In Thursday evening’s debate with Harley Johnstone, aka Durianrider, of 30 Bananas a Day (see here for the debate wrap up and reader discussion), I issued a challenge for listeners to get a sense for comparative nutrient density by comparing some measure of beef liver with what it would take in any mix of fruit to roughly approximate the nutrition, buy which I basically meant: vitamins and minerals.
While not a precise comparison and we don’t have the actual nutrient breakdown, 30BAD member Harrison — to his credit — was honest and open enough to do just that. Basically, he compared his breakfast of 1800g of papaya and 450g of strawberries to a measly 113g of beef liver. That’s 79.4 ounces of fruit (5 POUNDS!!!) compared to 4 ounces of beef liver (1/4 POUND!!!). Here’s the chart, the top one being the fruit and the bottom one the liver.
Fruit (top) vs. Liver (bottom)
In rough terms, this makes liver about 20 times more nutritious than fruit by weight. Also note the protein. Four ounces of liver and you get 10g more protein than in 5 pounds of fruit. What you don’t get, however, is 211g of sugar, a full 207g more than in the liver.
Now here’s where Harrison flubs the experiment all up, making it an apples to oranges comparison (who can fault him?).
I exceeded the vitamin and mineral content of 4 ounces of beef liver with my breakfast. It’s not really so tough.
He’s comparing a reasonable amount of caloric energy in his breakfast to a breakfast that wouldn’t satiate my 15 lb. rat terrier. So let’s do a little work on FitDay and see how his 850 kcal breakfast compares to a breakfast with the 4 ounces of liver, plus eggs, potato and fruit, to get up to an equivalent level of energy.
But first, let’s look at the actual nutritional breakdown for the fruit. You’ll need to click it to open up the full size version.
Fruit Nutrition
Green numbers are those nutrients that exceed the daily RDA and red, those that fall short (but in fairness, this is but one meal). Dashes mean the meal doesn’t contain the nutrient at all.
So here’s the full meal I constructed and again, click to open it to full size if you need.
Full Meal
Now, for a breakfast I would be more likely to go with double the meat (8oz) in the form of a sirloin or other breakfast steak and adjust the other stuff accordingly. At any rate, let’s stick with the 4 ounces of liver for continuity.
Here’s the nutritional breakdown.
Liver Meal Nutrition
And now finally, here’s a graphical comparison of both ~850 kcal meals, with the fruit meal at top.
850 Calorie Comparison
So, while he was able to achieve a rough vitamin and mineral equivalent consuming 850 calories and 5 pounds of fruit to 150 calories and 4 ounces of beef liver, if you actually add the rest of what you would need for an 850 calorie meal from eggs, starch and fruit, you simply blow the 5 pounds of fruit out of the water by a very wide margin, on average. What’s more, you don’t have to eat five pounds. Estimating my meal at 650 grams total, you’re under a pound and one half of total food.
This ought to give any vegan pause, especially feeding infants and children.
So, commenters, what have you to add? Any other insights to glean from this? Vegans: see if you can do better. Better mix of fruit? Perhaps some leafy greens? Paleos, can you do better? Just how about everyone stick to the same 850 kcal meal so that we’re comparing animal flesh to animal flesh.
Stabby 
Chris 
Tony 
Michael 
Adam Landry 
Walter 
I don’t like these comparisons because they give equal weights to nutrients supplied to superfluidity. We don’t need that much vitamin A or copper. At least Richard isn’t writing a book based on the faulty premise like some guys *cough*fuhrman*cough* How much vitamin k1 and beta carotene do we actually need? Chances are you could get it in a cup of kale, or
My point Stabby is merely one of nutrient density. A meal with a variety of animal and plant products is always going to provide more vitamins and minerals than an equally caloric mix of just plants, and at a far less gram count total.
Agreed, then. Complete sufficiency in all nutrients is more important, and liver still wins in that department, by a long shot. Eggs, brains and some seafood too.
