Green Super Food Supplements on Low Carb?

iKapuniai

Howzit everyone,

I'm doing the low carb thing... or rather, the lowER carb thing. I'm trying for about 50g or less. My problem is... I hate vegetables. I LOATHE them. I mean... I'll eat fresh green beans and broccoli from time to time, maybe a salad here and there, but really... aside from that, I don't eat much veggies. Just can't stomach them, they're boring, bland, tasteless, and unless there's some starchy, high-carb dressing or sauce to go with them, I have no desire to eat them.

So... I've been purchasing Super Food Green Supplement powder to get the nutrition of greens that I otherwise wouldn't get. I've been taking Emerald Balance Total Nutrition Drink Mix, which is a formula made primarily of greens. I'll have one to two servings per day, but each serving is about 6g of carbs.

Does anybody else do this? I'm trying to think of the nutritional aspect of it all as well, I'm hoping it's as nutritious as they make it out to be... but I suppose it's still better than nothing.

memelizzy

I do wheat grass powder. It's about 1g per 1.2 t. I also don't feel I'm getting enough veggies and therefore not enough potassium and other important nutrients. I am doing Atkins and I'm on day 42 of Induction so I'm suppose to be getting 20g of carbs daily, but most days I eat that many carbs. The wheat grass powder does seem to help; I feel more energetic when I drink it. I have a friend that is using a product that sounds similar to what you are using.

Dragonwolf

Fun fact -- you can live without vegetables entirely, if you know what to eat instead. Fiber is the big thing you're "missing out on" when you forego plant material entirely, but it's kind of questionable how much is actually needed (I know several of us here only get about 10g of day or so), especially as long as you're getting enough fat.

Now, there are two caveats to that:

1. You have to consume the right foods in order to pull it off. This means eating a fair amount of organ meat. At least liver, but just about anything you can get your hands on for variety. Also, be generous with the herbs and spices.

2. Survival and optimum health are two different things. An entirely carnivorous diet is light in some nutrients, particularly potassium, magnesium, and (fermentable) fiber.

Then, there's also the fact that it was only very recently that you could get anything except local vegetables, let alone have access to that kind of variety year-round. When you think about that, it makes the idea of "5 a day, every day" seem ludicrous.

I would make sure you're getting enough of all the right nutrients, through a variety of foods that you enjoy, when you enjoy them, but other than that, I wouldn't sweat too terribly much over the idea of needing "X servings" of just about anything. And you certainly don't have to eat the ones you really hate.

For example, I'm one of those people that can taste the bitter compounds in foods like coffee, dark greens, and grapefruit. As such, I don't eat much, if any, of those types of things. That means I pretty much never eat kale (not for lack of trying, I assure you). Instead, I get my vitamin K from butter (K2), parsley, and broccoli; my vitamin A from carrots (and hopefully in the future, liver; still working on that, though); manganese from nuts, tea, and occasionally spinach and pumpkin seeds; vitamin C from citrus fruits and berries (and fiber, more soluble than non), and so on.

That said, it sounds like one of the things you just need to do is find ways to eat them. Salads aren't the only way to eat vegetables, and if they're "bland, tasteless," then someone did something wrong, because most vegetables are anything but. It may not be on your end, which is what sucks. Poor growing practices and environments can do it, too.

(On a side note -- if foods in general are pretty bland to you, you might want to consider talking to your doctor. Inhibited sense of taste/smell is actually a symptom of some larger problems.)

However, you don't need a high-carb dressing or sauce to go with them. Try a high-fat one, instead. For better or worse, I'm a ranch dressing addict, for example. A quick search says that's about 15g of fat and 2g of carbs per serving. Or, you can go with an oil and vinegar dressing. Get a good quality olive oil, perhaps something infused with herbs or whatever (or infuse some yourself), and your favorite vinegar, maybe some other spices, and you've got yourself a tasty, low-carb salad dressing. For non-salad foods, try marinading some vegetables and grilling or roasting them. Or don't marinade them, and douse them in lard, ghee, butter, or olive oil after they're done (seriously, grill asparagus + lard + butter = heaven on a plate). You can do stuffed mushrooms or peppers, coleslaw, or chop them up and put them into something else (meatloaf, omelet, burgers, etc).

Just like how grains aren't the only source of carbs, lettuce is not the only vegetable.