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Research of the Week

Sales taxes work better than fat taxes.

More breastfeeding, more mitochondria in blood in adolescence.

Traditional architecture gives a better sense of well-being than modern architecture.

Garbage anti-meat study. I’ll address this in Sunday with Sisson. (If you don’t already subscribe to our emails, sign up here to read Sunday with Sisson.)

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 402: Courtney Contos: Elle Russ chats with Courtney Contos, chef, wellness expert, and certified Functional Medicine Health Coach.

Primal Health Coach Radio, Episode 46: Erin and Laura chat with Robb Wolf, the man himself.

Media, Schmedia

Starbucks shifts away from dairy.

The cartels turn to avocados.

Interesting Blog Posts

A different way to think about agriculture.

Social Notes

Who needs tortilla chips?

Everything Else

This is the future I always dreamed of.

Paul’s response.

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

Chat I enjoyed having: “The Great Fiber Myth” with Shawn Baker, Paul Saladino, Brian Sanders, and yours truly.

I have to ask why: Toddler milk.

Good deal I’m passing along: 20% off Tribali food orders with discount code “Primal20.”

Interesting diet: The Everest Diet.

Someone else goes carnivore: Joe Rogan’s experience.

Question I’m Asking

Is very high LDL cholesterol always a problem?

Recipe Corner

Tex-Mex beef and rice casserole, for those higher-carb days.

Lasagna… soup?

Time Capsule

One year ago (Feb 1 – Feb 7)

10 Moves to Help Ease Joint Pain — Lube for your tissues.

Can I Eat Fruit on a Keto Diet? — Can you?

Comment of the Week

“I’ve been telling my kids that success is like a lottery and that school, work experience, travel, and your social network are the lottery tickets.”

I like that, Mike.

The post Weekly Link Love – Edition 67 appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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To eat or not to eat before exercising in the morning? This question has been circulating for years and years. One group says yes, eat before you exercise because it is needed to fuel the body. The other group says no, you will have more health gains if you exercise in the morning in a […]

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For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering a couple questions taken from Instagram followers. Normally every Wednesday, I do a quick Q&A on Instagram. I wasn’t able to get to them last week so I’ll be answering some here on the blog. First, how often do I eat organ meat, and how do I like it? And finally, what’s the deal with using metformin for longevity?

Let’s go:

How often do you eat organ meats?

Maybe twice a month. I should probably do it more.

It’s not that I dislike them. Every time I eat heart or liver, I enjoy it. It’s not something that comes intuitively to me. Because I wasn’t raised in a household where organs were a normal part of the daily diet, I have to remind myself to do it.

If you’re counting marrow, I eat that far more frequently. I order it every time I see it on a menu. I eat lamb chops frequently, which often come with little pockets of marrow.

And personally, I include eggs and shellfish as “organs.” Reason being, you’re eating the entire organism. The whole animal. Well, the egg isn’t an animal yet, but it contains everything one needs to construct an entire animal. These tend to be far more nutrient-dense than muscle meats.

If you’re looking to eat more organs, there are some great options.

You can go the product route. US Wellness carries fantastic organ sausages. Check out the braunschweiger (60/40 blend of grass-fed beef and grass-fed beef liver) or the liverwurst (GF beef, liver, kidney, heart). I’ve crumbled these up into ground beef and mixed into spaghetti sauce.

You can usually ask any butcher to make sausages or meat grinds with different muscle/organ ratios. You could do 70% beef chuck with 15% liver and 15% heart, or whatever ratio you prefer.

Ancestral Supplements does great organs in supplement form.

There are awesome recipes out there that “hide” the organs. I wrote an entire post on slipping organs into normal meals that you don’t even notice.

