Make Whole Plant Foods The Foundation Of Your Diet by Brenda Davis R.D.

Intro

it’s such a pleasure to be here in a privilege and thank you Steve and all of the team that has put on this amazing conference it’s such a privilege to be part of this and I thank you all for being here on this beautiful beautiful day so today I’m going to be talking about eating for life designing an optimal diet and when I think about an

What is an optimal diet

optimal diet I mean we all have a little bit of a different definition of optimal but to me the important factors are number one the diet has got to maximize health and well-being it’s got a support persons healthy body weight so you won’t be overweight or underweight it’s got a minimize risk of all chronic diseases it needs to meet our needs for all essential nutrients it’s got to be satisfying appealing and culturally and socially appropriate for us it’s and and last but definitely not least it has got to be ecologically sustainable and ethically justifiable so when we think

The Blue Zones

about the healthy people who consume healthy diets and who truly enjoy optimal health we can’t help but talking about the blue zones and the blue zones are really regions of the world where people commonly live to be ninety or a hundred years of age there are many centenarians within the blue zones but not only do they live to be 90 or 100 years of age but at those advanced ages they’re healthy they’re out gardening they’re doing really well they’re not on 14 medications there are five well recognized blue zones Okinawa Japan Sardinia Italy seventh-day adventists vegetarians of Loma Linda California I carry agree Samana Khoya Peninsula of Costa Rica and if you look at what lifestyle practices are common the common thread that we can weave through all of these populations there’s certain lifestyle practices that are a little bit unique within each of these populations this is just three of the blue zones a Venn diagram of three of the blue zones some are shared by two or more populations but there are six lifestyle practices that are common to every blue zone on the planet and they are strong sense of family these people are socially engaged they do constant moderate physical activity they don’t smoke they all consume and to things where diet is concerned they all consume plant-based diets and they all consume legumes you know I’m just going to go back for a second because tomorrow the entire lecture is looking at diet and disease and what we know about the link between diet and disease and the various populations and so just touching on it lightly here but tomorrow that will be the entire lecture so in terms of

The Evidence

optimal health we know the healthiest populations in the world are eating plant-based diets the evidence for plant-based diets is actually really strong and I show this this quote from marion Nestle because of really who she is I don’t know if you’re familiar with her work but she wrote many books safe food and and the food politics and but she was a former senior nutrition policy adviser for the government she was the NYU neutral head of the nutrition department for years she was even a senior editor for the Surgeon General’s report back in 1988 and and the reason I show this is because I want you to understand that this is not controversial in the mainstream scientific community scientists know that plant-based diets are most appropriate for human health and marion Nestle says there’s no that largely vegetarian diets are as healthy as you can get the evidence is so strong and overwhelming and produced over such a long period of time it’s no longer debatable but plant-based diets

The Problem

are not foolproof there are no animal products in a lot of potato chips or soda pop or other junk foods people can put together a diet that is based on plant foods that’s actually really unhealthy so what we’re going to talk about today is ten steps to a truly optimal plant-based diet and step one is make whole plant foods the foundation of the diet what we want to do is aim for at least ten or more servings of colorful vegetables and fruits each day I was adding up my numbers this morning just wondering where I’m at and I’m at about 14 to 16 on most days and I’m not you know I’m not a 200-pound man so I think that we just need to recognize that these are foundational foods we need at least three or four servings of greens a couple servings of read a couple servings of orange yellow a couple servings of purple blue a couple servings of white beige because all of these different colorful foods provide us with different beneficial component and you know the us recommendations aim

US Recommendations

for feasible rather than optimal they recommend at least two to three servings of vegetables and one and a half to two servings of fruit today that having been said almost no one in the United States meets even these feasible recommendations the average is less than one percent of adolescents less about two percent of men and about three and a half percent of women meet the u.s. recommendations and guess what guess what they included when they looked at the number of servings people were eating they included french fries and ketchup amongst vegetables and they included jam and jelly with fruit so this is really scary this is really quite frightening why do we need these foods they’re nutrient dense foods and nutrient density is all about nutrients per calorie what do we get for our calorie what we want to do is we want to get the most from every calorie consumed we want to select foods that contribute to health rather than undermine it okay so think of this if a person has a disease it’s kind of like their house is on fire everything you put in your body will

Nutrient Density Index

either serve as gasoline or water you know and think about this every single cell is a product of what we eat we think of food as fuel but food is so much more than fuel it’s the building blocks with which our brain is made of every cell in our body so we you know we if we’re if we’re eating junk constantly no wonder our bodies are not functioning optimally this is we have heard a lot from dr. Fuhrman this is his nutrient density index so at the top green leafy vegetables other non starchy vegetables and fruit then you’ve got other plant foods and fish then you’ve got animal products and at the bottom of the list you’ve got french fries and vegetable oil well when you get food in oil before you eat it it dilutes the nutritional density and oil has very few nutrients so it’s mostly calorie you know to me mostly calories to me oil is too high fat plant foods like sugar is too high carbohydrate plant foods we’ve extracted a macronutrient and left everything of value behind the phytochemicals the antioxidants and so forth we want to be including legumes or legging products on a daily basis in my view these are the foods that are most concentrated sources of protein iron zinc and some other trace minerals and also fiber so they’re very very valuable foods in plant-based diet there is an interesting study that looked at food intake patterns with people 70 years plus and found that the only statistically significant food indicator of longevity was legume intake for every 20 grams and 20 grams is about 2/3 of an ounce okay so for every 2/3 of an ounce of legumes there was a 7 to 8 percent reduction in mortality really quite

Nuts and Seeds

stunning we need to be including at least one serving one ounce of nuts and seeds a day and I would prefer to see one serving of each I think these are extraordinary valuable foods they are under appreciated by many people in the plant-based community the there is very consistent evidence that they improve longevity cardiovascular disease risk diabetes metabolic syndrome there’s moderate evidence for protection against dementia macular degeneration and gall stones as well so nuts and seeds are really our primary sources of essential fatty acids they’re low in saturated fats they’re really rich in vitamin E and most people get about half the vitamin E that they need they’re great sources of B vitamins and vitamin K they’re abundant sources of many trace minerals many of which are difficult to get from other foods in sufficient quantity they’re high in phytochemicals and antioxidants and they have the lowest glycemic index and glycemic load of any plant foods so they’re very valuable and also they’re high in arginine which is a which is an amino acid that’s a very potent vasodilator so it helps with improving a blood flow

Grains

we want to choose whole grains but most of them should be intact the goods on grains well grains are not absolutely essential they are key sources of protein and energy for a large part of the world’s population they contribute a lot of nutrients and also about 45% of our dietary fiber to me a very reasonable approach with grains is to get everything else first get your vegetables and fruits the more nutrient-dense foods get your legumes get your nuts and seeds and then the calories you have to play with can be intact whole grains and some people need very few two or three servings a day at most and some people who are burning four or five thousand calories a day that they’re competitive athletes they may be able to consume more the other thing that we often forget is the power of herbs and spices we need to be using these foods constantly I might breakfast is a sprouted grains some fruits I make a cashew cream I put some nuts and seeds on and then I often put on a little ginger and a little cinnamon you know just to get the herbs and spices in so it’s a wonderful way of eating just it just boosts the flavor and all of the wonderful powerful protective components in foods