Stop the Nonsense!!

Training Bodybuilding
1

Let’s get something straight here. A diet consisting of canned tuna, cottage cheese, skinless chicken breasts, and MRPs every day is NOT a “clean” or “healthy” diet.

First off, where’s the fat? You NEED fat in your diet, and eating this low fat is not good for health, not to mention it lowers T levels. And you shouldn’t be getting most of your fat from polyunsaturated sources - this is NOT healthy.

Second, you can’t eat the same thing every day. You need to vary the diet in order to prevent development of allergies. Plus it gives you a wider source of nutrients. And no, just because some of you don’t develop allergies does not mean allergies cannot develop.

A MRP is a supplement, NOT a staple. It should only be for when you absolutely cannot get in a solid meal. Consuming MRPs all the time compromises intestinal flora, and contains lots of synthetic vitamins, and could very easily contain chemicals that are not good for you.

This type of diet does not include much nutrient content. Where are all the good vitamins comming from? No, don’t tell me you take a mega multiple…those are synthetic vitamins and do not do the same thing. And how many multiples contain vitamins C, calcium, potassium, etc? Not to mention beta-carotene is NOT vitamin A.

Why don’t people eat more eggs? Eat 3-12 raw a day and you’ll get a lot of great vitamins. Include some oysters and clams in there, too…they’re jam packed with extremely valuable nutrients (such as zinc, which is found to be depleted in many atheletes). Eat some veal liver. It has tons of vitamin A and other B vitamins. Eat shrimp that supplies a lot of vitamin D. Use butter for the good fats and vitamins in it. Add some more fermented products in there to help digestion and intestinal health. Add some cod liver oil into the diet as well. Buy whole chickens and cook them, and when you’re done eating the meat, take the carcass, put it into 2-3 liters of water, add some seasoning and 1-2 tbsp of vinegar and let it cook for 6 or more hours. This is a GREAT source of many nutrients that’s found in the bones and cartilage. Add the giblets into the soup, too. It’s all good.

I don’t know why such important foods are forgotten when they supply such vital nutrients.

Don’t forget to eat plenty of veggies, too.

Berries are also a great food, although these should be more for mornings.

Keep this in mind when you plan a diet, and also when you want to call your diet “clean” or “healthy”.

Take care, and sorry for the rant.
Neil

2

First of all, you’re preaching to the choir here. What was your motivation for writing this? Also, there is nothing great about eating raw eggs. You wont get all of the protein from them that way, and most everyone here eats eggs anyway.

Just about everyone here knows that you need fats and most here do supp with olive, fish, and flaxseed oil.

So to conclude, what the hell are you talking about?

3

3-12 RAW eggs a day?

4

Man i think I need to duck out of the way cause this Neil guy has just come in and started launching knowledge bombs all over the map!!

Seriously Neil, I think you’re raising some excellent points - but another consideration is the source of these whole foods?

I’ve been reading a lot about the GMO stuff happening in the world and to be honest, the potential damage of these things on the environment and society is something I find a little horrifying. Particularly the fact that they cannot really be controlled. We’ve already seen instances of lawsuits filed by farmers complaining that Monsanto crops have contaminate their own and are creating cross-pollinations of things. I eat a ton of fresh vegetables every day (well, 2 lbs or more) and I do my damnedest to make sure I get the stuff thats had the least firsthand exposure to herbicides and pesticides. I think for the bodybuilder, the health-conscious, the athlete, and the people who are in this for themselves only, these types of concerns can be very problematic. What happens when we ingest these things? What happens when someone with severe allergies eats something thats been cross-bred with something else but it isn’t known? And why, with all these serious and potential concerns, is this type of product being made available for public consumption at this time?
I think GMO could have a potential in the future to be very useful if it were extremely refined, but right now the processes and actions are so crude, and the potential for problems is so dramatic that we are looking at a situation that could go very wrong.

Any whole foods based diet needs to consume a large amount of products that are somehow based upon the earth we are living on - to what extent does eating foods which which somehow are venturing astray from the food-chain and have been altered by science and corporations play a role in these considerations when trying to eat a healthy and nutritious diet?

5

Well put, the only thing I would change is the bit about raw eggs. Cook them, whites raw isn’t good for you.

