Diet Theory...

[Skilla_Staz]

I was just thinking..in theory, if I could find a product with just protein in it, find some pure glucose or fructose or whatever, and take some MCT and EFA's or what not, could i build a pure diet? I know vitamin/mineral supplementation would be necessary as well..but would this be the ultimate "clean" diet?

 

[spesmilitis]

Well, eating pure glucose, thats worse than eating pure sugar. I think atleast with sugars, its two or three glucose molecules together.

Anyways, my nutrition professor said that nutrients are most effective when they interact with the foods they come from.

 

[dirtyvibe]

salt?

 

[Warboss Alex]

no.

 

[Throttle]

that gives you no fiber, soluble or insoluble. you need a balance of fats, not just the 'good ones' (MCTs & EFAs are such useful supplements b/c american diets dominated by other fats). a simple sugar like malodextrin is potentially useful post-workout, but will play havoc with your insulin and metabolism the rest of the time.

more broadly, virtually every study of supplementation has shown, as spes says, that natural foods are more useful for health than the supplements that purportedly copy their "good parts"...

this makes sense. our GIs evolved as a compromise in order to process our omniverous habits, and get the most out of all sorts of foods (given those compromises -- we're pretty bad herbivores, for example). pure protein, pure sugar, and so forth were unavailable to us until extremely recently.

although it is possible to "fortify" some foods to make them healthier, for the most part, additives are put into our foods for other reasons (taste, texture, appearance, shelf-life, convenience, etc.) we still don't know what most of those additives really do for us, so there is a case for eating as simply as possible. but you're not proposing simple (primitive) eating, you're proposing simple (reduce our diet to its chemical components) eating. I think that's a dead end (plus it would be really, really boring!)