I cant say i agree with that fruit, vegetables for most even if cooked are pretty digestible compared to meat etc.

It seems your opposed to fiber, we do need a certain degree of fiber for various health functions such as bile formation, binding to toxins etc. But yeah each to there own and im genuinely interested not getting at you.

Will read your link, cant say im a fan of fasting in general though or long term fasts. Fasting in healthy individuals i could accept is probably ok but not those chronically ill especially those with adrenal fatigue as hypoglycemia at certain stages usually follows so can be deathly.

Low fiber = high risk of colon cancer.

Nature's food in a natural form is the best food for the body. We have teeth for chewing and a digestive tract for digesting. Perfect set up for munching on fiber foods. Removing a vital component such as fiber from the diet is very risky to your health.

Remember... if you don't use it, you lose it. What will happen to all those teeth if you don't use them?

The teeth and digestive system need a rest, they have been overused for years.

They can be taxed, stressed and overused on modern diet due to the high amounts of meat and other hard to digest food. Or even just because the quantity.

But other than that id agree with rocketship we have them for a reason and lack of fiber isnt a good idea in my opinion.

That's like saying the lungs and heart muscle need a rest. They get as much rest as they need when we are sleeping. What they need is proper exercise and nutrition. So long as one is not eating too late at night or otherwise abusing the system with poor food or too much of it there is no need for extra down time.

Agreed every muscle and gland in the body needs exercised right down to the adrenal glands which is why they can get lazy from glandulars or substituted steroids.

I chew my green smoothie

There is this huge misconception that because something is there we must use it. What the body needs is nutrients and chewing is one way into getting those nutrients, it is not necessarily the only way, animals in the wild chew all day long because they have nothing else to do such as balancing their checkbooks or taking the kids to school. We have machines to do the chewing so that we can do other things. Most of the chewing and eating we do is not necessarily a response to need of nutrients by the body but rather a response to stressful situations, we try to resort to food when we have an issue we want to escape from. It is more psychological. People have been nourished with liquid diets for years in hospitals, it is not unnatural.

Animals in the wild have nothing else to do? Wha? Like care for their young and elude predators all day long?
Btw, never met any hospital patient on all-liquids for years who is a.) healthy, or b.) still alive. And I know from hospitals.

I am in favor of occasional fasting to give the body a break but I don't think it's biologically accurate to say that most of our chewing and eating isn't for nutrition intake, like it's a desultory pastime; for a SADer maybe, but not one of us.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2011 09:54PM by Tamukha.

Right. People in the hospital are generally SO healthy. Because they are surviving on those awesome liquid diets. Not all the drugs or the machines they are hooked up to or anything. But it's not "unnatural", it's good for them! LOL.

Med -
Your machine isn't chewing either... it is juicing. No fiber. Unfortunately for me I care what you eat and how you treat your body. But I concede that you are entitled to consume all the pesticides and fiberless juice that you want. I am at peace knowing that we tried to educate you to the dangers of doing so in excess.

Madinah,

while I am a fan of fasting, I'm not a personal fan of a long term liquid diet. Yes our digestive system needs a rest, but there are other complications and biofeedback mechanism at play when digestion of fibrous food is carried out.

the biggest being the feedback loop between chewing and the health of the teeth. Like bones (which are closely related) teeth need weight bearing exercise in order to stay healthy. Chewing achieves this exercise. Long term liquid diets may not provide the amount of chewing needed to maintain strong, healthy teeth.

Rocketship "Low fiber = high risk of colon cancer".

There is no evidence I know of that indicates this for a liquid plant based diet. Studies that show evidence for this are based on comparisons between the average high fibre and the average low fibre diets. The average low fibre diets are low in fibre due to an increase in low fibre foods such as meat and meat products and processed starchy, sugary and fatty foods. As a consequence, they are also low in foods such as fresh plant foods, full of cancer fighting antioxidants and other nutrients that contribute to a bodily environment that is not cancer friendly.

So a liquid low fibre diet is radically different to the average low fibre diet and extrapolating evidence from one and applying it to the other is not ideal.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2011 10:36PM by klomasius.

coco you are so funny.