6

Sure you need fat. Most of us know that. I add flax oil to my water packed tuna, I add ground flax to my low carb pancakes and my protein shakes. I use olive oil in salad dressings and I eat salmon and sardines frequently.

Where did you get the idea that a mundane and unchanging diet will develop allergies? My dogs have eaten the same food since they were pups, my horses eat the same food every day, that’s the way most animals, and many humans live and they live allergy free. You might get bored eating the same things but I highly doubt you develop a new allergy. If anything you may find allergies you didn’t know you had by intoducing a lot of new foodstuffs to your diet.

Synthetic verusus natural. Hmm. So you’re saying your body can tell the difference in compounds that are chemically identical and a mass spectrometer can’t differentiate between them?

Whole foods are great, especially if the veggies were grown in mineral rich soil (not likely) instead of mineral depleted and artificially fertilized soil. The difference is that artifical fertilizer, unlike synthetic multivitamins, only supplies maybe 3 things to the soil instead of the multitudes of things natural compost does. So, eat your mineral deficient factory farmed veggies for fiber and some nutrition and pop a multivitamin and get on with life.

Or you can turn Amish and farm your own food behind a horse team using only natural composted fertilizer.

Raw eggs? Those are good for you? Really? I don’t think so. Not to mention the burps you get later…wow. Been there, done that when I was a teenager and in a hurry at breakfast.

Oysters and clams are great for you. I wish they weren’t so expensive, although sometimes I can get a dozen live oysters for a few bucks…so I do.
Shrimp are great in the morning omelette or on a big dark leafy green salad.

More people should learn to cook but that’s a whole different story.

7

While I agree with most of what you said, I take issue with some things.

1st…3-12 raw eggs a day? We all know that you lose 1/2 the protein content if you don’t cook your eggs…so why the hell would you suggest eating them raw?

2nd… “diet consisting of canned tuna, cottage cheese, skinless chicken breasts, and MRPs every day is NOT a “clean” or “healthy” diet.”

Why isn’t this clean? You make it seem as though someone who eats these foods as staples automatically don’t take in anything else. Sorry bud, but I eat all of those things every day, but I still manage to get in plenty of other food, including oatmeal, berries, eggs, whole wheat bread, flax oil, olive oil, veggies, peanut butter, avocados, almonds, walnuts, and more. There’s no way someone who is trying to meet caloric goals (esp. during bulking stages) could do it without adding to their staple foods.

3rd…while you have a point about eating the same food EVERY DAY, I think there is justification for doing this for short bouts of time. (Hey look at the Subway guy hehehe:) Just joking). I eat the same meals for about 1-2 weeks at a time. Don’t really have much of a choice, since my hours in the lab require preping food in bulk. That being said, it is very important to have a wide variety within the meals of the day. I have 8 meals a day, and they are all very different, so as to minimize any possible deficiency (which is always going to arise). I feel that some of the meals can be identical for long periods of time (I usually keep my P+C meals constant for long stints and change up my P+F meals)…I don’t think more than 3 weeks of eating the same thing Every day is optimal either.

I appologize for exchanging rants with you NeilG. You’ve always got good advice for people, but there’s always room for some disagreement in these forums. :slight_smile:

8

“A diet consisting of canned tuna, cottage cheese, skinless chicken breasts, and MRPs”

uhh, who is that directed to? who here has told you that is all that they eat?

there is no one on this site that would recommend eating those items and those items only.

again i ask who are you talking to, and why?

9

Akheron,

I realize that I’m sorta preaching to the choir here, but kinda not, and I can tell from your post.

“Just about everyone here knows that you need fats and most here do supp with olive, fish, and flaxseed oil.”

This is exactly what I am trying to say you don’t want to do. You want to be getting most fat from natural saturated sources, such as butter and other animal fat (coconut oil is a great, source, though- over 90% saturated), NOT from supplementation with unsaturated fats.

Take care,
Neil

10

Hyphnz,

The problem with raw egg whites is the avidin which inhibits biotin absorption. But the thing is, biotin is a sensitive vitamin, and cooking it can damage it. So by cooking the egg, you get rid of the biotin AND the avidin. But, if you eat them raw, yes, you do get some blockage of biotin absorption, but there’s so much biotin in the whole egg that all of it is not blocked and you do end up getting your B6.

If you’re that worried about it, though, you can run the egg under running hot water for a minute and get rid of the avidin problem.

