Steps To An Optimal Plant Based Diet by Brenda Davis, R.D.

so now we will move on to what to eat how can we create a diet that provides maximum protection against chronic disease so we’ll look at the 10 steps to an optimal plant-based diet and step one is to make whole plant foods the foundation of the diet what i would suggest is 10 or more servings of vegetables and fruits each day with every color of the rainbow two or more servings of legumes every day intact whole grains being the predominant whole grains you’re eating and you vary your your intake to meet energy needs uh nuts and seeds one or two servings a day and generous amounts of herbs and spices i think this needs to be a new food group because we’re finding that there’s so pretty there’s there are so many protective phytochemicals and antioxidants in these foods

step two is to select our carbohydrates with care and you know carbohydrates are not the enemy carbohydrates are consistently protective to human health when they come from whole plant foods if you think about you remember the list of protective foods and pathogenic or protective factors and pathogenic factors and and we you know it was all plant foods are the most protective uh just take a look at the carbohydrate content of plant foods 92 percent of the calories from fruits are carbohydrates 90 in in starchy vegetables 75 percent in grains 70 percent in legumes and 58 in what we call non-starchy vegetables 58 of the calories are still coming from carbohydrates if you look these are the healthiest foods on the planet they they provide between 60 and 90 percent of calories from carbohydrates how can carbohydrates be dangerous when you consider this simple fact it wouldn’t make sense but the truth is refined carbohydrates are bad news and what the carbohydrate naysayers forget is that there’s a big difference between carbohydrates that are packaged with fiber and phytochemicals and carbohydrates have been that have been stripped of everything of value to human health so what are refined carbohydrates well as i mentioned they’re they’re carbohydrates that you take away the fiber you take away the vitamins and minerals and and you know we do this with by food processing and so we’ve got these simple sugars sugars and jams and syrups and sweet beverages and we’ve got complex refined carbohydrates like white flour products and white rice and so forth so two categories of refined carbohydrates and if you think about sugars well what is recommended well the american heart association says men should not consume more than nine teaspoons a day women not more than six the dietary guidelines for americans say not more than 10 of calories that’s about 12 teaspoons in a 2 000 calorie diet and the world health organization also says not more than 10 calories however they also add that less than 5 of calories would actually be better which is about 6 teaspoons a day would provide additional health benefits if people could limit sugar intake to to that in my view added sugars how much should we be eating zero we don’t need them we get plenty of sweet from fruits and dried fruits and just eating whole foods we don’t need to be adding sugar but what a lot of people don’t know is actual intakes are about 22 teaspoons a day and if you look at the numbers just a 20 ounce bottle of soda would be 18 to 21 teaspoons a flavored coffee you could get 7 to 18 teaspoons of sugar in one coffee one cup of fruit yogurt 9 to 12 teaspoons of sugar a cinnamon bun 12 an energy bar five even a quarter cup of barbecue sauce four instant oatmeal all three and a half it just adds up very quickly when you look at the numbers if you look at the sources of added sugars as a percent of calories in the diet almost half come from sweet beverages if people did nothing else but stopped drinking sugar they would make a huge dent in their health improved you know they they would have less overweight and obesity and they would reduce inflammation and oxidative stress and so on so that really is step number one we get about 31 from from sweets and snacks so again we really need to look at what we’re consuming and then if we look at the complex carbohydrates that are refined many people are claiming that grains are harmful to health we see green brain wheat belly and all of the the paleo folks saying do not eat grains but our grain is really helpful well the answer is you know i’m going to sound like a bit of a broken record but only if they are refined uh and and that’s really the bottom line the problem is 90 plus of the car of the grains americans consume are refined and so when you know when people are saying carb carbs are bad they’re talking about refined carbs that make up 90 of the grains people are eating on the other hand and when you think about it when we refine grains we take a whole grain that has three parts you probably know this but the bran the endosperm the germ and we remove two of the three parts we remove the bran and the germ where the fiber and the nutrients are are are concentrated and we’re left with the endosperm which is really the carbohydrates a little bit of protein a few nutrients but not not a whole lot in the process of turning a whole grain into say white flour we remove 80 to 90 percent of the fiber 70 to 80 percent of the vitamins and minerals and about 95 of the protective phytochemicals and then who eats a bowl of white flour nobody nobody eats a bowl of white flour what do you do before you eat the bowl of white flour you know you add fat sugar salt color preservatives flavors and then you eat the white flour right and that’s the problem not only are you removing most of what’s value to human health you’re adding a bunch of junk to it before you actually eat it that’s harmful to human health so therein lies the problem the evidence we’ve got a 2016 meta-analysis of 45 studies that reported that whole grain intake is associated with a reduced risk of mortality from all causes cardiovascular disease diabetes cancer and respiratory diseases so this is what we know all whole grains however are not created equal so a granola bar does not equal ebola oatmeal and a box of kamut flakes even if they’re organic does not equal a kamut berry salad okay and so we need to understand there are differences even within the world of whole grains there’s differences because of the level of processing of those whole grains and so i’ve created this thing called the whole grain hierarchy the whole grain hierarchy is the top of the hierarchy are intact whole grains and when i say intact whole grains what am i talking about i’m talking about the grains as they’re picked off the plant nothing added nothing taken away oat groats camut berries quinoa barley that’s what we’re talking about and and the even better than cooking those intact whole grains would be sprouting them because when you sprout them you decrease antinutrients and you increase a wide variety of nutrients and you increase phytochemical phytochemicals in that food by probably about 500 percent so some some interesting changes the next on the list would be cut whole grains so all we do is chop the whole grains we’re increasing the surface area we’re increasing exposure to oxygen so we could get some oxidation happening so one level down and we’re talking about things like steel cut oats then the rolled whole grains then the shredded whole grains then ground whole grains are whole wheat flour products then flaked whole grains and then at the bottom of the barrel is puffed whole grains so why are we going down on this list because as we go down we we actually increase glycemic index so the rate at which these foods are absorbed into the bloodstream and impact our blood sugar and and insulin resistance and so forth but we’re also increasing nutrition destruction of nutrients as we go down so we get fewer nutrients we get higher glycemic index and so not that you can’t have some of these things down lower on the list especially people who use a lot of calories but for people who have disease and are trying to reverse disease i urge them to draw the line at the rolled whole grains and eat only the grains above the line and if they want really rapid results just draw the line at intact whole grains and eat nothing else so that’s just a you know one of the ways that i found in my work especially with diabetes and in the marshall islands that we see much more dramatic results more quickly is is sticking more to intact whole grains so carbohydrate common sense we want to get our carbohydrates from vegetables fruits legumes and whole grains we want to avoid all beverages with added sugars and we want to minimize refined carbohydrates sugars and starches and other highly processed grains

