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I'm thinking about going very low-carb and therefore considering ditching fruit for at least one month, for gut healing purposes and to become more insulin sensitive. The only thing that is holding me back is the idea that if i cut on fruits i might end up with some nutrient deficiency. My question: Can one get all the necessary nutrients from all the other foods? |
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For a month? You'll be fine. I did a year without much trouble. As already noted, Stefansson did a year without any trouble. People at ZIOH have done it for longer. Don't worry about cutting out fruit - fruit doesn't contain anything you can't get elsewhere. A note on vitamin C. Vitamin C is required in collagen synthesis as a means to convert an amino acid into another protein which you need to build collagen. No vitamin C, no new collagen, you get scurvy. Except when you eat all meat, you don't get scurvy. Best theory as to why I've seen is that meat, being meat, contains a great deal of the proteins necessary for building collagen, so you don't need vitamin C to do the conversion, so you don't get scurvy. Ah, the beauty of meat. You don't need to eat raw meat, just rare or medium. Doing ZC for a lifetime is a question mark because no one has actually done that in modern times with medical supervision (the bear half-counts but no one wrote a case study about him to review). But for a month? Your biggest problem will be dealing with adapting to a very ketogenic diet in such a short timeframe. It took me a while (3 months) to get into the swing of VLC. The first month was weird, as your body is adjusting to a pretty novel situation. Anyway, good luck on your ZC month and don't worry about anything. Just don't overcook your meat and you'll be fine. |
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Cutting all fruits: easily achieveable and beneficial. Vegetables almost invariably contain more nutrients than fruit without the fructose. Low carbohydrate vegetables can also provide you with tonnes of nutrients with minimal carbs. Personally I've not had any fruit at all, aside from strawberries about three times this summer, but have consumed about 0.5kg of veg per day. Cutting all carbs: This is a more controversial question. You can cover a great variety of nutritional bases on just meat and fat, far more than you would on a standard wheat-dominated 'balanced' diet. This is especially so if you regularly consume offals rather than plain muscle meat. On paper this would leave you struggling to get a variety of nutrients, especially things like magnesium, potassium, vitamin C etc, which tend to be found more in plant foods. The counter-argument to this fear, is that people who do live on meat-only diets often seem to thrive, with Vilhjalmur Stefansson and the inuit often cited as examples. One of the rationales for this, is that eating a very low-carbohydrate diet might decrease the need for various minerals. For example, vitamin C has to compete with glucose in the body, so far lower amounts are needed in the absence of carbohydrate; plausibly with lowered insulin, inflammation etc, one needs lower amounts of lots of minerals. It would make sense that in a mimicked starvation mode, your body would be able to survive only on its own resources of meat and fat, without intake of large amounts of nutrients from plants, but it's up for debate whether this is optimal or sustainable. |
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Some answers to your quetions on Zero Carb/ very low carb you can find in this fascinating forum: http://forum.zeroinginonhealth.com/index.php There you can find downloads for the books of Vilhjalmur Stefansson - very intresting to read... I don't feel any need to eat more than an occasional hand full of berrys fresh from my garden or some onions, garlic, herbs and greens for better taste with my meats... I feel great with that way of eating. |
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Good Calories, Bad Calories has some extended discussion of the idea David mentioned that requirements for some vitamins may drop on a low-carb diet. "Extra" vitamin intake may be required to deal with fructose, ethanol, anti-nutrients in grains, etc, and of course that's what most people eat so that's where the RDAs are set. But to make life more complicated I've also read the meat-only diet is only safe if the meat is raw, as cooking can destroy Vitamin C and possibly other vitamins as well. So if you cook your meat, you may need some other uncooked foods to avoid deficiencies. There's plenty of anecdote out there but finding reliable information is tough. |
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Cooking is far superior than raw in fact you can not get to many of the vits in raw veggies since cooking opens the plant up for digestion. somethings can be eaten raw but PROPER cooking is not going to kill anyone from lack of nutrients. Yes reliable information is tough to find. |
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