Denise Minger hasn't been blogging so much, so I missed this one.
Not only is it fascinating, it's aligned with her book,
Death by Food Pyramid, which I loved. It's explains the diet variations in all of us, depending on the enzyme patterns our ancestors developed.
Which explains so much. Including why none of us does particularly well from a highly processed food diet. And why the right diet for us must be experimented with. There is no one-size-fits-most.
Why Do Some People Do Well as Vegans and Vegetarians? (Clues From the Magical World of Genetics) explains that otherwise inexplicable dilemma. The one where I know people who happily eat in a way that would give me a slow agonizing death.
Quote:
Luckily, science is nudging closer to an understanding of why people respond differently to low- or no-animal-food diets — with a great deal of the answer rooted in genetics and gut health.
No matter how nutritionally adequate a vegan diet looks on paper, metabolic variation can determine whether someone thrives or flounders when going meat-free and beyond.
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Personally, this is part of the variation I'm doing, which has given me dramatic good results. But I had to pare down my diet to only those foods which DON'T make me me sick and fat. A year and a half later, that turns out to be a very short list
Specifically: meat, seafood, eggs, high fat dairy, and botanical fruit.
Here's the four she covers in the article:
1. Vitamin A conversion
2. Gut microbiome and vitamin K2
3. Amylase and starch tolerance
4. PEMT activity and choline
Though, of course, there are many many more. My experiment with vegetarianism including cheese and eggs was a failure, leading me to conclude I simply can't get enough protein from plant sources. And now, probably other things as well.
Most people would be freaked out by my near total elimination of plant foods, but if I don't make the enzymes to get protein and vitamins from them;
I don't make the enzymes. Without proper digestion, such foods are bad for me, not good for me.
I found it a fascinating read. Though I still have no patience with vegans