How to eat right for your health and upgrade recipes part 3....

Today's Post: Friday, 9-30-2011

This is my fourth post in the 8 ways to stay healthy.

2. Eat only foods that benefit you and your health – or at least do no harm.

(We did the first one on Friday, 9-9: 1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks. And, we repost the list of all 8 ways at the end of today’s post.)

This post is part 4 of eating OK and good for you foods..

C. There are several foundation blocks for foods that actually benefit you and your health to eat.

In an earlier post in this series we covered the two kinds of health supporting oils, monosaturated fats and omega 3 oils, particularly those found in fish.

Besides those, the three most important kinds are health OK plant protein foods, health OK animal protein foods, and nonstarchy vegetables.

(Fruit and starchy vegetables can be OK but need special handling and although sometimes very beneficial, they are less essential and more a nice to have option than OK plant protein foods, health OK animal protein foods, and nonstarchy vegetables.)

This post is about health OK plant protein foods.

Health OK plant proteins have multiple advantages and benefits for your health.

Most of them cost far less than the health OK animal proteins such as wild caught fish, eggs, and meat from birds and animals fed only their natural diets 100 % of their lives.
How do you afford the extra cost for the health OK animal proteins?

One answer is eat the health OK plant proteins a majority of the time.

a) Beans and lentils are particularly good. They are very cheap.

You can boil them once a week yourself after buying them in bulk which costs even less. My wife and I do that with pinto beans which is a staple in my diet. Doing it this way uses no salt. So when add pasta sauce with some salt to the pinto beans for my dinner 3 or 4 evenings a week, my salt intake is still relatively low.

The canned, cooked lentils, I have as part of my breakfast 3 or 4 days a week cost more per serving than the pinto beans we cook ourselves but are still quite inexpensive. The third of a can I eat on those days costs just 66 cents!

Beans and lentils are relatively low glycemic and have a lot of LDL lowering soluble fiber. They have a lot of total fiber and even are high in antioxidants and some vitamins and minerals.

One fatloss expert, Tim Ferris, found that just eating health OK animal protein and nonstarchy vegetables left him and many of the people he was coaching a bit too hungry; but adding some beans turned off the hunger without stopping their fat loss!

Beans and lentils do provide an incomplete protein so I eat them with a bit of parmesan cheese in some cases. The days I eat the canned lentils for breakfast I also eat two boiled eggs; and I have a glass of 2% lowfat milk.

b) Nuts, for those who aren’t allergic to them, are such a potent superfood I once read that people who eat nuts daily live as many MORE years as the number of years LESS people live who are smokers!

Nuts contain health OK and heart health improving monosaturated oils. People who eat them regularly have their protective HDL go up. They also tend to eat less saturated fat and omega 6 oils while still getting the essential oils their body needs.

It is also very important to eat nuts raw or dry roasted only.

The nuts prepared by cooking in oils high in omega 6 and then salted, do taste good but the extra omega 6 oils and salt will cancel the health benefits of the nuts except for the minerals such as magnesium in the nuts. Some prepared nuts even are coated with hydrogenated omega 6 oils which have trans fats and are heart attack starter! So, avoid any nuts of this kind!

Nuts can be a bit expensive. The good news is that Whole Foods Markets sells raw, unsalted nuts in bulk. My wife and I eat walnuts and pecans. And, for almonds, the unsalted almond butter at Whole Foods costs less than the bulk almonds, so we eat that.

Did you know that nuts are high fat but rarely fattening? This counter-intuitive fact is due to two things.

Nuts are crunchy to eat and taste good but take a bit of chewing to eat. That makes them psychologically satisfying.

And nuts are superb at turning off hunger. Protein turns off hunger. Nuts have health OK plant protein. Fats turn off hunger. Nuts have health OK fats and oils. Fiber turns off hunger. Nuts have plenty of fiber. So raw nuts turn off hunger all three ways!

In practice, studies found, that when people eat 500 calories of nuts, they wind up NOT eating 500 calories of other foods and do NOT gain weight.

The one exception to this is nut butters. Between tasting good and requiring very little chewing to eat, you CAN gain weight or stop losing fat if you eat too much. That has happened to both me and author Tim Ferris with almond butter.

