NutriMagnus - For those who choose intelligent eating

The breakfast challenge: harder than you think, and always present

CLICK TO ENLARGE -- PRESS ESC TO RETURN

Let me take you through a practical problem I just dealt with: I want my breakfast.

I also want it to be a good one. So...eggs, potatoes, toast, jam, orange juice...uh, nope. That one won't even come close to being good enough.

I start with cooked quinoa - a seed grown in South American that is unusually nutritious, as you will see. It looks like grayish millet - yes, bird seed - but is far more nutritious than either that or the much more universal rice. There's about a cup of it in the bowl.

You see that I have the bowl on my kitchen scale. I put it there empty, zero out the scale, then add the quinoa, the scale reads 118 grams.

Note also that beside the scale I have a simple slip of paper - a quarter sheet of 8x12" paper - and a pen. I'm keeping a record of the weight in grams of the important food that goes into my bowl.

As a sidenote - it would also work to record weight in ounces, or volume in any of the familiar volume measures - ccs, tablespoons, cups - whatever is handy and familiar for you.

CLICK TO ENLARGE -- PRESS ESC TO RETURN

Then I add my beans - in this case about a cup of homegrown Scarlett-runner beans. Fat and tasty, and I much recommend them, but they will cause a problem shortly.

Since I forgot to zero out the scale again, it now reads 238 grams. A bit of subtraction and I have my beans weight at 120 grams. These weights will be needed very shortly.

Starting with this very basic mix, I then fancy it up a little:

1. Heat 1/4 cup of water fairly hot in my ancient microwave, then add 1/4 t vegetable broth paste and stir well. I pour this over my beans and quinoa.
2. Sprinkle 1/4 t garlic granules over the mix, and also add 2 T of salsa.
3. Stir it well and heat it in my microwave.

Stirred again, it's ready to be my breakfast. Everything in it is solid food, and both major foods are excellent protein sources. At least it seems reasonable to think so.

The core of the problem: Protein accessibility and quality

So...where am I with the protein question at this point?

What protein question, you should be asking. Here's the problem, in summary:

Protein is fundamental

Many substances are required for use to continue living. Protein is a vast class of nutrient substances which are absolutely fundamental to our survival.

Protein is used in the biochemical construction of every cell in our body, and as a substance is second only water in it mass in our bodies. Collagen is the most common protein we have, making up about 6% of our body weight. About 30% of our bones are collagen, and it comprises large amounts tendons, ligaments, cartilage, skin, and muscle. ¹

Note that lean people have more protein by percent body weight than do less lean people.²

The need for protein is related to cell death

No cell lives forever, but some live much longer than others. The cells lining our gut live short, glorious lives on the front line - lasting 3 to 5 days.³ Red blood cells normally live about 120 days, after which they are consumed by microphages, specialist white blood cells that are a part of our innate immune system.^4 5

Neurons are particularly interesting. Our brain is initially equipped with huge number of neurons, but in rather constrained period around the time of birth about half of them are eliminated because they are not sufficiently stimulated or otherwise marked for survival.^6 7

Neurons that survive last for life. But their connections to other neurons well may be affected by the ongoing process of learning and development. From birth to late childhood, synaptic connections approximately double. Then, in adolescence a process of synaptic pruning that began shortly after birth dramatically accelerates and continues into about the late 20s.⁸

(What follows is an early first draft. Sources are not provided, but will be later.)

It is well known that sarcopenia - the progressive, age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass, strength, and physical function substantially impact mortality, hospitalization risk, and quality of life for among older adults. Globally, it is estimated to affect 10% to 40% of non-hospitalized older adults.

A key factor driving this is the progressive failure of protein utilization processes to properly service muscle cells over time. Also significant factors are decreasing physical activity and decreasing levels of protein consumption. Other, more complex biochemical factors also drive this serious muscle loss dynamic. The bottom line is that older people not only deliberate, well focused resistance exercise, they also need major increases in protein volume and close attention to protein quality.

