Comments by "DynamicWorlds" (@dynamicworlds1) on "Rice, beans, and the "myth" of protein combining" video.

  1. Strictly speaking, they don't have to understand the nutrition for it to be why those foods are combined. All else being equal, if 2 cultures are competing, the one with the food culture that combines foods in a more healthy way is going to have an advantage and (though one of many means) be more likely to survive and have its food culture spread. Understanding is not required for the selection process to take place anymore than it is with genetic evolution. They are healthy to eat in combination can flow right into a causal relation to the frequency in which they are combined. Even down to a smaller level, a family with healthier family recipes is more likely to produce more children who are able to grow into healthy adults who are able to have healthy kids of their own. Likewise, if a family is doing well, others are more likely to emulate things they are doing, even without any understanding of if or why those things would confer an advantage. "What are you feeding them?" is, afterall, something said to a parent who's children are growing up bigger and stronger than average. Whether you want to call it memetics or dual inheritance theory or something else, the fundamentals of evolution (selection+reproduction with random variation) apply to ideas and culture, not just biology.
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  2. Yeah, bioavailability is important. I'm not as up on protein bioavailability, but I do know that getting at least some saturated fats in your meals is important for the absorption of some vitamins and that they need to be in your stomach at the same time to get that effect (iirc because the vitamins are fat soluble, and the body it better able to absorb them when they're clinging to the fat molecules than just dissolved in aqueous solution without fat). Likewise, making sure you're getting some of both kinds of fiber in every meal can help the digestive system in general (whereas both no fiber and getting exclusively high amounts of insoluble fiber can make it harder on your digestive system to absorb the full nutrition of what you're eating). I don't know of any reason the different amino acids would need to be eaten together in the same meal for absorption, but the general idea of bioavailability is still important and a good reason to have your meals be more mixed in the types of foods in them (rather than say, getting all your grains in one meal, all your meat in another, etc). I am curious what kinds of things could cause problems with absorbing protein if you don't mind sharing.
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