Fruits and Veggies -Worth the hassle?

We have gone back where we started. Don't get me wrong, I tremendously appreciate the time everyone has taken to post but at the end of the day, everybody has just said "are you crazy? fruits / veggies are of course good for you". That much I know and that is what my grandma says anyway -albeit you guys said the same in a much fancier way. But for me to be motivated enough to go ahead and invest the time and effort into eating them, I must know how good they are. It looks like no one can really tell me -or to hard headed people like me in general- how much longer we can expect to live or how much we can reduce disease risk by eating fruits and veggies. My demand for such quantitative data may sound childish but are we not asking for such information whenever we make a decision? Are we not always comparing the cost to the benefit in life? What is wrong about doing the same about this topic?

So again, my question is: pls do not say -no matter how fancy a language you use to say this- that fruits and veggies are good for you and there is science to prove this. Every single poster on this board knows this. If you can, pls try and quantify "how good" they are. If such quantification cannot be made, simply say so...

Sub7

Posted by: @Josh

CR certainly seems to provide advantages both in life extension and in wellness.

At what cost though? Low energy, cold all the time...sure you live longer but there has to be a balance between quantity and quality.

Posted by: @Sub7

I must know how good they are. It looks like no one can really tell me -or to hard headed people like me in general- how much longer we can expect to live or how much we can reduce disease risk by eating fruits and veggies. My demand for such quantitative data may sound childish but are we not asking for such information whenever we make a decision? Are we not always comparing the cost to the benefit in life? What is wrong about doing the same about this topic?

So again, my question is: pls do not say -no matter how fancy a language you use to say this- that fruits and veggies are good for you and there is science to prove this. Every single poster on this board knows this. If you can, pls try and quantify "how good" they are. If such quantification cannot be made, simply say so...

Sub7

EDIT:
You really expect numbers e.g. if you eat broccoli you'll live 1.378 years longer? [not that broccoli isn't really good for you and highly recommended]

No there is no such data (nor could there be).

Leaving life extension aside I think eating fruits and veggies will increase the odds of you being heathy longer, and as been noted many feel better doing so.

I gotta ask, Sub how old are you?

Re: CR

I kinda though lifting regularly and CR were kinda mutually exclusive (even leaving bulking aside). I would wonder similar things about regular cardio.

ScottL! Are you feeling well today?

Or are you biased in your opinion of the benefit of fruits and vegetables because your gut isn't exactly whole and functioning properly - is it?

Cardio has other benefits for us; of few of those were delineated in young Swords thread on sleep habits.

ATB, you are barking up the wrong tree. The benefits vary among fruits and vegetables. But what is important is their degree of hemicellulose availability to digestion, the rate at which they release glucose forming mono and polysaccarides. For its profound influence on insulin - and there lies the tie in to CR.

We are generations away from the back breaking toil of the mid-1800s; the result of the industiral age has been to change our energy budgets and alter the cultivation, processing, distribution, and physical storage of foodstuffs - our calorie salary has grown. And yet, our eating habits that reflect even through the 1960s our heritage of feeding up for a day of hard physical labor, remained unchanged for nearly a century.

Concurrent with the movement away from hard physical labor in the fields, was the shift for most of the labor population to life in cities, with its rampant pollution, noise, fast paced living - all cumulative impact stressors that contribute, along with calorie overload, to the majority of disease prevalent today.

CR? It is not a matter of reducing calories, its which calories you reduce, and that used -- for timing and energy production and storage, tiisue building, fiber content for gut health and glucagon/insulin response, of micronutrient - phytochemicals - that *moderate* the action of many cellular control, expression, and response cascades.

Benson has it rightly. Sub-7 why do you persist is demanding some nonexistant absolute proof of efficacy?

If you are lazy, continue with your current diet. I have given you plenty of reasons for the beneficial effects of fruits and vegetables.

