Minimize Dietary Contaminants like Agrochemicals, Products Of High-Temperature Cooking And Food

step six is to minimize dietary contaminants and here we’re talking about agro chemicals environmental contaminants the products of high temperature cooking and food additives and I’m going to go through this very very quickly but agro chemicals we’re talking about pesticides that that are concentrated in conventional produce and other conventionally grown foods and all the veterinary drugs the hormones and antibiotics and antimicrobial agents which are mainly in meat poultry and fish and dairy products the solution is simple eat organic if you can as much as possible and you can look at the environmental working groups Dirty Dozen and clean 15 they raid about 50 different fruits and vegetables and the 12 with the highest pesticide content are called the Dirty Dozen and the 15 with the lowest pesticide content are called with clean 15 and they updated every single year

and then environmental contaminants things like heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants like PCBs DDT and dioxins the most concentrated sources of environmental contaminants are fish meat and dairy products the solutions here eat lower on the food chain and of course eat plants

the products of high-temperature cooking we’re talking about things like heterocyclic amines which are cancer-causing chemicals that are formed when we cook meat poultry or fish at high temperatures they don’t form in plants because plants don’t contain any of the the creatine or creatinine you need to make heterocyclic amines

then there’s polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs these are known mutagens they’re linked with all sorts of cancers they’re present in grilled and charred foods they come from the incomplete burning of carbon so they’re in all foods meat or or plant forms in and can form at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or higher cooking in order to reduce them you just don’t want to blacken your foods

acrylamide is a compound that’s formed in starchy foods especially potato products that are cooked at with dry heat or with oil at high temperatures and you can see the most content acrylamide again is a is a potential carcinogen the the most concentrated sources are sweet potato chips and regular potato chips and we see it in things like rye crisp bread and french fries and coffee coffee’s not really fair here because we’re looking at a hundred gram servings and you don’t you eat five grams of coffee or something so it’s a little bit unfair they’re ready to eat cereals and and so on a little bit they’re not much

and advanced glycation end-products which are strongly associated with diabetes risk and advanced glycation end-products the impaired immune function they accelerate aging and the increased risk of just about every disease you can think of and look at this the most concentrated source and these are really advanced glycation end-products are really just the final and irreversible products of the maori action which is that browning reaction in food but bacon broiled and boiled frankfurters fried meat poultry fish even butter but even grilled or fried tofu and and other foods can have some advanced glycation end-products

the solutions here again eat more raw food use moist cooking methods like steaming and and stewing and boiling and you know like a soup these will produce fewer products of oxidation be very savvy with dry heat a saute with water broth or wine use the lowest temperatures possible and again avoid blackening your food

and harmful food additives like preservatives and artificial colors and flavors and all of those things you want to minimize your intake but the most common additive is salt and 70 to 80 percent of salt comes from processed foods even what we think of as healthy processed foods and if you look at this list it’s you can see I don’t know what it didn’t come up by one at the time but basically you can get you know three to five hundred milligrams in one veggie burger you need to to look at this though one ounce of corn flakes or Raisin Bran has over 300 milligrams of sodium more than you’d get if you ate an ounce of potato chips and an ounce of peanuts combined

now this is really shocking to people because why peanuts taste salty salted peanuts potato chips taste salty corn flakes or Raisin Bran don’t and so you go why how could that be that it’s higher it’s because when you put salt on the surface of a food it tastes really salty but when you put it through a batter you don’t it’s not the pronounced flavor anymore and so that’s why it’s important to read labels more

the most healthful food have healthful foods of all have no label they have one ingredient broccoli blueberries those are the foods but what you want to look for when you read labels is labels with a short ingredient list and ingredients you actually understand that are that you recognize as food you want to minimize your use of labels

and the last step step 7 get lean if you can eat whole unprocessed or minimally processed foods as grown steer clear of processed foods with added fat sugar and salt eat until you’re 80% full Harry hacci boo choose less calorically dense foods oil is super calorically dense sugar is super calorically dense and and whole plant foods have a much lower a caloric density so what does that mean it means you can eat a lot and not get so many calories and feel satisfied drink water not sugar and increase your physical activity aim for about sixty minutes a day if you can make sure all of your nutrient needs are met and so this is of the food guide that was in our books that we developed and it essentially if you follow the guide it’s pretty much foolproof

so just winding up the take-home message here is simple every time you eat or drink you either feed disease or you fight disease you want every when you’re fighting disease you want every calorie that crosses your lips to be fighting disease you can choose to fight disease with the most powerful medicine on the planet whole plant foods organic preferably

and I want to end by telling you the rest of the story about my dad about two years after the incident that I told you about at the beginning of the lecture my dad had a stroke and it wasn’t a super serious stroke but he was taken to the hospital and he his when he was taken to the hospital they found out his blood glucose was over 500 milligrams per deciliter his blood pressure was over 120 it was over 220 over 120 so his blood pressure was through the roof he was diabetic he had had a heart attack he didn’t know about and his blood vessels were completely destroyed and his doctor said to him if you stopped smoking you if you don’t stop smoking you might live three months if you do you might live three years my dad wasn’t even fifty years of age yet

and I can remember sitting on my dad’s hospital bed with him and we were both crying and he said to me I don’t want to die I want to see my grandchildren grow up and I want to dance with my sweetheart at our 50th wedding anniversary

and you know I thought it was so sad that my dad had to get hit over the head with a hammer before he realized that without health there is no freedom he wanted to be free to do what he wanted to do but when your health gets snatched away your freedom gets snatched away right along with it

my dad ended up living almost 30 years instead of free three he made big he didn’t make the changes Carlos made I wish he would have because he’d still be alive had he done that but instead of bacon and eggs he ate oatmeal for breakfast he did some things that he could do and we had him with us so he could see his grandchildren graduate and he could dance at his 50th wedding anniversary and he died eight years ago and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss him terribly and I wish he could see his great-grandchildren my grandchildren

but I I just want to leave you with the thought that there’s nothing more important than your health because without it you can’t do what you love to do and you know people say but I just don’t want to eat that way it’s hard and I might not like it you know what I can tell you one thing I can guarantee is that as you change the more you change the more your health will change and as you change your palate changes and those foods you thought were so yummy become disgusting they don’t even taste like food anymore and the foods that you thought we’re disgusting tastes wonderful you actually become addicted to greens oh it’s a whole different world

and I’ll tell you you do not enjoy your food any less when you start eating healthfully if anything I think you enjoy it more because you can appreciate the real taste of real food

and so with that I will stop and I know everybody’s probably pretty anxious to take the food that’s coming thank you so much