new research debunks trad views on nutrition

[Appalachickens]

They aren’t putting a value judgement on it. They are saying that with unprocessed food people naturally select food that gives them the micronutrients the body needs and that because a lot of those micronutrients come in foods that are relatively low in calories people on a diet of unprocessed food will eat fewer calories.
For people in the West where obesity is an issue that would generally be a good thing.
It is also interesting from a chicken perspective because it supports the theory that given enough variety of available foods (not easy here right now under a lot of snow), a chicken can select a healthy diet for itself.

Okay, I did get that part, I just wasn’t clear if they were saying there might be a problem with getting fewer calories.

Seems like either free-ranging or supplying regular grains, fruits and veggies is the way to go with chickens. Fortunately where I live, we don’t get a lot of snow and (and since it is a temperate rainforest) there’s at least some green things growing all year. On days where it is too stormy to let them out, I give them things like cabbage.

 

[RoyalChick]

This is so wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start.

Why? There were a couple of facts I would challenge but they were minor. Otherwise I think what he says is correct.

 

[RoyalChick]

Okay, I did get that part, I just wasn’t clear if they were saying there might be a problem with getting fewer calories.

Seems like either free-ranging or supplying regular grains, fruits and veggies is the way to go with chickens. Fortunately where I live, we don’t get a lot of snow and (and since it is a temperate rainforest) there’s at least some green things growing all year. On days where it is too stormy to let them out, I give them things like cabbage.

Yup. Makes sense to me. And also for ourselves try and eat a diet mainly of less processed food.

 

[saysfaa]

They aren’t putting a value judgement on it. They are saying that with unprocessed food people naturally select food that gives them the micronutrients the body needs and that because a lot of those micronutrients come in foods that are relatively low in calories people on a diet of unprocessed food will eat fewer calories.
...

Livestock and people have also been shown to naturally select the foods that provide enough calories too. If I remember correctly, we will select for that first (or maybe after salt) unless we are severely deficient in something. It doesn't show for most of us because energy is so much not a problem.

And it doesn't show in all situations, hence so much obesity even with access to much healthier choices, because of things like influence from what our mothers ate while they were pregnant, what we ate as infants, social aspects, a bias toward nutrients that are both essential to us and often scarce in wild foods (sugar, salt, and fat), a bias toward foods with characteristics that went with certain nutrients for most of history.

An example of the last one is more colorful foods having more vitamins or antioxidants, unless the food has been colored or bred for color without those nutrients. Eating on the Wild Side discusses this - people weren't trying to breed plants to have less nutrition; they were breeding for less of the characteristics that also generally go with that. Like tenderness and size.

We can learn to listen to what our bodies need even if our mothers ate a lot of junk food when we were young, etc.. It takes being consistently purposeful.

 

[Shadrach]

Why? There were a couple of facts I would challenge but they were minor. Otherwise I think what he says is correct.

I don't want to spend much time dealing with this on this thread because I'm writing an article on this topic.
A couple of points though while I'm here.
My understanding is extra calcium in commercial feed had little to do with egg shell quality and more to do with battery hens succumbing to osteoporosis because they prioritized what calcium they had available to produce eggs rather than their own health. If this is true it contradicts the assertion in the video that the hen puts her health before the health of her eggs.

High protein food for some unknown reason has become a thing in western society. There is very little evidence that suggests that we humans in these societies are short of protein eating regular foodstuffs. Should we be short of protein, then the solution is to eat more food. One can get the recommended protein intake per day (varies by demand and age but say one gram per kilo of body-weight for an active person) by eating a couple of portions of steak at say 24 grams of protein per 100 grams of steak, or double the amount of vegetables and grains with a combined protein content of 12 grams.
The same applies to chickens.

The studies I've read and there are a lots of such studies on the net, found that the minimum protein requirement for high production laying hens was around 12 grams per 100 grams. Less than this and egg production dropped off and the hens lost weight with a measured feeding regime. Bear in mind these are high production hens and as such have a higher protein demand than many of the dual purpose breeds favoured by backyard keepers.
16 grams of protein per 100 grams of feed was found to be the optimal percentage, not the minimum. Higher protein content feeds didn't tend to produce more eggs, but did produce heavier eggs and the hens put on weight.

Excess protein is broken down into fats and that is what happened to the hens in the studies; they got fat. This can be better understood by be aware that there is for all creatures a maintenance level of protein required for good health and to make use of protein above this level (to turn into muscle rather than fat) requires exercise usually of a resistive nature. That's why strength athletes require higher levels of protein, the muscle demand it to grow.
A group of mainly confined hens don't get the intensity of exercise required to build past maintenance levels of protein while free rangers often do.

