The Nutrients

These are the basic compounds that make up our food.

• Macronutrients
• Micronutrients
• Intrinsic factors

MACRO (large) nutrients are the big group:  –the carbohydrates, proteins and fats.

Carbohydrates (carbs) offer the widest selection, and they are our major fuel source.

They are nearly all (excepting dairy) from plants, and are split into two groups:

1.     Simple carbs, are the sugars, syrups and fructose, alcohol, lactose (dairy), refined flours, fruit juices and sweetened beverages, and even the natural and unrefined  simple carbs like raw sugar, dried fruits, fruit juice, honey and syrups, etc.. Simple carbs get into the blood quickly, and then provide quick energy. If we don’t use the breakdown “sugars” immediately, a sluggish, imbalanced system tends to make a fat cell to store what’s left for a time of need. That time of need rarely ever comes, and the fat stays. Most people eat way too many simple carbs. By reducing simple carbs to the rare occasions, it’s much easier to-

• keep appetite and cravings subdued
• keep a trim and healthy weight
• keep blood sugar normal!
• keep brain function balanced
• keep the cardiovascular system strong
• stay healthy for life!

Eating lots of simple carbs regularly will keep the appetite turned up and make us eat more –usually lots more. They really mess with our blood sugar, and that causes all kinds of problems with cravings, fatigue, brain fog, headaches, weakened immunity, messed-up hormones, blood vessels and more.

2.     Complex carbs come from whole, unrefined foods like whole, (peeled) fruits, veggies, grains and beans, seeds and nuts. Complex carbs are simple carbs locked together with fiber that the body has to work on slowly to break down into fuel = slow-burning energy. Being less refined, complex carbs usually hold lots of micronutrients and intrinsic factors—the vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antioxidants, probiotics, and so many things science has already discovered, and no doubt a lot that are still to be discovered.

Generally, complex carbs don’t create the blood sugar problems that simple carbs do. But some complex carbs have enough sweet and starch in them to cause the appetite to kick up higher which can lead to overeating and fat cells being made.

Simple Carbs are Stressors

It’s important to know the difference between simple and complex carbs, because our population eats way too many simple carbs, and that causes lots of disease and a lot of cravings. Simple carbs are quick energy. They all break down quickly in our gut into energy molecules called saccharides (Greek for ‘sugar’). Simple carbs are quick fuel, and like gasoline on a flame, it burns fast!

Fact: Amount of sugar (just white sugar, not corn sweetener and others) eaten per person, per year in 1900 = 2 pounds, compared with 160 pounds in 2010. This drives disease today.

The “sugar” fuel is dumped into the Blood but it can’t stay there, or you’d pass out. Only one teaspoon of sugar is the maximum allowed to circulate in the body’s six quarts of blood. A tablespoon can put you into a coma. The body has to immediately provide insulin to take the sugar out of the blood and store it in the muscles or in a fat cell. The pancreas must pump a lot of insulin, NOW! (That’s the body yelling at you.) Metabolism jumps, and that’s a fun rush for the body, which it remembers when the rush passes and leaves us feeling tired and low –burned out. It remembers this rush and craves the rush again, from the sweets, the crackers, the cheese, the bread, the pasta etc. Simple carbs inflame the appetite (Want more food!) and cause strong cravings. And then afterward, energy drops like lead.

Simple carbs are quick energy food for the short term (test-taking and athletics), but low energy/anti-energy food for the long term.

Alcohol is the smallest and most quickly absorbed simple carb. Drinking alcohol alone is like mainlining sugar. Other common simple carbs are all those items that end in ‘ose’, like sucrose (sugar), fructose (corn sweetener and fruit juices), lactose (milk sugar), glucose, maltose (grain sugars), etc. Refined flour is essentially a “sugar” in digestion.

This modern-food diet demand on our bodies for large amounts of insulin creates so many problems with our cardiovascular system, nervous system, digestive system and brain function –it messes up the whole metabolism and triggers obesity.

Natural, unrefined simple carbs come with micronutrients to help digest and use them. Processed simple carbs don’t, and every dose of refined simple carbs robs the body of nutrient stores –it must sacrifice its nutrients that are maintaining health in order to process the ‘sugars’.  That’s the way we get big nutrient deficiencies, a messed-up metabolism, and how deeper disease is created.

Complex Carbs are Healthy Carbs

The complex carbs take more time for the body to break down, because they come in as larger clusters (poly = many) of saccharide molecules (polysaccharides = “starches”, as opposed to “sugars”) that are locked together with the natural fiber that complements that starch. Complex carbs promote normal, healthy digestion. It’s a slow-burning, steady fuel, like a log of wood, or better– like a charcoal briquette. Natural, whole food, complex carbs have everything included (micronutrients) that the body must get from food to be really healthy and have steady energy.

