Optimal Fuel Mix for Biological Vehicles

[P3nT4gR4m]

I treat my body like a machine. Not like a "temple" as I've heard some people say. It's not something I revere and/or worship. It's a tool. It gets me from A-B and allows me to X, Y and Z when I get there. Some time ago, perhaps unconsciously, I decided I needed mine to be a touch more high-performance than the mean average. Compared to an Olympic athlete, my body is a heap of shit but, compared to the average joe, the difference is probably about the same.

Inhabiting a machine that's that's tuned to this level of performance has it's advantages. If you have a fast car, you get from A-B faster. For a given subset of human activity, a given X, Y and Z, being significantly stronger, more agile and with a greater stamina, the activity becomes easier, quicker, more efficient or even more enjoyable. One other area that requires very little attention to maintain machine performance is fuel. I'll stuff it full of carbs and proteins and fat for whatever the fuck it is that it does with that shit. Keep the water topped up. Essentially diet is not something I have to think about. One of the benefits of a performance metabolism is that, within reason, you can chuck most anything at it and it'll burn up what it needs and shit the rest.

So why am I thinking about this shit now? Quite simply my machine is out of warranty. Another couple of decades and most folks get rid of theirs by then, they just break down. They're programmed to break down. We (by this I mean people other than me) Haven't quite been able to either halt or reverse this process as of yet but we are able to slow it down and/or mitigate it's effects. We replace dying organs, we inject potions and elixirs and we zap shit with magical beams of energy. One thing that we (by this I mean me included) can do to help is to optimise fuel intake.

So here's my plan.

I've never given much of a fuck about variety (I can take it or leave it) I have actually lived whole years of my life on staple diets of convenience that never varied much. I'd eat the same shit for breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day. Never bothered me. I want to replicate the same scenario, as far as possible, reducing my day to day fuel consumption to one highly optimised training day diet and one highly optimised rest day intake.

I want to try and lob some science at this bitch, stay away from calories for the time being and concentrate on proportions and the best possible ingredients to give all the best kinds of nutrients. One diet to rule them all. Ideally it should consist of easy to procure ingredients which I can buy in bulk. I'll favour cheaper stuff but not to the detriment of health benefits. If a couple of spoons of lentils gave the same nutrients as caviar, I'll go lentils is what I mean.

Prep is another thing I'd like to simplify. I know it's not healthy to whizz everything up in a blender and skull the lot. I'm sure I've heard tell of reasons you ought to chew and fibres being destroyed or turned into sugar or some shit but, maybe some of it could be whizzed up and other stuff lobbed in a bowl and guzzled down? My fuel will be yanked from the fridge and stuffed in with the minimum time and effort applied.

Problem - I'm Scottish - I know fuck all about food. So, Peedee, I challenge you to help me invent the perfect formula top-fuel for running this machine on.

*edit* - Link dump

Site has my new age bullshit sense tingling but the bullet points are solid if I can back them up or replace them with research

[Reginald Ret]

Blending is merely chewing with powertools, just make sure your chewing muscles don't atrophy.

Calories are neither good nor bad since you are not gaining weight, so you shouldn't think about them at all.

Eat lots of various vegetables, raw vegetables usually retain more micronutrients than cooked but the difference isn't huge and cooked is easier to eat. Then again, if you blend it you won't need to cook it to make it easy to eat.

Nuts are always good but can be a hassle, eat them as occasional snacks or toss a handful of them in the blender with your meal.

Red meat is good for everything but your heart&arteries, eat it in moderation. I'd say go for 10-20% meat in your meal.
Keep the same percentage or less for fruit, too many bad sugars.

Here are some ther things that should never be primary ingredients:
Butter, Lard, Oil, etc (most people know this but scotsmen can use the reminder)
Sugar (That includes fruit)
Alcohol(Think of alcohol like this: It is sugar that dehydrates you for 72 hours)
Chocolate

[P3nT4gR4m]

Blending is merely chewing with powertools, just make sure your chewing muscles don't atrophy.