Take care,
Neil

11

“This is exactly what I am trying to say you don’t want to do. You want to be getting most fat from natural saturated sources, such as butter and other animal fat (coconut oil is a great, source, though- over 90% saturated), NOT from supplementation with unsaturated fats.”

I’m sorry, but this flies in the face of every bit of legitimate research and real world evidence that I’ve ever seen. You’ll have to do better than that.

12

Franks,

GMO foods are scary. Eventually they want to engineer vaccines into our food. They want to administer medicine without our consent. Scary, isn’t it?

I think GMO foods have no place in a healthy diet. The contamination of good crops from these mutant crops is not a good thing. I personally try to get as much organic food as I can. No one yet knows how our bodies react to these GMO foods. If I’m not mistaken, they modify a lot of crops to have natural pesticides in them so they spray less. You could wash off stuff that’s sprayed on, but how will you get around something that’s in the plant?

Another scary thing is that 70% of processed food contains GMO products.

So if you ask me, only organic whole foods are the way to go. But I think that’s a bit obssessive to a lot of people.

Take care,
Neil

13

Um, what? Olive, fish, and flaxseeds aren’t natural? But butter is. Right.

Care to back up your ridiculous suggestions with real data and research?

14

steelyeyes: I tend to agree with neil on basically all points.
1)you haven’t looked into holistic medicine much I take i take it? B/c not overeating the same foods (for the purpose of eliminating allergies) is one of the main ideas in healthy eating. And to say that 'many people live without out allergies. But when you consider any single person can can name probably 10 people that they know that suffer from some sort of allergy.
2) raw eggs are good for you. In fact some Dr. beleive that the reason so many people are allergic to eggs is b/c they cook them, altering the state of the proteins - especially those in the whites. Ever since i started eating raw eggs, my sensitivity to them has disappeared. And by the way, I don’t burp at all after eating raw eggs the way I did after eating them cooked.

15

ND,

“1st…3-12 raw eggs a day? We all know that you lose 1/2 the protein content if you don’t cook your eggs…so why the hell would you suggest eating them raw?”

But you deactivate other proteins if you cook them. So either way you’re going to have some sort of issue. The reason I recommned raw whites is that it’s good to include raw foods in the diet that contain enzymes that help the body digest it. This is the main reason, if you ask me.

“Why isn’t this clean? You make it seem as though someone who eats these foods as staples automatically don’t take in anything else.”

Well, I WAS referring to people who eat mostly this. That was the point. I guess I shouldn’t have said that it’s not clean, although lots of canned tuna is not good, IMO. Clean? Sure, I guess that’s ok to call it, but it certainly isn’t healthy.

“Sorry bud, but I eat all of those things every day, but I still manage to get in plenty of other food, including oatmeal, berries, eggs, whole wheat bread, flax oil, olive oil, veggies, peanut butter, avocados, almonds, walnuts, and more. There’s no way someone who is trying to meet caloric goals (esp. during bulking stages) could do it without adding to their staple foods.”

Well, then my post wasn’t directed towards you. I’ve heard of many people using almost those foods exclusively, and using tons of MRPs.

ND, your diet sounds ok, but I still think “supplementation” with “super foods” is a good idea. I mentioned some of these…liver, cod liver oil, sea vegetables, oysters, clams, shrimp, bone broths, etc.

Another thing that you might find interesting is the need for grains, seeds, nuts, and legumes to be soaked, fermented, or sprouted in order to neutralize phytic acid in them that inhibits absorption of some very important nutrients, zinc being one of them. Not only that, but it also increases the avaliable nutrient content of the food itself. I do know you can buy sprouted products at health food stores. I’ve soaked sunflower seeds, which turned out good.

“I appologize for exchanging rants with you NeilG. You’ve always got good advice for people, but there’s always room for some disagreement in these forums. :)”

Of course…thanks,

Neil

16

Is your last name Atkins?!

17

so you recommend that we eat loads of sausage bacon and ultimate cheeseburgers, cooked in butter and topped with some sour cream?

18

SteelyEyes,

“Sure you need fat. Most of us know that. I add flax oil to my water packed tuna, I add ground flax to my low carb pancakes and my protein shakes. I use olive oil in salad dressings and I eat salmon and sardines frequently.”