Nuts are also an excellent source of the several kinds of natural tocopherols including the alpha tocopherol form, vitamin E.

Even better, nuts are a source of natural tocotrienols which may be even better for your heart and which cost 10 times as much or more as a supplement than getting them from nuts.

(Note that for people who aren’t allergic, peanut butter that has only peanuts or only peanuts and salt is a similar food to almond butter in its effects. Adams makes and I think Laura Scudders makes that kind of peanut butter.

But there are many hazards to peanut butter almond butter does not have.

Many, many more people have potentially fatal allergies to peanuts. So for that reason, it’s much safer if you avoid taking any peanut butter out of your house or putting any peanut butter in your kid’s lunches -- ever.

Even more of a concern, is that most other companies that sell peanut butter add sugar and some even add partially hydrogenated oils. Yikes !! Since this isn’t yet illegal, if you buy peanut butter, you absolutely must read the labels and avoid those kinds.)

c) Mushrooms are only health OK plant protein, fiber, water, taste, and nutrients.

Mushrooms are a nonstarchy vegetable with health OK plant protein, distinctive flavors, and some interesting health benefits.

You can dice them up raw and add them to salads or cook them into cooked egg dishes. You can use them in soups. You can even cook the large Portobello mushrooms in extra virgin olive oil as a center piece for a meal.

Because some wild mushrooms are dangerous to eat, I personally pass on buying wild mushrooms at the store. But Portobello mushrooms are unmistakable. And the inexpensive white and brown mushrooms have the majority of the immune system boosting power of their much more expensive cousins for many dollars less.

That extra immune system boosting power is quite powerful. I’ve read that women who eat mushrooms several times a week are significantly less likely to get breast cancer. I’ve not yet tried eating extra mushrooms to get over a cold or the flu or an infection. But it might well help!

c) Whole grain foods are a mixed review. Some studies show eating 100 % whole grains has health benefits and some show health harm.

So, here’s my take on them.

Bad news first:

Some people are allergic to wheat or do NOT process the gluten in wheat well or at all. This can cause health problems from mild to severe.

Most wheat is grown in large factory farms using pesticides and herbicides and much of it is likely genetically modified. So that’s an issue too.

Even brown rice and 100 % whole wheat flour and the foods made from them have 100 % of the potentially health harming VERY high glycemic index as their whiter, refined cousins. Their glycemic index is about fifty % HIGHER than sugar! Yikes!

So, most people with even slightly elevated blood sugar or type 2 diabetes should take a pass on most whole grain foods in addition to a total pass on all refined grain foods.

Another consideration is that the oil in whole grains is omega 6 oil. So eating a lot of whole grains every day can help cause chronic inflammation.

In addition to that, grains are NOT in the paleo diet. Before 10,000 years ago, people did not eat grains.

That’s one of the reasons many people don’t process grains well.

Here’s the better news about whole grains.:

The other side of the story is that whole grains also have some health benefits and the studies of people who eat ONLY 100% whole grains often show they are healthier than most people. (Of course the people who weren’t as healthy likely had no clue to avoid refined grains and were eating a LOT of them.)

Whole grains are only moderate in price. They are high in plant protein. And, whole grains are high in many kinds of B vitamins and some minerals – notably chromium which helps keep your blood sugar under control.

Whole grains also are high in fiber. In fact, barley, oat bran, and rolled and steel cut oats are each high in soluble fiber which helps lower LDL cholesterol. People who eat them often do seem to have less heart disease.

Wheat germ is a concentrated source of B vitamins including so much choline that eating wheat germ will raise your protective HDL cholesterol. And wheat germ is high in fiber.

I personally eat rolled oats and wheat germ with 2% lowfat milk for these exact reasons. But by cutting back to doing it every other day and eating 2 boiled eggs and some lentils on the other days, it did help me lose 15 pounds of fat.

In addition there are a number of ways to have less harm from eating grains.

Whole grain breads made from sprouted grains are lower glycemic than regular whole grain breads. That’s one partial solution.

Another is to add zero glycemic or very low glycemic foods to whole grains to buffer the blood sugar boost. A piece of 100 % whole grain bread with a good bit of almond butter will boost your blood sugar far less than just the bread by itself. Garlic bread using extra virgin olive oil on a 100 % whole grain bread also boosts your blood sugar less than just the bread alone.