Or you could just figure out a way to cook organs that you’ll consistently enjoy and consume. Here are some of my favorite ways:

• Ginger garlic chicken liver: Chop chicken liver into small pieces. In a pan, sauté ginger and garlic in butter or avocado oil. When it’s all softened, add a generous cup of gelatinous bone broth and reduce, reduce, reduce. When it’s getting syrupy, drop in the liver and stir over medium high heat for 2 minutes. The liver will cook quickly without overcooking.
• Beef liver sashimi: Get the best, freshest organic grass-fed beef liver you can find. Slice thin and marinate in fish sauce, sesame oil, and lemon juice for an hour. Eat raw, or briefly sear in a pan. If eating raw, might be advisable to freeze for two weeks first.
• Chicken heart skewers: Marinate chicken hearts in lemon juice, soy sauce, and a little bit of honey. Place on skewers and grill over coals or flame.
• Lamb/beef heart steaks: Slice a heart into steaks. Season with salt and pepper, and place on roasting rack in a 275°F oven for 15 minutes. Remove and sear briefly over high heat on both sides. Do not overcook. It will get tough and inedible.

What’s your take on supplementing Metformin for longevity?

There are certainly reasons to suspect it could help.

Metformin activates AMPK, the same autophagy pathway activated by exercise, fasting, polyphenol consumption, and reduced calorie intake.

Metformin also seems to protect against many of the conditions that kill people, like cancer. It lowers hyperinsulinemia and may protect against insulin-related cancers (breast, colon, etc.). Early treatment during adolescence, for example, protects rats against later tumor growth.

Type 2 diabetics (a population with lower overall mortality) who take metformin live longer than age-matched controls who don’t have diabetes. That’s huge. Type 2 diabetes isn’t enough to offset the longevity gains.

Metformin appears to work on lifespan via hormesis. Diabetics who need it just to keep their blood sugar in check are taking (and should take) it regularly, but if you’re just an experimenter interested in potential life extension, treating it like a hormetic input like fasting or intense exercise is probably a better, safer approach. Instead of daily, maybe intermittently. Cycle it.

It appears that metformin may also act via modulation of the gut bacteria (surprise, surprise). It increases mucus production in the gut, which the resident bacteria are able to feed upon and increase in strength and number. It’s been shown to boost Akkermensia count, the strain commonly linked to leanness and anti-diabetic effects. Some studies have even shown that Akkermensia can improve gut barrier function in obese subjects, so metformin may be especially helpful for this population. Additional effects include reduced carb absorption by the host (that’s you), leaving more to be consumed by gut bacteria (a la resistant starch).

If you don’t want to (or can’t) find real metformin, berberine might be a “natural alternative” to metformin. Like metformin, berberine can activate AMPK, lower blood sugar and improve blood sugar control, and enhance short chain fatty acid production by gut bacteria. Being a whole plant extract, berberine isn’t identical to metformin, so I wouldn’t suggest diabetics switch without consulting their doctors, but it is a promising alternative that doesn’t require a prescription. It might be a viable alternative for someone looking to improve their longevity.

Overall, metformin looks promising. I’m not sure it’s an essential part of a longevity-promoting regimen if you’re already fasting, training, and eating colorful polyphenol-rich fruits, vegetables, spices, and dark chocolate. Many of the populations it seems to help in studies aren’t doing these things and metformin is likely acting as a “healthy living mimetic”—but I’m certainly open to the idea, and await further research.

That’s it for today, folks. Take care and keep the questions coming! If you have anything to add or ask, go for it down below.

The post Dear Mark: How Often I Eat Organ Meat and Should You Take Metformin for Longevity? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

Years ago, you were young with little responsibility. You wanted to pack on muscle, shed fat, and gain superhuman strength. You trained six days a week for two hours at a time. You felt invincible.

Then, you matured and life changed.

Today, you tackle high-level work projects. You have family functions to attend. The days of training six days a week for two hours each session are long gone. Now, you’re lucky if you lift two days a week for an hour.

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In the comment section of my recent Definitive Guide to Blood Sugar, someone asked about fasting insulin. What does it predict? Is it the preeminent health marker? Does it actually cause harm, or is it just an indicator? Great questions and a great idea, I thought. Let’s do it. Let’s dig in.

It looks like it’s all true. Elevated insulin is both a direct cause of certain unwanted health conditions and an indicator of several other unwanted health conditions.

There are difficulties inherent to insulin. It varies wildly. There is no universally-agreed-upon reference range for healthy and unhealthy insulin levels. In the studies that find connections between elevated insulin and disease, they use quantiles—breaking up the subjects into groups of low, medium, and high insulin levels. It’s all relative.

