Flavour, Toxins and Nutritional Wisdom

In this post, Food for Thought on Food Choices, I wrote about learning to listen to my body.  In the past couple of years since I have purged processed foods from my diet there have been times when I have craved a particular food and I felt like my body was telling me that I needed something that's in that particular food.

I'm talking about cravings for real foods like scrambled eggs and fresh parsley, or a big salad or a juicy steak, not fake foods like chips and ice cream.   I've heard this referred to as "intuitive eating", a concept I initially considered a bit "airy fairy" and "new age" or something, but I really do feel like I've experienced it.

After listening to this podcast which is an interview with Mark Schatzker, author of the book "The Dorito Effect" it made sense. 

This was a really interesting interview.  The "Dorito Effect" is about flavour and nutritional wisdom.  It's about how we can know what our body needs to meet our changing nutritional requirements and how toxins, chemicals naturally occurring in foods, talk to our body to tell us when to stop eating - an inbuilt dieting mechanism you might say.  Most of all it's about how artificial flavours in processed foods, even those labelled "natural flavours" which incidentally are not natural at all, trick our brains, confusing our innate nutritional wisdom.

It's also about how modern commercial production of meats and produce, which focuses on higher, faster yields, is occurring at the expense of flavour and nutritional content, also affecting our nutritional wisdom.

Mark says:

"The good stuff is getting blander and the wrong stuff is getting more flavourful."

"The food crisis we're spending so much time and money on might better be thought of as a large-scale flavour disorder.  Our problem isn't calories and what our bodies do with them.  Our problem is that we want to eat the wrong food.  The longer we ignore flavour, the longer we are bound to be victims of it"

In his show notes the interviewer, Sean Croxton, says:

"Fruits and vegetables, once bursting with flavour, are now plump with water and bred with yield in mind, to the detriment of taste and nutrition.  And it's making us fat (and hungry).  Flavour dilution is the new normal.  Meanwhile, the food flavouring industry has made a science out of covering it all up while engineering addiction at the same time."

The interview discusses some very interesting research done in this area.  To me it highlights yet more incentive to avoid processed foods and seek out real whole foods, but it is also evidence of God's great engineering!

Im definitely putting this book on my reading list.

Source:  www.undergroundwellness.com
"The Dorito Effect" is available as a ebook from Amazon and ITunes.

~ take every opportunity to put the good stuff in ~

This blog is about me, what I'm doing, what's working for me, and what's not. It includes my experiences and opinions. It is for general information only and is in no way intended to replace the advice of a health care professional.

The Importance of Blood Sugar Balance

Homeostasis - the tendency to maintain, or the maintenance of, normal, internal stability in an organism by coordinated responses of the organ systems that automatically compensate for environmental changes. 

Our blood sugar is one of the areas in which our body works hard to achieve homeostasis.  However, our dietary choices can overwhelm our body's ability to do this.

In a previous post "Heart Surgeon Speaks Out on What Really Causes Heart Disease"  the author, Dr Dwight Lundell, highlighted that keeping blood sugar levels in check is one way to reduce inflammation in the body and therefore one of the most important things you can do for your for health.

"Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels."

In a lecture given by Dr Lundell in 2013 he explains this concept in a lot more detail.  In fact he gets very technical and I admit that the fist time I listened to this lecture I was a bit like "....yawn . . . where's he going with all this...", but I recommend that you listen and hang in there as he brings all the information together and paints a very clear picture (even if you don't understand some of the big words he uses) of how and why keeping your blood sugar levels in check is so important.

WARNING:  This will change the way you look at a burger and fries!  Listen, or watch (includes slides), the presentation here.


Source:  Livinlavidalowcarb.com - 2013 Low-Carb Cruise Lecture - Dr Dwight Lundell (Episode 754)
Definition of homeostasis from www.yourdictionary.com

~ take every opportunity to put the good stuff in ~

This blog is about me, what I'm doing, what's working for me, and what's not. It includes my experiences and opinions. It is for general information only and is in no way intended to replace the advice of a health care professional.