Quote

Interestingly enough, chimpanzees have been observed doing a primitive type of juicing called "wedging:" rolling up plant leaves into a "wedge," extracting the juice inside their mouths against their teeth (sometimes together with soft mushy fruit), and then spitting out the plant fiber (which they seem to have trouble digesting in large amounts).

[www.fastingconnection.com]

It is a natural apprach to use our intelligence to build equipment for survival, and juicer is one of them, there is nothing unnatural about a juicer.

There is nothing unnatural about living on a liquid diet, years of over eating are being balanced out with years of liquidarianism and fasting. It is the right approach, I drink about 3 pints of green juices in the morning and again evening and in between I eat soft fruits such as kiwis, pears, mangoes, pineaple, okras. My system is clean, rested, I do not need heavy green smoothies. If some leaves such as collard greens are not digestible, putting them in a blender to turn them into tiny pieces does not change that, they remain indigestible, creating heavy stools few days later. It is the green juice in the green smoothies that is useful and make them popular not the fiber.

I do water fast on Mondays, dry fast on Thursdays, my system is rested in between the juicing and soft fruit consumption.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2011 10:56PM by madinah.

Can you at least admit that it is the right approach for YOU and possibly NOT the right approach for others?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Sure I admit that it works and want to share my findings with the forum family members.

klomasius Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>>
> So a liquid low fibre diet is radically different
> to the average low fibre diet and extrapolating
> evidence from one and applying it to the other is
> not ideal.

Agree, not ideal. What we DO know is the same typical SAD diet that is high in fiber has a lower incidence of cancer.

It is not ideal for us to surmise that because a diet is healthful, such as a vegan diet, that fiber may not play as vital of a cancer-prevention role for the body.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2011 11:51PM by RocketShip.

When I chew wheatgrass I spit out the pulp, because it is impossible to chew. Not so with lettuce, spinach, parsley, kale, etc. That is a silly analogy.

Extremism in either direction is not a balanced approach. This may work for a while (like Atkins) but it probably won't work for long. I certainly wouldn't test it out on myself.

Quote

Fiber Menace: The Truth About the Leading Role of Fiber in Diet Failure, Constipation, Hemorrhoids, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn's Disease, and Colon Cancer

[www.gutsense.org]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2011 02:41AM by madinah.

Looks like I eat crow on that one. Metaphorically speaking, of course! Fiber does have an important role in the digestive process. So there. LOL

Simple green smoothies make me feel awesome! They are like the secret my body has been looking for. (as if that is not dramatic!) would you guys recommend a smoothie fast? If so, for how long? I am just trying to kick things up a notch.

februarygirl

Smoothies make us eat more, you would eat less if you were chewing the greens you put in the smoothies. It is very hard to chew smoothies.
A fast is either a water fast or a dry fast. A juice fast is not a fast, it is a juice feast, smoothies should not be even be considered in a fast discussion, would you say green fast if you were just chewing greens?

madinah,

Agree that juicing is not fasting. However, though I allow for my smoothies' maybe being different than is typical, I CAN chew mine, though obviously to a lesser extent than any solid component of the smoothie. I've deduced from experience that, whereas de-fiberized green or other juices do not satisfy my appetite, green smoothies quell it; this seems to be true, anecdotal evidence-wise for green smoothie advocates. If you mean that we consume "more" calories in a smoothie than we would eating individual components, I agree, with the caveat that that is the point: it's convenient for me to get the bulk of my fruit calories by bunging them into my Vita-Mix with a bunch of greens, and consuming[slowly over several hours] at least half a day's calorie allotment thusly. I understand that this may not be feasible/beneficial for everyone, however.

I don't even think its anecdotal, when you have the fiber it adds bulk which makes you feel fuller faster also, aswell as obviously slowing the absorption of sugars.

Like i say im a big fan of juicing but only if its with a juicer which retains some of the fiber, or i add abit of the pulp/external fiber source back in.

