Transcript

How did you do the last two weeks? Did you do your homework and drink 3 liters of water a day and eat more green vegetables? It wasn’t that hard, was it? Just keep continuing to incorporate these healthy habits into your diet.

Today, we’re going to talk about protein, including meat, fish, and eggs. We’re going to touch on vegetarianism, Carbohydrates and Grains, Gluten sensitivity and finish by learning how to listen to your body to meet your nutritional needs. We have a lot to learn today! Let’s get started!

Protein

Eat 10-30% animal protein (on the higher end if you have a fast metabolism). Meat and animal protein includes beef, chicken, poultry, pork, lamb, fish, and eggs. You’re fine eating a lot of meat as long as you eat it with a lot of vegetables – you need to balance out the acidic meats with alkaline vegetables. I recommend you eat a little protein with every meal. This will balance your blood sugar and give you the raw materials to make the neurotransmitters in your brain. However, you have to play around with protein levels to see what level works for you. This takes some time. Eggs are an amazing perfect protein that’s very easy to digest. Broths are a wonderfully nutritious food and very healing. Fish are wonderfully nutritious, but need to be wild, not farm-raised. Avoid processed meats like luncheon meat slices, hot dogs, salamis, preserved meats, and sausage links. These are full of MSG, salt, nitrates, and nitrites. This means Subway is not healthy!

Organic meats are expensive, but well worth the expense. If you are on a budget, opt for organic meats and get conventional veggies.

Conventional, factory-farmed meats contain hormones, antibiotics, GMO (genetically modified) corn and soy feed, and are treated shockingly inhumanely. Meat must be organic, preferably grass-fed, aka range-fed, grass finished, or pastured. Note the difference between organic, grass-fed, and organic/grass-fed. Grass-fed is not necessarily organic and vice versa. Grass-fed meat has fat that is orange to dark yellow in color, whereas grain-produced meat has fat that appears white. This omega-rich fat tastes ‘gamey’ or almost off tasting, but this is a good sign that you’re eating healthy meat. If you don’t like this taste, marinate the meat overnight. Organic meat will have less inflammatory omega 6’s and more anti-inflammatory omega 3’s, while GMO grain fed beef is just the opposite.

One of the best online resources for locating healthy, naturally produced, grass-fed meats near you is www.EatWild.com. Give wild meats a try, like buffalo, elk, sage hen, ostrich, or antelope. Look online for mail-order suppliers of game meat.

Red meat

Red meat gets a bad rap, but I recommend you eat it about once a week. Red meat contains saturated fats, but you need some kinds of saturated fats to be healthy. There are different kinds of saturated fats – some are healthy, some are not. Most importantly, red meat is very high in zinc and iron, and is a good source of B12 (except for nutritional yeast, which I think is inedible). It’s red because it contains tons of iron.

Poultry

Free-range, organic chickens are better than factory-farmed caged chickens because they’re not as fat. Here, too, the natural foraging diet of insects, worms, and plants guarantees a healthful ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids. Factory-farmed chickens eat an unnatural grain diet, are disease ridden, fed GMO feed, pumped with antibiotics, full of inflammatory omega 6 fats, and fed arsenic to make them grow twice as fast. They are also fed back their own poop and chickens that died in their horrible living conditions. These diseased animals are probably not going to nourish your body!

Fish

Fish is so good for you – supplying high protein, low total fat, while high in omega 3. However, fish is some of the most contaminated animal protein due to our environment. Fish and seafood, especially shellfish, are contaminated with heavy metals, particularly mercury, and industrial wastes like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and pesticides such as DDT. No matter how pristine a fish’s environment, industrial waste spews into clouds, which take it to the most remote corners of the earth. Heavy metals and fat-soluble pesticides become concentrated in older fish, large, predatory fish, and in fatty species of fish.

I’ll tell you a few ways you can minimize your risk of eating contaminated fish:

  • Eat wild fish. Farmed fish are raised in festering pools and routinely fed antibiotics, unnatural diets containing GMOs, growth hormones, and dyes (to make them look healthy) – just like factory-farmed meats. These fish will not have the omega 3 content of wild caught fish. Fish frequently farmed are salmon, trout, catfish, tilapia, eels, shrimp, and crayfish.
  • Avoid freshwater fish from lakes and rivers – particularly the Great Lakes and other polluted, industrialized areas.
  • Choose fish that come from cleaner, remote bodies of water, such as the Pacific Ocean and Alaska.
  • Eat mainly smaller, nonpredatory species such as anchovies, flounder, herring, sardines, mackerel, sole, pollock, catfish, halibut, and clams. I regularly eat canned Wild Planet brand sardines. They are so good.
  • Avoid Shellfish. Shellfish tend to grow near beaches and river mouths, but this exposes them to industrial and human runoff. Shellfish are incredibly contaminated with heavy metals. Shellfish include oysters, scallops, shrimp, lobster et al.
  • Avoid big fish like swordfish, shark, and tuna. These long-lived predatory fish tend to accumulate more mercury and pollutants.