We need to figure out what normal looks like. We can’t measure the insulin levels of paleolithic hunter-gatherers (insulin degrades pretty quickly and cannot be recovered from fossils). We can look at extant hunter-gatherers, but those are slipping away with every passing year (and to my knowledge, no one has actually tested the Hadza or Tsimane). The best way do it would be to measure the fasting insulin in a healthy, non-industrialized population largely free of disease, like the Kitava of the South Pacific. Staffan Lindeberg did test their fasting insulin levels, finding them to be very low—an average range of 3-6 uIU/mL in both men and women of all ages. He then compared them to modern Swedes, whose insulin ranged from 4-11 uIU/mL and went up with age. The average American fasting insulin runs about 8.4 uIU/mL, which likely isn’t physiologically normal.

That the Kitavans’ fasting insulin was relatively low and consistent throughout their entire lives, and they were largely free of the degenerative diseases that plague industrialized societies, suggests that a fasting insulin somewhere between 3-6 uIU/mL is the physiological norm for humans. It’s what we should be walking around with.

What’s the problem, exactly, with hyperinsulinemia?

Insulin and Overweight

One primary function of insulin is to suppress lipolysis—the release of fatty acids from body fat to be burned. This makes sense. You eat carbohydrates, glucose goes up, and the glucose has to go somewhere. Insulin rises to help you dispose of the glucose and suppress the release of free fatty acids. It’s harder to burn fat when glucose is in the picture, and insulin keeps fat locked away so you can dispose of the glucose.

Studies as far back as the 80s are pretty clear that the higher your insulin level, the higher your hunger and the more you eat. These aren’t just observational, either. Researchers actually pushed subjects’ insulin higher or lower, both with and without increasing their glucose, and found that raising their insulin was the most reliable way to increase hunger, food intake, and junk food cravings.

So hyperinsulinemia hits you from two sides:

• It prevents you from burning your own body fat.
• It makes you hungrier than your energy stores would actually suggest you should be.

That’s probably why a recent study found that reducing insulin could reduce diet-induced weight gain.

Insulin and Cancer

Another major function of insulin is to make things grow. This is an important function that makes total sense in certain situations, like when you’re trying to gain muscle, heal a wound, or if you’re a toddler who needs to grow your skeleton and get taller. But there are times where cellular growth is unwanted. Consider cancer, a disease of unchecked cellular growth. It’s no surprise that hyperinsulinemia is a risk factor for most, if not all cancers. 

While insulin isn’t everything when it comes to cancer, the links are undeniable and myriad—and worrying.

The link between colon cancer and hyperinsulinemia likely involves the tendency of insulin to increase the availability and potency of insulin-like growth factor. Post-menopausal women with genetic variants related to insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia have a greater risk of colorectal cancer, and colon cancer patients who eat the most insulinogenic foods have poorer outcomes.

In breast cancer, hyperglycemia increases the tumors’ resistance to chemotherapy. Fixing the hyperglycemia makes chemotherapy more effective.

People with a genetic predisposition toward hyperinsulinemia have a higher chance of developing pancreatic cancer.

Independent of bodyweight, hyperinsulinemia predicts endometrial cancer; so does a high postprandial insulin response.

Diabetics who use insulin therapy have an increased risk of liver cancer. One study of Taiwanese diabetics found that those on insulin therapy have an elevated risk of dying from cancer and from non-cancer.

Most cancer cells overexpress insulin receptors, suggesting a unique affinity of cancer for circulating insulin.

Across the board, in both obese and people of normal bodyweight, hyperinsulinemia, whether it’s genetic, simulated, or diet-driven, increases cancer incidence and mortality. 

Okay, okay. That’s all rather convincing, but there’s a chance that these are merely associations and some common factor is causing both the hyperinsulinemia/insulin resistance and the cancer. Right?

What seems to counter that hypothesis is the effect of metformin, an anti-diabetic drug, on cancer. Compared to other diabetic drugs, metformin reduces the risk of cancer in type 2 diabetics. Metformin’s mechanism of action? A reduction in insulin levels and improvement of insulin resistance.

