Travis
Member
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2016
- Messages
- 3,189
I must be eating quite a bit of fibre; but like "saturated fat," it's a category that I never pay much attention to—I even like seeing it in the red (i.e. 500% RDA).
The similar thing can be said about iron, where I regard values under 100% as actually a good thing.
I see veganism as convenient, and I've been doing it for about ten years minus a few winters of heavy cheese eating and the occasional egg-eating. I find that it actually saves time eating raw food because you don't have to spend any time cooking.
These young kale leaves that I eat aren't too fibrous, and I just eat them raw (unless if they get kinda limp towards the end of the week from storage; then I steam). It sounds from your description that gorillas almost eat plants willy-nilly, selecting such things as bark, stems, and mature leaves—certainly quite the task. Them, and pandas (i.e. ), probably live symbiotically with some more esoteric bacteria in their digestive tracts—ones with β-galacotose-cleaving enzymes.
Starch gives me an opportunity for doing one of my favorite activities—bitching about biochemistry textbooks. Lehninger's fourth edition presents a chain of amylose in the Hawthorne Projection:
Not especially illuminating, as these pyranose rings are not actually flat. Not having any double-bonds, these must exist in the chair configuration—maintaining the tetrahedral 109° bond angles seen in unsaturated chains. What follows is a more realistic representation of amylose:
click here for full image
And two amylose chains together actually form a double-helix:
click here for full image
Amylose's connectivity is α(1⟶4), and cellulose's connectivity is β(1→4). Each amylose glucose unit is superimposable in the image further above; and so is each other cellulose glucose unit.. Perhaps the most obvious difference is that each adjacent glucose unit in cellulose chain is rotated 180° about it's axis, thereby allowing each #3 carbon to hydrogen bond with each #4 pyranose (cycloether) oxygen. This does not happen in the amylose alpha chain.
We often don't have the enzymes to tear these β-bonds apart. This is sometimes stressed by the paleo crowd, and even the Western A. Price Foundation who—as it must be stated—also recommend consuming a β-glycosidic bond, a different one . . . in the form of lactose (β-D-galactopyranosyl-(1→4)-D-glucose).
The protein in leaves appear to be assimilated as well as . . . say, the protein in nuts? (I think so, perhaps Ray Peat can point-us in the right direction. From his article on milk:
This one here shows about ⅓ as much sugar as cellulose in leaves, with lignin and cellulose nearly equal:
I'm basically eating the free sucrose in pineapple, dates, apples, and pears this week; with some more fat and protein coming from whole coconuts and raw hydrated almonds. The kale is just there for the minerals, amino acids, carotenes, and folate. The leaf has manganese and calcium crystals in photosystem II, a fascinating enzyme which captures photons and [black box of speculation and intrigue] electrons to glucose while evolving O₂ in the process. (The veritable Chuck Norris of enzymes.) The calcium is necessary for thee oxygen evolving complex subunit of this enzymes, so leafs are actually impossible to find without Ca²⁺ since they cannot transduce energy without it.
The similar thing can be said about iron, where I regard values under 100% as actually a good thing.
I see veganism as convenient, and I've been doing it for about ten years minus a few winters of heavy cheese eating and the occasional egg-eating. I find that it actually saves time eating raw food because you don't have to spend any time cooking.
These young kale leaves that I eat aren't too fibrous, and I just eat them raw (unless if they get kinda limp towards the end of the week from storage; then I steam). It sounds from your description that gorillas almost eat plants willy-nilly, selecting such things as bark, stems, and mature leaves—certainly quite the task. Them, and pandas (i.e. ), probably live symbiotically with some more esoteric bacteria in their digestive tracts—ones with β-galacotose-cleaving enzymes.
Starch gives me an opportunity for doing one of my favorite activities—bitching about biochemistry textbooks. Lehninger's fourth edition presents a chain of amylose in the Hawthorne Projection:
- Nelson, David L., Albert L. Lehninger, and Michael M. Cox. Lehninger principles of biochemistry. 4th edition.
Not especially illuminating, as these pyranose rings are not actually flat. Not having any double-bonds, these must exist in the chair configuration—maintaining the tetrahedral 109° bond angles seen in unsaturated chains. What follows is a more realistic representation of amylose:
And two amylose chains together actually form a double-helix:
- Hancock, Robert D., and Bryon J. Tarbet. "The other double helix—the fascinating chemistry of starch." J. Chem. Educ 77.8 (2000): 988.
Amylose's connectivity is α(1⟶4), and cellulose's connectivity is β(1→4). Each amylose glucose unit is superimposable in the image further above; and so is each other cellulose glucose unit.. Perhaps the most obvious difference is that each adjacent glucose unit in cellulose chain is rotated 180° about it's axis, thereby allowing each #3 carbon to hydrogen bond with each #4 pyranose (cycloether) oxygen. This does not happen in the amylose alpha chain.
We often don't have the enzymes to tear these β-bonds apart. This is sometimes stressed by the paleo crowd, and even the Western A. Price Foundation who—as it must be stated—also recommend consuming a β-glycosidic bond, a different one . . . in the form of lactose (β-D-galactopyranosyl-(1→4)-D-glucose).
The protein in leaves appear to be assimilated as well as . . . say, the protein in nuts? (I think so, perhaps Ray Peat can point-us in the right direction. From his article on milk:
- "The chemist Norman Pirie argued convincingly that leaf protein had much higher nutritional value than grain and bean proteins, and that it had the potential to be much more efficient economically, if it could be separated from the less desirable components of leaves." —Ray Peat
This one here shows about ⅓ as much sugar as cellulose in leaves, with lignin and cellulose nearly equal:
- Curran, Paul J., Jennifer L. Dungan, and David L. Peterson. "Estimating the foliar biochemical concentration of leaves with reflectance spectrometry: testing the Kokaly and Clark methodologies." Remote Sensing of Environment 76.3 (2001): 349-359.
I'm basically eating the free sucrose in pineapple, dates, apples, and pears this week; with some more fat and protein coming from whole coconuts and raw hydrated almonds. The kale is just there for the minerals, amino acids, carotenes, and folate. The leaf has manganese and calcium crystals in photosystem II, a fascinating enzyme which captures photons and [black box of speculation and intrigue] electrons to glucose while evolving O₂ in the process. (The veritable Chuck Norris of enzymes.) The calcium is necessary for thee oxygen evolving complex subunit of this enzymes, so leafs are actually impossible to find without Ca²⁺ since they cannot transduce energy without it.
- McEvoy, James P., and Gary W. Brudvig. "Water-splitting chemistry of photosystem II." Chemical reviews 106.11 (2006): 4455-448
- "Calcium was found in the 1980s to be an essential cofactor in oxygen evolution. One calcium is required per OEC [oxygen-evolving complex]. The metal’s proximity to the Mn₄ unit was established with the discovery that its binding depends on the S-state and of a long-lived, modified EPR [electron paramagnetic resonance] multiline signal produced by the S2-state of the Ca²⁺-depleted OEC. XAS [X-ray absorption spectroscopy] and pulsed EPR evidence for the location of Ca²⁺ within the OEC is detailed in section. It has been hypothesized both that calcium acts in water splitting by binding a substrate water molecule and that it modifies the redox potential of the OEC, perhaps by controlling proton transfer. Direct evidence for the former hypothesis comes from mass spectroscopic measurements of ¹⁸O-labeled dioxygen release from OECs in which calcium has been replaced with strontium. A review of calcium’s role in the OEC has recently been published." ―McEvoy
Last edited: