DrJ
Member
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2015
- Messages
- 723
I have been reading @Travis posts and found the whole idea of the Fernstrom ratio (basically, a measure to aim for tryptophan depletion) pretty interesting. I've been experimenting with trying to keep tryptophan lower, which I took to mean reducing muscle meats based on what I've read. Once I started plugging the numbers, I realized I have no idea what I'm doing or what a 'good' Fernstrom ratio is, but obviously lower is better. Maybe @Travis can weigh in on that.
Using my good friend, nutrition.self.com, I started a spreadsheet of a sampling of foods to see what I would find. I go there, plug in a food, set the serving size to 100g so I can get an idea of what I'm getting per 100g of a food for easy conversion calculations. But note: the ratio is constant per unit of serving size. I was thinking chicken wings (which I love) would be good as I thought they would be more gelatinous with the skin, and I know a few places to get them fried in beef fat so think of them as a decent 'eat-out' option. They turned out not so great!
I did notice that nutrition.self.com actually pulls all that data from a database produced by the USDA (called SR-21). One day I will get the time and write a script to scrape the database and calculate the Fernstrom ratio for all the things in there, but until then, this is limited list I've produced so far to try to get a handle on the situation with my apologies for the formatting as I couldn't figure out if it's possible to make a table in here...
FOOD : Fernstrom Ratio*
Chicken breast, boneless skinless: 0.046
Ground beef, 80% lean, 20% fat: 0.019
Cheese, Gouda: 0.041
Cheese, Parmesan: 0.041
Milk, 2%: 0.038
Apple, raw w/skin: 0.026
Beef, top sirloin: 0.027
Beef, ribeye lean and trimmed: .030
Egg, whole: 0.044
Banana, raw: .045
Shrimp: .056
Chicken wings with skin: .046
Peaches, raw: 0.101
Watermelon, raw: 0.088
Bread, wheat: 0.062
Spinach, cooked: 0.05
Orange juice, raw: 0.044
So from that short list, ground beef seems to be the best! To my surprise. I thought fruit might do better. Cheese doesn't even seem so great. And forget raw peaches! Feel free to add!
*Calculated as Tryptophan/(Tyrosine + Phenylalanine + Valine + Isoleucine + Leucine)**
** Hopefully have that right!
Using my good friend, nutrition.self.com, I started a spreadsheet of a sampling of foods to see what I would find. I go there, plug in a food, set the serving size to 100g so I can get an idea of what I'm getting per 100g of a food for easy conversion calculations. But note: the ratio is constant per unit of serving size. I was thinking chicken wings (which I love) would be good as I thought they would be more gelatinous with the skin, and I know a few places to get them fried in beef fat so think of them as a decent 'eat-out' option. They turned out not so great!
I did notice that nutrition.self.com actually pulls all that data from a database produced by the USDA (called SR-21). One day I will get the time and write a script to scrape the database and calculate the Fernstrom ratio for all the things in there, but until then, this is limited list I've produced so far to try to get a handle on the situation with my apologies for the formatting as I couldn't figure out if it's possible to make a table in here...
FOOD : Fernstrom Ratio*
Chicken breast, boneless skinless: 0.046
Ground beef, 80% lean, 20% fat: 0.019
Cheese, Gouda: 0.041
Cheese, Parmesan: 0.041
Milk, 2%: 0.038
Apple, raw w/skin: 0.026
Beef, top sirloin: 0.027
Beef, ribeye lean and trimmed: .030
Egg, whole: 0.044
Banana, raw: .045
Shrimp: .056
Chicken wings with skin: .046
Peaches, raw: 0.101
Watermelon, raw: 0.088
Bread, wheat: 0.062
Spinach, cooked: 0.05
Orange juice, raw: 0.044
So from that short list, ground beef seems to be the best! To my surprise. I thought fruit might do better. Cheese doesn't even seem so great. And forget raw peaches! Feel free to add!
*Calculated as Tryptophan/(Tyrosine + Phenylalanine + Valine + Isoleucine + Leucine)**
** Hopefully have that right!