Fiber Food Quotes

Fang: “Let them blow up the world, and global-warm it, and pollute it. You and me and the others will be holed up somewhere, safe. We’ll come back out when they’re all gone, done playing their games of world domination." Max: “That’s a great plan. Of course, by then we won’t be able to go outside because we’ll get fried by the lack of the ozone layer. We’ll be living at the bottom of the food chain because everything with flavor will be full of mercury or radiation or something! And there won’t be any TV or cable because all the people will be dead! So our only entertainment will be Gazzy singing the constipation song! And there won’t be amusement parks and museums and zoos and libraries and cute shoes! We’ll be like cavemen, trying to weave clothes out of plant fibers. We’ll have nothing! Nothing! All because you and the kids want to kick back in a La-Z-Boy during the most important time in history!” Fang: “So maybe we should sign you up for a weaving class. Get a jump start on all those plant fibers.” Max: "I HATE YOU!!!" Fang: "NO YOU DOOOOOON'T!!" Voice: "You two are crazy about each other.

It is mainly the soluble fiber in the common natural foods that  lower cholesterol

Excess cholesterol in the blood can lead to excess cholesterol in the brain, which may then help trigger the clumping of amyloid seen in Alzheimer’s brains. Under an electron microscope, we can see the clustering of amyloid fibers on and around tiny crystals of cholesterol.

The phytochemicals, antioxidants, and fiber- all of the healthful components of plant foods- originate in plants, not animals. If they are present, it is because the animal ate plants. And why should we go through an animal to get the benefits of the plants themselves? To consume unnecessary, unseemly, and unhealthy substances, such as saturated fat, animal protein, lactose, and dietary cholesterol, is to negate the benefits of the fiber, phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are prevalent and inherent in plants.

The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the color, and show its food in every ... minutest fiber.

There is evidence that you can improve your microbiota even in old age by adopting a Mediterranean-type diet and eating more fiber.

The weight of our guts is estimated at about 60 percent of what is expected for a primate of our size: the human digestive system as a whole is much smaller than would be predicted on the basis of size relations in primates. Our small mouths, teeth, and guts fit well with the softness, high caloric density, low fiber content, and high digestibility of cooked food.

Thanks to this availability of suitable wild mammals and plants, early peoples of the Fertile Crescent could quickly assemble a potent and balanced biological package for intensive food production. That package comprised three cereals, as the main carbohydrate sources; four pulses, with 20—25 percent protein, and four domestic animals, as the main protein sources, supplemented by the generous protein content of wheat; and flax as a source of fiber and oil (termed linseed oil: flax seeds are about 40 percent oil). Eventually, thousands of years after the beginnings of animal domestication and food production, the animals also began to be used for milk, wool, plowing, and transport. Thus, the crops and animals of the Fertile Crescent's first farmers came to meet humanity's basic economic needs: carbohydrate, protein, fat, clothing, traction, and transport.

The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn't pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business. Begin with the food and fiber raised in the farm, to the ore drilled in a mine, to the oil and gas from out of the ground, whatever it may be -- through the processing, through the manufacturing, on out to the retailer's license. If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business.

A solitary ant, afield, cannot be considered to have much of anything on his mind; indeed, with only a few neurons strung together by fibers, he can’t be imagined to have a mind at all, much less a thought. He is more like a ganglion on legs. Four ants together, or ten, encircling a dead moth on a path, begin to look more like an idea. They fumble and shove, gradually moving the food toward the Hill, but as though by blind chance. It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.

I’ve been eating potatoes for weeks. Theoretically, with my three-quarter ration plan, I should still be eating food packs. But three-quarter ration is hard to maintain, so now I’m eating potatoes. I have enough to last till launch, so I won’t starve. But I’m pretty damn sick of potatoes. Also, they have a lot of fiber, so…let’s just say it’s good I’m the only guy on this planet.

What is clear is that diets naturally high in fiber and low in animal-based foods can prevent colorectal cancer.

Provided you drink enough water daily, fiber eases constipation by making your stool softer and bulkier. High-fiber foods include beans, bran cereals, whole grains, fresh fruits, and vegetables. In many instances, constipation arises from the modern couch-potato lifestyle lacking in regular exercise. Physical inactivity can definitely lead to lazy and sluggish bowels.