step three is to boost fiber and and we know fiber is nature’s broom it keeps our intestinal tract clean it promotes regularity improves gut flora it it increases satiety and reduces cravings reduces cholesterol stabilizes blood sugar reduces our risk of gi disorders colorectal cancer and it enhances immune function and it also can help to lessen hormonal imbalances so if we think about how much should we consume how much people are actually consuming well the rda is 38 grams a day for men and 25 for women and it’s based on about 14 grams per thousand calories of of food intake actual intake is about 15 to 17 grams a day in the american diet the vegan diet about 35 to 40 grams a day for women and about 45 to 60 for men and it’s not too much different on a raw food diet now this is the shocker and i’m going to be doing a presentation i think it’s on monday on paleolithic diets you know the new paleo diet versus real paleolithic diets and fiber intakes in the paleolithic times were estimated to be between 70 and 150 plus grams a day just so you know it’s it’s this is this is what humans consumed for millennia was far more fiber than even vegans consume so that one’s hard to wrap your brain around but we’ll be talking about that in the next lecture in my next lecture so we want to be aiming for at least 12 to 20 grams of fiber per meal but we don’t want to just be sprinkling wheat bran on food we want to be getting fiber from a variety of whole plant foods and if you look at what are the most concentrated sources of fiber well beans are at the top of the list then avocado then grains berries and then other fruits and vegetables nuts and seeds the the thing to know is only plant foods contain fiber all whole plant foods contain fiber and refined carbohydrates fast foods processed foods are low fiber foods and the no fiber foods of course are meat poultry fish dairy eggs oils and sugars zero fiber