Current Diet: 1-29-2012

Reflecting back on my past 3 or so months I've been living in Germany, I've realized that I've departed quite a bit from what I was eating back in the states. Primarily the frequency and amount of vegetable consumption has gone way down, and the quality of the meat that I eat isn't as good as I'd like it to be.

The main vegetable matter I eat is sauerkraut, spinach, and canned tomatoes, in order of frequency, with all of them being organic. I'm eating organic ground meat (pork and beef mix), organic eggs, Kerrygold butter, and organic/Kerrygold cheese, along with the occasional conventional meat, although lower fat. I eat fruit probably once every two weeks, and I am experimenting with eating more carbs prior to my workouts in order to have more glycogen. I've started doing this as I realized I fill out a lot when I eat more carbs, which shows me that I am fairly glycogen depleted (in muscles) normally. Makes sense due to my pretty low carb diet.

Typical Day:

• Breakfast - 300g ground meat or 6 eggs cooked in 50g butter, with Sauerkraut, coffee [60g P, 50-70g F]
• Lunch - 300g ground meat in broth with spinach, coffee [60g P, 30g F]
• Dinner - 300g ground meat or 6 eggs in 50g butter, sauerkraut [60g P, 50-70g F]

Totals: 180g P, 130-170g F, negligible carbs

Calories: 1900-2250

Recently I've been buying some cheese, and eating 200g a day, adding roughly 30g P and 30g F, and 390 calories to my daily totals.

For lifting, I eat two potatoes the meal prior to lifting, and then two post. On Saturdays I lift around 10:30am, so I've been experimenting with eating two more potatoes on Friday night.

Looking at my totals, I'm a little surprised to see the calorie totals around 2000, I was under the impression I was eating around 2500 or so. 

Everything is too damn sweet

Almost every vegetable or fruit breeder out there is selecting for sweetness, since that's what the consumers want nowadays. We have “super sweet” sweet corn, sweet carrots, sweet cabbage, sweet broccoli, and sickly sweet fruit. There is also a selection for “milder” tasting fruits and vegetables, with carrots tasting less like carrots, and apples less like apples. To me, it seems every plant product is tending towards some form of sugar delivery system.

This irritates me, as I want to cook with “serious” vegetables. Carrots that with slap you in the face with their terpene content, and flavor the shit out of soups. I'm also looking for fruits that actually taste different from each other, in other words, fruits that have higher concentrations of phenolics, and aromatics. In the past years I've been enjoying “antique” apples, and eating many different kinds, since some have more spicy notes reminiscent of licorice, or more milder notes like bananas and strawberry.

Another thing that I've been thinking about, is that since many of the compounds that give fruits and vegetables their characteristic are actually there for defense against pathogens and herbivores, by selecting against these compounds, were actually selecting for plants that are essentially harder to grow. Instead of plants defending themselves against pathogens, we have to take the roll with insecticides and pesticides.

If we just bred plants for being what they are, and not focusing on making a bland, sweet consumable for the masses, we could enjoy more kinds of flavors in our foods, and grow them better.

Now I just need to get some of these heirlooms varieties and breed my own.