You are the result of familial genes, and their expression in response to environmental factors. If you family genetics are stellar, your parents and grandparents long lived - then the benefits will not as profound as for those who have any of the common diseases of poor lifestyle choice...you *inherit* that tendency when its replayed over generations.

So go ahead, if there is bad genetic currency in your family genes, add to it, and pass it on to your off-spring. Eat whatever you wish.

If you owned a motorcycle, your brand of hardheaded logic would demand direct evidence that a helmet would protect *you* from mortal injury. You would cast off the many studies that show its life preserving benefits. After all, it can't be quantitated for your particular case, can it?

Because life is a crap shoot, an unknown statistic, an algorithm comprised of a hundred or more factors, each factor with it's specific coefficient. How do you calculate the exact benefit of eating fruits and vegetables?

Not for us to evaluate. Why the hell should we care, eh?

Its your life -you are in the drivers seat.

Posted by: @Sub7

We have gone back where we started. Don't get me wrong, I tremendously appreciate the time everyone has taken to post but at the end of the day, everybody has just said "are you crazy? fruits / veggies are of course good for you". That much I know and that is what my grandma says anyway -albeit you guys said the same in a much fancier way. But for me to be motivated enough to go ahead and invest the time and effort into eating them, I must know how good they are. It looks like no one can really tell me -or to hard headed people like me in general- how much longer we can expect to live or how much we can reduce disease risk by eating fruits and veggies. My demand for such quantitative data may sound childish but are we not asking for such information whenever we make a decision? Are we not always comparing the cost to the benefit in life? What is wrong about doing the same about this topic?

So again, my question is: pls do not say -no matter how fancy a language you use to say this- that fruits and veggies are good for you and there is science to prove this. Every single poster on this board knows this. If you can, pls try and quantify "how good" they are. If such quantification cannot be made, simply say so...

Sub7

Well the cost-benefits of fruit and vegge's depend on whether they are addressing needs in the individual, and their quality.

This may be of relevance:

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/fibre-deficiency.html

If they contribute to reduced mineral absorption, and the carbs contribute more than the nutrients do comparitively, they are negative influencers in the average diet. Massive ammount of vegges I dont think are actually good for you - nutrient density, and the kinds of nutrients that you dont get from other sources, are the key factors. Soluble fbre in the form of cellulose, good, other constituents may be bad.

Thats why I suggest that Spinach and Berries covers most of the benefits you can get from plants. I add carrots (raw) and apples, gives a range of useful things, low calories.

And if there are mineral deficiency causing constituents in the vegge, consume it away from meat and nuts.

Nuts are better than seeds, IMO.

Posted by: @trouble

ScottL!  Are you feeling well today?

Or are you biased in your opinion of the benefit of fruits and vegetables because your gut isn't exactly whole and functioning properly - is it?

I"m feeling fine but I think I need a course in precise communciations. I've clarified my post about perhaps that answers your question.

I agree that excess consumption of phytates is problematic for mineral absorption - when mineral supply from other nutrient dense dietary sources is lacking.

Some of the these studies are flawed, because they fail to address a significant issue addressed in numerous USDA ag lab studies conducted and published over the last decade. Modern agricultural practices result in the leaching of certain minerals from soils, including calcium, zinc, iron, copper, and selenium. Produce grown and animals raised on feeds produced from these depleted soils are deficient in certain minerals, and this trend is becoming more obvious in regions with highly leachable soil types employing modern ag practices.

Sustainable soil agricultural practices have been developed and proven to help correct leachability, restore mineral and carbon depleted soils, and allow production of mineral enriched crops.

Moderation is the key to reducing the effect of mineral binding phutates in certain food stuffs.

You do not avoid them, you use them in moderation.

Posted by: @trouble

Sub-7  why do you persist is demanding some nonexistant absolute proof of efficacy?

If you are lazy, continue with your current diet.  I have given you plenty of reasons for the beneficial effects of fruits and vegetables. 

