Sapient
Stews

Generally, humans need to consume somewhere around 15% protein in their diet to optimize anabolism—your potential for growth, maintenance, and repair of your tissues.

If you consume more than this, you likely just oxidize the protein, which converts the amino acids into glucose and ketones that your body does not need. You possibly only need more if you are pumping some serious iron.

However, if you consume three to four percent lower than this, you risk slowing down your anabolism which then might result in other detriments.

Complete proteins are the ones that are best utilized by our bodies. We provide these proteins through meat as well as combinations of plants: mostly legumes, grains and tubers.  These proteins help us maintain our muscles, most of our organs, and basic functions.

Collagen proteins are the ones that are best utilized by our tissues that consist mostly of collagen, including our bones, tendons, joints, ligaments, and skin. Collagen is also found, in smaller amounts, in more critical tissues of our body like our nervous and cardiovascular systems.  We provide these proteins from broth (melted bones, ligaments, tendons and skin) as well as small amounts of gelatin.

We combine these complete and collagen proteins in percentages that some studies show are the best ratios for their utilization.

Humans utilize carbs or glucose primarily for energy for our brain and red blood cells.  We provide carbs for this purpose, but not many more, because otherwise carbs are potentially detrimental in many ways.  So our meals are only 45% carbs.

Additionally, we combine various forms of carbs that absorb into the blood at different rates: some fast, like tubers, some slow, like barley, beans and vegetables.  This, in turn, helps to stabilize blood sugar, which provides multiple benefits, especially for our mental performance.

All of our carbs are whole carbs meaning they have their fiber and other parts intact—that is, tubers have their skin, and grains have their germs and bran, etc. This fiber also helps regulate blood sugar and, additionally, provides an enormous amount of benefits once fermented in our colon.

Fiber provides multiple benefits, helping us regulate digestion and the movement of food through our guts.  Additionally, once arriving in our colon, some forms of fiber, specifically soluble fiber, is fermented by our microflora, releasing an enormous array of additional nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, antioxidants (especially molecular hydrogen) as well as three different short chain fatty acids that provide energy and other benefits to our various tissues.

We mostly utilize fats as energy for our muscles and organs at more normal levels of exertion—that is, when you are resting, walking, studying, cleaning the house, etc.  So we provide enough fat for this purpose but no more.

The polyunsaturated fats, from both the omega-6 and omega-3 families, are essential, meaning our bodies cannot make them, so we provide plenty of them.  Additionally, we provide them in the best ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 that helps us regulate hormones inside our cells.

We add enough saturated fat but not enough to risk the possibility of raising bad cholesterol to irregular or risky levels.  And we add an abundance of monounsaturated fat, mostly from olive oil, which is generally regarded as one of the more beneficial of the fats.

There is some evidence to support that fats in these ratios (30 monounsaturated, and 25% polyunsaturated) are likely best utilized by the body.

Phytonutrients are molecules in plants that are not macronutrients but generally used by the plants as protection from predation. Oddly enough, at the same time, they can provide multiple benefits to our health, including enhanced immunity, antioxidants, metabolism, cognition, and protection from the sun.

Plants produce compounds to protect themselves from their predators, called secondary compounds, otherwise known as anti-nutrients, toxins and even storage proteins.  Generally, these compounds make it harder, or even impossible, for us to digest our food completely; and toxins, in particular, actually harm our tissues, however temporarily or slightly.  However, we reduce the effects of these compounds in several ways.  First of all, we do not use any one plant that much in our stews, which means we never have too much of specific types of these compounds.  Secondly, we process all our seeds, through soaking them in acidic liquid before cooking, which deactivate many of these compounds.  But most importantly, we slow cook our stews at low temperatures which deactivates even more of these compounds while the low heat does not damage the nutrients.

Believe it or not, humans use nutrients in mostly the same ways.  However, we vary in some ways as well, including our evolution and genetics (nutrigenetics), our lean mass relative to fat mass, our environments, and to some extent, our age and sex. Where we vary the most is by the amount and type of our exercise, known as our “exercise metabolism.”  Generally, when exercising more, we increase our need for all nutrients because our body is working and metabolizing more.  However, we do not increase our need for nutrients at the same amounts and levels.  Generally, we only slightly increase our need for protein while moderately or radically increasing our need for fats or carbs.

• Moderate forms of exercise do not increase our need for protein by more than several percentage points.  More intense sports, such as resistance training, tennis or basketball, break down more protein and thus we need to consume more protein to replenish our tissues.
• These meals are designed for moderate levels of exercise.  If you are doing high intensity exercise, you might need slightly more protein.
• If you are doing low intensity exercise, your muscles burn more fat relative to carbs and thus you need more fat.
• If you are doing more high intensity exercise, your muscles burn more carbs and thus you need more carbs but not all that many: per one hour of this exercise, you possibly need about sixy more grams of carbs, about the equivalent of two or three pieces of bread.
• In all of these cases, you can add either more protein, carbs or fats to the stews.  But we also recommend that you listen to your body and trust your instincts—and eat until you are satiated.  When you are surrounded by good foods, you will probably know, instinctually, how to eat them.