Just watch out for ‘constructed’ fiber foods at the grocery store, like bread, crackers, etc. Not all fiber is healthy. Beware a product that starts with refined flour and adds back fiber and nutrients, all mixed with chemical additives. If the fiber says cellulose or methyl cellulose, that’s code for wood pulp, which is a poison. That kind of fiber also irritates the gut and causes chronic inflammation if consumed regularly. That’s the kind of fiber in so many drug store fiber drinks people use as a laxative. Eat the whole grain, the whole food, with it’s own fiber. The two work together and the body knows the difference.

Whole food fruits, vegetable, grains, beans, and all the other plant foods are complex carbs. When fruit is dried, it still has fiber, but it’s natural sugar becomes very concentrated, and so dried fruits have much more simple carbs to them that the fresh ones do.

The juice of fruit by itself is a simple carb (no fiber). The whole fruit is a complex carb. Whole citrus fruit has lots of fiber and micronutrients in that white membrane, like bioflavonoids, which are such a critical compounds for keeping our blood vessels strong. If we only drink juice, we only get fruit ‘sugar’, and that’s not good. You don’t have to chew whole fruits. You can blend whole fruits (minus the peel) in a blender. It’s better than juice alone, and has all the important micros and fiber with it. Except for carrots and beets, and other high ‘sugar’ veggies, there is not the issue of excess ‘sugar spiking’ with vegetable juices. Those are fine for drinking without the fiber.

Key strategies

• Take the blood sugar stressors out of your life.
• All sweet foods, even natural ones, stimulate appetite and the desire for more food.
• Keep your simple carbs down to unprocessed, unrefined, no-chemicals-added dried fruit, raw honey, unsulphured molasses, and other raw natural sweets.
• Enjoy them on occasion, not daily.
• Combine them with high-fiber plant foods, to give the pancreas lots of time to provide adequate insulin and slow down their blood-sugar-spiking effect.
• Cinnamon, cloves, allspice and nutmeg make insulin more potent. Cinnamon makes it ten times more potent so add some quality (organic) cinnamon to fruit smoothies and all desserts and sweet treats, toast, etc.

Carbohydrates must be the largest part of a healthy diet. We need complex carbs in all their natural forms to stay healthy. Eat a variety of foods, like eating veggies by color. Eat lots of naturally green, red, orange, purple, blue, pink, yellow, white, brown, and black carbs. (check out ‘Food as Medicine’)

Protein Basics

Protein is for slow-burning fuel and for rebuilding healthy tissue.

Protein is not the body’s preferred source of short-term fuel. It will always use the simple carbs first because the sugar fuel is right there and available. It takes more work and more time to get energy from protein compounds. Carbs are made of saccharides (sugar molecules). Proteins are made of amino acids locked together by peptides (protein glue). Heat and digestive acids and enzymes break down protein molecules, breaking the peptide bonds. The scattered amino acids can be broken down further for energy fuel, or regrouped to make another protein molecule. Think of aminos as letters, and proteins as words. In rebuilding, it’s a big scrabble board full of words that gets dumped and then reassembled into new words. Food proteins are either broken down for fuel, or reassembled for repair and building-up the body tissues, and to make little work facilitators, like enzymes, neurotransmitters and hormones.

Like the structural steel in a building, proteins make up the structures of the cells, inside and out, and a steady supply of more materials are required to keep up with building and repair. Protein is critical for structural strength. Poor quality protein makes a weak cell and a weak body.

Plants supply varying amounts of amino acids and eating a variety of protein-rich plant foods daily can provide ample protein for most people. Beans and legumes, nuts, seeds like hemp and chia, grains (esp. basmati rice and corn), grasses like quinoa are all protein-rich plants. But avoid wheat in all it’s forms if you want to be healthy and avoid disease.

Wheat, even whole grain wheat, has changed dramatically due to hybridization and modern farming, and is not the grain it was 70 years ago. The protein in wheat is gluten, and that specific wheat gluten is absolutely toxic to our immune system. It creates leaky gut syndrome and auto-immunity, where the body attacks itself –the gut (diabetes, IBS and celiac disease), the thyroid, the brain, and any other weak area, causing problems like infertility, severe PMS, endometriosis, rashes, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, migraines, cardiovascular disease, cancer and more. Avoid wheat! It is no chore to live without wheat after making the cultural, mind adjustment.

About a third to half of the population feel better including some animal protein in their diet. (see Animal Foods) There are MANY debates about plant and animal protein needs, but this issue can be settled objectively by doing an elimination diet (see Diets), and I also muscle test clients to determine plant vs. animal protein needs.

How much protein do we need?