You shouldn’t be adding lots of polyunsaturated fats into your diet, and you definitely don’t want to cook with them, either. They go rancid very easily, which is bad for you to eat. Saturated fats are much more stable at high heat, which makes them the best for cooking. Pancakes fried in bacon grease is SOOO good :slight_smile: A diet should have under 5% calories from polyunsaturated fat.

From what I’ve seen and read, most people have allergies. If I’m not mistaken, I believe it was a number something like 1 in 3 have allergies. An allergy is just a general toxic overload, anyway. I’m not sure why exactly you can develop an allergy from eating the same thing all the time…I’ll have to look that one up more. But I have heard about it a lot.

“Synthetic verusus natural. Hmm. So you’re saying your body can tell the difference in compounds that are chemically identical and a mass spectrometer can’t differentiate between them?”

Yes, because your body has to use it’s own nutrient stores to use that synthetic vitamin. A natural vitamin already has all that stuff with it, so it does not put stress on the body to use it. You know how they say if you take your bioflavanoids with vitamin C it helps make it more effective? Well, natural vitamin C already has that in it.

I don’t want this to sound like an ad, but I know Dr. Eric Serrano recommended Standard Process vitamins. They grow all the foods on their own mineral rich farms and then process it at room temperature to get the vitamins into tablet form without destroying it. I believe if you want vitamins, something like this is the way to go, NOT a mega multiple from Walmart or something.

“Or you can turn Amish and farm your own food behind a horse team using only natural composted fertilizer.”

Hehehe, but the scary thing is a lot of Amish are starting to use unnatural methods which can really screw things up :frowning:

Burps from raw eggs? I know burps from cooked eggs smell bad, but I don’t find any smell from raw eggs. And that’s from eating a dozen a day.

One thing I’d like to point out is that supplementation with “super foods” is just as important, if not moreso, than normal supplements. That and that you want to have plenty of natural animal fats in the diet.

Take care,
Neil

19

Neil, there is not anything dangerous about a high protein intake; in fact I’ll dispel each and every argument against it right now:

  1. A high protein intake causes kidney and liver dysfunction. Well, your not going to see any references in this paragraph; know why? Take a guess at how many studies have concluded that a high protein intake causes renal damage in healthy individuals. If you guessed any number higher than zero, you’re wrong. This whole argument is based on theory that doesn’t add up in the real world along with a few studies conducted on individuals who already had some sort of pre-existing renal disorder. If a high protein intake really caused renal failure, then there would be a nationwide epidemic of liver and kidney conditions among athletes, bodybuilders, and high protein dieter…but, there’s not; in fact, it’s unheard of.

  2. A high protein intake puts individuals at greater risk for osteoporosis. This argument is based on the premise that a high protein intake leeches calcium from bones, which is true. However, the amount of calcium excreted in a single day is so minute that it can be replaced with the amount of calcium contained in a single tablespoon of milk [15]. The average high protein dieter consumes more than enough calcium daily to combat such a loss due to their consumption of milk and/or milk protein products (cottage cheese, whey and casein containing powders, bars, etc). Not only that, but if you are reading this magazine, I’m going to assume that you regularly perform some sort of resistance training, which by itself increases bone density.

  3. A high protein intake puts individuals at greater risk to develop kidney stones. Again, there are no studies to prove that a high protein intake causes kidney stone formation. Out of all the people you know consuming a high protein diet, how many of them ever developed a kidney stone? This is only true for individuals who previously had a kidney stone in that it may put them at greater risk for reoccurrence. I say “may” because this is only the case if the kidney stone was of the uric acid variety, and only 20% of all stones are uric acid stones. Regardless, unless you have a family history or some sort of pre-existing medical condition that makes you susceptible to stone formation, it’s not even an issue.

  4. A high protein intake causes dehydration. When the nitrogen-containing portion of an amino acid is removed in the liver, the chemical compound urea is formed and then excreted. Because urea must be dissolved in water before it is removed from the body, a high protein intake will result in minor fluid loss. The simple solution: drink more water.

Take care,

Joel

20

Neil, you are an idiot. First you say we should eat raw eggs. That will get you exactly where i have been for the past week. On the great throne of the porcelain gods. And second of all, you think coconut oil is a better source of fat than fish and flax oil. Ill say it one more time. You are an idiot. I would not call you an idiot except you came on here guns blazing and you are wrong. Big time wrong about two very important things.