Fuhrman included some esoteric plant compounds in his equation that have never been demonstrated to be useful, but he left out CLA in grass fed meat. You get like 5g of the stuff in a steak, that’s huge for a non-macronutrient that has biological activity. We could look at this stuff all day and come to one inexorable conclusion: animal foods in at least some quantity are nutritionally beneficial.
I need to call something out here: 5 grams of CLA in a steak? Do you have a nutrional profile of a steak that has that much?
It’s hard enough to get 1000mg from pills made from Safflower Oil (see Tonilin and Clarinol). The most I’ve ever seen is in a cut of pastured bison (which natually has a little more than an angus cow but about the same as a longhorn cow). That number didn’t even reach 100mg/100g. I’d love to know where you got your steak with that much though!
another thing i think needs to be pointed out is that cooked food is more bioavailable and absorbed at a higher rate than raw food. eating cooked paleo means consuming way less than raw vegan. so eating food that is more nutrient dense AND cooked means spending way less time and money to nourish your body.
this duriander character might as well be a jungle living primate grazing all day.
The much higher nutrition content of animal foods has another, interesting effect – it leads to a lower overall caloric intake: bit.ly/ieSJlF.
Some say that protein is satiating. Put a bunch of people on a protein-only diet of a toxic 400 g of protein powder per day, and they will be hungry all the time; that is before they develop serious health complications.
I think that satiety is highly correlated with how nutrient-dense a food is.
New, high protein is the problem. They are likely leaving out a matching (or higher!) level of essential fats, which provide a higher level of satiety and are absolutely required for proper assimilation of many nutrients.
Put a bunch of people on a protein-only diet of a toxic 400 g of protein powder per day?
In what way is this toxic? I’m not sure why this gets repeated. Do you have a reference for this? I’m really curious about this one.
400 grams of (dairy based) protein powder a day? What are we, lab rats? “Everyone” knows that whey powder digests very fast, yanks insulin around almost like sugar.
Try……meat. I have spent periods consuming 300-400 grams per day of meat protein, and I assure you that compared to a high fat diet, the high protein one is far more satiating. I have experimented on this several times and always get the same results. Further, protein digestion requires energy, so almost 25% of what protein you eat disappears due to TEF, Thermic Effect of Food. So if you are on a weight loss diet, you get a double good whammy: less hunger, fewer net calories.
Back to school, New.
Sure, but if you get your protein from meat you’ll also be getting fat and other nutrients at the same time, and the protein will no longer be toxic.
Does the term “rabbit starvation” ring a bell?
Heres my breakdown of my breakfast. I eat dairy but still mostly paleo.
16oz whole milk
3 Eggs fried
.8 cup spinach (for caloric accuracy)
.25 onion
1 tomato
1 banana
1 medium sweet potato (hashbrowns)
850 cal
Fat 39g
cho 88g
Pro 43g
http://img96.imageshack.us/i/drawpagel.png/ – link to rda graph
Pretty damn good, nutrient wise, i could eat another 850cal meal and hit all nutrients for that day easy with only eating 1700cal. I will probably eat over 3000cal however…
30g ham 66.2kcal
500g mineral water 0kcal
30g roasted liver 61.8kcal
140g beanstew 183.2kcal
15g parsley 1.8kcal
25g vanilla ice cream 48.1kcal
5g wheat germ 16.7ckal
12g sugar free sweets 15.5kcal
That meets the daily recommended intake in everything and in just under 800kcals. Database I used is http://www.fineli.fi so results may vary if you use different one.
Ooops, that came up incomplete.
15 parsley 1.8kcal
60g yellow bell pepper 15.8ckal
70g carrots 19.6ckal
2g mineral salt
200g mineral water
10g sunflower seeds 58.2kcal
165g smoked vendace 202.5kcal
200g brussel sprouts 39.3 kcal
500g mineral water
20g blue cheese 67.7kcal
2g basilica 1kcal
Upon closer examination it gets even worse.