Insulin and Heart Disease

As far as heart disease risk factors go, hyperinsulinemia might be the strongest one yet. Hyperinsulinemia predicts the risk of heart attack. And it’s an independent risk factor. That’s key. You can control for LDL cholesterol, LDL particle number, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, and it doesn’t matter. You can control for blood pressure and family history of heart disease, and it doesn’t matter. Among middle-aged men who do not have heart disease, hyperinsulinemia remains a significant and independent predictor of their risk of having a heart attack.

What about ApoB, the lipoprotein biomarker that most of the top cardiovascular health experts are pointing to as “causative” of heart disease? It’s actually one of the better predictors of insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. Whichever way you approach heart disease, insulin keeps popping up. Can’t escape it.

These are association studies, but the mechanisms for causality exist. As far back as 1990, researchers had established the pro-atherogenic effects of elevated insulin levels. As a review from that year explains:

Long-term treatment with insulin results in lipid-containing lesions and thickening of the arterial wall in experimental animals. Insulin also inhibits regression of diet-induced experimental atherosclerosis, and insulin deficiency inhibits the development of arterial lesions.

Could what they call an “insulin deficiency” be physiologically-normal levels of insulin? Could we all use a little “insulin deficiency”?

Insulin and Hypertension

Elevated insulin levels lead to sodium retention and water retention, which increases blood pressure. Dropping insulin—like, say, by eating a low-carb or keto diet—will counteract this effect and reduce blood pressure.

That’s why hyperinsulinemia is a consistent and independent predictor of hypertension, especially in women. Controlling for BMI doesn’t affect this relationship.

Insulin and Arthritis

There is growing evidence that insulin has an inflammatory effect on joints, reducing collagen deposition and increasing collagen degeneration. That’s in vitro research, but it jibes with many hundreds of anecdotes from people who went keto or low-carb or carnivore, dropped their insulin, and improved their arthritis—and with the common experience of reintroducing carbs and seeing the pain return.

Insulin and Fatty Liver

Among patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver, insulin resistance is almost a law. It’s very rare to see fatty liver without elevated insulin levels. Cause or effect?

Well, one job of insulin is to shove glucose into cells. It does this quite well, so long as there are vacancies. If the cell is already loaded with glucose, the liver converts the glucose into fat in a process called de novo lipogenesis. Some of this fat is exported to other cells, but a large portion is stored in the liver, especially in hyperinsulinemia.

Insulin and Mortality

Mortality is the endpoint of all endpoints. When it comes down to it, we’re trying to avoid dying. We don’t hope to live forever, but we do hope to live long and well as late into the game as possible. One way to do it is to reduce our insulin levels.

In cancer patients, for example, those who eat the most insulin-producing foods have worse cancer and overall mortality.

In middle aged adults, hyperinsulinemia predicts cancer mortality, even when you control for diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome.

In older adults with type 2 diabetes, insulin use predicts mortality.

You won’t find a dietary philosophy that promotes the “benefits of hyperinsulinemia.” At the very worst, you might find folks who think elevated insulin is merely an indicator, and not a cause of disease. But this is one of those areas where almost everyone agrees “less is better.”

Where people disagree is on how to reduce hyperinsulinemia and maintain a healthy insulin level. That’s a post for another time.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care and be well, and may your insulin levels approach that of a Kitavan!

References

Chakrabarti P, Kim JY, Singh M, et al. Insulin inhibits lipolysis in adipocytes via the evolutionarily conserved mTORC1-Egr1-ATGL-mediated pathway. Mol Cell Biol. 2013;33(18):3659-66.

Rodin J, Wack J, Ferrannini E, Defronzo RA. Effect of insulin and glucose on feeding behavior. Metab Clin Exp. 1985;34(9):826-31.

Kaur P, Choudhury D. Insulin Promotes Wound Healing by Inactivating NFk?P50/P65 and Activating Protein and Lipid Biosynthesis and alternating Pro/Anti-inflammatory Cytokines Dynamics. Biomol Concepts. 2019;10(1):11-24.

Jung SY, Rohan T, Strickler H, et al. Genetic variants and traits related to insulin-like growth factor-I and insulin resistance and their interaction with lifestyles on postmenopausal colorectal cancer risk. PLoS ONE. 2017;12(10):e0186296.

