Make Whole Plant Foods The Foundation Of The Diet

I want to talk now a little bit about all of the practical aspects of creating a diet that will work powerfully for you in protecting you and in helping to reverse chronic diseases so one thing that I want to say before I start is some plant-based diets are more helpful than others just because you’re on a plant-based diet doesn’t mean it’s a healthy plant-based diet chips are from potatoes you know these things are a hundred percent vegan snacks so we need to recognize that there there is a rain there are many ranges as a matter of fact in 2017 Harvard put out a study looking at they had a healthy plant-based diet index and an unhealthy plant based diet index and they found that if you ate a healthy plant-based diet it really reduced your risk of disease quite dramatically but if you ate an unhealthy plant-based diet not so much so there’s a big difference so we’re going to talk about seven steps to an optimal disease-fighting diet step number one make whole plant foods the foundation of the diet get your carbohydrates from beans and vegetables and all of these whole grains whole plant foods get your fat from nuts and seeds and avocados whole plant foods so what do we want I would say at least ten servings of colorful wonderful variety of vegetables and fruits every day we want at least two servings of legumes a day we want you don’t absolutely have to have grains for most people you could have starchy vegetables as a carbohydrate source instead but at least three servings a day for most people is what you would aim for we’re going to talk more about all of these things as we go nuts and seeds one or two servings a day as a minimum to provide you with these sanction fatty acids you need and then you want to sprinkle it all with generous amount of herbs and spices for many reasons which we’ll talk about as we go through so step two is to select your carbohydrates with care I think this is the biggest mistake people switching over to a plant-based diet make they switch from eating meat and potatoes to eating pasta and bagels and they it’s refined carbohydrates and the studies that show that saturated fat has been vindicated don’t really show saturated fat have has been vindicated all they actually show is if you replace saturated fat with refined carbohydrates you do not risk reduce your risk of heart disease one is almost as bad as the other that’s all they really show so we need to select our carbohydrates with care carbohydrates are not the enemy contrary to popular opinion people are the low-carbohydrate ketogenic carbohydrates from Whole Foods are consistently protective to human health the average carbohydrate intakes and Blue Zones are are in the about 62% of calories ok so they’re not the enemy the foods most strongly associated with disease risk reduction which are whole plant foods get most of their calories from carbohydrates with the one exception of nuts and seeds look at this fruits over 90 percent 92 percent of their calories are carbohydrates starchy vegetables about 90 percent grains about 75 legumes about 70 non starchy vegetables about 58 so most plant foods are 60 to 90 percent of their calories from carbohydrates so carbohydrates are just not the problem not since these the exception at about 12% of calories from carbohydrates so if carbohydrates are not the problem then why so much negative press about our behide rate because most of the carbohydrates people eat do not come in the form of fruits and vegetables and whole grains they’re coming in the form of refined carbohydrates and these are bad news so what are refined carbohydrates well refined carbohydrates are high carbohydrate foods that have been stripped of their nutrients by food processing tak techniques so we’re talking about simple refined carbohydrates that all of the sugars and sodas and candies and all of these things and the complex refined carbohydrates like white flour products and white rice products both types of refined carbohydrates increase disease risks they increase inflammation and they increase our risk of overeating and obesity of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease of insulin resistance of high triglycerides and heart disease but most of the carbohydrates as I mentioned that people eat are refined probably at least 80 to 90 percent and I want to talk a little bit about grains and a little bit about sugars so what is a safe level of added sugars well the American Heart Association says not more than nine teaspoons for men and not more than six for women the Dietary Guidelines for Americans say not more than ten percent of calories or about 12 teaspoons a day the World Health Organization says not more than 10 percent of calories but if we made it not more than 5 percent of calories we would have much greater health benefits so you might think to yourself six teaspoons nine teaspoons 12 teaspoons that’s a lot of sugar but in fact how much is in food well we get 12 teaspoons or more from a 12 ounce soda how many people drink a 12 ounce soda these days you go to the movie theater and it’s a 24 or 36 ounce soda one large flavored coffee one cup