I've heard there's more to it than that, enzimes in saliva that activate cascade effects in the digestive system and shit like that.

Calories are neither good nor bad since you are not gaining weight, so you shouldn't think about them at all.

A calorie is a unit of energy measurement. Absorbing energy in usable form is one of the main functions of eating. I'll have to think about them a bit but, like I said, I can scale up or down once I have a base proportion requirement.

Eat lots of various vegetables, raw vegetables usually retain more micronutrients than cooked but the difference isn't huge and cooked is easier to eat. Then again, if you blend it you won't need to cook it to make it easy to eat.

Nuts are always good but can be a hassle, eat them as occasional snacks or toss a handful of them in the blender with your meal.

Red meat is good for everything but your heart&arteries, eat it in moderation. I'd say go for 10-20% meat in your meal.
Keep the same percentage or less for fruit, too many bad sugars.

This pretty much defines where I'm at in terms of fuel intake, right now. What I want is what is the best single thing from each of those groups which, when taken in combination, yields the most efficient delivery of what I require. I don't want to be doing chicken one day and beef the next, if I can avoid it. What I want is an either/or or a percentage content of each which I can replicate every day. I want to concentrate on bang for my buck. So if one nut is the best source of something, I can ignore all the other types of nut and just eat that type.

Alcohol(Think of alcohol like this: It is sugar that dehydrates you for 72 hours)

I'll think of alcohol however I damn well please, thanks very much. It so happens I think of it as a psychic utopia realisation system, in accordance with popular Scottish theology

[Reginald Ret]

The only saliva enzymes i am aware of are Amylases, they help you digest complex carbohydrates. Fuck them, they do nothing but give you more calories. Also, you can just spit in your blender and not blend at full power (to protect your salival enzymes).

You can buy mixed nuts, mixed meats, mixed pretty much anything.
But fine, you want a meaty tip? Use beef, it is not as bad for your heart as pig and has more minerals and useful protein than chicken.
No wait, if you can get horse eat horse. It should be cheaper than beef and has more iron. Also, it tastes better.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Good call on the nuts. I'm also hearing good things about berries. Isn't there something about too much beef = murder death kill or something? Also - environment. Can it be replaced with better, sustainable alternatives or are they all missing something?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Variety is key to a really optimal diet, so forget about simplicity.

Animal proteins are the powerhouses of the food chain, because they represent the concentrated nutrition of all the organisms the animal consumed.

Don't be afraid of eating fat. The idea that fat is bad is a myth. Being fat has unhealthy side effects, eating fat, within reason, is good for you.

Eat lots of fresh vegetables, fruits, meats, eggs, dairy, fish, and nuts. Eat some grains. Minimize refined sugar and alcohol, and avoid heat-processed vegetable oils.

Beef is environmentally awful; pig is a little better, followed by chicken. None of them are ideal but you gotta eat. Wild-caught fish is great but you don't want to eat too much of it because of lead, mercury, and PCB concentrations. Don't eat farmed fish if you can help it, unless you are buying from a store that vets its suppliers really well.

Mix it up. Try to eat something different every day of the week. If you see a food you've never had before, try it.

Basically, follow Michael Pollan's advice and you'll probably be OK: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants".

[P3nT4gR4m]

Variety is key to a really optimal diet, so forget about simplicity.

See, I've come across this a few times but I'm not convinced. Is there an explanation somewhere why we should eat a whole different bunch of different stuff. I'm not saying it's a bunch of crap but it doesn't make any sense to me. I'd rather it did.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Variety is key to a really optimal diet, so forget about simplicity.

See, I've come across this a few times but I'm not convinced. Is there an explanation somewhere why we should eat a whole different bunch of different stuff. I'm not saying it's a bunch of crap but it doesn't make any sense to me. I'd rather it did.

No one thing you eat is a perfect source of nutrition. Eating a bunch of different things in moderation, with some general guidelines about protein/fat/carbs, is ultimately probably easier than picking through every nutrition label with tweezers to try and find a bare minimum "optimal" diet. You don't want to eat the same, mostly-ideal thing every day for a year only to discover that you forgot to account for Vitamin B-1337 and now you have Spontaneous Dissolving Butt Syndrome.