Yuan C, Bao Y, Sato K, et al. Influence of dietary insulin scores on survival in colorectal cancer patients. Br J Cancer. 2017;117(7):1079-1087.

Al qahtani A, Holly J, Perks C. Hypoxia negates hyperglycaemia-induced chemo-resistance in breast cancer cells: the role of insulin-like growth factor binding protein 2. Oncotarget. 2017;8(43):74635-74648.

Carreras-torres R, Johansson M, Gaborieau V, et al. The Role of Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, and Metabolic Factors in Pancreatic Cancer: A Mendelian Randomization Study. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2017;109(9)

Nead KT, Sharp SJ, Thompson DJ, et al. Evidence of a Causal Association Between Insulinemia and Endometrial Cancer: A Mendelian Randomization Analysis. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2015;107(9)

Liu XL, Wu H, Zhao LG, Xu HL, Zhang W, Xiang YB. Association between insulin therapy and risk of liver cancer among diabetics: a meta-analysis of epidemiological studies. Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2018;30(1):1-8.

Bowker SL, Majumdar SR, Veugelers P, Johnson JA. Increased cancer-related mortality for patients with type 2 diabetes who use sulfonylureas or insulin. Diabetes Care. 2006;29(2):254-8.

Baghbani-oskouei A, Tohidi M, Hasheminia M, Azizi F, Hadaegh F. Impact of 3-year changes in fasting insulin and insulin resistance indices on incident hypertension: Tehran lipid and glucose study. Nutr Metab (Lond). 2019;16:76.

Qiao L, Li Y, Sun S. Insulin Exacerbates Inflammation in Fibroblast-Like Synoviocytes. Inflammation. 2020;

Yuan C, Bao Y, Sato K, et al. Influence of dietary insulin scores on survival in colorectal cancer patients. Br J Cancer. 2017;117(7):1079-1087.

Perseghin G, Calori G, Lattuada G, et al. Insulin resistance/hyperinsulinemia and cancer mortality: the Cremona study at the 15th year of follow-up. Acta Diabetol. 2012;49(6):421-8.

Damluji AA, Cohen ER, Moscucci M, et al. Insulin provision therapy and mortality in older adults with diabetes mellitus and stable ischemic heart disease: Insights from BARI-2D trial. Int J Cardiol. 2017;241:35-40.

The post What Might Fasting Insulin Predict About Health? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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We are a coffee guzzling country, and our drinking habits are on the rise. According to the National Coffee Association, over 64% of Americans enjoy at least one cup of coffee daily. But, has your doctor urged you to cut down on caffeine? How much do you really know about that decaf cup of Jo […]

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In the hierarchy of vegetables, the best choices are fresh, in-season, and local.

Realistically, though, that’s not always going to happen. For one thing, you might live in a climate where access to a variety of local and in-season vegetables just isn’t a thing. It’s also well established that lower income areas have fewer supermarkets, so fresh produce is less available.

Although home-grown is the best of the best, I know that saying, “Just grow your own!” is presumptuous on a lot of levels. Assuming that you have the space and resources to plant a garden, time is a big consideration. Plus, once they’re grown, preparing fresh vegetables takes more time than preparing frozen or canned, which are already washed and chopped for you.

All this is to say, I’m sure many of you find yourself turning to frozen and canned vegetables—as well as fruit, seafood, and meat—for reasons of availability and convenience. You might wonder if you are sacrificing any health benefits or if I’m giving you the side-eye for eating vegetables that aren’t farm-fresh.

Are Frozen and Canned Foods Inherently Less Primal?

Let me put that concern to rest immediately.

True, Grok would not have frozen or canned foods. Food preservation as a concept is nothing new, though. Just because a technology is new does not mean it’s “un-Primal.” I am not now, nor have I ever been, opposed to using modern methods of food preservation and storage that make it safer or more convenient to eat healthy foods. I like safety and convenience.

So, if you’ve been avoiding frozen or canned foods because you think you’ll have to turn in your Primal card, rest assured that isn’t the case. That said, I have historically avoided canned vegetables in the store due to concerns over BPA in the can linings. (Home-canned in jars is different, of course. I’m all for home canning.)