For people who cannot eat gluten, a company called Bob’s Red Mill makes a 100 % gluten free whole grain buckwheat flower. This has more fiber and is lower glycemic than using flour from refined rice. And the foods made with buckwheat flour don’t tend to crumble and fall apart as those do which are made with rice flour.

Then too, you can try making breads or baked goods with a mix of buckwheat flour and pecan meal. That will create a richer taste and be far less glycemic.

The supply of it is now threatened by irresponsible mining near where it is grown; but wild rice can also be worth trying. It has far more fiber and less starch than most grains. You can eat it by itself or mix it with brown rice and nuts to create a dish that is lower glycemic and more filling than brown rice by itself.

Lastly, quinoa, pronounced “Keen Wah” I’ve read, is a grain-like seed that you can use instead of grain. I think it is lower glycemic than real grains. But it can be eaten and cooked with as if it was a grain. And, quinoa also has a more complete set of amino acids for a more high quality protein than grains.

d) Soy foods are a special category. Botanically they are beans. But in use they are much more like grains.

There is moderately good news about some forms of soy and bad news from not great to much worse news about other forms of soy.

If you don’t overdo it and aren’t allergic to soy, eating the OK kinds of soy foods that are OK can be a good idea.

We recommend a total pass on everything else made of soy.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

Even for people who aren’t allergic, raw soy or isolated and extracted soy protein are:

hard to digest;

the protein is an incomplete one;

they tend to lower testosterone in men and increase levels of a less known cause of heart disease, lp(a), if I remember correctly. (A local health oriented doctor in my area found that in the literature for scientific research instead of in medical research.)

And, worst of all, the soy used for such products is virtually all from genetically modified plants; and any soy oil in raw soy contains soy oil which is high in the pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils.

My take is that these forms of soy are best always avoided. At the very least, it’s likely not wise to eat them more than a handful of times a month; and even that is questionable. Soy bacon and other soy meat substitutes and soy milk and soy baby formula and “power bars” with soy protein; or other products “fortified with textured or isolated soy protein are all best left on the shelf in my opinion.

The good news is that in cultures where people have eaten soy foods for hundreds of years seem to not have most of these problems with it.

They eat soy foods in moderation as only a part of their diet. And they eat either tofu or fermented soy products such as miso, tempeh, & natto.

These foods are processed in ways that make the soy much safer to eat. And, so far, they grow the soy they use for these foods without the genetically modified plants used for raw soy or isolated and extract soy protein.

By eating these health OK plant protein foods often and combining them and combining them with some health OK animal protein foods, I think you get the best tasting food. And, you definitely get the best health results!

Our next post in this series will be about fruit, juices, and health OK drinks.

* * * *

Here’s the 8 ways to protect your health. (This post above has been following up on the first method with what to do instead.)

There are many, many ways to stay healthy.

But I find these eight ways cover most of the best and most effective methods.

1. Avoid harmful foods and drinks.

2. Eat only foods that benefit you and your health – or at least do no harm.

3. Get regular exercise every week -- mostly doing the most beneficial kinds.

4. Take key supplements.

(For almost every one of the diseases that are in your family history or which millions of people now get or which will kill you if you get them, there are supplements known to prevent or help prevent those diseases.) Hopefully we will get to keep this one as it can add so much to your protection.

5. Avoid tobacco and its smoke.

(Even though they cause 30% of all cancers, some smokers escape cancer. But EVERY exposure to them begins to cause heart disease, damage your lungs, and increase your rate of aging. No one exposed to tobacco smoke escapes this harm! That includes light smokers, teen smokers, and babies exposed to second hand smoke.)

6. Practice some form of physical stress control most days.

(So far, tai chi looks to be the most effective and time efficient way to do this.)

7. Become a purposeful, playful, proactive, and prudent optimist.

(Such people make good things happen and avoid bad ones. Also learn ways to survive and overcome difficulties and bad times that happen anyway.)

8. Practice other key prevention steps. (Brush and floss your teeth and gums well every day. Always wear your seat belt. Get your key blood indicators checked so you don’t get harmed by a problem you could have fixed first. There are more. But those 3 are extremely protective.)

Covering these 8 will turn into a series since each one deserves its own post.