It seems like eating a diet rich in polyphenols promotes good gut health and therefore complete health. There is some consensus that eating at least 30 unique plants per week will achieve this condition. It is important to note that the plants should be the least amount of processed until considered palatable to get the most per serving, so e.g. cooked potatoes over chips.
30 plants might seem a lot per week, though it averages to a bit more than 4 plants per day. It seems the issue of getting variety will exist in poorer nations and/or restrictive diets.
Thus to test this hypothesis will be tracking such plants plus the additional information of processed level (none, some, high) and if from a beverage (beer, tea, coffee, wine, juice).
Any one else who wants to participate, just let me know, so that we can anonymize the data.
@barefootstache "There is some consensus" : Have any citations for that claim?
@skilning heard it from a gastroenterologist on social media though not able to find the source. So it is only anecdotal currently.
They mentioned that they are against probiotic supplements since the science hasn't been fully explored and may even have side effects.
@barefootstache yeah I guess that's where fruits come in (plums especially)... but yeah when I did raw food diet it was like needing a lot of blended fruit otherwise quite hard with buying fancy hemp milk or coconut etc (which probably have sugar too) so yeah I'd like to see how much sugar one can avoid almost. 50% in whole form is impressive - is that one at a time or like sandwiching things or some other technique?
@freeschool since no serving sizes were added it might seem like 50% is a lot. The majority of the time it was like eating one apple or pear or a handful of berries.
I doubt plant based milks have much sugar, unless you deliberately buy them. Like I drink soy milk with zero added sugar. It has some natural sugar, but that is obvious since all plants have sugar.
One could argue that this natural form a sugar in beverages is just as bad as added sugar, since the beverage has little to no fibre, thus your body has no method of binding the excess sugar. Though at less than a gram per 100ml, it is negligible.
After a week of tracking without too much focus of purposely eating unique plants, I came up to 44.
It could be that my diet already plays an important role to almost guarantee that I achieve at least 30 plants per week, since I follow a whole food plant based diet.
From the 44 plants eaten, more than 50% were in their whole form. 25% were from beverages, mainly herbal teas. And the other 25% were from processed foods.
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Will need to look into the existing documentation to find data that can back up the initial claim of "eating at least 30 unique plants per week" promotes gut health.
Almost might need to track the size of the servings and the amount of added sugar, since sugar can make your gut health worse off.