Since people sounded the alarm about BPA in the past decade, industry reports suggest a significant number of manufacturers have moved away from BPA-lined cans, but not all of them. I still strongly favor frozen over industrially canned vegetables. If nothing else, the taste and texture is usually superior. Nutritionally, though, the data show that frozen and canned are comparable overall.

Frozen Vegetables and Fruit: As Good As Fresh?

The frozen food industry dates back to 1925, when Clarence Birdseye began quick-freezing fish. It really took off after WWII as more homes had freezers. Since then, food scientists have worked to improve freezing, packaging, and transporting methods so that today (spoiler alert!) frozen foods are nutritionally comparable to their fresh counterparts. They also taste better and maintain a more pleasing texture and appearance compared to our grandparents’ frozen options.

Factors that affect nutrients in the produce you buy, whether fresh or frozen, include:

• the particular nutrient in question,
• the type of vegetable, including cultivar (what specific type of bean, apple, etc.),
• growing conditions (soil, weather, and so on),
• post-harvest handling and storage,
• how you cook them.

Frozen vegetables are typically blanched before freezing to halt enzymatic reactions. This step cleans the vegetables and preserves flavor and texture, but the heat also reduces the levels of some nutrients, notably vitamin C.

On the other hand, fat-soluble vitamins like vitamins A and E and carotenoids are released from their cellular matrices by heat. This might make them more bioavailable in frozen foods. The jury is still out on the bioavailability question according to Dr. Diane Barrett of the UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology. Fiber is relatively impervious to processing and so isn’t affected by freezing.

From Farm to Table

Although there is an initial loss of some nutrients in the freezing process, this seems to even out by the time the vegetables make it to your plate.

At the very top of the nutritional hierarchy are vegetables that go from dirt to plate with the fewest stops in between. The best option is picking vegetables out of your garden and eating them more or less right away. That’s not usually how it works, though.

Supermarket produce might have been in the supply chain for several weeks before you even purchase it (and it was almost certainly not allowed to fully ripen before harvesting). Even if you buy your produce at a local farmer’s market, several days to a week might pass before you consume it.

During that time between farm and plate, nutrients are oxidizing and degrading. On the other hand, frozen vegetables are usually picked at the peak of ripeness and frozen as quickly as possible to preserve the nutrients.

Show Me the Data

Li and colleagues measured vitamin C, beta-carotene, and folate in broccoli, cauliflower, corn, green beans, green peas, spinach, blueberries, and strawberries that were fresh, “fresh-stored” (refrigerated for five days to mimic what happens when we actually buy produce), or frozen. They found a high degree of nutritional similarity overall and further concluded, “In the cases of significant differences, frozen produce outperformed ‘fresh-stored’ more frequently than ‘fresh-stored’ outperformed frozen.”

These findings are typical. Compared to fresh vegetables, frozen compare favorably in study after study. For example:

• Two studies from Bouzari and colleagues at UC Davis compared eight common fruits and vegetables that were either stored in a refrigerator for 3 or 10 days, or frozen up to 90 days. For vitamin C, riboflavin, alpha-tocopherol (a form of vitamin E), calcium, magnesium, zinc, copper, iron, fiber, and total phenolics, the researchers concluded that fresh and frozen were highly similar, with frozen sometimes outperforming fresh.
• British researchers measured vitamin C, total polyphenols, total anthocyanins, and carotenoids (beta-carotene and lutein) in six common fruits and vegetables. Immediately after purchase from the grocery store, fresh and frozen were mostly similar. Levels of nutrients tended to decrease in the fresh vegetables over three days of storage.
• Researchers from Virginia Tech and the USDA found that 5-methyltetrahydrofolate, the most bioavailable form of folate, did not decline in seven common vegetables over 12 months in frozen storage.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Note that across all the studies, results varied somewhat between different types of produce and nutrients. Dr. Barrett also points out that there is little research beyond that looking at key vitamins. More is needed to examine other nutritive compounds, as well as to explore the bioavailability question.

Don’t get caught up in the minutiae, though. Looking at the big picture, researchers consistently agree that taking everything into consideration, frozen is on par with fresh-stored. Frozen vegetables also have favorable nutrient-to-price ratios.

