80:10:10 and the crazy pregnant lady doing it

I read an interesting news article this morning about an Australian woman who is following a diet consisting of 80% carbohydrate, 10% protein and 10% fat... and she is pregnant.

She eats pretty much just fruit, which includes 20 bananas a day. Aside from the fact that I personally think this is a crazy diet for any normal person to follow I can't believe she is doing this while she is pregnant. Babies need protein, and wouldn't she be at risk of gestational diabetes?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/loni-jane-anthony-10-bananas_n_4266902.html

What do you think?
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Replies

  • meeper123
    meeper123 Posts: 3,347 Member
    I have heard of a lot of people doing stuff like that. I think it is extreme myself but there is nothing wrong with it either.
  • blably
    blably Posts: 490 Member
    it wont open the link, damn work.

    but does she have GD?

    as long as she is still gettin all the nutrition she needs.

    i think its better that she eats 10 bananas, than some US preggos who eat 10 bigmacs and 10 tacos / day
  • meeper123
    meeper123 Posts: 3,347 Member
    it wont open the link, damn work.

    but does she have GD?

    as long as she is still gettin all the nutrition she needs.

    i think its better that she eats 10 bananas, than some US preggos who eat 10 bigmacs and 10 tacos / day

    Yeah no one died from eating too many healthy foods lol
  • kalle9
    kalle9 Posts: 10 Member
    I think that :

    1. You aren't her.
    2. You aren't her doctor.
    3. You cant even quote the article correctly. 10 Bananas not 20. And she did say shes eating more cooked food for dinners.
    4. You should have clicked through to her tumblr page were she discusses a bit more about how she eats. ie she had salad and pasta for dinner.
  • blably
    blably Posts: 490 Member
    it wont open the link, damn work.

    but does she have GD?

    as long as she is still gettin all the nutrition she needs.

    i think its better that she eats 10 bananas, than some US preggos who eat 10 bigmacs and 10 tacos / day

    Yeah no one died from eating too many healthy foods lol

    exactly :)
  • msf74
    msf74 Posts: 3,498 Member
    Meh.

    As long as she supplements B12 then she can knock herself out.

    Raw foodism isn't necessarily unhealthy although taken to extreme it can be.
  • Phoenix_Warrior
    Phoenix_Warrior Posts: 1,633 Member
    As long as she's properly nourishing her baby, I don't see any problem with it.

    Are there actually people who could eat 10 big macs? Lol. Tacos, well. .. don't touch my tacos!
  • twixlepennie
    twixlepennie Posts: 1,074 Member
    I read an interesting news article this morning about an Australian woman who is following a diet consisting of 80% carbohydrate, 10% protein and 10% fat... and she is pregnant.

    She eats pretty much just fruit, which includes 20 bananas a day. Aside from the fact that I personally think this is a crazy diet for any normal person to follow I can't believe she is doing this while she is pregnant. Babies need protein, and wouldn't she be at risk of gestational diabetes?

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/loni-jane-anthony-10-bananas_n_4266902.html

    What do you think?

    80/10/10 isn't anything new. T. Collin Campbell's (scientist behind The China Study) latest book, Whole, is about this way of eating. It's not for me personally, but to each their own.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,222 Member
    Irresponsible considering there's another life in the balance.
  • neandermagnon
    neandermagnon Posts: 7,436 Member
    Irresponsible considering there's another life in the balance.

    ^^^ this

    she won't be getting enough fat or protein on that diet. An unborn baby needs a lot of fat, especially omega 3s for optimal brain development, and also a lot of protein for their development generally. I couldn't really give a monkeys (pardon the pun) regarding anyone, pregnant or not, eating 10 bananas for breakfast because they're a good source of carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, it's the lack of fat and protein that's the issue.

    There's a reason why humans eat more meat than most other primate species, and a lot of it has to do with the large size of our brains. at the very, very least, she should add oily fish or similar to her diet, so she gets protein and omega 3s. If she wants to eat all that fruit, why not, but add in some salmon or mackerel or something...
  • 3laine75
    3laine75 Posts: 3,069 Member
    Government guidelines for protein is actually 15% (pretty low, IMO) so she's not that far off the mark - I'm with you on the fat being far too low though.

    Everyone's different and I'm sure if she was feeling unwell she'd change things for the sake of her baby.

