How Not To Die: Part 2:
TOP-TEN FOOD SOURCES OF NITRATES: These can go either way with your system depending on how sensitive you are but should be included if you can!
10. Beets
9. Swiss chard
8. Oak leaf lettuce
7. Beet greens
6. Basil
5. Mesclun greens
4. Butter leaf lettuce
3. Cilantro
2. Rhubarb
1. Arugula
Whatever you absorb through your digestive tract isn’t immediately circulated throughout your body. The blood from your intestines first goes straight to the liver, where nutrients are metabolized and toxins are neutralized. It’s no surprise, then, that what you eat can and does play a critical role in liver health and disease. This may explain why adherence to a Mediterranean-style diet with plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans has been associated with less severe fatty liver disease even though it is not typically a low-fat diet. What else can we do? A specific class of plant compounds called anthocyanins—the purple, red, and blue pigments in such plants as berries, grapes, plums, red cabbage, and red onions—have been found to prevent fat accumulation in human liver cells in in vitro studies. For instance, sulforaphane, considered one of the more active components in cruciferous vegetables, kills human leukemia cells in a petri dish while having little impact on the growth of normal cells. Cruciferous vegetables include broccoli, cauliflower, and kale, but there are many others in this family, such as collard greens, watercress, bok choy, kohlrabi, rutabaga, turnips, arugula, radishes (including horseradish), wasabi, and all types of cabbage. Supplements contain only a select few antioxidants, whereas your body relies on hundreds of them, all working synergistically to create a network to help the body dispose of free radicals. High doses of a single antioxidant may upset this delicate balance and may actually diminish your body’s ability to fight cancer. Curcurmin is a big one! Your kidneys are tasked with the monumental responsibility of filtering your blood all day, every day. That’s a lot of work for two fist-sized organs. Kidneys are extremely resilient, but they aren’t indestructible. When they begin to fail, the body can start failing too. Toxic substances that healthy kidneys would ordinarily filter out can pass through and build up in the bloodstream. To keep your kidneys strong and your blood clean, you must carefully consider what you eat. The meat-sweet American diet can slowly damage your kidneys one meal at a time, forcing the kidneys into a state of hyperfiltration. For the purposes of this book, the author created two simple tools to help you integrate everything learned into your own daily life: 1. a Traffic Light system to quickly identify the healthiest options, and 2. a Daily Dozen checklist that will help you incorporate the foods that I consider essential to the optimal diet. The healthiest diet is one that maximizes the intake of whole plant foods and minimizes the intake of animal based foods and processed junk. Simply put, eat more green-light foods. Eat fewer yellow-light foods. And, especially, eat even fewer red-light foods. The green-light message shines brightly in pronouncements telling you to “eat more fruits and vegetables,” but the yellow and red lights can be dim and cloudy thanks to politics. In other words, the guidelines are clear when there is eat-more messaging (“Eat more fresh produce”), but eat-less messaging is obscured into biochemical components (“Eat less saturated and trans fatty acids”). National health authorities rarely just say to “eat less meat and dairy.” That’s why my green-light message will sound familiar to you (“Oh, ‘eat fruits and veggies’— I’ve heard that before”) but the yellow- and red-light messages may sound controversial (“What? Minimize meat? Really?”). That’s why, when those two directives are in sync, their eat-more language is clear: “Increase fruit intake.” “Increase vegetable intake.” But when their dual mandates are in conflict—when “improving nutrition and health” is at odds with promoting “agriculture production”—the eat-less messaging of the Dietary Guidelines gets repackaged and ends up referring to biochemical components: “Reduce intake of solid fats (major sources of saturated and trans fatty acids).” When the Guidelines tell you to eat less added sugar, calories, cholesterol, saturated fat, sodium, and trans fat, that’s code for eat less junk food, less meat, less dairy, fewer eggs, and fewer processed foods. But they can’t actually say that. When they did in the past, all hell broke loose. In conclusion,” the researchers wrote, “nearly the entire U.S. population consumes a diet that is not on par with recommendations. These findings add another piece to the rather disturbing picture that is emerging of a nation’s diet in crisis.” SO again, what do we eat? Find out more next week!
