What Are The Top 10 Ingredients In A Disease-Fighting Diet? by Brenda Davis

number one is you need the foundation of your diet to be whole plant foods and that is critical and so what do I mean by that I mean you want 10 servings of vegetables and fruits you want two or three servings of legumes you want to make sure you’ve got a serving of nuts and seeds or two like at least one of nuts one of seeds and make sure there’s an omega-3 rich source you if you’re eating grains are a little bit optional depending on your caloric needs but you want them to be mainly intact you want lots of herbs and spices because they’re loaded with phytochemicals and antioxidants so that’s number one whole plant foods

number two you want to make sure that you’re getting up in terms of the amount of fiber you’re eating so so and you do that just by eating that that number of whole plant foods and the the number one source of fiber of course is beans and so including some legumes is a really really good idea the average person’s eating 15 grams 20 grams at most of fiber a day we probably need more in the range of at least 35 to 50 for optimal health Paleolithic people ate 70 to 150 grams of fiber a day so that that’s number two

number three is be very picky about your sources of carbohydrates carbohydrates you you not only do you want to make sure you’re not consuming refined carbohydrates so when we say refined carbohydrates and we’re talking about both complex and simple carbohydrates simple carbohydrates being sugars so soda pop and and candy and white sugar and brown sugar and honey and all all concentrated sweeteners and and refined well honey wouldn’t be refined but generally sugars that are concentrated even agave syrup and and then on the complex carbohydrates the refined complex carbohydrates are the white flour products the white rice products so thus the concentrated starches and both of those are consistently associated with increased disease risk increased risk of overweight and obesity you can’t stop eating them and they’re addictive I and so and and and so we just need to get rid of those foods as much as is possible

and and then the next thing is a lot of people will say well you know whole grains are fine so I eat all whole wheat bread and I eat you know puffed rice and I eat my flaked organic chem lakes or whatever and people also need to understand that there’s a hierarchy within the whole grain world and I I created this sort of hierarchy of whole grains to help people understand that just because it’s a whole grain doesn’t mean it’s not highly processed okay so you can take and make whole grain flour but then you’re making you know that muffins or cupcakes or whatever with the whole grain flour you’ve still added a bunch of fat and sugar and salt and you know what we you know what we do when we make foods out of flour is add things to make it taste good and so in the whole grain hierarchy at the top of the hierarchy is intact whole grains then would be next would be cut whole grains like steel cut oats then next on the hierarchy would be rolled whole grains like rolled oats then next would be the granite whole grains then ground then flaked then puffed at the bottom and when you the puffing process is you know you put a green under you know so much pressure that you puff it well as you go down the hierarchy you digest and absorb these things faster you increase the surface area so it increases your blood glucose more you decrease the nutritional value because you’re exposing the food to air and just just all of these processing techniques and so we want to as much as possible stay higher on that on that whole grain hierarchy so that’s number three is the carbon carbide it’s

number four is with protein it stick to plant protein as much as possible and again you want to be sticking mainly to beans lentils peas these intact sort of legumes that have all the fiber and phytochemicals and all of that and choosing less often the more highly processed options now there’s a lot of controversy about soy so I’ll just say I haven’t said anything about so I’ll say a few words about soy to me the acid test is to look at the healthiest longest-lived populations on the planet two populations the Okinawans and the seventh-day adventists that are blue zone populations include soy as a dietary staple the Okinawans consuming two servings a day and the Adventists consuming I’m not sure they haven’t quantified it but soy is a part of their regular daily diet and so if it is a staple in the longest-lived people’s it’s probably not poison so but what people need to understand is that we want to be choosing I would choose organic and I would choose soy that’s less processed so edamame soybeans and and tofu or tempeh is not super highly processed rather than this this sort of veggie meats which are more highly processed which I’m not saying you can never include but should be less often and so you know plant-based protein foods have huge advantages over animal-based protein foods and I won’t get into that too much but just know and I think you’ve heard it probably from dr. Fuhrman quite a lot there’s so many problems with meat in comparison to legumes I have a kind of a list where of them side by side and there are so many advantages to legume and if we look at mortality this Studies on mortality show that even the tiniest bit of legume consumption 2/3 of an ounce a day decreases mortality by 7 to 8 percent whereas with meat its exact opposite meat increases mortality consistent across the board so so that’s number four protein