    Personally (I've no idea what the macros would have been as I wasn't interested in nutrition at the time), I survived my first pregnancy on wotsits and quenchie cups as I couldn't keep anything else down. Perfectly healthy, ten days late baby weighing in at 8 lb, 9 oz :)

    ETA: humans and pandas are the only animals that eat contrary to our evolutionary design - pandas are supposed to be carnivores and humans vegetarian so our bodies generally find a way (since learning this I have NOT given up my steaks)
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,222 Member
    Government guidelines for protein is actually 15% (pretty low, IMO) so she's not that far off the mark - I'm with you on the fat being far too low though.

    Everyone's different and I'm sure if she was feeling unwell she'd change things for the sake of her baby.

    Personally (I've no idea what the macros would have been as I wasn't interested in nutrition at the time), I survived my first pregnancy on wotsits and quenchie cups as I couldn't keep anything else down. Perfectly healthy, ten days late baby weighing in at 8 lb, 9 oz :)

    ETA: humans and pandas are the only animals that eat contrary to our evolutionary design - pandas are supposed to be carnivores and humans vegetarian so our bodies generally find a way (since learning this I have NOT given up my steaks)
    lol. The minimum protein requirements for a woman is about 45g's, which means she would need to eat 4500 calories a day to meet that. If she's consuming 1500, which i doubt she's even consuming that much would be 15g's........ridiculous considering if a woman is pregnant daily requirements go to 70.
  • Myhaloslipped
    Myhaloslipped Posts: 4,317 Member
    I don't know how far along she is, but from what I know from going through tons of my girlfriends' pregnancies with them, she will eventually give in to what her body is telling her it needs. Those cravings seem like a real b****. I was so damn shocked when my best friend, who is a hardcore vegetarian, ordered a huge cheeseburger at a restaurant during her 5th month. That was hilarious. Maybe this woman is more disciplined, but we'll see.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,294 Member
    Government guidelines for protein is actually 15% (pretty low, IMO) so she's not that far off the mark - I'm with you on the fat being far too low though.

    Everyone's different and I'm sure if she was feeling unwell she'd change things for the sake of her baby.

    Personally (I've no idea what the macros would have been as I wasn't interested in nutrition at the time), I survived my first pregnancy on wotsits and quenchie cups as I couldn't keep anything else down. Perfectly healthy, ten days late baby weighing in at 8 lb, 9 oz :)

    ETA: humans and pandas are the only animals that eat contrary to our evolutionary design - pandas are supposed to be carnivores and humans vegetarian so our bodies generally find a way (since learning this I have NOT given up my steaks)
    lol. The minimum protein requirements for a woman is about 45g's, which means she would need to eat 4500 calories a day to meet that. If she's consuming 1500, which i doubt she's even consuming that much would be 15g's........ridiculous considering if a woman is pregnant daily requirements go to 70.

    Not quite if she is eating 1500 cals, which she should be eating more than that, that would be 150 cals from protein (10%) which would be 37.5 grams (150/4), not 15 grams. Still not enough for her, let alone a developing baby
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,222 Member
    Government guidelines for protein is actually 15% (pretty low, IMO) so she's not that far off the mark - I'm with you on the fat being far too low though.

    Everyone's different and I'm sure if she was feeling unwell she'd change things for the sake of her baby.

    Personally (I've no idea what the macros would have been as I wasn't interested in nutrition at the time), I survived my first pregnancy on wotsits and quenchie cups as I couldn't keep anything else down. Perfectly healthy, ten days late baby weighing in at 8 lb, 9 oz :)

    ETA: humans and pandas are the only animals that eat contrary to our evolutionary design - pandas are supposed to be carnivores and humans vegetarian so our bodies generally find a way (since learning this I have NOT given up my steaks)
    lol. The minimum protein requirements for a woman is about 45g's, which means she would need to eat 4500 calories a day to meet that. If she's consuming 1500, which i doubt she's even consuming that much would be 15g's........ridiculous considering if a woman is pregnant daily requirements go to 70.

