Do Not Eat Fried Food And Do We Need Fish? by Brenda Davis, R.D.

Minimize exposure to damaged fats

next we want to minimize exposure to damaged fats so we want to avoid fried foods completely just do not fry foods in in fact it’s it’s not a good plan we want to minimize or avoid oils in cooking we don’t want to expose oils to high temperature and especially especially if the oil starts to smoke then we’re producing products of oxidation that are pretty toxic to human health we don’t want to burn high fat foods or allow them to blacken and we want to store high fat foods including shelled nuts and seeds in the refrigerator or freezer this is really important and a lot of people don’t know this they have you know they have all sets of mason jars of different nuts and seeds on their shelf well nuts and seeds you see nature has a way of protecting the the fragile fats in in these foods and that’s with a shell when you remove that shell you’re exposing that nut or seed to oxidation and so over time you’ll get more and more oxidized fats keep them in the freezer refrigerator to prevent that from happening and you want to minimize processed foods of course as well and then of course you want to make whole plant foods your primary sources of fat high fat whole plant foods are rich in fiber and antioxidants and phytochemicals and plant sterols and stanols and all of these protective components but we want to minimize concentrated fats and oils because they provide a lot of calories with very few nutrients I often say the you know oils are too the fat family as sugars are too the carbohydrate family sugars and white flour they’re highly processed the fiber and many of the nutrients have been removed neither is poison it’s you know the dose that makes the poison in very small quantities you know a couple of drops of sesame oil to give that kind of flavor in a peanut sauce no big deal but it’s when you’re using massive amounts you know pouring it on your sides using it in you know in your cooking and in large quantity not such a good plan instead use not sincere jazz basses or nuttin seed butters or avocados as your basis and salad dressings because then you get the fiber and all of the nutrients that go with those foods we want to ensure sufficient omega-3 fatty acids and for most people eating

Omega 3 fatty acids

plant-based diets we’re looking at about two to four grams of alpha linolenic acid a day and and so how do we get this well an ounce of walnuts gives us 2.6 and a tablespoon of ground flax seeds is 2.6 and if we grind them it’ll be a little a little more of a heaping tablespoon but but we’re looking at grind we want to grind them because you know these flax seeds are slippery little little things and they go right through us so if you grind them you make that omega-3 more available for absorption a chia seeds about 1.7 in a tablespoon hemp seeds about 0.9 and leafy greens half the fat in leafy greens or more is is omega-3 but they’re so low in fat you’d have to eat a truckload you’d have to eat like a horse or a cow to get enough you need about 30 cups 20 or 30 cups right so and some people you know eat like that but not very many it’s you’re eating all day long or you’re juicing a lot but so you can get some from leafy greens but you usually need some nuts or seeds to balance it out so the next question where Omega threes is concerned is don’t we need fish for EPA and DHA and the answer is no actually

Do we need fish

EPA and DHA are made by micro algae plants from the sea and so yes you can consume fish which got it you know at some point along the food chain from the micro algae or you can cut out the fish and just eat the micro algae you can actually culture it you don’t have to rape the ocean to get it it can be cultured grown and and you can take it as a supplement or sometimes it’s added to foods and so that that works very well so do we need to take DHA and EPA

DHA and EPA

you know the answer is we don’t really know vegans do very well in terms of chronic disease in terms of brain function in terms of risk of you know brain disorders we do very well would we do better if we took DHA and EPA vegans have levels of epa and DHA that are significantly lower than omnivores probably about one-third that of omnivore one-third in some cases one-half but definitely significantly lower levels and so if our levels were boosted would it give us an even bigger advantage is the question and we don’t know the research just isn’t there yet but we do know that epa and DHA have been associated with some health benefits so to me it makes sense for people that have increased needs for epa and DHA like pregnant and breastfeeding women to consider taking a supplement however you know young women are the most efficient converters of EPA in the era of ala to epa and DHA so alpha-linolenic I said the plant omega-3 can be converted into these bigger more unsaturated larger omega-3 fatty acids that are more biologically active the body can do that but the ability to do that is is somewhat limited but its highest in young women because they need to be able to convert for the you know brain growth of their infants and so on but still they may want to consider and there are people that don’t convert plant Omega threes to long-chain omega-3 is very efficiently people with diabetes metabolic syndrome or hypertension are poor converters populations who have traditionally consumed a lot of fish are poor converters and and this is because the enzymes required for conversion they just stop making as many because they don’t need them they’re consuming preformed epa and DHA so if you don’t need to be converting that enzyme just we don’t make as much of it and so if that’s been happening for many generations they may they may need to to have a direct source so micro algae supplements there are a lot of supplements now available and suggested

