Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Eating healthy is a natural progression from Aquaponics since we are growing vegetables and fish for consuption. I have been reading books about a healthy diet and from what I can gather eating a variety of fruit and vegetables is very beneficial. It would be good to hear what others think about healthy eating.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012 ... brain-size

This article mentions that eating meat more than likely helped humans to evolve with a bigger brain because of the calorie content of meat.

So from what I can gather eating meat was an essential part of human evolution. A human body at rest requires more energy than other primates and meat had to be consumed in order to sustain a person during this evolutionary period in history.

Today though we have food that is low GI and full of energy so we would not need to consume meat for the purpose of providing calories.

I have been reading books and surfing the net and it seems like eating plenty of meat is not very beneficial for us or the environment.

Any thoughts on this?

I recently watched Forks over knives:




Very interesting stuff about the correlation between the consumption of meat and dairy, and high levels of cancer and heart disease. Worth watching if you can get hold of it...

I've watched Fat sick and nearly dead a fair while ago, that was interesting and I surprised myself my doing a "juicing reboot" for a week. No solid food, just juiced fresh vegetables and fruit.




Then the real clincher for me a while back was watching this one about curing diabetes with raw food:



I've cut my meat and dairy consumption by a lot, and eat a lot of raw stuff. I probably have a diet of about 70-75% raw food, if I eat meat it's generally fish, haven't eaten red meat in perhaps a month or more, and the only dairy I have is milk in coffee. I feel great and I'm a a hell of a lot healthier than I was 12 months ago..

The article from the Washington post is a bit off the wall really.. That's like saying we got to where we are as a species and civilisation by having wars and major plagues wiping out millions of people at different stages, so therefore they are a good thing... In a world seriously suffering with diseases caused by excessive consumption, we need to drop calorific intake.

after watching fatsick and... we (wife and i) went out and bought a juicer.I am waiting to see an immunologist re suspected autoimmune probs and have a lot of symptoms he has i get .So far i have only juiced for one day, it was a very different experience.One problem you must shop for ingredients first.i made a juice out of lettuce and bok choi that had gone to seed with ginger and a pear,that taste is still stuck in my mouth.
We are going to do it for 3 day trial

What have I learnt??

I have had a benign brain tumour for the last 20 years and I think I have tried everything. Still ongoing.

You can eat as healthy as you want, but if you have a crap outlook on life what do you think you are feeding your body, and vice versa. My dad was as healthy as, no crap, but he was hugely stressed and died of a stressed related cancer.

My thoughts, do the best for your body (and mind) as you can, but don't obsess over it. For 6 months my mum fed me only "pure" organic food, no dairy, no wheat, no sugar, no meat, no oil...... I hated eating.... We need fuel... Do you think this was doing me any good... Hating the food I put in my mouth. One day I said to my mum I want a Junior Whopper with Cheese, it might have 'killed' her, but it was great!!!! I don't eat them everyday, but I hope you understand what I am saying...

Be Healthy, body and mind.

That is all, bye bye

I went vego about a year ago, and started riding aswell. Dropped 12kg in 2 months, and have never been healthier or fitter!

I (ideally) follow a Paleo type diet, or caveman diet.

This is the basic idea:

There is no problem with meat, and it should be eaten (with the fat) with pretty much every meal, variety is good, and plenty of fish.

What is absolutely essential though is eating LOTS of vegetables, half of which being green leafy type, and also plenty of red/orange veges.

The other important thing is not to eat grains... at all, especially wheat and corn.

Grains contain phytic acid, which binds up minerals and makes them unavailable for humans to absorb.
Only rodents get any real benefit from grains (they produce phytase which neutralises the phytic acid)
Eating grains prevents you from absorbing not only the minerals in the grain itself but also the food you are eating it with.



Grains also cause inflammation leading to a whole host of other longer term health issues.

A diet with grains tends to be very carbohydrate heavy. The body can easily get the energy it requires from fats (animal fats etc) Fat is more filling and so a diet with plenty of fat and no grains will tend to be much lower in total carbohydrates. Much better for insulin sensitivity and all the health issues associated with that.

For references and further reading i would first suggest articles from http://www.marksdailyapple.com and go from there.

My personal story of the "I need carbs for energy myth":
I have never been much of a runner, but my work signed us up for Tough Mudder, a 20km hardcore obstacle course. I started training about 4 months before, running about once per week. Before the event I was running almost 6km in about 25mins (nothing special I know) and hadn't run further than that.

I had very minimal carbs the whole time and leading up to the even, I just ate as best I could with plenty of meat+fat and veges. I completed the event and ran the whole way, I even felt I could have gone faster.

Ever since I have started the Paleo eating style I have had more energy and I don't get tired after lunch in the afternoon. I also dont get the desire (as much) to indulge in sweet foods in the mid afternoon.

I think if you are going to cut out red meat from your diet you are making life extra hard for yourself in terms of getting the right amount of nutrients, cutting out grains would certainly be beneficial... in all cases.