number five we’d be talking about fat and again get your fat from Whole Foods and and you know rather than I look at oils to me oils are to the fat world as sugars are to the carbohydrate world you know with carbohydrates when people get their carbohydrates from Whole Foods they’re at no increased risk of disease they’re at a decreased risk of disease and it’s the same with fats I think that with fats we want to get them mainly from Whole Foods nuts seeds avocados and these kinds of of higher fat foods rather than from oils which are highly refined foods and and so that and making sure we have that source of omega-3 we need two to four grams a day we would get that from eating a tablespoon of flax seeds we would get that a ground flax seeds because you’re not gonna absorb it from intact flax seeds a couple of tablespoons of hemp seeds a tablespoon and a half of chia seeds you know an ounce of walnuts would provide that so that’s you know and with fats you wanna you know absolutely eliminate trans fats you want to minimize saturated fats so maybe five six percent of calories is what the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology suggest the only people that are in that realm are vegans so that’s bottom line it’s not hard to be in that range on a vegan diet and we want to avoid damaged fats so fats that are heated to high temperatures and also even storing nuts and seeds we want to store nuts and seeds in their fridge or refrigerator so what I do when I buy nuts or seeds is so I get you know my five kilos or 10 pounds of walnut or pumpkin seeds or whatever I always buy them in volume the first thing I do is soak soak them for you know overnight or for a few hours whatever it is dehydrate them in the dehydrator and then I put them in little containers and freeze them I take them out as I need them and that’s that’s how I deal with nuts and seeds and so I think that was number five

number six would be to to minimize exposure to environmental contaminants so we’re wanting to minimize our exposure to persistent organic pollutants like dioxins and all of these pollutants that that you know move up the food chain and and mercury and and the heavy metals and and you know all of these agro chemicals pesticides and herbicides and and and growth you know growth regulators and all of these things so how do we do that with two ways eat lower on the food chain and eat organic so it’s really as simple as that

next on the list would be to really reduce our the toxic compounds that are formed from cooking and so we’re talking about heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and advanced glycation end-products and an acrylamide and all of these compounds which are potentially a neurotoxic carcinogenic you know and so we just need to be aware of those and so how do we deal with that don’t eat fried foods just don’t eat them don’t you know don’t fry with oil you keep if possible keep oils out of cooking as much as possible I think you know just not using them and and then storing foods properly so that the nuts and seeds in the fridge and freezer and so forth and I think that was number seven or eight around there anyway

and then the next on the list to me would be to maximize phytochemicals and antioxidants and that means just eating the widest variety and the most colorful foods you can within each category so in fruits and vegetables i io e say at least three green to red or two red to purple blue to orange yellow you know and a few even the white beige family with the onions and garlic and so forth and so you want the whole range of the rainbow but you want the variety and not just in fruits and vegetables think about it when you’re choosing beans more of the red and black beans more of the even in grains you know black rice or red rice or red or black quinoa instead of always choosing the brown for example and and so and and just the variety as well so you don’t want to be eating six apples a day as your as your fruits you want to be including some berries and some citrus fruits and and it’s the same in in all categories you want to be varying up your your choices

and then and and I’m not sure if I’m missing any but the last one that I would say would be just don’t overeat do not overeat I the Japanese with the Harry Hatch abou thing eat till your 80% full is a really good plan it’s so hard to do in such an obesogenic environment where we have such it you know foods that we can’t resist all around us and people are offering and that’s how we show love and it’s how we commune with our families and it’s so difficult it’s so difficult and so we just need to be really conscious of you know not just the type of food we eat but the quantity of food so if we’re eating a large volume it’s we want to eat a large volume of salad not a large volume of garbage food and and just you know and not the other thing that to me is really important is not drinking sugar that’s one of the best things you can do for weight control because people who are leaner have a have a much lower risk of any chronic disease and a greater longevity so that’s very very important so those are kind of the that I would say the top 10 if I did ten I’m not spread to nine or ten but anyway the the top

and and then I’ll leave you with my you know sort of final thought and that is that you know we we have such power in our personal example it’s it’s incredible people you know nobody I think we don’t get through to anybody by spitting in their face we need in order to move people we need to connect with them and love them and cherish the wonderful things that they’re doing and then share our example of good health but also share delicious wonderful food with a really generous heart and and I think that’s the the most important thing we can do to help other people shift rather than you know waving a finger at them or telling them they’re they’re idiots or any of that it doesn’t bring us together we we need to be connecting with people with respect and and with love and that means sharing it means sharing food and it means just being generous so that’s what veganism is all about it’s about compassion it’s about wanting to make this world a more beautiful place more ethical place and and it begins with how we treat our neighbors so I’ll leave you with that and thank you so much