Enhance Gut Flora

intakes are 2 to 300 milligrams a day or even just taking it 2 to 3 times a week to boost your year sort of levels step six is to enhance gut flora there are many benefits to healthy gut flora now I’m just going to zip through them one of them is enhance nutritional status because gut flora actually produces nutrients it can protect against pathogens promote healthy body weight you can actually get some energy in short chain fatty acids that protect against colon cancer from from your gut flora you get better immunity reduced inflammation you get better maintenance of the integrity of the the sort of lining of the intestinal wall you get better brain function you get increased insulin secretion when you have a healthy gut flora so how do we improve gut flora well we want to eat a diet high in prebiotics from beans whole

Prebiotics

grains asparagus Jerusalem artichokes bananas onions and garlic these are especially high in prebiotics we want to eat food based probiotics like you know I would suggest non-dairy yogurt fermented vegetables sauerkraut tempeh me so these are all foods with the probiotics in them and prebiotics for those of you that don’t know prebiotics are the the food for the bacteria probiotics are the bacteria just to get to understand that and then we want to minimize intake of foods that foster the growth of bad bacteria or harmful bacteria processed foods fried foods refined carbohydrates and meat we want to take probiotics especially if we’re using antibiotics and avoid excessive alcohol consumption step seven is to maximize antioxidants and phytochemicals and phytonutrients reduce blood pressure improve endothelial function they just do it I mean the list really pages and pages long they do a lot of things that will potentially protect against disease then antioxidants are compounds that help to protect a protect against oxidative stress and disease processes and so how

Antioxidants

do we enhance phytochemicals and antioxidants well think color the richest sources of phytochemicals and antioxidants are often the most colorful to maximize protection we might want to

Color

choose the colorful vegetables rather than the less colorful choices you know black instead of brown rice or red instead of brown rice red instead of white beans for example so these are just some even quinoa you can get red or black versus white you you tend to get more phytochemicals when you choose the color and also variety the wider the range of plant foods in the diet the wider the range of antioxidants and phytochemicals you will be consuming we

Variety

want to eat more raw foods and the reason for this is that there are enzymes and raw foods that when we cook those foods we destroy the enzymes that convert the phytochemicals into their active forms so for example my Rosa naze helps convert a compound called glucosinolates into the more active form called isothiocyanates like sulforaphane which is a very potent detoxifier of carcinogen so it’s you know very very important and then we’ve got Alan A’s and and my rosin days is in cruciferous vegetables and alan a’s is in Allium vegetables and it helps convert Alan to the active form Alison and then the

Sprouting

other thing we can do is to start to start sprouting and and when a seed is germinated anti nutrients are broken down enzymes are released so that the stored forms of nutrients can be available for the plant growth and the phytochemical army that’s poised to protect the plant just multiplies and and so these are really helpful things as well eight is to reduce harmful chemical residues and food additives and so we’re

Reduce harmful chemical residues and food additives

talking here about agro chemicals environmental contaminants products of food processing and cooking and food

Agrochemicals

additives and when we consume these things they can wreak havoc in a number of ways they can cause oxidative stress and inflammation they can disrupt hormones and be if you will o be so gens make increase obesity they can damage vital organs damaged DNA and our central nervous systems and they can increase the risk of chronic disease so agro chemicals pesticides plant growth regulators veterinary drugs like hormones and antibiotics and anti microbials and the way to avoid these

Choose Organic

things is to choose organic and so this is you know it’s a simple way not everybody can afford to do everything organic but one thing that you can do is go to the environmental working groups you know dirty dozen and clean fifteen and if you have to buy some conventional stick with the the cleaner crops and and buy the sort of the Dirty Dozen buy organic at least environmental contaminants like heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants or peel

Environmental Contamination

peas and dioxin packaging materials like lead and and BPA and ten and the most concentrated sources of heavy metals and peel peas are animal products fish meat and dairy products and so what do we do eat lower on the food chain eat more plants eat fewer animals and use foods

What Do We Do

without excessive packaging jars instead of cans and bpa-free lining in cans the products of high temperature cooking