This also varies, from person to person and from week to week, or month to month. I muscle-test clients for protein needs, and would like to share that with you. (see Individualize) I also look at their dominant metabolic type to help determine optimal protein requirements. (see Services) Generally, infants to age one need 1 gram of protein per pound daily, up to 14 grams maximum.  Children from 1-6 years need 16-24 grams per day, and 7-15 years need 28-70 grams. Adults need 40-70 grams. Most Americans eat much more protein than they need.

The quality of the protein makes all the difference. As your budget allows, eat organic, whole food minimally-prepared plant proteins. Avoid GMO like the plague that it is to our health. Consume only small, infrequent amounts of tofu/soy, and no cold soy (milks, yogurts, ice cream, etc.) or powdered. Soy is very allergenic and perilous to hormone balance. Stick to wild-caught fish (never farmed); (free-range, no-soy fed) poultry; and grass-fed,’ clean’ (antibiotic and hormone-free) red meat. Avoid scavengers (shellfish, swordfish, shark, calamari, pork, critters, etc.) that contain toxins and cause deep, pathogenic disease.

Protein requires more work (= lost energy) to digest. As we age, digestion usually weakens, and supplemental enzymes become important to help digest all the proteins and fats, so they can be used properly. Plant proteins, like beans, take about 3 hours to digest; grains take about 2 hours; vegetable take an hour; fruit eaten by itself takes 20 minutes to digest. Animal food-wise, yogurt takes and hour to digest –the good bacteria breaks down a lot of the protein and milk sugar; cooked dairy, including pasteurized milk, takes 3 hours; fish takes 4 hours; other meats take 6 hours to digest. Plant proteins are much easier on the body, and require much less energy to digest. And as they are accompanied by fiber which sweeps digestive residues out of the gut, keeping it ‘cleaner’.

Since animal proteins take a lot more work to digest and clear, people who eat animal food need more protein. Those who eat just plants don’t need as much protein. And the less a protein is cooked, the easier it is to digest. Raw/rare meat is easier to digest, and if it’s clean and very fresh, it’s healthier. Well done meat is the hardest to digest and the least healthy. It causes cancer. Raw eggs are the easiest to digest, and if they are from healthy chickens, and the shell is completely in tact (not cracked) there is no significant concern with bacterial contamination. The harder an egg is cooked, the harder it is to digest. Slow cooking meats at low temperatures (like crock pot cooking) is actually helpful because it breaks down the proteins, making them easier to digest.

Raw dairy is the healthiest dairy. It contains the specific enzymes needed to digest the specific milk proteins– enzymes that are lost in the heating of pasteurized milk products. Raw cheese is healthiest. One protein compound in dairy is casein, which has become a very strong toxin due to modern milk production. Processed dairy causes auto-immune disease, as everyday consumption causes the body’s immune systems to become skewed and attack itself– causing thyroid weakness, blood sugar problems and brain dysfunction, all due to inflammation stemming from leaking gut syndrome caused by casein in milk and cheese, and gluten in wheat. To gain health, avoid milk casein and wheat gluten!

Whey is the other milk protein compound. It actually has health promoting aspects as long as it’s unprocessed or properly processed to remain a healthy food. Also, cheese that’s been aged more than 100 days has most of the casein broken down. Those two are safer dairy foods.

Plant proteins don’t create the strong acids that animal proteins (meat, dairy, eggs) do, like uric, sulfuric and phosphoric acids. Those acids tax the liver and the normal elimination work of the kidneys. The kidneys’ capacity for clearing these acids is limited, and excesses are stored in body tissues, including connective tissue. The build-up of these acids over time makes the terrain of the body more acid = it holds less oxygen in the tissues, and that sets the stage for disease. The acid accumulations crystallize and then can result in gout, chronic muscle and joint pain, kidney stones, etc. Sweating (exercise, sauna, etc.) on a regular basis is the only other outlet for releasing these strong acids that the kidneys don’t clear. Adequate hydration with pure water is neccessary as well for the kidneys to process animal proteins.

Keys

• Proteins are essential for keeping the body systems functional and the cell/tissue structures strong, supple and resilient.
• Plant proteins are easiest to digest. Animal proteins take more work to digest, and increase protein requirements.
• Don’t cook proteins ‘hard’, especially animal proteins.
• Avoid wheat/gluten and dairy/casein. They cause serious auto-immune disease.
• Be sure to drink lots of pure water everyday to help remove the harmful residues of protein digestion.

Coming…the dietary fats

Plants Have It All

Whole plant foods can supply complex carbs, proteins and fats (the MACROS) plus the micronutrients.

Everyday, people struggling with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, auto-immune diseases, fibromyalgia, bone loss, gland problems, cancer, etc., switch to a quality, whole food, plant-based diet and, in time, find their disease becomes a thing of the past, and their present becomes full of health. This happens over and over again and again and is well documented.

Food Energetics

more to come

Food Safety

more to come