Hunting Down the Micronutrients

[Mitra]

A few weeks ago Gaelen & Malcolm had a discussion that had a link to http://www.nutritiondata.com/ (NutritionData). I spent a bit of time exploring the site at the time, but I've recently gone back to it, and have entered all my food for a couple of days. This site not only adds up the protein, carbs, fat and calories in the food, but tells you how complete the proteins are (of particular interest to vegetarians), and how much you've had of a whole range of vitamins and minerals. It can tell you if you've reached the RDA, or you can enter your own personal target values.

I don't believe the RDAs are engraved in tablets of stone, but they seemed like a good starting point. I've found it's really helping me to focus on the nutritional value of my food, and it also helps identify any areas where you really need to supplement if you're consistently missing some nutrient in your food. There are graphical as well as numerical presentations of the information, for those who aren't keen on dealing with a page full of numbers. For those who love numbers, you can export your daily totals as a .csv and play with them however you like.

I'm finding that the one that's often short is Vitamin E. Curiously, NutritionData has a requirement that's about 5 times higher than the one one the UK Food Standards Agency site - and which I'm comfortably above. But it's made me look at the foods that contain it (nuts, olive oil, wheat germ oil) and think about how to make sure I get there consistently.

Has anybody else tried this? If not, it's well worth the effort - not every day, but from time to time. Maybe I'll do it for one Monitor Monday a month. I'm definitely concentrating on getting lots of green stuff since I started doing this!

[laughingW]

I do that with Fitday too. It allows you to put in your personal targets and see how you're doing. I did it when I was wanting to get enough potassium from food, and also to watch calcium intake.

[Mitra]

I haven't used fitday, so I didn't realise it could track all your vitamins & minerals too - the software I tried for a bit just did one or two of the big ones.

[mcsblues]

I take it you found the nutrient search tool (in 'tools' strangely enough!:))

Gets you the best choices in each catagory for a selected nutrient - eg nuts;

http://www.nutritiondata.com/foods-012103000000000000000-w.html

- or if you were to happen to find a particularly easy going Beluga whale in Sainsburys with an extra flipper, or even better an eye or two going spare :p...

http://www.nutritiondata.com/foods-043103000000000000000-w.html

In the real world wheat germ oil is good ... but very high in omega 6 though.

[Mitra]

I did find that tool, Malcolm, but as you percipiently observe, Sainsbury's don't always have beluga whale eyes in ;). Even Waitrose can't be relied on. I've been taking 1/2 - 1 tsp of wheat germ oil - just the minimum to top it up.

What do other people do for Vit E?

If anybody else has used this kind of analysis, what were the nutrients you were short on?

[Gaelen]

Mitra, I used to use FitDay to monitor my nutrients...with extra set-points added in for potassium, calcium and Vitamin K--the three areas where I am most likely to fall down, despite a diet high in dark leafy greens and including at least two servings of dairy daily.

For vitamin E, I used to just TAKE a 400 I.U. capsule daily...the easy way out. For potassium, I made an effort to increase avocado and raw seed consumption (especially raw pumpkin seeds or pepitas, which make a good snack AND a wonderful sauce.) Vitamin K evened out with two daily servings of dark leafy greens and I supplemented calcium, too, but no longer do that.

[Mitra]

I seem to do OK for those on the whole, though Ca, and Vit K are sometimes only just there. I noticed that the multi that we have doesn't have any vit E, so this highlighted an area I might need to supplement separately, instead of just assuming vitamins are covered by the multi. Iron is sometimes a bit low, too, but the Eadeses don't seem to worry about that too much, and I've never been anaemic, so I haven't bothered about that one.

Did you stop supplementing with calcium because you changed your diet, or did you have some other reason?

[Viking Dan]

Here's a low carb treat that'll more than take care of Vitamin E. (http://nutritiondata.com/facts-B00001-01c226K.html)

[Mitra]

Thanks, Dan - that's the one Malcolm suggested, too :lol:, but they don't seem to sell them locally, not even at the farmers market :(.

[gitfiddle]

How do you generally serve them? :p

It reminds me of one of the scenes in an Indiana Jones movie. :p :p :p :p

[Gaelen]

IDid you stop supplementing with calcium because you changed your diet, or did you have some other reason?

Actually, for both the surgery in March of this year, and the surgery I had last February, I was taken off all supplements for 30 days prior to surgery and 90-120 days post-surgery. Part of that is standard precaution. Part of that is because I have some interesting blood-coag results that mean if I supplement the wrong things, I'll be a heavy bleeder during surgery...not a good thing. ;) Part of the long wait to resume supplementation is that certain supplements interfere with the mechanism of action in the types of chemo I've taken, and so the oncologists have to be sure that I'm responding to the chemo without supplements, and only then do they allow me to add them back in one at a time. I was using Viactiv as my calcium supplement, but it's not the best way to get it--and it contains fructose, something I need to avoid--so I'll have to go to a calcium pill if I supplement it in the future.