    Not quite if she is eating 1500 cals, which she should be eating more than that, that would be 150 cals from protein (10%) which would be 37.5 grams (150/4), not 15 grams. Still not enough for her, let alone a developing baby
    My bad...lol I apologize 3laine75, your right pretty close, but these are minimums, which most people including myself believe are too low anyway.
  • neandermagnon
    neandermagnon Posts: 7,436 Member
    ETA: humans and pandas are the only animals that eat contrary to our evolutionary design - pandas are supposed to be carnivores and humans vegetarian so our bodies generally find a way (since learning this I have NOT given up my steaks)

    humans are not "supposed to be vegetarian"... that came from someone who's never studied human evolution and who knows very little about primate biology. Primates are on the whole omnivores. The more vegetarian ones (not even sure if they're exclusively vegetarian) have smaller brains for body size, and the ones that eat more animal protein (which includes insects) have larger brains for body size. And within human evolution, eating more meat led to brains getting larger. In fact without animal protein, we wouldn't be having this conversation, we'd be sitting in trees thinking of nothing more complex than how to find more leaves to eat. Of all the great apes, none are herbivorous. Vegans and vegetarians like to talk about gorillas, but gorillas eat insects and they also have the smallest brain for body size of all the great apes. Humans have the largest and eat the most meat, chimps and bonobos have the second largest brains out of the great apes (largest out of the non-human great apes) and they eat small mammals, e.g. monkeys (and they hunt them co-operatively, possibly similar to how very early human ancestors hunted)

    so keep enjoying your steak, and thank your Homo habilis ancestors for inventing stone tools for smashing animal bones to extract bone marrow from bones, and your Homo erectus ancestors for doing persistence hunting to be able to catch larger animals and get more meat, and either Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis for discovering how to control fire, and cook meat, thus increasing the bioavailability of the nutrients in meat thus leading to growing even bigger brains, and finally to Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens for having the biggest brains and using complex hunting techniques to bring down huge animals. Without meat, we wouldn't have evolved large brains.

    Re primates having evolved from vegetarian animals... not sure whether the common ancestor of all primates was vegetarian or ominvorous, but probably if you go back far enough you can probably find a herbivorous ancestor... but evolution is like that, it's dynamic. Organisms don't generally just find a niche and stick to it. The environment is constantly changing and organisms are constantly adapting to it, and that often means changes in diet such that many organisms are not perfectly adapted for the environment they currently live in, including the diet that they eat. Failure to adapt = extinction. So it's not just humans and pandas that have had to adapt to different diets to evolutionary ancestors, it's all organisms all the time.
  • neandermagnon
    neandermagnon Posts: 7,436 Member
    I don't know how far along she is, but from what I know from going through tons of my girlfriends' pregnancies with them, she will eventually give in to what her body is telling her it needs. Those cravings seem like a real b****. I was so damn shocked when my best friend, who is a hardcore vegetarian, ordered a huge cheeseburger at a restaurant during her 5th month. That was hilarious. Maybe this woman is more disciplined, but we'll see.

    I don't think your vegetarian friend lacked discipline... I think she made a very wise decision. She realised that maybe she didn't need to eat meat when not pregnant, but that her baby obviously did need it so she ate it rather than sticking to a principle for the sake of sticking to a principle.

    People shouldn't be criticised for making decisions like this. Principles are great, but knowing when to have different principles is an important life skill. Muslims will eat pork if they're starving, and the Qur'an tells them to do this.
  • RonnieLodge
    RonnieLodge Posts: 665 Member
    While that lifestyle isn't for me, I think she seems pretty happy and thriving on it. She isn't using it to sell anything (is she?) and isn't suggesting everyone else do it.

    I think that anyone being judgy under the guise of THINK OF HER UNBORN CHILD needs to be quiet.

    It is not as if she is going on drinking and drug benders.
  • RonnieLodge
    RonnieLodge Posts: 665 Member
    Irresponsible considering there's another life in the balance.

    WTH? No there isn't.

    Life doesn't begin until after birth.
  • Carnivor0us
    Carnivor0us Posts: 1,752 Member
    Irresponsible considering there's another life in the balance.

    WTH? No there isn't.

    Life doesn't begin until after birth.

    Hello, can of worms. Nice to meat you.
  • mmckee10
    mmckee10 Posts: 405 Member
    Irresponsible considering there's another life in the balance.

    WTH? No there isn't.

    Life doesn't begin until after birth.

    VYyB5PM.gif

    ETA: Have you ever seen an ultrasound by chance? The baby's heart forms around 5 weeks.. I consider that life. (Actually, I believe life begins at conception.. buuuuuut for the sake of argument..) the baby just doesn't magically become "alive" when it is born. It kicks and moves the whole pregnancy. movement = life. heart beat = life. pregnancy = another life DEPENDS on you for survival.
  • Nonya81
    Nonya81 Posts: 145 Member
    Irresponsible considering there's another life in the balance.

    WTH? No there isn't.

    Life doesn't begin until after birth.

    Your joking right?!
  • neandermagnon
    neandermagnon Posts: 7,436 Member
    Irresponsible considering there's another life in the balance.