Heterocyclic Amines

heterocyclic heterocyclic amines are known carcinogens they’re formed only when we cook meat at high temperatures meat poultry fish at high temperatures plants can’t form heterocyclic amines because you need to have current you need to have creatine or creatinine in the food to make heterocyclic Amiens plants don’t have any so we don’t have to worry about that polycyclic aromatic turbines are a second product of of

Polycyclic Aromatic Turbines

cooking these are known mutagens they’re they’re linked with a number of cancers and they’re present in grilled or charred meat poultry and fish but also in any plant food that’s grilled and blackened how we can avoid this is by avoid blackening foods and avoid heating foods above 392 degrees or Fahrenheit or 200 degrees cent centigrade advanced

Advanced Glycation End Products

glycation end-products these are are basically compounds that are advanced products of the mayor dree action and they’re irreversible products of the mayor dree action and they impair immune function they accelerate aging they contribute to pretty much every disease you can think of including Alzheimer’s disease and what you see is their highest in bacon broiled frankfurters grilled or fried meat but even whipped butter even fried tofu Parmesan cheese even roasted knots so you can see it it you know they they accumulate probably more in animal products than plants but can form in plant foods as well oh and they they I’m trying to remember they oh well they’ll form at any temperature

Acrylamide

acrylamide is is a substance that’s formed from starchy foods and the main component that forms acrylamide is is something called a guillotine or a garrote een which is no not a Garrity knit some sorry it’s a no it’s asparagine sorry I’m mixing up the chemical in mushrooms with asparagine but asparagine is in is the amino acid that you need to form acrylamide and it’s mostly found in in potatoes both sweet potatoes and regular potatoes and so just to know if you’re heating them above 248 degrees which you always do when you bake you’re forming some of these compounds but they’re formed most when you deep-fry so potato chips and french fries are the worst and I’m just gonna whip down this

How to avoid this

so how do we avoid that this will use food preparation methods that minimize the production of harmful compounds some wet cooking methods instead of dry cooking methods and if you’re using dry keep heat lower and then finally harmful harmful food additives food additives you just want to avoid artificial sweeteners all the you know read you can read labels but preferably use fewer foods with labels we want to be using whole foods the most common food additive is salt and 80% comes from processed foods and if you look at the

salt

amount of salt in foods like a teaspoon of salt is 2,300 milligrams of sodium you can go down this list ramen dill pickle soup tomato sauce veggie burger Raisin Bran Italian dressing potato chips salted peanuts you can actually eat an ounce of potato chips and an ounce of salted peanuts and get less sodium than you would from an ounce of Raisin Bran and people go no way that’s impossible but when you put salt on the outside of a potato chip or a peanut you taste it it’s just there whereas you put it inside batter and you make something like flake cereal and it’s it’s throughout the batter you don’t taste it in the same way so you need to read labels step 9 is to meet nutrients

meet nutrients

your needs for all the nutrients of concern and in plant-based diet the biggest nutrients of concern are b12 and vitamin D and we’re not going to talk a lot about these but just know they need to be taken care of and and one of the

resources

things that I’ve done in my career is a dietitian is to create resources that help people to do vegetarian and vegan diets very well because to me a failed vegan is really exhibit number one for why we need to eat meat and and and so it’s really important we get this right and so the resources that you know I’ve written and created and the food guides and so on are meant to be essentially foolproof you’ll you’ll you’ll you’ll get right if you follow these these guidelines and and I mentioned that and step 10 is to maintain a healthy body

healthy body weight

weight so one thing that that I think the blue zones especially Okinawans have done really well is something called Harry Hachi Bou they eat until they’re 80% full instead of stuffing themselves so they’re under eating a little bit all the time and this is helpful we want to minimize foods without it fat sugar and salt fat sugar and salt you know in

fat sugar and salt

nature these flavors are so dilute when you take and concentrate those flavors and processed foods it messes up your appetite control center and you can’t stop eating them and so this is something we just really need to be aware of we need to say these foods I’m just not going to do because I need to reacquaint my appetite control system with with you know whole unadulterated foods it makes a huge difference we need to avoid super sizing except for salad we can supersize our salads and drink

plantbased diets

water not sugar just do not ever drink sugar period that’s an important step and there’s no question that well-designed whole food plant-based diets are optimal for human health