What’s the conversion ratio of the carotenoids to true vitamin A? 10:1? 12:1? Even if for kicks and giggles we arbitrarily lowered it to 6:1 he is still getting a lot less vitamin A than what appears on the chart. And God forbid he is a non-responder.
What is the bio-availability of the B-6? That is one thing bananas provide in a highly bio-available form, but no bananas at this meal.
How much of the protein is complete even if multiplied by 3? Might explain some of the emaciation affect that is noticeable to nearly everyone except LFRV*ns
Give them pause? Indeed.
Spot on. Once you take into account the poor bioavailability and anti-nutrient issue with plant sources these kinds of comparisons become meaningless. Similarly with vitamin C – about the only micronutrient more abundant in a fruit-based diet – people consuming all that sugar need higher vitamin C intakes. If you are a low carb meat-eater, you don’t need so much vitamin C. I don’t eat any fruit or veg and haven’t done for a number of years. Neither do I supplement, yet I have so far had no problems with vitamin C deficiency. I probably get small amounts occasionally (bacon usually has a small amount of ascorbic acid added) but I guess, being almost zero carb and maintaining low-normal blood sugar throughout most of the day I just don’t need that much.
Might want to reexamine the Vit C requirements on a VLC diet. Not saying you weren’t getting enough, but I’m pretty sure the dietary requirement goes up significantly for VLCers. The Perfect Health Diet folks chronicle an episode of scurvy from going VLC without paying attention to their intake. Of course, it’s very easily avoidable if you pay attention.
Breakdown of my breakfast:
coffee, black
more coffee
even more coffee
yet another coffee
not much in the way of nutrients but I have a firm ass
Why the fuck would you post this ??
Because he’s showing that he NEEDS the coffee to get through his day – you know – the DRUG that coffee/caffeine is. – Going away from stimulants was one of the best things I did for myself – I’m glad I’m no longer abusing caffeine, and that my diet gives me the energy I need.
You sound boring.
I think rob is troll baiting. This is fucking hilarious. Rob you caught a live one man.
Don’t forget, all that fruit would be expensive as hell (especially if you get organic), and totally NOT local for most of the year (anywhere but the tropics).
For a crazy-ass bike rider who can quadruple his calories from fruit to try and just TOUCH on the amount of nutrition from animal products, so be it. For growing kids who need more nutrients, don’t shove more fruit down their throats. Give them nutritionally DENSE foods– butter, organs, eggs. Balance with some fruit and veg.
Ugh. I read through some of the comments over at 30BAD and it’s just down right frustrating. It amazes me to this day how different people can read the same studies and come to such different conclusions.
Personally, 5lbs of fruit for breakfast alone is ridiculous. Give me the meat and eggs and call it a day.
Re: the mention of wheat germ above, I don’t know whether that was serious or not, but that’s a good example of where basing one’s breakfast solely on reported nutrient content can go wrong. There are other factors like antinutrients and the bioavailability issue that Michael mentioned. Because of these issues and others, wheat germ is best avoided regardless of alleged nutrient content. These issues are also additional reasons beyond listed nutrient content that Richard’s breakfast is better on the whole than Harrison’s.
—*—
Richard, are you aware that Durianrider is claiming that you have 30% body fat?
“Its fat vs fit.
Saturated fat and cholesterol vs high water content, glucose rich fuel.
10 second workouts vs all day and night stamina.
30% body fat vs 5% body fat.
Fatty and greasy vs sweet and juicy.”
What do you expect? He has been shown to lie about everything. Anyone can do the math. 30% BF of 175 would mean I have a lean mass of only 122.5.
Of course, most of the 30BAD crowd would not even intuitively understand how ridiculous that is.
In fat, my BF is about 15%. I’m happy with that. Going to 165 would put me around 10%, but last time I went down to 170 I soon realized I just felt better at 175, where I’ve been +/- for quite a while now (I did have a brief shoot up to 183 or so before starting Leangains). But, perhaps it’s time to give another shot and see if my bod is ready to take a lower set point and live with it.