Eggs

Eggs are a perfect protein and very easy to digest. You want to keep egg consumption to 6-12 eggs a week. They are about 34% protein and high in fat, though the fat is healthy. Forget what you’ve heard that eggs raise your cholesterol. This is complete nonsense. Your liver makes 80% of the body’s cholesterol. Dietary cholesterol has almost no effect on blood cholesterol levels. Eating one egg a day has no discernible effect on your cholesterol. White flour and sugar raise are what raise your cholesterol. Keep in mind that eggs from free-range hens have 1/3 the cholesterol and many more nutrients than battery-cage eggs.

Eggs should be eaten organic and grass-fed. Organic chickens, while good, are fed an unnatural diet of grains, which will render the eggs less healthy. When chickens are grass-fed, they eat insects that add a ton of omega 3’s to the eggs, making them much healthier for you. If you cannot find grass-fed at your local farmer’s market or health food store, get the omega 3-enriched eggs. Even eggs that are organic, though the chickens are not given antibiotics or GMO feed, can still be produced on factory farms in rancid conditions. And don’t even bother with eggs that say ‘free range’ on the package. This means nothing, as the FDA does not regulate this phrase. To see how your eggs rate, see the Cornucopia Institute’s Egg Scorecard. My favorite are Frenz brand eggs from New Zealand. The yolks are a bright orange and the shells are thick – the sign of a healthy egg. I haven’t found a better egg, but, unfortunately, they cost a billion dollars a carton. I’ve also recently discovered Burroughs eggs. They’re great too.

Vegetarian and Vegan

Vegetarians must get their protein from dairy, nuts, seeds, beans, and soy, but vegans don’t eat dairy

Though plants contain protein, humans cannot digest and assimilate them very easily. It is very hard to break down fibrous plants. We don’t have the fermentative bacteria that gorillas or cows do. Plants stay in their stomachs for three days, with bacteria effectively breaking down the fiber and extracting the protein. We don’t enjoy this benefit.

Animal proteins are the basic building blocks for DNA synthesis, the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine and the sex hormones, estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone. Without animal protein, you cannot perform these vital functions. You may likely suffer depression or mood swings from a deficiency in serotonin, low hormones, or thyroid issues. I can attest to this myself as I suffered these problems after not eating meat for two years. And I’m STILL recovering! Some are not so fortunate to figure this out in time.

Vegan diets can be very dangerous. It makes me very sad that they have become so popular and are being forced on children. Vegan diets are primarily deficient in FATS and fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin D and K. Without animal protein and the fat it contains, humans become deficient in necessary vitamins: fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, K, as well as B12, iron, etc. Vegetarians don’t suffer these problems as long as they eat plenty of dairy and eggs. Being vegan for an extended period of time can result in permanent neurological and physical disability. But you don’t hear about these problems as much. You don’t read much about people who have to stop being vegan because their health is threatened.

This is why I’m a fan of a Paleo-type caveman diet. It just makes sense. As far as I’m concerned, you have to choose between your health or your convictions to save the earth and the animals. I personally choose health.

Carbs and Grains

Complex carbohydrates include whole grain bread, whole grains, whole grain tortillas, whole grain pasta, brown rice (or any whole red, black, or green rice), root veggies like red, purple, yellow, or fingerling potatoes and sweet potatoes, etc.  Simple carbohydrates like white flour, white potatoes (white Idaho), white rice, and white sugar are to be completely avoided. These are the main contributors to obesity and disease. They turn into sugars in your body and negatively impact your health.

Carbohydrates (aka starches and sugars) are useful. They’re good for energy, but many people do well by entirely eliminating them from their diet. They are not essential for survival because there are plenty of carbohydrates in fruits and vegetables. You do need some carbohydrates, but they should be limited to one or two servings a day unless you’re very active – you’ll need more energy to burn off. If you’re trying to lose weight, you should only have one carbohydrate a day if any at all.

