Best eating styles....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 5-19-2016

What are the best eating styles?

For health and fat loss that’s beginning to be very clear

And some eating styles are dramatically better than others for health and fat loss and have been tested to be so.

There are several styles that work.  That’s a good thing because people have different preferences and goals.

And, a style that has great benefits that you cannot or will not eat won’t work for you!

Most people eat foods they really like and foods they find OK but not great but eat so often they become like old friends.

Few people eat foods they really find to taste awful or directly make them sick at all often.

The eating styles that rate well or extremely well for health and fat loss can be listed by which foods they contain and by the names they have been given or the people who discovered them.

This post does it both ways.

We post often on what NOT to eat and drink; but that is not here in this post. 

However, if it is NOT  listed here in one of the categories TO eat, that food or drink is likely to be one NOT to eat or drink.

The one exception is wheat and to a lesser degree other grains. 

None of the most health supporting styles include ANY! 

(Note that if refined grains get an F and whole grains are better and get a C-,

 the people who get an A all eat zero grains or very, very close to it.)

A.  The foods in eating styles that help cause good health and prevent disease and enable permanent fat loss:

Organic Vegetables & Organic Fruit are number one.

ALL the healthy eating styles have them.  

(Why organic? 

Two reasons for this are the multiplier factor and the diseases caused by herbicides and pesticides when consumed that much are horrid and cause suffering disability & death.

One exposure or even a few to a fruit with pesticide or herbicide residue may be safe.  But we are talking of what you eat all the time.  If you eat Strawberries that tend to be heavily sprayed with pesticides if not organic twice a week for 30 years however that’s 4680 times and quite likely is NOT safe. 

That level of exposure in people with the wrong heredity causes MS, apparently most ALS --one recent study put it at 90%, and a good bit of Parkinson’s disease.

At that level of exposure it may also cause cancers.)

Why are vegetables and fruit the foundation of all the health producing and supporting styles of eating?

They prevent disease, support good health, AND because they are calorically dense and relatively high in fiber, you can eat enough without taking in enough calories to be or stay fat I most cases.

A UK study found that eating 6 or more vegetables a day prevented heart disease and stroke and many cancers.  And it cut the risk of dying of those diseases and from all causes significantly!

That’s challenging to do in today’s world.  But the closer you get to it and the more organic cruciferous vegetables and vegetables high in carotenes you include, the healthier you will be.

And, those vegetables also give you the most cancer protection.

The same UK study found that people who at ONE or more servings of organic fresh fruit a day got truly jaw dropping protection from BOTH kinds of stroke from just that.

For fat loss eating lower glycemic fruit such as berries or whole apples or even taking fruit concentrate supplements is a good way to go.

Protein foods and fats and oils don’t go as well in all styles but it’s ideal to get enough protein to maintain your muscle mass and bones and enough health OK proteins, fats and oils to keep from getting too hungry.

Vegan vegetarians can be quite healthy.  Nuts and hemp protein and beans and lentils for those who aren’t allergic to nuts or react badly to the lectins in beans and lentils plus the mandatory taking of the many supplements of lacking nutrients can make an organic vegan an OK way to go.  (The eating style recommended by Dr Furhman is hard for most people to stick with and must have the supplements added to be OK for good health.  But it contains these foods only and may be the best one for fat loss.  This is so much the case that eating some health OK animal protein every other day and eating Dr Fuhrman style every other day can be a great fat loss and keeping it off strategy.)

Paleo adds to the fruits and vegetables and nuts protein from wild or naturally fed animals and fish – except beans and lentils and dairy.

If ALL of the animal protein foods are from wild caught or naturally fed animals AND you make sure to include the high intake of vegetables and the daily serving of fruit, Paleo gets great health results.

Paleo plus some beans and lentils and dairy products from naturally fed cows only can be less expensive and more doable than Paleo. 

And, such cheese, whole milk, whole milk yogurt, and particularly Whey protein supplements  can be a real asset to people who do effective strength training.

These foods can help people to lose fat, to ONLY lose fat, and to have enough muscle to make keeping the fat lost off much more likely.

Beans and lentils are starchier and for some the lectins can fight fat loss.  So eating fewer of these or none can help fat loss.  But for people who tolerate them and are already trim, they do fill you up, provide lots of protein and nutrients and cost very, very little. 

Lentils are the best choice as they are very high in nutrition and have the lowest glycemic index.  For people following the Furhman diet, lentils have the highest ANDI score having the most nutrients per calorie.

(Given their negative health effects, soybeans are basically a kind of grain and have most of the problems of grains. They should NOT be included.)

Health OK fats and oils in addition to those found in animals fed only their natural diet include extra virgin olive oil, nuts, avocados, and the omega 3 oils from fish – and coconut oil.

When people get these in moderation they get natural vitamin E in all its forms; and needed essential oils; and have better bioavailability of the carotenes they eat and are much less hungry than people who do not. 

This makes them essential for successful fat loss and particularly for keeping it off.

Besides the Vegan diet and the related Furhman diet which is vegan that needs many extra supplements for good health, the other styles that work are:

The DASH diet with no grains and a bit more vegetables and some nuts.

(If you eat factory farmed animal protein foods, the DASH diet’s recommendation to eat fat free, very fat-trimmed, and lowest fat version is sound because it eliminates the excessive omega 6 oils and bioconcentrated herbicides and pesticides in the fat.

The DASH diet with protein foods that are only from wild or 100% naturally fed animals is a better choice if you can afford it and get those foods.)

The Mediterranean diet with extra vegetables and wild caught fish and zero grains has a dramatically positive track record.  It also has enough good tasting recipes and extra virgin olive oil and red wine in moderation all of which makes it easy to stay on!

The Wahls diet as described in Dr Wahls book uses even more vegetables including seaweed and includes eggs and heart and liver.  She designed a diet that includes ALL of the known nutrients successfully.  It’s high enough in vegetables to be as good as Dr Furhman’s diet for fat loss, and by adding the liver provides the nutrients vegans would otherwise need to supplement! 

It’s two drawbacks are that it is extremely challenging to eat that many vegetables each and every day; and it’s unsafe to eat liver from animals that eat grains because the liver super-bioconcentrates the herbicides and pesticides in the grain AND it’s as yet very hard to get liver from naturally fed animals.  THAT I expect will change however!

The common things that Dr Weston Price found his native peoples to eat are quite similar to Paleo or Dr Wahls style but with a much larger variety of animal protein foods.  Of course all of those protein foods were from animals fed their natural diets and free of herbicides and pesticides.

The vitamin that enabled all these peoples to have near perfect teeth was in the fats of those animals, vitamin K2.

Because of the importance of this vitamin NONE of the peoples he studied were vegan.

If you are new to health oriented eating this post will give you a background of the best eating styles and a guide for making your own version!