Methodology For Testing Foods

[_noozie]

Hi people. I was curious the ways you go about testing whether a food is "right" for you and diagnosing foods you don't tolerate well. The more I learn, the more I realize that beyond the minutiae, the most important diet principles revolve around (a) avoiding stressful foods and (b) eating foods that efficiently fuel metabolism.

This week I want to carefully observe differences in how I react to starches vs sugars (and if this test is informative I'll try the same thing to compare different dairy products). I'm thinking of holding as much as I can constant across experimental meals (time, meals before, etc.), except the test food. I'll measure the following: pre+post-meal temp, pre+post-meal pulse, as well as rating digestion, energy levels, and satiety after the meal.

Example: Day 1 test meal I'll have 1 cup cottage cheese with 50g carbs from OJ. Day 2 1 cup cottage cheese with 50g carbs from white potato. Day 3 1 cup cottage cheese with 50g carbs from jasmine rice. And so on. And by the end of the week I'll have feedback on how I feel by just changing the carb source.

How does this sound? Could you touch on your approach for figuring out what foods you do well with and identifying those that are 'stressful'? I've always had a hard time trying to tell 'intuitively'.

 

[squanch]

I wouldn't do the individual tests for just 1 day, more like 1 week. Some of the negative effects certain foods have take a few days of daily consumption to show up.

Could you touch on your approach for figuring out what foods you do well with and identifying those that are 'stressful'?

For me personally, my skin quality is probably the best measurement of how well I tolerate certain foods. (milk, chocolate, gluten and citrus fruit will cause acne for me)
Some foods will also cause mucus in the back of my throat (bananas, dates, citrus fruits) for whatever reason.
Other than that, I don't really feel any negative effects from those "problematic" foods. No drastic change in temperature, pulse, sleep quality etc.

 

[_noozie]

I wouldn't just do the individual tests for 1 day, more like 1 week. Some of the negative effects certain foods have take a few days of daily consumption to show up.

I suppose this test would be a decent comparison of short-term digestion and energy. But you're absolutely right. I will have to take the "winners" of this test and roll with them for a while to see true effects.

For me personally, my skin quality is probably the best measurement of how well I tolerate certain foods. (milk, chocolate, gluten and citrus fruit will cause acne for me)
Some foods will also cause mucus in the back of my throat (bananas, dates, citrus fruits) for whatever reason.
Other than that, I don't really feel any negative effects from "problematic" foods. No drastic change in temperature, pulse, sleep quality etc.

This is interesting. A lot of people claim they notice the negative effects immediately but not you or me. I'll also note things like acne and sinuses. Thanks!

 

[squanch]

Another thing I just remembered:
Some foods did initially cause some digestive issues for me (bloating, sticky poop, slow digestion etc.) but it subsided after a few weeks and now I digest those things just fine. I assume the gut microbiome adjusted to those foods after a while (coconut oil was really bad in this regard in the beginning, now I can eat around 75 g of it daily without any issues whatsoever).
Just something to keep in mind, your body might take a few weeks to adjust to new foods or foods that you haven't eaten regularly for a while.

 

[BigYellowLemon]

Measure your heart rate, and heart rate variability too.

 

[_noozie]

Another thing I just remembered:
Some foods did initially cause some digestive issues for me (bloating, sticky poop, slow digestion etc.) but it subsided after a few weeks and now I digest those things just fine. I assume the gut microbiome adjusted to those foods after a while (coconut oil was really bad in this regard in the beginning, now I can eat around 75 g of it daily without any issues whatsoever).
Just something to keep in mind, your body might take a few weeks to adjust to new foods or foods that you haven't eaten regularly for a while.

I think I noticed this with milk. In the past I've always maintained high dairy consumption in the form of Greek yogurt and even whey, but it took an adjustment period of about 2 weeks to get used to high milk fluid consumption.

 

[_noozie]

Measure your heart rate, and heart rate variability too.

Would pulse (bpm) not give similar information to heart rate?

 

[BigYellowLemon]

Would pulse (bpm) not give similar information to heart rate?

In addition to BPM, heart rate variability is useful. Actually I would save HRV would be more important than BPM.

BPM is just a raw, crude number, and doesn't really say much. In my mind, I doubt BPM changes much from diet or lifestyle.

There isn't much correlation between health and BPM. As long as your in the normal rage, epidemiology has found very little.

The more variable your heart rate (as in, random), the less stressed it is. The more static the beats are, you more consistent they are, like a clock, the more stress it's under. Supposedly.

In my mind, having a varied heart rate means the heart is dynamically pumping blood based on the needs an context of the body. Sorry for the buzzwords, but that's the best way I can explain it, I'm not trying to be pretentious. Like instead of a robotic beat, each beat has a purpose.

Like, the more varied the heart rate is, the less stress the heart is under. Instead of being forced to pump in a certain rhythmic way via adrenaline, the heart can fluidly control it's own beats. Hard to explain.

Regardless of my explanation, HRV is an important and easily measured biomarker. Google it, read the wiki article on it.