10 Good Reasons to Cook Your Own Food at Home

Struggling to give up fast food?  Watch this video "10 Disgusting Fast Food Secrets".

Source: YouTube.com

~ take every opportunity to put the good stuff in ~

This blog is about me, what I'm doing, what's working for me, and what's not. It includes my experiences and opinions. It is for general information only and is in no way intended to replace the advice of a health care professional.

Heart Surgeon Speaks Out on What Really causes Heart Disease

This article is by Dr Dwight Lundell, a heart surgeon of 25 years experience who has performed over 5000 open-heart surgeries.  Do read the entire article, but here's a summary:

"I freely admit to being wrong" says Dr Lundell.

Dr Lundell explains to us that it is inflammation in the artery wall, and not simply high cholesterol from a high fat diet, that is the real cause of heart disease.

"Without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes.  Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended.  It is inflammation, that causes cholesterol to become trapped."

Inflammation is "quite simply your body's natural defence to a foreign invader such as bacteria, toxin or virus."

So what causes inflammation?

"The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine".

The biggest culprits of chronic inflammation are "the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods."

Dr Lundell explains that it's this type of diet over time which does the damage.

"I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries.  A diseased artery look as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall.  Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation."

Consuming simple carbohydrates raises blood sugar rapidly and in turn your pancreas secretes insulin to drive the sugar into your cells for energy, but once the cells are full, excess sugar is stored as fat.  The body aims to control blood sugar in a narrow range.  Excess sugar injures the blood vessel wall.  

"This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation."

"When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels."

"There is no escaping the fact that the more that we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day.  The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils."

So what should we do?

"There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state.  To build muscle, eat more protein.  Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colourful fruits and vegetables.  Cut down on or eliminate inflammation-causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them."

"The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation.  Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favour of foods high in omega-6 fats.  We now have an epidemic of arterial inflamation leading to heart disease and other silent killers."

"By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage to your arteries."

Source article: http://www.sott.net/article/242516-Heart-surgeon-speaks-out-on-what-really-causes-heart-disease If you Google Dr Lundell you will find a page called "Quackwatch" which says some disparaging things about him.  In this online interview (towards the end) Dr Lundell addresses this criticism.

~ take every opportunity to put the good stuff in ~

This blog is about me, what I'm doing, what's working for me, and what's not. It includes my experiences and opinions. It is for general information only and is in no way intended to replace the advice of a health care professional.

Five Minute Salad

Think you don't have time to pack a healthy lunch for work?  With a little forward planning at your weekly shop to always have a few things on hand it's not that hard.  I like to try plan my weekly menus to have some dinner leftovers to turn into a salad for work but when I'm really pressed for time or things just don't go according to plan, this is my plan "B" basic healthy lunch that provides good fats, fibre and protein, and is packed in five minutes flat!

You need to keep in your pantry:

Small tins of wild-caught* salmon

Olive oil

And in your fridge:

Bag of pre-washed mixed lettuce/greens

Tomatoes or cherry tomatoes

Avocado

Throw two handfuls of pre-washed mixed lettuce/greens in a lunchbox.  Wash and chop the tomato and throw that in too.  If you have cherry tomatoes this step is even quicker - no chopping!  Then slice an avocado like you would a mango and squeeze the avocado pieces on top.

Pour a little olive oil in a small jar or container and pop this in the lunchbox also then refrigerate.  I always pack my lunches in the evening and don't have any issues with the avocado turning brown.  I do use air-tight lunchboxes which probably helps with that.

In the morning grab your lunchbox from the fridge, the salmon from the cupboard and pack these in an insulated bag with an ice pack.  At lunch time add the salmon to your salad, drizzle over olive oil and enjoy!

* wild-caught fish is the best option.  For information about the dangers of farmed fish read this article by Dr Axe.

~ take every opportunity to put the good stuff in ~

This blog is about me, what I'm doing, what's working for me, and what's not. It includes my experiences and opinions. It is for general information only and is in no way intended to replace the advice of a health care professional.