Go Ahead and Hit Up the Freezer Section

The fact is, you can’t stand in a grocery store with a head of fresh cauliflower in one hand and a bag of frozen florets in the other and know for sure which has more nutrients. There’s no reason to feel bad about choosing frozen over fresh, especially when fresh seasonal and local options are lacking.

Consider, too, that if convenience is key, and your choice is between a frozen meal containing vegetables, or grabbing a drive-thru meal, the frozen food is often the better choice.

Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) longitudinal study, researchers compared adults who reported eating frozen meals or “restaurant fast food/pizza.” Using the standardized Healthy Eating Index, the frozen meal eaters scored higher overall and specifically for total vegetable intake and total protein food. They also had lower intake of refined grains and empty calories.

A separate analysis of NHANES data showed that people who eat frozen vegetables eat more total vegetables and get more fiber, potassium, calcium and vitamin D, than those who don’t.

In terms of covering your nutrient bases, your best option is to choose a wide variety of produce, fresh and local when possible, and frozen when needed. If you can grow some fresh herbs and a tomato plant outside your window, all the better.

What About Meat and Seafood?

The expert consensus is that frozen meat and seafood is also nutritionally on par with fresh.

For fish in particular, freezing is the only viable way besides canning for many consumers to access safe products. According to the Seafood Storage Guide from the National Fisheries Institute, most fresh fish (not shellfish) should be eaten within 36 hours of catching.

As a final note, if you opt for frozen food products, check out the USDA Freezing and Food Safety fact sheet and USDA guide to Safe Defrosting Methods to make sure you are maximizing safety and quality.

References

Composition of Foods Raw, Processed, Prepared. USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 28 (2015) – Documentation and User Guide.

Kmiecik W, Lisiewska Z, Korus A. Retention of mineral constituents in frozen brassicas depending on the method of preliminary processing of the raw material and preparation of frozen products for consumption. Eur. Food Res. Technol. 2007; 224:573–79.

Li, M. Ho, K., Hayes, M. Ferruzzi, M. G. The Roles of Food Processing in Translation of Dietary Guidance for Whole Grains, Fruits, and Vegetables. Annual Review of Food Science and Technology. 2019; 10:569-596.

MacTavish-West, H. Vegetables: is fresh best? The Journal of the Institute of Food Science and Technology. 2014.

Miller SR, Knudson WA. 2014. Nutrition and cost comparisons of select canned, frozen, and fresh fruits and vegetables. Am. J. Lifestyle Med. 2014; 8:430–37.

Produce for Better Health Foundation. State of the Plate: 2015 Study on America’s Consumption of Fruit & Vegetables.

Rickman JC, Barrett DM, Bruhn CM. Nutritional comparison of fresh, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables. Part 1. Vitamins C and B and phenolic compounds. 2007; J. Sci. Food Agric. 87:930–44.

Rickman JC, Bruhn CM, Barrett DM. Nutritional comparison of fresh, frozen, and canned fruits and vegetables. II. Vitamin A and carotenoids, vitamin E, minerals and fiber. J. Sci. Food Agric. 2007; 87:1185–96.

Villa-Rodriguez, J.A., et al. Maintaining antioxidant potential of fresh fruits and vegetables after harvest. Crit. Rev. Food Sci. Nutr. 2015; 55: 806–822.

The post Fresh Versus Frozen Food: Which Is More Nutritious? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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Is aging inevitable, or can it be reduced—or even treated? In this episode of Revolution Health Radio, I talk with Dr. David Sinclair about what causes aging and strategies to reduce its effect on our lifespans and healthspans.

The post RHR: How to Slow Aging and Increase Healthspan, with Dr. David Sinclair appeared first on Chris Kresser.

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With the citrus season in full swing, there is no better time than now to embrace all of the benefits that citrus has to offer. Just a hint…. it goes way beyond vitamin C. Citrus includes a wide variety of fruits with the most popular being grapefruit, oranges, lemons, limes, and tangerines. Reaching for these […]

Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

Many books on weight training will have chapters on intensity and its importance. They describe 100% intensity as being whatever weight one can only do one rep of within a certain exercise. If you can do more than one rep of the particular exercise then its intensity is lower. Thus, the more reps one can do, the lower the intensity the weight will be.

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