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Trail Mix

December 23, 2005 08:19 PM

Does anybody eat this stuff? Why?

I bought some trail mix, brand undisclosed, the other day. I have been a bit lacking in calories with caring for my wife so I picked a bag up at the last visit to the store. It happened to be over in the produce section.

What a joke. It isn't produce. It isn't food. When I bit into it my tooth began to hurt --- a sugar attack. This is for real. The sugar creates reactive oxygen species and glycoslylates the tooth, root, nerve, gum, enamel and all. The label was a bad dream of nutrition. Concentrated fruit sugar, rancid oils from nuts far too old to be eaten, hydrogenated oils that harden your cell membranes and foul up metabolism.

A labeling trick permits the manufacturer not to call hydrogenated oils saturated, but that is what hydrogenation does, it saturates the oil with hydrogen. So, hydrogenated oils are far worse than the saturated fats you get in feeding pen beef. The feeding pen, by the way, just hydrogenates the cattle on the hoof because the grains release excess hydrogen when the cattle eat it and it is trapped in fat through hydrogenation So, they are the same process; one on the hoof and the other in a vat. Same result too. Oils that the body cannot use and that mess up the membranes.

Your membranes are more important than you may realize. They enclose all the cells of the body and regulate the passage of hormones and other messengers. In the brain, stiff membranes decrease the plasticity of brain cells and interfere with learning. That is why fish are called brain food, the omega 3 oils increase the pliability, metabolic rates, and plasticity of brain cells. Fluid membranes work better and they form new synapses more readily.

So, the trail mix went into the trash. If you eat something like this sugar-saturated oil concentration, you shut down your access to body fat and quit burning fat. One of the best reasons to hike is to burn fat and you have just killed that process by eating this junk.

If I walk through the health food store, I find that most of the snacks and foods there are junk. Better go to See's candy store and get some honest chocolate with antioxidant content. Better yet, eat real food.

· Evolutionary Fitness

Comments

Posted by: Flower Online [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 11, 2006 2:02 PM

Unequivocally, a lot of sugar is harmfully.
There are vegetables better

Best regards, Serg

Posted by: Serg [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 5, 2006 4:07 AM

Are you sure that Pemmican has "little saturated fat, almost all poly-unsaturated fat of omega 3 and omega 6 balance?" I was under the impression that it was typically made from fat taken from adipose tissue, and that even wild animals have adipose fat which is 40-50% saturated (at the high end for ruminants like bison).

Posted by: Brandon Berg [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 5, 2006 6:55 PM

Paul:

Native American indians had this figured out long ago. Take pemmican, the real stuff made from bison or venison and the fat of the animal mixed with some fresh blackberries. High energy content, little saturated fat, almost all poly-unsaturated fat of omega 3 and omega 6 balance. The berries add a lot of antioxidant content. Don't go for the fake pemmican in most stores with grains and various sugars.

A terrific accomplishment and likely a wonderful experience. But, be careful that you don't turn your body into a sugar-burning machine by eating primarily carbs to fuel the hike. Your friend is ill-informed, but you may already know from other posts and comments that vegans suffer poor health. They only look OK when they are compared to the awful American diet, that nobody ought to be eating.

Posted by: Art [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 1, 2006 6:42 PM

I hiked the John Muir Trail a couple of years ago and weight considerations mean you can't take "real food" you have to eat dehydrated stuff of one kind or another. Also it all has to fit in bear barrels, the volume is as big a problem as the weight. We didn't take much trail mix but since my partner is vegetarian we took mostly meals from "Mary Jane's Farm" which seem like a reasonable balance of stuff, and from prior experience taste good.

My question would be what would you take? You have to carry all the food for, say, 10 days in a California summer meaning only the first day or two at most can be fresh food. It has to be light or you need extra days and thus even more food.

We did the whole trail in 14 days carrying packs that weighed about 20 lbs plus food and water.

-- paul

Posted by: paul [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 31, 2005 7:48 PM

The hydrogenated oils are super saturated compared to the saturated fats in pen fed cattle. It is a matter of degree. Also the hydrogenated oils contain far more trans fats, which are altered in shape and not properly recognized in the body. They really mess up membrane communication.

Posted by: Art [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 28, 2005 5:13 PM

So, hydrogenated oils are far worse than the saturated fats you get in feeding pen beef....So, they are the same process; one on the hoof and the other in a vat. Same result too.

You seem to be saying that hydrogenated oils and saturated fat from beef are basically the same thing, but that the former is somehow much worse. Why?

Posted by: Brandon Berg [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 27, 2005 11:03 PM

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