What's your breakfast before diving?

[DCBC]

Usually steak, eggs, a mess of fried potatoes and OJ.

 

[Tigerman]

Sorry, buddy, I'm inherently skeptical to all those arguments about one single foodstuff suddenly becoming the great scourge, guilty of all health problems.
...

Pretty much ANY fooditem is unhealthy if you eat excessive ammounts..

I'm relying on proven conventional nutritional science and living according to conventional Scandinavian health advice: Minimize sugar, white flour and saturated fats. Eat balanced amounts of protein, marine fats, veggies and slow carbs - including whole grain bread. That diet has kept me healthy for almost 50 years, and I expect it to keep me healthy for a couple more decades

And most people does and it seems to work. The average BMI in the US is 28.8 and the average in Norway is 25.3 (as per 2010 WHO numbers).
And before people go on about BMI being inaccurate due to muscle mass and yadayada, while that is true for INDIVIDUALS, the BMI was designed specifically as a way to measure lare populations, like countries and as such it is infact much more accurate on a country by country scale..

 

[lostcajun]

For me it would be my normal breakfast. Oatmeal with blue berries and one cup of coffee. I love food and I love to cook and prepare food, but breakfast is for starting up the metabolism. This kind of breakfast is easy on the body, so no problems with diving. And YES, I do consume bananas and almonds as snacks in between meals. And then no problems with diving.

 

[Abdullah]

1: IME, US "whole wheat" bread and Scandinavian whole grain bread are two totally different creatures. I had a hard time finding decent whole grain bread when I lived in your country. Don't use your processed industrial breads as examples of North European breads.
2: Biochemically, we still burn carbohydrates as our primary source of energy, regardless of all those low-carb fads. Just as we did when we crawled up from the ocean several millions of years before Mr. Atkins and his like started appearing in media. Biochemical fact: If you don't get enough carbs to burn for energy to your brain, your body needs to convert the protein to carbs before it burns it. Fat is metabolized through another pathway, though, but you need to be very, very careful with your high-fat diet to avoid too much saturated fats which clog up your arteries. And fat metabolism can't feed your brain, that's another biochemical fact.
3: I know that raisins are high in sugar. I use that deliberately to kick-start my metabolism, but I complement that with slow carbs that keep me going for a long time, avoiding the sudden drop in blood sugar that follows a too sugar-rich meal. And from extensive experience with day-long hikes and 100k bike rides, I also know that oat keeps me going longer than most other foodstuffs before my blood sugar gets too low, while a high-protein/high-fat breakfast is the absolute worst I can eat before that kind of activity.



Sorry, buddy, I'm inherently skeptical to all those arguments about one single foodstuff suddenly becoming the great scourge, guilty of all health problems. I'm relying on proven conventional nutritional science and living according to conventional Scandinavian health advice: Minimize sugar, white flour and saturated fats. Eat balanced amounts of protein, marine fats, veggies and slow carbs - including whole grain bread. That diet has kept me healthy for almost 50 years, and I expect it to keep me healthy for a couple more decades

Your body wasn't built to eat carbs all the time: Plant based nutrients were very seasonal before the invention agriculture when the your primordial ancestors were evolving. They were eating a lot more meat than carbs because meat isn't nearly as seasonal, especially if you follow the herds. And there are peer reviewed studies that show that the IGF spikes you get from carbohydrates are associated with some cancers and other health issues.

In addition to sugar, I think if you study the correlation between the percentage of grains in the modern diet (including corn) and the rise of obesity and related illnesses you will find a relationship. Almost every modern processed food is fortified with some sort of grain product. If you don't believe it look at the global rise in food prices when US corn was converted to ethanol production. The grain based carbohydrate loading in processed foods is fairly high; read the ingredients on a "low fat" product and you see a lot of sugar or grain based carbs replace the fat. Compare modern foods with the foods available 40 years ago and you will find that you generally had to buy bread or something called grain (i.e. cereal) to get grain in your diet. Now it's the insidious ingredient in everything.

