I am very aware of things like cooked spinach v.s. non cooked spinach. I pay close attention to what I eat, and make an effort not to fall into the traps of fad diets.
I eat a whole foods based, well rounded diet, that avoids known "gotchas" like aforementioned raw spinach. Oxalate are found in many of other "healthy" foods. I'm also very lean, but still pay close attention to the role of inflammation caused by insulin, and generally do my best to keep that down by avoiding carbs and sugar (though, not completely cut out, I am not keto).
Trust me, food is not the panacea of health that everyone espouses it to be. If you were dying of cancer, even the best diet on earth for you, may not save you. That said, a life of healthy eating is definitely a good idea and there's always the chance that I would feel worse, or simply die of a heart attack, if I weren't paying attention to my diet.
Diet is absolutely important to get in check, just like exercise. But it's all too often prescribed as THE solution above everything else. This often comes in the form of some revelation someone had, visa vi some weight lost, or some medical situation from their prior eating.
For some of us, there is no issue with weight, no medical problems, we cook all our own food (never eat out), eat well balanced whole foods, and yet still life is not magically solved.
Oxalic acid [1]. Could cause kidney stones especially if combined with other factors that may predispose you to having them. Simply cooking the spinach can remove most of it.
Personally, I ate an amount of spinach that made me an outlier(think the maximum you could fit on a foot long subway sandwich often daily for a couple years, and that was also combined with other poor choices like gas station big gulp sodas.
Raw spinach, some nuts like cashews, and other raw health foods can be high in oxalic acid. This is something of an anti-nutrient, which at best tends to reduce absorption of nutrients and at worst can build up in the kidneys and cause kidney stones.
As with all diet data though, YMMV. Some people eat loads of yaw spinach and never develop kidney stones.
Certainly if you have a familiar history of them, you should avoid raw spinach. Cooking it reduces the oxalates.
So... another case of "too much of a good thing?" I feel like the point comes up again and again... eat a variety of foods... everything in moderation? No single food is a cure-all or magically going to fix your problems. I'm sure if you eat too much of damn near anything, there will be some negative effects.
Yes. That's my take away after years of "paying attention" to diet and health. Countless articles read, videos watched, diets tried, trends analyzed.
Through it all, it seems a general rule of thumb is:
Eat whole foods. If it requires processing in a factory, avoid it. This includes many things that you might not intuitively think of. Vegetable oils, for example are a highly processed food.
Aside from avoiding processed foods, and eating whole ingredients... Yes, eat a variety of different foods. Eat vegetables, eat carbohydrates, eat meat. Just don't eat too much of any one thing, and if you can identify something that doesn't sit well with you, avoid it!
Spinach famously contains iron, but less famously also contains a substance that inhibits iron absorption. So IIRC, it actually lowers your iron, unless you blanch it and throw away the water.
Nothing indicates that the decimal point error ever was made, but the account about it will most likely live a long and colorful life, just like its parent myth
Spinach is a fictional plant, it was described by Linné as sort of a joke but then everyone just went with it.
But seriously, you described three layers of misconceptions in this comment thread, how is anyone supposed to know "the real truth" about anything food related, if spinach alone is such a hard subject?
Apparently there is no documentary evidence why an 1870 measure of spinach's iron content was exaggerated. The paper cited does not explore whether it ever was exaggerated, or what its actual iron content then or now might be.
I read various reports indicating that modern vegetables have much less of various nutrients than older, slower-growing or smaller-yielding varieties, and have no idea how I might evaluate such claims. Maybe spinach harvested in 1870 had more iron than highly-fertilized 1930 varieties, never mind 2021 varieties no one, to my knowledge, has bothered to measure. Or maybe not.
Yes, I actually illustrate that in a sibling comment.
My point is that it's a practice.
And yes, your weakest link may not be food related. My suggestion is that, given that the body receives input from nothing comparable other than maybe the air you breathe, as a whole we don't pay enough attention to what we eat. In other words, Occam's razor points to food in most scenarios.
> Trust me, food is not the panacea of health that everyone espouses it to be
If "everyone" says something, doesn't that kind of make it true?
> too often prescribed as THE solution above everything else
No doctor every prescribed food as my solution. The spinach thing was more like a comment in passing. Maybe on a single page "take home" paper after surgery. I have been prescribed surgery twice, though. And both could have been prevented with food.
PS- suffer from recuring sinus infections? Quit mixing dairy and sugar (individually they're fine). And yes, that means no ice cream before bed. But if you do not want to quit, there's a survey for that!
Yes, probably including you.
I am very aware of things like cooked spinach v.s. non cooked spinach. I pay close attention to what I eat, and make an effort not to fall into the traps of fad diets.
I eat a whole foods based, well rounded diet, that avoids known "gotchas" like aforementioned raw spinach. Oxalate are found in many of other "healthy" foods. I'm also very lean, but still pay close attention to the role of inflammation caused by insulin, and generally do my best to keep that down by avoiding carbs and sugar (though, not completely cut out, I am not keto).
Trust me, food is not the panacea of health that everyone espouses it to be. If you were dying of cancer, even the best diet on earth for you, may not save you. That said, a life of healthy eating is definitely a good idea and there's always the chance that I would feel worse, or simply die of a heart attack, if I weren't paying attention to my diet.
Diet is absolutely important to get in check, just like exercise. But it's all too often prescribed as THE solution above everything else. This often comes in the form of some revelation someone had, visa vi some weight lost, or some medical situation from their prior eating.
For some of us, there is no issue with weight, no medical problems, we cook all our own food (never eat out), eat well balanced whole foods, and yet still life is not magically solved.