Sunday:
This information is from my "Introduction to Nutrition" textbook (Understanding Nutrition, Whitney et al, 2011) which I assume is based on the latest scientific research.
1) Lactose intolerance varies widely across ethnic groups. For instance 75% of African Americans are lactose intolerant, whereas less than 10% of Northern Europeans are. As I am of English and Russian stock, and therefore one of the lucky 30% of the world who produce plenty of lactase enzymes, I shall continue to enjoy my cheese and milk without worrying that it is doing nasty things to my insides. It isn't.
2) I'm up to Chapter 4 and this won't be discussed fully until Chapter 7 so I don't have all the science behind it, but carbohydrates are important to the human body and very low carb diets have negative health consequences. My calorie counting app suggests I have around 200g of carbohydrate a day, the textbook says 50 to 100g is needed. So it's not suggesting you need to have lots of pasta every day, but it advises you to avoid the kind of very low carb diet that doesn't even let you have fruit or starchy vegetables.
3) Scientists are still learning about sugars in the body (and everything else) and one worrying new bit of information is "Cancer cells coated with sugar molecules, for example, are able to sneak by the cells of the immune system."
So, those are a few interesting things I've learned this week.
That was an interesting fact about sugar Natalie! Scary too.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who is in remission from cancer and she was advised to abstain from sugar in the days leading up to her scans/tests because of similar advice.
Never new such fascinating facts about Nutrition. Thanks for all the facts, learned a lot from this post.
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