LogFAQs > #945619099

As someone who has almost exclusively eaten brown rice for 17 months, you would be surprised how your body compensates for not having nutrients. I think the real key is that bacteria can produce a lot things your body can't so even if you don't eat any food that has say copper, it's possible that the food you did eat is feeding a bacteria in your stomach that IS producing copper.

If you've ever wondered how cows eating exclusively grass can have enough protein to be a 2000 pound muscular creature, it's the same way. The cows actually get very little nutrients from the grass, but the bacteria in their stomach feeds off the grass and has protein and the cow digests the bacteria and ends up with the protein from the bacteria. That's why they have 4 stomachs, it's not actually for digestion, only the last one does that very much, it's to ferment and culture the bacteria which then get digested in the last stomach.

Like I'm getting about 1% of my daily potassium most days because rice does not have potassium and yet when I get bloodwork done, my potassium only drops by a very small amount every month or so. Sometimes it even goes up. Presumably, some bacteria is producing it. Additionally, a lot of processes in your body can make do with non ideal materials or some processes can just be stopped and replaced by less efficient versions. The human body is very good at adapting to what seem to be lethal diets.

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