Whole grain or processed grain is still starch, which converts quickly to glucose. The only thing slowing the conversion of whole grain is the time it takes your body to extract the starch from the indigestible bits of the whole grain. A slow carb would be something like milk. If you're buying raw foods (meat, eggs, veggies, fruit, etc.) and preparing your own meals, you can control your carbohydrate intake. If you're buying something in a box or a bag you will have difficulty controlling your carbohydrate intake.

You do need carbs, but not nearly the levels of carbs that is found in the modern diet - including your beloved European diets. Diving isn't a road race, it's a low energy activity for most divers (at least those with low air consumption). A half a slice of bread is all the grain based carbs you really need. Add a couple eggs, plenty of fluids, and a comfort food of choice, and you've got all the energy you really need.

 

[miketsp]

..snip..
You do need carbs, but not nearly the levels of carbs that is found in the modern diet - including your beloved European diets. Diving isn't a road race, it's a low energy activity for most divers (at least those with low air consumption).
..snip..

The big problem I have is staying warm. My SAC has dropped over the years to a very low level for the simple reason that my movements are minimal, economical and efficient. The flip side of this is that by not exercising my muscles I feel the cold much more. When I do a dive where I have to exercise and swim constantly I don't get cold but when just hanging around a reef or a wreck then I find I really need a high sugar/carb intake beforehand to avoid feeling the cold.

 

[Tigerman]

The big problem I have is staying warm. My SAC has dropped over the years to a very low level for the simple reason that my movements are minimal, economical and efficient. The flip side of this is that by not exercising my muscles I feel the cold much more. When I do a dive where I have to exercise and swim constantly I don't get cold but when just hanging around a reef or a wreck then I find I really need a high sugar/carb intake beforehand to avoid feeling the cold.

Not so much of a problem when you live in abu dhabi as when you live in Norway, is it?

 

[Lorenzoid]

What I eat for breakfast depends on where I am. Since I mainly dive tropical, there is always fruit. Mangoes and papayas rock. In Mexico, I will gladly eat a couple of tacos--potato and chorizo are good with me. In Indonesia, I want my nasi goreng (fried rice) or mee goreng (fried noodles), and because dive ops cater to the international crowd, I get to top it with that favorite of Western divers: bacon. Easy on the sambal, though. Burping (or worse) up breakfast can be unpleasant.

I realize this is probably not responsive to the OP's actual question. The OP is in Riga, but didn't say if he is referring to breakfast before diving locally. I think it's fair to say I will not be diving in the Baltic--ever.

 

[danvolker]

1: IME, US "whole wheat" bread and Scandinavian whole grain bread are two totally different creatures. I had a hard time finding decent whole grain bread when I lived in your country. Don't use your processed industrial breads as examples of North European breads.
2: Biochemically, we still burn carbohydrates as our primary source of energy, regardless of all those low-carb fads. Just as we did when we crawled up from the ocean several millions of years before Mr. Atkins and his like started appearing in media. Biochemical fact: If you don't get enough carbs to burn for energy to your brain, your body needs to convert the protein to carbs before it burns it. Fat is metabolized through another pathway, though, but you need to be very, very careful with your high-fat diet to avoid too much saturated fats which clog up your arteries. And fat metabolism can't feed your brain, that's another biochemical fact.
3: I know that raisins are high in sugar. I use that deliberately to kick-start my metabolism, but I complement that with slow carbs that keep me going for a long time, avoiding the sudden drop in blood sugar that follows a too sugar-rich meal. And from extensive experience with day-long hikes and 100k bike rides, I also know that oat keeps me going longer than most other foodstuffs before my blood sugar gets too low, while a high-protein/high-fat breakfast is the absolute worst I can eat before that kind of activity.