You are the result of familial genes, and their expression in response to environmental factors.  If you family genetics are stellar, your parents and grandparents long lived - then the benefits will not as profound as for those who have any of the common diseases of poor lifestyle choice...you *inherit* that tendency when its replayed over generations.

So go ahead, if there is bad genetic currency in your family genes, add to it, and pass it on to your off-spring.  Eat whatever you wish.

If you owned a motorcycle, your brand of hardheaded logic would demand direct evidence that a helmet would protect *you* from mortal injury.  You would cast off the many studies that show its life preserving benefits.  After all, it can't be quantitated for your particular case, can it?

Because life is a crap shoot, an unknown statistic, an algorithmf comprised of hundred or more factors, each factor with sits specific coefficient.

Not for us to evaluate.  Why the hell should we care, eh?

Its your life -you are in the drivers seat.

Excuse me?
May I please invite you to use a more mature tone?

From my earlier post: "If you can, pls try and quantify "how good" they are. If such quantification cannot be made, simply say so..."

Hence, I cannot see the point in your comments

Sub7

Posted by: @Benson

CR certainly seems to provide advantages both in life extension and in wellness.

At what cost though? Low energy, cold all the time...sure you live longer but there has to be a balance between quantity and quality.

Life is not cheap.

Actually I do agree with this point. I did CR for a long time, and it was only when I increased my energy intake that I appreciated just how crap you can feel on CR. That aside. The energy is a bit of a problem. I found that regular dosing with Vit B throughout the day seemed to help. As for the cold - put another sweatshirt on

J

Cool soup recipe Josh.

Have you added sauted beef or chicken to this recipe for protein? I would use a concentrated chken or beef stock, and simmer it with shredded beef, for a non-vegetarian variation, instead of adding the bran at the end.

Love the addition of the anti-inflams.

Sub,
I hate veggies too. I just throw a lot of assorted vegetables and fruits int one of those damn juicer things. It leaves a lot of the fiber intact and makes consuming them much faster and a lot less unpleasant.

Posted by: @geigertube

Re: CR

I kinda though lifting regularly and CR were kinda mutually exclusive (even leaving bulking aside).  I would wonder similar things about regular cardio.

What sort of exercise is recommended for CR?

Sitting quietly...seriously, if you have restricted your calorie intake to the point I have seen advocated, you would have just enough coming in to cover base metabolic function...and not much else. Serious CR folks can often not even maintain body temp...

Posted by: @Sub7

If one wanted to show the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables, one can easily find hundreds if not thousands of pages of research to back up such a position. However, I am starting to wonder if the difference is big enough to really bother. First of all, some studies fail to find any benefit at all of eating fruits and vegetables in terms of longevity and cancer prevention. Sure, there are also numerous studies that do show such benefits but the effect size is usually so small that the sample size has to be enormous to display a statistically significant difference (the effect size is almost never discussed in either the mainstream media or even scientific publications, it is enough for people to see a statistically significant difference even if this means a 2% reduction in cancer risk or 1% improvement in expected lifespan). On top of it all, a lot of the benefits from fruits and vegetables come either from the fiber content or the major vitamins and minerals (as in the vit and minerals one can find in a pill that sells for $9.95 / bottle).

Given all this, I am wondering whether the hassle of trying to eat more fruits and vegetables is really worth the effort. If you are eating your oatmeal and taking a basic vitamin supplement, how much more will you really gain by eating frutis and veggies? Of course there are hundreds of components that we can either not find in pills or we can absorb and utilize better if we get them from natural sources. But how much is the improvement really going to be? I personally have gone for long periods without eaitng frutis/vegetables and never felt a difference. I know people -even athletes- who eat almost zero fruits and veggies and do perfectly fine. Is it really worth the hassle of buying that stuff, throwing them away often as they spoil on you and -most importantly- forcing yourself to eat them if you are like me and do not really like that stuff?

Not looking for confirmation of my own views, only seeking an objective discussion really...

Thanks

Sub

if there is one dietary factor that is the most inversely related with cancer incidence, it is vegetable intake... period