Grains do contain nutrients, but are generally not healthy. That being said it’s ideally a good idea to slowly eliminate grains from your diet. They are generally irritating to your body, with rice being the least irritating. Even if you eat whole grains, they are usually ground into flour, rendering them no longer whole, and cause the same rise in your blood sugar as refined grains. So, they raise your blood sugar and insulin just the same and contribute to disease for this reason.

Gluten Intolerance

This leads me to talk about gluten intolerance. Gluten intolerance is the inability to digest gluten. One out of every three people – 30% of the population – may have gluten sensitivity, also known as gluten intolerance. Foods that contain gluten include bread, pasta, bagels, crackers, cookies, most processed food and any food that contains wheat, rye, or barley. Some oats contain gluten. Gluten free oats are labeled. Given the fact that gluten, of any food, is the highest correlated with disease, it’s a good idea to reconsider including it in your diet.

Gluten is the primary protein found in wheat. It is hard to digest and often passes through the stomach undigested. When your stomach acid is low (which is quite common), gluten enters the small intestine undigested, where it causes intestinal irritation. A recent study shows that even people without gluten intolerance or celiac disease suffer inflammation after consuming gluten. It’s best avoided. Remember, most people eat it at every meal! I have been trying to eliminate for a couple years. I’m doing pretty well, but it’s hard to avoid! I can report I feel a lot better.

Eating by Listening to Your Body

Now I want to talk a little about how vital it is to learn to listen to your body in order to give it the nutrients it requires. You learn to eat by listening to your body by respecting your cravings, sense of smell, taste, and satisfaction with your food.

This is important because repairing your body requires very different nutrients from those it uses for cleansing. Animal foods are generally building and repairing while plant foods are generally cleansing. You could never guess at any given moment what you need. So just leave it to your body.

Cravings for a particular food are completely normal and should not be resisted as long as it is for a healthy food. Desire for a food is the way your body tells you what it needs. So, when you get hungry try to figure out which food you are craving. The answer should come immediately. Desire is your inner intelligence talking to you, letting you know what it nutritionally needs to keep you healthy and energetic. If you listen to your desire every time you eat, you will enjoy good digestion of that food. It will provide you with the nutrients your body needs at that moment because you have eaten it at the right time, just when your body asked for it.

Sadly, people’s desire for food have been hijacked by addictive and taste-altering chemicals in processed foods, like MSG. Processed ‘foods’ are specifically engineered with chemicals to make them addictive. Listening to your body is only applicable with cravings for whole foods. You must stop eating processed foods for your subtle taste and desire for natural food to return.

Sense of smell gives you a lot of information about food: if it is safe to eat, is it full of chemicals or bacteria, is it fresh or moldy, and most importantly, if it meets your body’s nutritional needs? Smell everything before putting it into your mouth. If it is the right food for you at the moment, it will smell very appealing. If it is not the right food, it will smell unappetizing or repulsive.

If food is not pleasurable, then it is the wrong food for you at the moment no matter how healthy it is supposed to be! Listen to your sense of taste and respect it, as it is a major channel of communication of your body’s innate intelligence.

As the natural foods on this planet have been designed, your inner body intelligence knows their composition, and knows what foods to choose for particular needs. All we have to do is treat this intelligence with respect. Use your senses of smell, taste, desire for food and satisfaction from eating it to guide you in your decisions when to eat, what foods to eat, and in what combinations.

Goals For Next Week

  1. Listen to Your Body. Over the next couple weeks I want you to focus on how you feel after eating. What foods make you sick to your stomach, or tired, or moody? What foods make you feel energetic, clean, and satisfied? Begin to pay attention. You may be very surprised by what you find. I was surprised to learn that sugar makes me moody. Food has a profound impact on our moods and physical well being. You just have to pay attention. It’s very easy to attribute your mood or energy level to things other than diet.
  2. Eliminate Gluten. I also want you to try to reduce or eliminate gluten from your diet. Read my blog about Gluten Sensitivity. Scare yourself into compliance!! This means eliminating bread, pasta, flour tortillas, muffins, cake, cookies, crackers, etc. You can, however, eat corn tortillas, quinoa or brown rice pasta, muffins and breads with almond or other flours, gluten-free bread (which is great), rice, quinoa, millet, and so much more. It just takes a little adjustment, but I promise you, if you have pain (especially joint pain), fatigue, headaches, digestive issues, etc, they may just disappear after removing gluten from your diet.