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Nutritional madness - Food itself

There is probably nothing more confusing than nutritional space. At least that's how I feel when navigating it. Let's see if we can even build a mental model of what can be considered healthy when selecting the food itself. This is not nutritional advice, but rather an exploration of the topic. I'm not an expert. Individual factors play a significant role, keep that in mind. What follows is examination of evidence - scientific and personal, and complications that make the universal dietary recommendations so difficult.

Calories?

Yes, there is the Atwater system. You burn some sort of a food item and measure how much heat is produced. To me, this is very far away from how the body digests any given food, and is too simplistic. Some calories may be better utilized, some less. Calories from protein are also used as a building block, and if there is no protein coming from food, extra energy is required to synthesize them I speculate.

The food matrix is another point here. Calorie is not a calorie when taking into account food processing and binding factors. The food label is therefore a source of confusion, yet we rely on these labels when shopping. I'm not even taking into account individual factors such as metabolism and gut microbiome.

The RDA that roughly falls into the 2k calorie range may be too high or too low, where I'm leaning towards the lower range. While the Atwater system overestimates the usable energy in many whole foods, someone eating nutrient-dense minimally processed foods might appear in calorie deficit, while meeting their actual energy needs. This is different from a true sustained energy deficit, which has been studied in humans in the CALERIE study on longevity, with some research on animals.

Macros and calories are one thing, what about micronutrients?

Micronutrients?

It's a very nuanced topic. First, the vitamins were established by observing acute symptoms of a deficiency - scurvy, pellagra. This is how it is considered essential. What if there is a cumulative effect of some compound that can manifest itself after years? Modern research already identified thousands of bioactive compounds that aren't classified as essential, yet may protect from disease. Focus on individual isolated essential nutrients may be missing benefits of these thousands of compounds.

The food matrix also plays a role. Bioavilability may differ from when the vitamin is consumed in isolation versus being supplied with other elements. Delivery method, presence of other compounds - all that matters when the body digests food or an isolated nutrient.

At least for some known essential nutrients there is good research that backs them up, allowing us to prepare them in a lab, still some synthetic vitamins or minerals have different structure or are delivered by other means, affecting bioavailability. Take magnesium for instance - magnesium citrate has higher availability than oxide. Binding definitely plays a role.

RDAs are also just a reference and were designed to cover 97.5% of the population for extra safety. It may as well be that most people likely need even less micronutrients than the RDA suggests. There is also nutrient interaction that may skew the actual values - some nutrients may compete for absorption, like zinc and copper, which is not taken into account by the recommendation. Individual factors like metabolism, gut health, and activity level further complicate one-size-fits-all recommendations.

My take is to simply classify foods by their theoretical nutrient density and let the nature do the work. Be sure to avoid processing to leave the food as close to the original state as possible, leaving the tens of thousands of possible compounds, some of which are not known yet, intact.

Processing

There is scientific evidence that says that ultra-processed foods are unhealthy for various reasons, including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity, etc. However, the evidence is low quality at the very least. How would you define whether the food is ultra-processed or not? Are there any confounding factors? Can we get better than doing observational study? Despite these questions, I believe that the scientific suggestion is in the correct direction here.

What about general processing like cooking? It's clear that heat exposure can alter the nutritional profile of the food. For instance, milk pasteurization reduces B12 content, as it is heat-sensitive. I'm not even counting bacteria and enzymes that are getting destroyed, leaving a different composition of milk as prior to heating. I know that the idea is to kill bacteria in the first place. Raw milk advocates argue these beneficial bacteria have value, though raw milk carries documented pathogen risks that can be significantly mitigated through careful sourcing.

It is worth noting that cooking can actually improve availability of nutrients - for instance cooking tomatoes increases lycopene absorption, and fermentation can increase B vitamins. The key seems to be minimal processing that preserves the food matrix while improving digestibility where needed.

Protein denaturation from cooking is a well-known effect that generally improves amino acid availability - for instance, cooked eggs are far more digestible than raw ones. However, excessive heat can destroy beneficial proteins like taurine, and the Maillard reaction from prolonged high-heat cooking can reduce amino acid bioavailability.

Given the above and my personal experience, my take would be to avoid any processing where possible. Can you eat something uncooked, in its original state? Weigh the risks and go for it. Cook only what's necessary, like grains, or legumes, or certain vegetables, perhaps egg whites. The challenge is whether to accept risks with milk or meat (yes, this can be eaten raw), as these may harbor pathogens like bacteria or parasites. Notably, outbreak rates from raw milk have declined significantly even as consumption has increased, suggesting that sourcing from producers with strong safety protocols does make a meaningful difference.

Sourcing

Now if you decide to eat something, especially raw, you better know the source. This becomes quite complicated. You need to find farms that feed the animals a natural diet, do not keep the animals in confinement, maintain good hygiene and do not medicate unnecessarily. Yes, it's possible to raise animals without routine use of "chemicals".

The issue here is that animal products' profile depends on how the animals are treated. Going with the milk example, if you dare to try unpasteurized milk from conventionally raised animals kept in confinement and fed primarily grain, you are accepting higher pathogen risks - which is exactly why pasteurization became standard practice. On the other hand, milk from pasture-raised animals on well-managed farms with rigorous hygiene protocols significantly reduces these risks compared to conventional milk.

Animal diet directly affects milk composition. Research shows that milk from 100% grass fed cows has 147% more omega-3 fatty acids and 125% more conjugated linoleic acid than conventional milk, with an omega-6 to omega-3 ratio near 1:1 compared to 5.7:1 in conventional milk. Grass-fed milk also contains higher levels of fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin E and beta-carotene. Whatever the animal consumes affects the final product - feed an animal garlic and the milk will taste of garlic; provide highly nutritious pasture and you get more nutrient-dense milk.

My lean here is that products from a proper farm are much higher quality than options available at supermarkets. The latter may be useful when traveling or as a backup, but knowing your supply chain - understanding how animals are raised, what they're fed, and the farm's hygiene practices - becomes essential if you're choosing minimally processed foods.

In conclusion

I acknowledge the complexity and limitations of what's typed above - nutrition science is messy, and individual variation is enormous. We've touched on nutrients, processing and sourcing, and it is already getting quite complicated. If I were to distill that into simple rules that likely fail, that would look something like that:

That's my view on the actual food. I hope this helps to unconfuse the reader somewhat.