then saying "here it is, lets use it!"  Chemistry is cool.  Synthesizing stuff is fun.  And sometimes we can synthesize stuff cheaper than plants or animals can make it, and some people think that's a good thing.

But if it comes down to using science to remove all the fat from milk, and then you're left with a blue clearish kind of gross looking product, well you need Dupont and their titanium dioxide to make it more visually appealing.  So when you pour it over your frosted flakes it looks like it is whole milk.

Slowly the bits are falling in place and making more sense as to why it is best to protein load in the morning and not at night.  Carbs are best eaten in larger quantities at night.  When you're sleeping the brain still needs glucose and if you have nice topped up carb stores in the liver (glycogen) it can mediate the glucose level while you sleep without having to trigger any hormones to burn more complex fuel sources.  You probably want to have a little bit of CHO in the morning but how much? Certainly not a glass of milk and a piece of toast with jam and a glass of orange juice and a bowl of frosted flakes.  Couple eggs, some bacon and toast with black coffee?  Yeah that works.  Or a nice veggie omelet...  huevos rancheros or something, tofu scramble.

The protein will be there digesting slowly through the day.  You need your stomach to be active to break down the stuff.  When you go to sleep with a big chunk of protein in your belly, it is still mostly there in the morning... kind of  waste but on one hand, sure you don't need to eat anything in the morning then.  But might as well add it when you can use it, and not carry it around for later.    Stomach's work best when they are upright.  You have proper movement and digestion and stuff flows in the right direction.  And the more complex something is to digest and absorb (protein) the worse it is to have it in there when you go to sleep.  And yes, the digestive system is more or less autonomous, and it will process while you are sleeping but not the the same level of efficiency as when your are up right and gravity plus motion aid in the process.

Damn, re-reading the first part, I'm all over the map.  At least this isn't popping up as the top thing.  No one is going to get this far probably, but you know what? Don't care.  I'm sharing my point of view.  You don't have to agree, and you are very welcome to discuss it with me, pull out science, show me where I'm wrong. That's good.

and this has gone on long enough talking about nothing much and there is work to do and i started writing this hours ago...  hitting publish and watching "rome burn"

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