Reddit reviews Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry

I'll stick to recommending science communication books (those that don't require a deep background on biological concepts):

• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection - Charles Darwin, bonus points if you can get a 1st edition reprint (before his colleagues made him change a lot of important things); it is a must-read but it might need quite some time to truly understand it, it is a heavy read.
  
  
• A lot of people recommend the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins but that one is one of his most controversial books and if you decide to read it, you should take everything with a pinch of salt; for Dawkins I prefer to recommend the Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution and the Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. Just beware of Dawkins, he's a little dogmatic in his approach.
  
  
• The Dialectical Biologist - Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin.
  
  
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn, this one will change forever your conception of science as a whole.
  
  
• The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley.
  
  
• Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, and the Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History - Stephen J. Gould.
  
  
• The Ghosts of Evolution: Non-sensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms - Connie Barlow.
  
  
• Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? - Frans de Waal, this one is about animal cognition but has an incredible underline of all the deficiencies and prejudges on science.
  
  
• Microbe Hunters - Paul de Kruif.
  
  
• Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, and What is Life? - Lynn Margulis.
  
  
• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan.
  
  
• A Short Story of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson.
  
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  For books that everyone studying biology ends up reading, my candidate would be Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry, by Nelson & Cox but that's a textbook.

Chemistry has some expensive textbooks (each separate word is its own link)

Here's some resources to get you started:

• https://www.edx.org/course/nutrition-health-part-1-macronutrients-wageningenx-nutr101x-0
  
  
• http://nutritionfacts.org/
  
  
• http://www.pcrm.org/health/resources
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Lehninger-Principles-Biochemistry-David-Nelson/dp/1429234148

And another

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1429234148/

• [Introduction to Human Nutrition] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1405168072/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_hist_1) is a very good book to get started with if you have a solid biochemical background
  
  
• If you need to get some knowledge about biochemistry first I recommend reading Biochemistry for Dummies which is ok for non-professionals to read. One of the best Biochemistry books is Lehninger, Biochemistry, but it is very pricey
  
  Nutrition is mostly about biochemistry. So I'd recommend you reading some biochemistry books instead of nutrition based ones. Once you have a solid knowledge of biochemistry you'll be able to understand nutrition without a problem.

We can digest cellulose?! I've never researched the topic so I've got no idea. I've been under the impression that any digestion of "fiber" (such a vague term! I have a feeling it'll be going out of style in the coming decades) was through gut bacteria, but again, I've never really done any research on it. Good call on whether hydroxyproline/hydroxylysine can be utilized by gut bacteria. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they could.

Digestion isn't my forte either beyond knowing where things get broken down/absorbed. I've been meaning to hit up gut bacteria since they're becoming so popular topic these days.

Lotta respect for you too dude! And everyone here who contributes discussion. The more we talk things out and try to see where we might be overassuming/flat out wrong/missing information, the more we learn. That's the beauty of the scientific method, in my opinion. I've got high hopes for this sub.

Not sure if FFA/glucose radicals are handled by different antioxidants. That would definitely make sense, though, considering the unique antioxidant utilities of vitamins C and E each.

I have no idea if any nutrients are more bioavailable from plants than animals. Some would be exclusive (or nearly so) to one category, like taurine in animal products or beta-carotene in vegetable products. There are a lot of factors to consider in food bioavailability too, like cooking methods, usage of oils, cooking time, all that stuff.

> Perhaps physiological insulin resistance? And perhaps something like this hints that physiological insulin resistance isn't a good thing; you've reached a point of ketosis that is too "deep" and are pushing starvation. (Subtly referring back to the body's need to replenish aminos from diet).

I was wondering about that. I've yet to examine Mr. Dobromylskyj's hypothesis of physiological insulin resistance in depth.

> That would mean a lot for an all meat diet since it's argued that vitamin E is one of the nutrients that would be deficient.

Isn't that one of the better arguments against it? ;) I figure, hunter-gatherer societies have eaten varying proportions of foods derived from animals and plants, it's possible, even probable we would be okay going proportionately in either direction. Though, I'm more a fan of moderation... :)

I think my secret is a huge interest, which keeps me going in researching/learning about biochemistry. Even still I learn new things all the time, and ideas I previously had turn out to be wrong.. c'est la vie. I can't imagine taking up, say, mechanical engineering, I just don't have much an interest in it. Hopefully you get to take some kind of chemistry class! (Idk, most biochem classes I know of around here are higher-level/require several prerequisites). Really cool that you play the guitar btw. Piano player here.

Learning new/challenging material sure isn't easy but it's very rewarding. I started learning some basic cell biology by just looking at wiki pages and exhaustingly detailing every last definition that I didn't know like the back of my hand. It all expanded from there and I started doing the same with primary literature (what I often read here; bscly all research that's not a review). If you're looking for a textbook, I highly recommend Lehninger et al's Principles of Biochemistry. ^^^Pop ^^^me ^^^a ^^^pm ^^^if ^^^you ^^^want ^^^a ^^^PDF ^^^of ^^^the ^^^book