Fuck all this debating bullshit, why don’t we let Mr 20-something Bananas take on Mr 50-something Paleo in a knock-down (with or without Queensberry rules). My money’s on Richard, and I’m a cheap bastard.
I for one, would pay big dollars to see that!!! :)
I for one think a 10 minute MMA cage match would be fun. I would certainly not shy away from the challenge.
Indeed, I would expect nothing less from Durianrider/Harley. The only way I can figure he got the figure was by lazily going by the quote in your “ABOUT” section: “Tipping the scale at 235 (5’10), at over 33% body fat, I decided to do something about it.” Some good may come of Harley’s bogus criticism, since I think it would make your ABOUT section more impressive if you included your current 15% body fat figure.
Richard has 15% body fat? Maybe Im deficient but all I see is gut rolls and bingo arms. Hey, like I said ‘my Mum is as fat as Richard and I still love her’.
Both the water dunk and the electrostatic yield 13-18, but I assume you understand that water is counted as lean mass and water kinda has a mind of it’s own. When I was 235, I was reading 33-35.
But do the math. Do you think I could deadlift 2 plus of your scrawny 145 at a mere 120 lean mass. That’s about what you have, Harley. BTW, there’s a recent video of me DLing 305 that you can look up.
What do you suppose would happens if we both set out into the outback, water only, no food? I could g0 weeks. I’d guess you might go days.
Endurance?
I hate to say this, Richard, but Harley (Durianrider) may be right in that case. If you weigh 175 lbs. and are at 5’10”, or 70″, that works out to a BMI of 25.1 – just barely overweight (overweight is BMI of 25 – 29.9). Even by American standards, you are overweight, and according to Harley, American standards are pretty lenient because fat is the norm in America. However, your body fat percentage is 15%, so you could just have a lot of lean muscle mass.
Ryan, those BMI translations into “Obese”, “Overweight,” or whatever are real crapola. I think anorexics come in “Normal.” :) Then throw in the observation that so many American’s are overweight as a sub-translation and we are walking on air.
In fact, the whole BMI thing is, at best, fraught with problems. Best as a rough guide, but too many variables.
Body fat percentage is probably the most accurate way to assess one’s normal weight. But even that parameter is hard to measure accurately and consistently. Calipers depend on expert use, and there are any number of formulas out there, some better with old people, some with men, yadayada. Mark Sisson had a water immersion test once that read WAY wrong, the administrator knew it, too. Finally gave him his money back, IIRC.
After three years of self-comparison with scales or calipers, I’ve decided that the only test is “How do I look,” coupled with “How do these pants fit?” Compare yourself to yourself, not to others.
There are people on one side (such as Harley) that say the American standards for overweight are too low in order to hide the extent of America’s fat problem, then there’s people on another side that say American standards for overweight are too high so certain groups can scream, “America has an overweight/obesity problem”. LOL
Michael Jordan is “overweight” by BMI standards, as are virtually all MMA fighters, boxers and especially, bodybuilders.
The BMI makes no distinction between lean tissue and fat, and appears to have been standardized by ectomorphs, not mesomorphs (like me) or endomorphs.
Well, of course bodybuilders appear overweight by BMI standards, but the average American isn’t a bodybuilder.
“Re: the mention of wheat germ above, I don’t know whether that was serious or not”
Lemme give you a bit background info on that. Health officials in my country have been comparing LC diet to a rat poison and saying that if you limit your intake of grains, vegetables and fruits, you are gonna be lacking in vitamins and minerals. One guy who lost a lot of weight and got improved health on low carb diet, came up with a 800 calorie challenge. You had to fit all the daily vitamins and minerals in 800 calories following the official guidelines just like he did on LC. Guess what the biggest complaint by the contestants was? That it had to have some either potatos, rice or pasta and bread in it, because their nutrient density is so poor.