    WTH? No there isn't.

    Life doesn't begin until after birth.

    LOL @ trying to start a debate

    but anyway

    biological definition of living. If it does the following (or will do as an adult) it's alive:

    1. respiration - check.
    2. nutrition - check. through the placenta, but it's still nutrition
    3. sensitivity - yep this develops earlier for some senses than others but they're all developed well before birth
    4. growth - check
    5. reproduction - it will do this is if it survives to adulthood, the same is true of all immature organisms and if you exclude unborn babies from counting as being alive on this basis you have to exclude all pre-pubescent children, baby animals, plants that are not yet flowering, etc etc etc.... which is not what biologists do. It has the potential to reproduce, therefore it ticks this box re being alive.
    6. excretion - also through the placenta but it still does this
    7. movement- it actually starts doing this really early on in pregnancy, the heart is beating by 2 weeks, it has active nerve cells by this time as well, and actual movement in the sense of moving it's little tiny limbs, that starts around 8 weeks

    So yes, it's alive

    In fact, the blastocyst that the baby develops from is alive, as are sperms and eggs. There is no point in gestation where the unborn baby suddenly comes alive, because biology doesn't work like that. I'm not getting involved in any abortion debates, but the question regarding that is about at what point in the child's development you consider it acceptable to kill it. Prior to people having the knowledge of how to do an abortion, many societies considered it acceptable to kill newborn babies, especially using methods that prevented them from ever taking their first breath (although others like leaving them outside in the cold to die of exposure were also used). If anyone is framing the abortion debate in terms of "at what point is the baby alive" then they are totally ignorant of biology. It's alive and has been right from the start.

    BTW the above is plain biological and historical facts, I am not presenting an argument for or against abortion. There are other factors to be considered, but the question "is the unborn baby alive" has already been answered by science.
  • 12skipafew99100
    12skipafew99100 Posts: 1,669 Member
    This does sound extreme. I had one banana everyday with my first pregnancy. They sounded good and I liked them. But after the baby was born it was years before I ever wanted another banana.

    Well wishes to her. I wonder what the fat % is?
  • 12skipafew99100
    12skipafew99100 Posts: 1,669 Member
    Irresponsible considering there's another life in the balance.

    WTH? No there isn't.

    Life doesn't begin until after birth.

    If that is so, then why do you have to kill it?
  • gigglesinthesun
    gigglesinthesun Posts: 860 Member
    at least she's not smoking, drinking or taking drugs ...

    at the end of the day, she is living in Australia (like I) and not some third world country, and she will be under medical care for her pregnancy. If there are problems in the foetal development, she'll be told (we do have ultrasounds here, not just koalas) and she can adjust her diet accordingly.
  • YesIAm17
    YesIAm17 Posts: 817 Member
    Irresponsible considering there's another life in the balance.

    WTH? No there isn't.

    Life doesn't begin until after birth.

    67531-Big-Lewbowski-gif-thats-just-l-LrZh.gif
  • meeper123
    meeper123 Posts: 3,347 Member
    You can actually get a very healthy balance of fat and protien on 80-10-10 they eat a lot of calories actually 4000 seems to be the number that comes up the most. Do a little research about what the diet entales before pointing fingers. It is by no means an unhealthy diet its fruits and veggies doctors have been harping at people to eat more of them forever. I do not believe as they do that it is the only healthy way to eat, but she isn't chugging whiskey and eating sushi. Its vegetables and fruit lol they eats seeds and avacados and nuts they are all about eating as much as they want to be satisfied. They eat huge meals that have a balance of fruits, veggies, and small amounts of fat. They are also very creative um..."cooks" I actually enjoy quite a few of thier meals.
  • Iwishyouwell
    Iwishyouwell Posts: 1,888 Member
    I take my own issues with the 80/10/10 approach, particularly with some of the fanatics who push it, but I find it very interesting that this woman is being so vehemently attacked, yet scores of pregnant women are downing every single piece of cheap, low quality, nutritionally lite piece of processed food they can get their hands on, gaining way more weight than they need, and yet almost nobody ever calls them out.

    The United States of Obesity indeed.
  • ldrosophila
    ldrosophila Posts: 7,512 Member
    My only concern is how is she going to meet the increase production of albumin when her blood volume increases? Don't know if anyone has ever read the Brewer's Diet, but that was one of his hypothesis that a low protein diet could possibly increase the chances of eclampsia.