How are we all still alive? Whats the physiological effects of not having veggies in the diet?
Asking as a new parent who’s toddler used to eat everything, but now understands what “greens” are and actively denies any attempt to feed him veggies, even disguised. I swear his tongue has an alarm the instant any hidden veggie enters his mouth.
I also have a coworker who goes out of their way to not eat veggies. Not the heathiest, but he functions as well as I can see.
In: Biology
Amlas contain the necessary nutrient called “Vitamin C”. Have you ever eaten an Amla? Are you still alive?
It turns out many things contain this “Vitamin C”.
Nutrition happens on the molecular level. Your body, anybody , gets what it needs to survive, even if that means sacrificing some of the other tissue and organs. There’s a difference between surviving and thriving.
There are only certain vitamins your body can’t make itself. Off the top of my head that includes B12 an Vitamin C. I’m sure there are others, but a lot of what make vegetables healthful is unknown.
They try giving people vitamins and other chemicals from vegetables in isolation without much positive effect. Part of the healthful effect seems to be the fiber. Other might be the nitric oxide production from consuming nitrates. Or just that if you’re consuming more vegetables (which are generally lower calorie) you’re eating less other higher calorie foods. Calorie reduction itself is longevity promoting.
Survival ≠ healthy
You can survive on the bare minimum for X amount of time. But you’ll most likely feel like crap, and have no energy, and liquid poop which just speeds up dehydration.
On the other hand, eating a balanced diet has a boat load of effects. From blood pressure, to brain function, to muscle development, and healthy one wipe poops
And it’s not just the nutrients. The fiber you get from veggies goes a long way to help your digestive tract
Here’s a very specific example:
Folic acid is something that, when eaten by pregnant women, prevents babies from developing certain disorders. It is found in leafy greens, but it is also put in things like cereal to decrease the occurrence of these disorders. I imagine similar stuff occurs with some other nutrients.
Probably why my grandma gave me flint stone vitamins every day when I was at her house, I was a little bit of a picky kid
There was a case back in the 90s where a 14 year old girl got scurvy because she didn’t eat any vegetables or fruit. An article I read at the time said that the only vitamin C she got was from ketchup.
Think about all the kinds of plants in the plant kingdom. Hundreds of thousands of species.
Think of how many are edible to humans. Of those, how many were cultivated in just the past hundred years or two. We eat a very narrow slice of the plant kingdom, and much of those were cultivated from a few species to fit human needs.
As I see it, plants are more of a convenience food that we turned to after learning agriculture, rather than a foundational food that humans have eaten for all of human history.
If nutrients are absorbed into our tissues when we eat them; then arguably nutrients are also absorbed into the tissues of the animals we eat. And then we eat those animals.
So interesting you mention vegetables I grew up in Mexico for like the first 7 years of my life we don’t really push vegetables (other than lettuce or broccoli really ) but I mean all our meat dishes have tons of tomatoes, bell peppers, or even lemon. Yeah vegetables pushing on kids is such an American concept thing to me like Latin america for the most part pushes fruit based instead of vegetable based. So I mean if you mean how well there is fruits , fruits have fiber and nutrients just like vegetables, their also more easily digested if you think about it (so I think that’s some reason why in Latin America we don’t push for vegetables, they make most people stomach hurt (bloat, GI distress).
Veggies contain necessary nutrients, but they’re not the sole source of those nutrients. Also, many people survive but don’t thrive because they don’t get enough of those nutrients, just the quantity they need to live.
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