of fruit flavored yogurt can give you nine to 12 teaspoons of sugar cinnamon bun 12 teaspoons of sugar even things we don’t associate so much with sugar like barbecue sauce or or tomatoes some spaghetti sauce or energy bars or instant oatmeal can have three four to six teaspoons of sugar in a serving the numbers add up very very quickly so one of the things I do myself is I don’t have any added sugar I just don’t buy things without add sugar and I also when I prepare foods at home if I want something sweet I’ll use dates or dried pears or something like that that’s a whole food to provide the sweetness in that food the sugars not poison but it doesn’t it’s not a nutrient-dense food it doesn’t come with any fiber any of the protective components we talked about so it’s always better if you can get it from Whole Foods so if we look at the sources of added sugar in the u.s. diet 47% of the sugars come from sweet beverages and by the way on average people are consuming about 19 teaspoons a day so that’s average in the United States and and so just cutting out sweet beverages would cut that intake in half so I want to talk a little bit about the grains as well because most of the grains people eat are refined and if you take a grain of wheat and you turn it into white flour you’re losing two of the three parts of the week you’re losing the bran and the germ what you’re left with is endosperm and in that process you lose 80 to 90 percent of the fiber 70 to 80 percent of the vitamins and minerals and 95% of the protective phytochemicals and then of course who eats a bowl of white flour nobody nobody eats a bowl of white flour what do we do with the flour before we eat it well we add fat we add sugar we add salt we add additives like flavors and colors and then we eat the white flower and therein lies the problem not only have we removed almost everything of value to human health in making the white flower but we add a bunch of things that are cheap and unhealthy to the white flower before we eat it and that is the issue so you know in order to to metabolize calories from carbohydrates and protein and fat we need certain nutrients in our diet and when we strip them out of our diet it makes it very difficult on the body to deal with these things so and and whole grains I think that’s the other thing that people believe it’s grains are bad refined grains are not so great but whole grains are just fine thank you very much and as a matter of fact we have a study from 2016 which is a meta-analysis of 45 studies showing that people that eat three servings of whole grains per day reduce the risk of diabetes by 51% of cardiovascular disease by 22% respiratory diseases 22% stroke 18% and all cause mortality by 17% and total cancer by 15% so whole grains are our healthy foods but all whole grains are not created equal a granola bar does not equal a bowl of oatmeal and a box of Kemet flakes does not equal a kamut berry salad okay so there’s a one of the things that I found when I first started working with diabetes is is people we’re living on whole-wheat bread and whole wheat pasta and all of these whole wheat flour products and so I started thinking to myself I need to provide them with a tool that will help them to understand that there are differences between the level of processing of whole grains so for example at the top of so here’s my hierarchy at the top of the whole grain hierarchy are intact whole grains grains as they’re picked off the plant nothing added nothing taken away so things like barley chemic berries quinoa red or black or brown rice and then next on the hierarchy would be cut whole grains like steel cut oats or bulgur then would be rolled whole grains like rolled oats rolled barley roll dry then shredded whole grains like shredded wheat then ground whole grains like whole wheat flour products then flaked whole grains like flaked cereals and then puffed whole grains at the bottom of the barrel ok so why are we going down on this list and the way we do well as you increase the surface area of that original grain you increase the rate at which it will be absorbed into the bloodstream and so it has a higher glycemic index and a higher impact on blood sugar and inflammation as you go down this list you lose nutrients so when you eat that green intact as with nothing added nothing taken away it takes your body a long time to digest it but also everything that was intended for you to have was there but as you process you lose nutrients so two things nutrient losses an increase in rate of absorption of that food so if you’re trying to fight disease you might want to say I’m only gonna eat intact grains or intact grains and and cut grains and I’m going to stop there but definitely you want to minimize puffed and flaked you you may want to if you’re trying to reverse disease say no flour products for a time and and see how that works for you because I’ve found it makes a huge difference for people so carbohydrate common-sense will get your carbohydrates from vegetables fruits legumes and whole grains avoid added sugars especially in beverages and minimize all refined carbohydrates whether they’re starches or sugars