Ive seen enough research to prove pure fructose is one of the leading causes of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, not to mention insulin spikes.

fructose is an issue if you are juicing fruits, I eat fruits never juice them. I make smoothies from carrots and coconuts. Greens for me are not good for smoothies, you are forced to mix them with fruits which is wrong, I have a high speed blender and used to make green smoothies, it did not work for me, when I switched to juicing greens then I saw big improvement in my health. People are talking about the virtues of fiber, fiber is indigestible and should be maintained to a minimum and there is plenty of fiber, actually one of the best in carrots, coconuts, and fruits

I don't know if fiber should be kept to a minimum there is much documented evidence that increased fiber plays a role in preventing many degenerative diseases. Although yeah the subjects probably are those on SAD diets, still an adequate amount of fiber is essential for many health functions such as bile formation.

Either way it doesn't matter what your juicing what your left with is nutrients and pure sugar when you strip the fiber away. Again im an advocate of juicing to an extent as an addition to an already health diet. Each to there own i guess, i wouldn't like to rely on it solely.

Fiber should not be maintained at a minimum in a healthy diet. Those studies were with SAD eaters using wheat fiber supplements. Bah.

In any case, fiber plays a vital role in our health and claiming that it should be maintained at a minimum is ridiculous. If you are going to make those sort of statements HERE then please post links to a study that shows a liquid fiber-free diet is a healthier diet than a whole-foods vegan diet.

You wrote:
Smoothies make us eat more, you would eat less if you were chewing the greens you put in the smoothies. It is very hard to chew smoothies

Not true. When I eat a salad it is HUGE and my smoothies never contain as much greens/produce. So really, that is an assumption of yours. So I didn't quite get your point with that statement. A filling glass of smoothie is a filling glass of goodness. I don't understand why you are implying that it is somehow a bad thing that it might contain more food than if it were eaten whole.
Or are you implying that smoothies lead to overeating? Obesity?

(BTW, when I make a smoothie I prepare a portion of food that I am hungry for and looks appealing. THEN I blend it. So really and honestly I do not understand your claim that a smoothie makes us eat more. I do not pile the food up until I predict it will result in exactly 1.5 glasses of smoothie. LOL!)

From an economic perspective... definately it takes more produce to juice a glass of goodness than it takes to make a glass of smoothie goodness.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2011 07:32PM by RocketShip.

I juice greens and eat fruits. Very simple. There are good fibers in fruits, I do not need the fiber in greens. Where are the links to the study of the claim you make RocketShip?
If kale was not digestible raw what make it digestible suddenly when blended with water or fruits? No digestive enzyme was added during blending.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2011 09:38PM by madinah.

because its the cellular walls being especially thick that make it difficult to digest raw, high speed blending breaks down the cellular walls considerably, not quite as well as juicing does though... but youd be chewing the same leaf of kale for hours to break down the cells as much as blending does...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Madinah you have stated that you eat very little solid foods and at least 80 percent liquidarian diet. That is YOUR choice.

You have stated that you consume non-organic produce and use it in your liquidarian diet. That is YOUR choice.

A high pesticide, low-fiber liquidarian diet is not one that I would choose for myself or any of my loved ones. That is MY choice. And I won't be convinced otherwise.

You have been given enough attention on this topic. Your fallacious logic has hijacked this thread.

I'm done. (Unless of course you want to post that link to a study showing a low-fiber liquidarian diet is healthier than a whole-food vegan diet.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2011 12:10AM by RocketShip.

RocketShip, my findings are from experience, they should not be dismissed because they do not fall within the mainstream of thoughts on the topic.
My findings supported by others are that the key point is nutrient assimilation not that the food item was organic, blended, vegan or not.
What liquidarianism does is increase nutrient assimilation. In modern societies, we are overfed, the digestive system is overloaded with food, most people eat all the time. When you introduce more liquid in that body, there is a huge change.

Another big part of my diet is indoor greens, I grow wheatgrass, sunflowers, peas greens. Another point is weekly fasting days, a water fast on mondays, a dry fast on thursdays. It worked for me and just wanted to share.