Worry first about digestibility, and then about protein quality

Protein quality has two aspects: digestibility ("bioavailability"), and completeness. When you read on your jar of peanut butter (an excellent protein source) that 2 tablespoons contain 7 grams of protein (a bit more than that in a large egg), what it doesn't tell you is that only a bit less than 4 grams is actually digestible by human bodies, and of that only a little over 2 grams is complete protein - the kind found in an egg or a piece of chicken meat, and the kind we need.

"Completeness" of a protein source is a bit complex. Most simply put, is has to do with the mix of the various sorts of protein in a food. Of the 20 protein building blocks we need (amino acids) we can ourselves make all but 9. We also need them in certain amounts, and within about a 24-hour period, if they are to be useful.

So, if you eat a food that is rich in protein but it is lacking a sufficient amount of just one of those 9 indispensable amino acids (IAA), to the degree that single amino acid is missing the rest of the proteins will be used for energy - stored as fat or broken down into metabolizable components, with what can't be used excreted in your urine.

The problem with peanut butter is its mix of IAAs. The problem with that egg and potato breakfast mentioned earlier is the sheer amount of protein in it, PLUS the mix of IAAs.

I recently became aware both of the fact that older people need about double the protein younger people need, and also the fact that many plant proteins simple never make it into our bloodstream beyond a certain point. This was critical new information for me, and it meant that up until this point I simply have not been eating enough protein, for most of my life. If this is true for me, it's certainly true

The protein consumption problem for older people goes far beyond the picture given us about 50 years ago by Lappe's critically important book Diet for a small planet.⁹

Nutrimagnus shows us the picture

At this point, let's check in on my breakfast.

NutriMagnus is a computer program written in the Python language. Built out of a large number of separate modules, it accesses two major online databases as sources of information about food, keeps several internal databases of its own, and encourages the user to create a database which then becomes the first place it looks for food information - your "pantry".

Homepage

WEB version

CLICK TO ENLARGE -- PRESS ESC TO RETURN

There are two versions of the program one runs in a terminal emulator - basically an empty screen on your computer that you type into to communicate with the program. This is the "CLI" (Command Line Interface) version. The other version runs in your browser. I'll show you a little of the CLI version, but most of what follows will show you the browser version, as it will look more like what you're used to seeing on your screen, and will operate in a way that is more familiar to you.

Launching the program, this is what the command line version looks like. On your screen it will likely look a little different, but the text and menu is what you should notice here.

There is clearly a lot of empty space. But, that space will be FULL of information soon. For showing a lot of detail, the CLI version is superior to the browser version. But, you do need to get used to communicating with the program entirely through your keyboard. This needlessly freaks out some folks. Think of it as texting with your computer. You know how to text. You can do this!

Browser version

CLICK TO ENLARGE -- PRESS ESC TO RETURN

The browser home page has an essay explaining the rational for of this program - why it's needed and what it does.

The 5-part menu you see in the CLI screenshot is now seen in as the program's "navigation strip" across the top of every page the program has, including this one.

You can click on any menu link and a drop-down menu will appear.

Food menu

CLI version

CLICK TO ENLARGE -- PRESS ESC TO RETURN

WEB version

CLICK TO ENLARGE -- PRESS ESC TO RETURN

 

Working in the terminal with the command line, directly-typed numbers access menu items. It's fast and simple, and your hands never leave the keyboard.

In the browser version, both the main menu and the items in the drop-down menus may be accessed either by clicking or by using your keyboard directly - but keyboard "access keys" are an option that only works in a Firefox browser. Perhaps in the future this feature will be available in the Chrome browser.

The nine items on the Food menu are well described in the User Manual. Have a look now, and use your browser's back button to return here.

Next, let's look at the analysis shown for a single food - pinto beans.

At this point I am stopping for the day. Tomorrow, we'll look at a couple more menus, then look at the beginning of a day's meal and the protein challenges it presents. Work on validating the program - now focused on the suggested protein complements - and on further developing the browser version of the program will also continue.

Notes ^{^}