Thanks for the great discussion.
I just did a quick calculation in the Cron-O-Meter (
www.cronometer.com), to see how the numbers work out.
For simplicity, here is a diet of just cooked brown rice and raw iceberg lettuce:
Brown Rice, cooked in unsalted water
1462.45 g
Approx. 3.22 lbs (454 g/lb)
7.5 cup
1623.32 calories
Lettuce, Iceberg [raw]
2849.96 g
Approx. 6.28 lbs (454 g/lb)
50 cups, chopped
398.99 calories
** Remember, 2 cups raw leafy greens are typically considered one serving of vegetables. So we have 25 servings of vegetables in this example day. If we steamed the lettuce, the resulting volume would be much lower, as I am sure many of us have experienced.
Total Calories: 2022
All RDAs met at 80%, with the exception of a few that we have discussed previously on Jeff Novick's boards, such as calcium and sodium.
(If anyone is just stumbling on this discussion without any background knowledge, I would spend some time learning more about the overall dietary pattern and recommendations, especially the "sticky" posts on Jeff Novick's (MS, RD) message board:
viewforum.php?f=22 . Novick posts as "JeffN.")
Novick has previously discussed that a target of at least 75% RDA per day seems to be prudent. (
viewtopic.php?p=409340#p409340) (75% RDA of Vit A would be 47.5 cups of iceberg for the day.)
The "limiting nutrient" here appears to be Vitamin A, which comes in at 79%. Since all the Vitamin A is coming from the iceberg, we could add in more servings to bump the Vit A up if we wanted to aim for 100% RDA. (For those of us aiming for excellence, we would need a total of 63 cups of raw iceberg lettuce to hit 100% RDA for Vit A, which my Cron-o-meter lists as 3000 IU.)
I hope that helps further the discussion, at least from a nutrient perspective. As we can see, it is still a starch-based diet, with the vast majority of the calories coming from the brown rice.
Thanks again for the amazing discussion. Please have a wonderful day.