[LisaS]

I was perusing the list of "world's healthiest foods" and found that sunflower seeds do pretty well on the Vit E front - and they are easy to toss into salads or smoothies or just eat for snacks -
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=57

Sunflower Seeds, Dried
0.25 cup
205.20 calories
Nutrient Amount and DV(%)


vitamin E
18.10 mg 90.5

vitamin B1 (thiamin)
0.82 mg 54.7

manganese
0.73 mg 36.5

magnesium
127.44 mg 31.9

[Mitra]

After my researches into fish oil, I went back to nutritiondata again, and looked at the omega3/6 ratio. I stuck in a rough stab at what today's menu will look like, and it came up with:


Total omega-3 fats ~807.4 mg
Total omega-6 fats ~433.2 mg

I need to look in a bit more detail at the numbers for DHA, EPA etc, but it doesn't look as if I need the fish oil to bring my ratios into line!

This is turning out to be a really useful tool both for highlighting areas where I need to supplement (or eat more whale's eyes) and for showing where I don't need to supplement.

Those numbers are without taking supplementary omega-3 either as fish oil or using flax seed or oil. I looked at the other couple of days I had entered, and found similar results. It surprised me, since I never give any thought to omega 3:6 ratios - that is just what I eat (I do have a taste for fish eggs, crustaceans and oily fish, so they all appear regularly). I always had the impression that unless you tried pretty hard omega-6 would dominate!

Mary Enig's Know Your Fats says you should get 2-3% of your energy as omega-6: so on that basis I should be getting about 4g per day, not the 0.5g I seem to be getting. Does this mean I need more omega-6? :confused: Then I'd need more omega-3 to balance it. :rolleyes: Or is something strange going on with nutritiondata?

[LisaS]

well - you probably avoid the usual suspects for w-6 overload - like vegetable oils, processed foods and fattier cuts of beef -

[Mitra]

I do eat beef, but maybe not on those particular days. But I've just noticed there's a large category of "18:2 undifferentiated" with typically about 10g in it, so I suspect the summary figure is probably misleading.

[mcsblues]

Yes 18:2 is linoleic acid (omega 6) so that puts a different complexion on it - as you know I can't brimg myself to journal ... but I'd be interested in how your variious daily menus work out! :p

[Mitra]

I won't be doing it every day, but I'll probably put a few more days in to see what I can pick out of it. And if it gives you more free time to finish your review, maybe I won't push you too hard to do your own journalling :).

[Mitra]

I've done another day - and I can't seem to manage to get my full Vitamin and mineral requirement from food :(.

Vitamin D usually seems to be short (unless I take cod liver oil), and vitamin E (unless I take wheat germ oil). Today, I had about 100g fat (that's fairly typical) of which about 20g was polyunsaturated, which seems high, but about 3/4 of that came from an ounce of walnuts. Of course, if I'd taken the CLO and wheat germ oil that would have given me a few more grammes of PUFAs.

One thing that has happened, is that my efforts to get more vitamins have increased my veg consumption, so I'm now getting 20g fibre, which is a big increase (today 67g total carb, 20g fibre, so 47g ECC - which is a bit lower than I usually eat, but showed me that you can get quite a lot of fibre without using any fibrous additives). Now if only I can get those vitamins from somewhere ...

Salmon and herring seem to have plenty of vitamin D, but I'm not going to eat them daily. And I'm still looking for a source of whale eyes for my vitamin E. I do sometimes eat sunflower seeds (as Lisa suggested), but a Tbs every few days, not 1/4 cup at a time.

This exercise has definitely convinced me that the standard, "if you eat a balanced diet you don't need to supplement," statements are wildly optimistic.

Today I had:

B - almond muffin with fish eggs, yogurt with pomegranate and walnuts, cappuccino
L - salad of beetroot, with beet greens, goat's cheese and walnuts with olive oil dressing, cappuccino
D - Lamb-burgers & peas, raspberries and cream, glass of wine.

Not perfect, but I'm sure you could find worse, and it's short on vit D, E, folate, potassium and calcium as well as being low on ω-3 (although USDA don't give an ω-3 figure for walnuts, whereas Mary Enig says that walnut oil is 12% ω-3).

I don't think I'll devote much more to this - I'm not convinced the numbers are accurate enough to take it too far, but it's convinced me to eat lots of different veggies, nuts and fruit, fish and organ meats, and to take a multivitamin, supplement Ca/Mg/K (which I did anyway) and small quantites of cod liver oil and wheat germ (because I can't find a good Vit E supplement). The supplementation is subject to further research on the validity of the daily requirements, of course ;).

[Gaelen]

It seems from that menu and your research into your intake that you'd be fine with a decent multi-vitamin, vitamin E, and a balanced calcium/magnesium/potassium supplement daily...three pills, if you're lucky, but maybe four. What do you mean by a 'good VitE supplement?' Are you looking for a specific form of vitamin E? Lately I've been reading a lot of journal articles that seemed to conclude that, after testing, natural source Vitamin E was no more or less effective than synthetic Vitamin E or mixed tocopherols, so you may be chasing a VitE blend harder than necessary.

[Mitra]

I only seem to be able to find alpha-tocopherals, not mixed. I know my multi covers the folate (and though that was low yesterday, it wasn't on the other days), but not vit E, and can't remember D - but maybe I need to go out in the sun! So you're right, a few vit pills should cover it, but it still surprised me how hard it is to get the RDA for everything from food.