BMI is just wrong. It can for example, be misleading not only between people, but for individuals. If you lose muscle, you may well get a better BMI and if you gain muscle your BMI may be worse. On the standard low carb diet (which should have be disparaged after Ancel Key’s starvation experiment) you lose about equal amounts of both — a horrible deal. And people apply this repeatedly each time starting from a worse position. Don’t ask me how I know. Been there, done that, silk screened and hawked the t-shirt.
Been reading the blog for a while and spent a bit of time over on the banana site looking at what a general daily food intake would be on that type of diet. I did a bit of messing around with fit-day as well looking and nutrient comparisons vs quantity and density too and then did some rough costing out based on the current prices I buy food at. I didn’t write it all down though.
Anyways I figured out that for some daily diets it was considerably more cost then my diet even if I was buying grass-fed organic meats. I do have some pretty straight from the farmer sources and do buy bulk so my meat costs tend to hover around regularly meat costs.
It came out at even more cost considering that I grow and preserve about 60-70% of my vegetables each year. Even if I grew more fruit I would be greatly restricted in variety because I live in a northern clime. I do have apples and plum trees and am planting a variety of berries but as anyone who grows these things they know how seasonal things are. So I would be trucking ‘fresh’ fruit from 1000 kms away. Also there is the whole idea of ‘fresh’. Most tropical like fruit for people that don’t live in the areas is grown isn’t all that fresh and the large majority of it is picked green, unripened or barely ripe. Consider me spoiled. On a vacation in Florida I ate actual tree ripened fruit. There is just no comparison. That type of fruit in the stores here is just a pitiful facsimile.
A diet like that would also make me utterly dependent on my local grocery store and massive global food networks. Thanks but no thanks. Right now the majority of my diet comes from local sources. The farms I get my meat from are less then 50 kms away and my pastured eggs are 30ft away in my back yard.
If someone want to not eat meat or animal products for ethical reasons (not killing) then fine that’s their worldview. I was veggie once too so I know all the arguments. However anyone making some sort of arguments made on that this type of diet is better ethically ecological wise compared to mine can seriously blow it out their rear. Seriously get a clue. It’s ridiculous and based on a lot of myths about agriculture and how things can be grown and produced. I’m with them on the whole industrial factory system though when it comes to animals. However production of fruit and especially someone who demand that level, type and quantity of fruit in North America is just as complacent and dependent on that industrial ag model. Most of the fruit that is commonly found in grocery stores has been specifically bred for that industry as well.
Thanks but no thanks. I’m going to stick with my 20 varieties of tomatoes I grow, the apples that you can’t find in a store when they’re in season, seasonal strawberries I pick fresh and ripe, other seasonal fruits and berries and the dozens of varieties of veggies I grow each year to feed myself. Oh yes and the animals and related products. Ethics and ecological reasons aside it’s appears to be way cheaper. I’d have to get another job to eat that way year round. Sorry not happening. :)
Oh and plus how in the hell am I supposed to go camping or on weekend hikes needing that much food? And eating that often and that much in a day? I’d never get anything done.
Anyways…that was a bit ranty…but seriously it’s one of the most ridiculous types of diets I’ve ever come across. All the power to people who choose to do it I guess. If it makes them feel good then it’s nothing to me. Don’t bother trying to convince me to do it though or that it’s a better ‘lifestyle’ for me and for everyone else.
Jade, hate to tell ya, but most of the fresh fruit and veggies in Florida are now not local. Once upon a time (woo, am I old), especially in the winter, everything was from nearby. Florida has a law, apparently, that mandates a grocer must list country of origin for fruits at the point of sale.
While avocados and mangos are commercially grown still (around Miami, I think) most now come from Latin America. Oh, the avos are the big green “alligator pears” type. Those puny Haas come from California and Mexico, only, I think.
Even citrus is now mostly imported. Brazil hammerlocked the juice market decades ago, and now even fresh citrus is often imported.
Welcome to America, 21st century.
