The FastDay Forum

Phoenix your diet sounds just about perfect to me.

[carorees]

Interesting...I wonder if that's why stress makes us craves carbs...effect of steroid hormone?

[carorees]

Also might explain post fast cravings...slightly raised cortisol during fasting due to the stress of going without food, leads to anti inflammatory action plus perhaps cravings depending how sensitive you are to it I suppose.

I think the challenge is really about reconfiguring what a standard (ie non-fast) meal should look like. I'm vegetarian and come from a vegetarian family where we've always been interested in wholefood/nutrition and when I was being taught meal planning it's always been around the carbohydrate. (The carbs at home tended to be 'good', brown rice, wholemeal pasta and homemade wholemeal bread) and in the wider world the advice from school and everywhere else is that the meals needs to contain starch and you get those diagrams of plates such as this one:

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=h ... Q&dur=5242

So a third of the plate needs to be carbs apparently, but the evidence seems to be showing this to be incorrect. But I suppose in someways this is what 5:2 is partially about helping us to reconfigure what being healthy means.

Incidentally has anyone seen this article about Gwyneth Paltrow apparently restricting her children's access to carbs?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... fect-sense
Quite interesting.

Nobody has popped up with a reason why we need to eat starch. The recommended quantities tend to fall out after considering the essential proteins and fats and are influenced by the general lipophobic climate which favours carbohydrates as the "top up" between recommended total energy and recommended fats and proteins.

For example the UK's COMA report of 1991 recommended no more than 35% of energy from fat. With their protein recommendation around 9% then you don't have to be Einstein to see that they have to have 56% from carbs to make it up to 100%.

I like the square of 90% chocolate. From Lindt's ingredient list I suspect their Excellence 90% is the perfect foodstuff!

[carorees]

In the "wild" fats are quite hard to come by as are sugars which its why we are programmed to find such foods attractive, so where did our ancient ancestors get most of their calories from?

Fish, meat, nuts, seeds ?

It has been said that "Man turned only to agriculture, which began around 10,000 years ago, when he had largely exhausted the seemingly endless supply of game due to his ever increasing population"

As I understand it the human species has become almost extinct on a number of occasions. We simply didn't get enough to eat to carry us through the hard times. I suppose it's a matter of opinion as to how ancient humans got their energy requirements. From lectures I've listened to I think the bulk of our calories came from plants, in all their forms, supplemented by the occasional kill.
As Caroline says we have a strong drive to grab the most calorific stuff we can. Unfortunately these days we are surrounded by more calories than we know what to do with.

This lecture is quite interesting:-

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0A8rNQ8CC2Q

Although his fasting methods are a tad extreme!

The great apes seem to be mainly herbivorous, although most of them will eat limited quantities of insects and possibly small animals - so that may indicate our own original diet. And human teeth suggest that we have evolved as primarily herbivorous mammals but with the capacity to eat meat (probably initially as scavengers) when it was available.

"Man turned only to agriculture, which began around 10,000 years ago, when he had largely exhausted the seemingly endless supply of game due to his ever increasing population" I think agriculture came first & the population rise followed as more food allowed..... but whatever. The Paleo school boldly suggests that fat % has to increase to fill the low carb/moderate protein gap. This does present quite a bit of a practical cooking problem, and the separation of good & bad fats is pretty complex - and controversial. (The Paleo school also suggests saturated fat is good for 'keto adapted' fat burners). I'd like to increase feast day fats to halt continuing weight decline, but without going the 'deep fried Mars bars' route...

This talk of saturated fat being good for you makes a Sleeper clip irresistible!

[carorees]

Not really "paleo" if you eat a lot of fat...fat was hard to come by in paleolithic times! Most game is low in fat. Only farm animals are high in fat. Other fatty foods like nuts etc were only available in season.

So...is the Eatwell Plate right that we should be consuming 65+% of our calories from statchy carbs and be basing most of our meals on starch? Should we also include, as the plate suggests a fair wedge of junk food in our diet?