Sorry, buddy, I'm inherently skeptical to all those arguments about one single foodstuff suddenly becoming the great scourge, guilty of all health problems. I'm relying on proven conventional nutritional science and living according to conventional Scandinavian health advice: Minimize sugar, white flour and saturated fats. Eat balanced amounts of protein, marine fats, veggies and slow carbs - including whole grain bread. That diet has kept me healthy for almost 50 years, and I expect it to keep me healthy for a couple more decades

Just remember, in the US, we had proven and conventional Medical science stating Clearly in the 40's and 50's, that tobacco and cigarettes had no connection to cancer. The money of the tobacco lobby made a sham of the truth.
Today in the US, the Food and Drug administration is essentially a shill and protector for the Pharmaceutical giants, and for Big Sugar, and for the Factory approach to feeding the masses. This is all about the money, and has little to nothing to do with health. Schools in America will still tell kids that Bread is part of the foundational diet you need to be healthy....So Wonder Bread is alive and well in the "accepted Nutritional Science" of today.

Advanced Glycation End Products are well known to Medical Researchers, but the food companies are more than likely complicit in holding back any publicizing of this, for the demonizing of sugar and processed foods it would cause--and the economic trauma this would cause in the Foods industry.

With A.G.E. , some people are far more susceptible to it's effects than others...in the sugar issue, some people deal with large amounts of sugar in their food much better than others....for many, with a large sugar meal, along with the insulin spiking comes formation of sugar globules on muscle fibers and linings of blood vessels. This forms sites of inflammation, and should this happen often...chronically, then you can easily end up with arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, and a host of other illnesses that occur from too much sugar in each meal.

I agree that the breads in Europe are much healthier than the processed breads in America, and that Europeans are less likely to SUPERSIZE a meal of Bread the way an America might with bagels or sub sandwiches. The issue is more about at what point YOUR body can't use any more sugar, and at what point the issues of A.G.E. or diabetes begins to develop from the food you eat.

 

[Lorenzoid]

. . .
I agree that the breads in Europe are much healthier than the processed breads in America, and that Europeans are less likely to SUPERSIZE a meal of Bread the way an America might with bagels or sub sandwiches. The issue is more about at what point YOUR body can't use any more sugar, and at what point the issues of A.G.E. or diabetes begins to develop from the food you eat.

I will stay out of the health-related aspect of this thread except to say that my wife and I were discussing European versus American sandwiches last night. She (a European) observed that Europeans will put just a couple of thin slices of meat and/or cheese in a "foot-long" (pardon the Imperial units) baguette, and that the bread is not an afterthought or mere vehicle for holding the sandwich filling but rather an equal focal point of the sandwich along with the filling and an integral part of the meal as a whole. They want and expect the bread to meat/cheese ratio to be high. To many Europeans, it's just not a meal without bread. In America, except perhaps for some high-end "artisan" sandwich places, the bread is just a vehicle for holding the ingredients. I've seen carb-phobic Americans remove half the bread from their sandwich and just eat the interior and a little of the bread--something I don't think you would ever see Europeans do. Of course, a "foot-long" European baguette is thinner than the sub sandwich bread we get in the US and weighs far less than a foot-long American "Italian"/"French" sub sandwich bread. And it actually tastes like bread, not plastic. Okay, that's all I've got to contribute.

 

[Storker]

Your body wasn't built to eat carbs all the time: Plant based nutrients were very seasonal before the invention agriculture when the your primordial ancestors were evolving. They were eating a lot more meat than carbs because meat isn't nearly as seasonal, especially if you follow the herds.

And if I'd lived during that "golden age", I'd be dead by now. Life expectancy during the early stone age was lower than my current age.

Besides, the country with the highest life expectancy in the world is Japan. And traditionally, their staple food is rice. You know, as in almost pure, unadulterated starch. With veggies, a little fish and some soy on the side. You don't think that that little fact kind of contradicts the hypothesis that starch is evil?

Just remember, in the US, we had proven and conventional Medical science stating Clearly in the 40's and 50's, that tobacco and cigarettes had no connection to cancer. The money of the tobacco lobby made a sham of the truth.

Yeah, I've read "Merchants of doubt" as well. And the picture that Oreskes and Conway draws of the lobbying by big money isn't pretty.

Today in the US, the Food and Drug administration is essentially a shill and protector for the Pharmaceutical giants, and for Big Sugar, and for the Factory approach to feeding the masses.

...but this is too close to CT for me.