Please excuse all the typos in my previous post. I wrote it way to fast and failed to proofread. :)
How can a person eat 5lbs of anything in one sitting? As much as my three year old loves fruit, and would eat nothing but it and bread, there is NO WAY he could consume enough of it to meet his nutritional needs. Children have small stomachs – they can’t eat a 3000 calorie smoothie. And if he had that much sugar, we would all be very very unhappy in a few hours – because of the crash that would come, and because he would probably have diarrhea in a few hours. Good thing mine son likes his bacon!
How can a person eat 5lbs of anything in one sitting?
Ha, we have had some fun with Martin Berkhan with back and forth comments about eating 5 pounds of…ahem…meat in response to his cheesecake mastery posts. :-) We may have even talked about it here in some previous comment thread.
“How can a person eat 5lbs of anything in one sitting?”
maybe just a lack of imagination on your part doesn’t allow you to conceive of someone, not only being able to eat this much, but for it to be an enjoyable experience
I just cooked 5 strips of bacon and an onion (in the bacon grease of course) then threw 4 ounces of beef liver and 8 ounces of grassfed ground beef in with it and mixed it all up and kept cooking. When all the meat was done I put 4 eggs on top of that and stirred it around until they were cooked.
All of that was dumped on a plate (my version of “plated”) and topped with a whole avocado. Raw. That’s right, raw fruit…
Anyway, I didn’t feel like plugging all that data into Fitday so I just plugged it into my mouth. What was the nutritional breakdown? Delicious! My more detailed calculations are:
Liver…Delicious
Beef…Delicious
Bacon…Delicious
Eggs…Delicious
Onions…Delicious
Raw avocado…Yeah, even that was delicious
Okay, on a more serious note I do think it’s cool to compare the nutrient content of vegan/vegetarian meals to the ones I eat. If the v/v is eating grains, the comparison looks even worse than what Richard was showing above. Robb Wolf has mentioned an analysis Cordain did in which he compared vitamin/mineral breakdown if a paleo diet to standard food pyramid type of stuff. It’s worth tracking down to share with your friends, especially the ones afraid to feed their kids proper food.
I would struggle to put into words how hungry this post just made me… Excuse me, I think my pan is about hot enough now to drop the bacon strips in…
I still cant image the mental burden of finding, eating, and carrying that much weight in food each and every day of your life. Shame on you Durian for promoting a cult that supports the transporting of out of season goods half way around the world. That’s an environmental
tragedy and crime against humanity. For goodness sakes, eat some fucking flesh and call it a day.
I have, on numerous occasions, eaten “raw” for weeks at a time. One of the biggest drawbacks was how often I had to eat or make something to eat. I felt like I was constantly preparing something in the kitchen or going to the store to buy more supplies. I have a dehydrator, Champion juicer, and Vita-Mix blender so I was making raw crackers, juices and smoothies/soups. I ate so often and on days where I had to go to school it was awful! Lugging around big tubs of salad, multiple fruits, and smoothies in canteens. Biggest pain in my ass. By the end of these attempts at being “vibrantly healthy” from raw food, I said FUCK THIS and went back to eating pasta. Raw can be affordable but it just wasn’t feasible on a daily basis.
Now, I shun the pasta as well and eat a nice breakfast of eggs, meat and veggies. For lunch, I buy a salad with meat in it and make dinner at home. I eat smaller quantities of food but I am more satisfied. No need to carry around a bunch of food all day in case I’m hungry. It’s nice!
Evolutionarily for primates, there is the continuum from gorilla who eat almost ever waking minute on the small bran/massive gut extreme to the other, humans who can go without eating for 2-3 months on the big brain/small gut extreme.
Which would you rather be?
This morning I only had a short time to prepare something to eat before heading to school. I fried 3 eggs in butter with 2 turkey breakfast sausage. I also ate a small tangerine that came from my own backyard tree (living in southern California allows for such things.) I was satisfied and NOT HUNGRY till about 2pm! Lower amounts of food that make me feel full longer, feel good in my tummy and taste good: WIN.