A further problem is commercial feed is digested at a faster rate than wholegrains, some vegetables and higher fiber foods and this makes the hen eat more because she feels hunger earlier than a hen eating unprocessed (natural?) foods.
There is lots more and it gets quite complicated when feeding routines, activity levels, feed composition and availability are taken into account.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

There is also the complication that:

a) Not all protein is "the same", and there are a handful of studies showing that chickens, at least, can have difficulty in optimizing their critical amino acid intakes in the presence of a cafe of moderate to high calorie foods

and

b) studies have shown, again and again, that critters (us, chickens, others) ability to self regulate intake gets "wonky" once our daily caloric needs are met. With that understanding, seeking micronutrients in foods of low caloric density makes very good sense since it allows the eater to address both needs while staying near their desired caloric target.

So eat your veggies first???

[Edit: and I've not watched the YouTube video, but the simple fact that its posted on Youtube makes me doubt its veracity]

 

[RoyalChick]

I don't want to spend much time dealing with this on this thread because I'm writing an article on this topic.
A couple of points though while I'm here.
My understanding is extra calcium in commercial feed had little to do with egg shell quality and more to do with battery hens succumbing to osteoporosis because they prioritized what calcium they had available to produce eggs rather than their own health. If this is true it contradicts the assertion in the video that the hen puts her health before the health of her eggs.

High protein food for some unknown reason has become a thing in western society. There is very little evidence that suggests that we humans in these societies are short of protein eating regular foodstuffs. Should we be short of protein, then the solution is to eat more food. One can get the recommended protein intake per day (varies by demand and age but say one gram per kilo of body-weight for an active person) by eating a couple of portions of steak at say 24 grams of protein per 100 grams of steak, or double the amount of vegetables and grains with a combined protein content of 12 grams.
The same applies to chickens.

The studies I've read and there are a lots of such studies on the net, found that the minimum protein requirement for high production laying hens was around 12 grams per 100 grams. Less than this and egg production dropped off and the hens lost weight with a measured feeding regime. Bear in mind these are high production hens and as such have a higher protein demand than many of the dual purpose breeds favoured by backyard keepers.
16 grams of protein per 100 grams of feed was found to be the optimal percentage, not the minimum. Higher protein content feeds didn't tend to produce more eggs, but did produce heavier eggs and the hens put on weight.

Excess protein is broken down into fats and that is what happened to the hens in the studies; they got fat. This can be better understood by be aware that there is for all creatures a maintenance level of protein required for good health and to make use of protein above this level (to turn into muscle rather than fat) requires exercise usually of a resistive nature. That's why strength athletes require higher levels of protein, the muscle demand it to grow.
A group of mainly confined hens don't get the intensity of exercise required to build past maintenance levels of protein while free rangers often do.

A further problem is commercial feed is digested at a faster rate than wholegrains, some vegetables and higher fiber foods and this makes the hen eat more because she feels hunger earlier than a hen eating unprocessed (natural?) foods.
There is lots more and it gets quite complicated when feeding routines, activity levels, feed composition and availability are taken into account.

I will wait for your article but the calcium and bones vs shells was one of my factual quibbles. Along with egg production stopping.
To challenge accuracy of one of your points here, all excess calories - whether from protein or carbohydrate or fat get metabolized and stored as fat. Proteins do not get broken down into fat. Fat is how the body stores excess energy from any source. Fat is created by the body (a process which itself takes energy), it is not simply a by product of eating protein.

 

[Appalachickens]

Yup. Makes sense to me. And also for ourselves try and eat a diet mainly of less processed food.

Absolutely. It's why I make my own bread, can my own marinara and meat broths, etc.

 

[Perris]

I thought the group here might be interested in this scientific study that I originally found on the NIH website.

I think it is free. If not, I can post as a PDF.

Here is one paragraph to whet your appetite(!):

A second reason why an unprocessed diet might promote lower energy intake is that meal components may be selected for nutritional qualities other than calories. Early studies in chickens [8], pigs [9], and rats [10] showed that animals grow as well or better when provided free access to a cafeteria diet compared with formula feed. Building on this, Rozin [11] and Provenza [12,13] showed how species adjust their dietary choices to alleviate specific micronutrient deficiencies. Recently, we reported that humans might show a similar tendency, preferring specific pairs of fruit and vegetables that deliver a broad range of micronutrients [14]. Because fruits and vegetables are rich in micronutrients, yet low in energy density, we reasoned that consuming these components might lead to less calorific meals [15,16]. Thus, “micronutrient seeking” might be an additional factor contributing to lower energy intake from unprocessed meals in Hall et al.’s [1] study.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916525007750

An interesting paper, but sadly the one reference to chickens is from 1935 and is behind a paywall, despite its age.

 

[Shadrach]

I will wait for your article but the calcium and bones vs shells was one of my factual quibbles. Along with egg production stopping.
To challenge accuracy of one of your points here, all excess calories - whether from protein or carbohydrate or fat get metabolized and stored as fat. Proteins do not get broken down into fat. Fat is how the body stores excess energy from any source. Fat is created by the body (a process which itself takes energy), it is not simply a by product of eating protein.

You are correct. I didn't feel the need to explain exactly how the body metabolizes the nutrients it gets.