[Cain]

Red Bull, bacon, haggis and salt.  The four basic food groups.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Variety is key to a really optimal diet, so forget about simplicity.

See, I've come across this a few times but I'm not convinced. Is there an explanation somewhere why we should eat a whole different bunch of different stuff. I'm not saying it's a bunch of crap but it doesn't make any sense to me. I'd rather it did.

No one thing you eat is a perfect source of nutrition. Eating a bunch of different things in moderation, with some general guidelines about protein/fat/carbs, is ultimately probably easier than picking through every nutrition label with tweezers to try and find a bare minimum "optimal" diet. You don't want to eat the same, mostly-ideal thing every day for a year only to discover that you forgot to account for Vitamin B-1337 and now you have Spontaneous Dissolving Butt Syndrome.

In addition, there are a couple of other factors:

1. Nutrition is only incompletely understood at this time. One thing that is known is that people with an extremely varied diet tend to be healthier and live longer.
2. Many foods that have a lot of known important nutrients (salmon, for example) also have known carcinogens (PCBs, for example) so it's good to eat some salmon, but also good to not eat it all the time, to avoid ending up with a high toxic load and increasing your likelihood of developing cancer. Applying this principle across the board helps ensure that you are getting the widest exposure to nutrients while minimizing the opportunity for toxic accumulation.

[Reginald Ret]

Variety is key to a really optimal diet, so forget about simplicity.

See, I've come across this a few times but I'm not convinced. Is there an explanation somewhere why we should eat a whole different bunch of different stuff. I'm not saying it's a bunch of crap but it doesn't make any sense to me. I'd rather it did.

No one thing you eat is a perfect source of nutrition. Eating a bunch of different things in moderation, with some general guidelines about protein/fat/carbs, is ultimately probably easier than picking through every nutrition label with tweezers to try and find a bare minimum "optimal" diet. You don't want to eat the same, mostly-ideal thing every day for a year only to discover that you forgot to account for Vitamin B-1337 and now you have Spontaneous Dissolving Butt Syndrome.

In addition, there are a couple of other factors:

1. Nutrition is only incompletely understood at this time. One thing that is known is that people with an extremely varied diet tend to be healthier and live longer.
2. Many foods that have a lot of known important nutrients (salmon, for example) also have known carcinogens (PCBs, for example) so it's good to eat some salmon, but also good to not eat it all the time, to avoid ending up with a high toxic load and increasing your likelihood of developing cancer. Applying this principle across the board helps ensure that you are getting the widest exposure to nutrients while minimizing the opportunity for toxic accumulation.

Nigel speaks many truths.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Yeah, I guess I can get behind that. Just a bit of a shame it can't be better optimised 

The simple facts are food just fucking bores me. It's a lot of hassle having to decide on something to eat, go procure the ingredients and then spend hours mixing it all up into shit you can swallow. It's even more of a hassle when you really don't give a fuck about the whole process. Now and again I like a nice meal but, day to day, I can't be fucked even thinking about it.

Biology really gets on my tits sometimes 

[Junkenstein]

Red Bull, bacon, haggis and salt.  The four basic food groups.

If you're English on tour, maybe.

The real food groups are Grease, carbon, unknown meat and starch. Fat was originally in there as well but there was this whole takeover by the Grease council and it's more Scottish politics than you really want.

[Reginald Ret]

Red Bull, bacon, haggis and salt.  The four basic food groups.

If you're English on tour, maybe.

The real food groups are Grease, carbon, unknown meat and starch. Fat was originally in there as well but there was this whole takeover by the Grease council and it's more Scottish politics than you really want.

? That is just called 'meat'.
Named meat costs more.

[Junkenstein]

"Meat" comes in cans. Origin tends to be known but few questions asked as it's not usually good.

"unknown meat" usually comes in bags. Usually paper, usually dripping a bit. Questions on origin lead to cleavers being waved in faces and indications that you could also be considered meat.