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Wednesday 1 June 2011

Low-Carb Diets – What Is Missing?


Bumped post.

Those of you who are regular readers of diet and diabetic forums will be familiar with the ranting of a barely literate dietician. I have always put the illiteracy down to the possibility that English may not be her native language. Although the ranting is enormously amusing it may be a cause of confusion to newly diagnosed diabetics - the dietician has repeatedly insisted over many years of the possibility of scurvy, osteoporosis, constipation, etc, from following a low-carb diet. It is interesting to try to find what is missing in following a low carb diet. Perhaps the simplest way of doing this is to consider identical meals (identical in both portions and meat/fish etc) over a day in which the high-carb food type (potato, pasta rice, bread, fruit, etc) is replaced by a low-carb food type (or more likely a combination of low-carb food types).

In the following example 100g of new potatoes boiled in unsalted water is replaced with 100g of broccoli boiled in unsalted water. Table 1 indicates the vitamin and mineral content for some of the more important dietary elements. It can be seen that broccoli in 13 out of 18 of the important dietary elements has a greater or equal amount of the element. In those instances where potato has a greater or equal amount of the dietary element (vitamin B1, vitamin B6, potassium and selenium) the deficit in dietary element is easily made up with side-dishes made up of combinations of one or more of celery, courgette, radish, cauliflower, or mushroom.
It is interesting to consider the possibility of scurvy, osteoporosis, and constipation.
Table 1 Potato versus Broccoli








Potato

Broccoli

Winner

Vitamin

A

0.00

80.00

+

B1

0.13

0.05

_

B2

0.02

0.05

+

B3

0.40

0.70

+

B5

0.38

N

_

B6

0.33

0.11

_

B12

0.00

0.00

Draw

Folic Acid

19.00

64.00

+

C

9.00

44.00

+

D

0.00

0.00

Draw

E

0.06

1.10

+

Mineral

Calcium

5.00

40.00

+

Iron

0.30

1.00

+

Magnesium

12.00

13.00

Draw

Potassium

250.00

179.00

_

Selenium

1.00

Tr

_

Zinc

0.10

0.40

+

Dietary Fibre

1.10

2.60

+


broccoli contains almost 5 times as much vitamin C as potato
broccoli contains 8 times as much calcium as potato
broccoli contains almost 2.5 times as much dietary fibre as potato

Unless an increase in vitamin C, calcium and dietary fibre increases the respective possibility of scurvy, osteoporosis, and constipation, it seems reasonable to conclude that the replacement of potato by broccoli (or numerous other nutrient rich vegetables) provides a viable dietary strategy for the diabetic and the illiterate ranting of the said dietician can safely be ignored.


Source http://www.food.gov.uk/science/dietarysurveys/dietsurveys/
John


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great article, thanks for 'bumping' it up.

Joe

Anonymous said...

Well put together, a good read.

Josh

Anonymous said...

Are you trying to alienate all the Welsh,or just this dietitian? :)

Lowcarb team member said...

No problem with the Welsh. But some useful advice from the dietition would be great. After three years of dross it's wearing thin !

Eddie

Anonymous said...

This blog has such a wide variety of articles and yes I'm hooked. I always look at the recipe's first but this one caught my eye. For my humble opinion I thought it said everything so well and set out in such a good way.

Thanks

Sarah