If the things we eat have been processed—manipulated, broken apart, adulterated, with most of the fiber (and nutrients) thrown away—then we end up consuming something that’s food, technically speaking, but lacks many of the health benefits that eating is supposed to bring us. We get calories—which we need to survive, of course—but little else. None of the nutrition. As Dr. Fuhrman puts it, we end up mechanically full but nutritionally starved. If we do that often enough, we will absolutely harm ourselves at the cellular level. Over time, that may bring about some chronic condition.

All vegetables, beans, and whole grains are good sources of both fiber and complex carbohydrates, while there isn’t an animal food on the planet that contains any fiber or complex carbohydrate at all. Zero. Zilch.

a healthy diet consists of vegetables, fruit, fish, high-fiber grains, nuts, eggs, and quality vegetable oil. These are elements of both the Nordic and Mediterranean diets, known to add healthy years to your life.

As you will see, all successful diets share three precepts: low sugar, high fiber (which means high micronutrients), and fat and carbohydrate consumed together in the presence of an offsetting amount of fiber. Anything after that is window dressing.

Bowel transit time, as it is known in the trade, is a very personal thing and varies widely between individuals, and in fact within individuals depending on how active they are on a given day and what and how much they have been eating. Men and women evince a surprising amount of difference in this regard. For a man, the average journey time from mouth to anus is fifty-five hours. For a woman, typically, it is more like seventy-two. Food lingers inside a woman for nearly a full day longer, with what consequences, if any, we do not know. Roughly speaking, however, each meal you eat spends about four to six hours in the stomach, a further six to eight hours in the small intestine, where all that is nutritious (or fattening) is stripped away and dispatched to the rest of the body to be used or, alas, stored, and up to three days in the colon, which is essentially a large fermentation tank where billions and billions of bacteria pick over whatever the rest of the intestines couldn’t manage—fiber mostly. That’s why you are constantly told to eat more fiber: because it keeps your gut microbes happy and at the same time, for reasons not well understood, reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, bowel cancer, and indeed death of all types.

There are also stretch receptors in the stomach to signal satiety by detecting the volume of food eaten, not the weight of the food. If you are not filled up with nutrients and fiber, the brain will send out signals telling you to eat more food, or overeat.

the single most pro-inflammatory food component is saturated fat. The single most anti-inflammatory food component? Fiber.3899 Since saturated fat is found mostly in meat, dairy, and junk food, whereas fiber is abundant in whole grains, beans, vegetables, and fruit,

For centuries oatsΔ were used as animal food. When evidence-based science researched oats and found that they help reduce cholesterol in humans and that they contained complex carbohydrates, protein, minerals, vitamins, and soluble and insoluble fiber, their use became popular.

What You Need to Cut from Your Diet: 1.   Vegetable oil 2.   Added sugar and honey (to tea, coffee, etc.) 3.   Soda 4.   Juice, except fresh squeezed. (Why not just eat the fruit? It’s got more fiber and more antioxidants!) 5.   Energy bars and “health” bars 6.   Boxed cereals 7.   Fried fast foods 8.   Powdered “proteins,” and powdered milk 9.   Salad dressings made with any kind of vegetable oil, including canola 10. Low-fat products, including milk, cheese, salad dressings, cookies, and other baked goods 11. Snacks and desserts—if you want to lose weight

Anyone that insults my country, my intelligence, my feminist ideals, all women in general, and a favorite childhood food, and refers to both himself and me in the third person in one sentence automatically gets an honorary spot on my Hate With Every Fiber of My Being For All Time list.

BORN TO RUN In his book Racing the Antelope: What Animals Can Teach Us about Running and Life, biologist Bernd Heinrich describes the human species as an endurance predator. The genes that govern our bodies today evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, when we were in constant motion, either foraging for food or chasing antelope for hours and days across the plains. Heinrich describes how, even though antelope are among the fastest mammals, our ancestors were able to hunt them down by driving them to exhaustion—keeping on their tails until they had no energy left to escape. Antelope are sprinters, but their metabolism doesn’t allow them to go and go and go. Ours does. And we have a fairly balanced distribution of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers, so even after ranging miles over the landscape we retain the metabolic capacity to sprint in short bursts to make the kill.

Berries and beans R: Rainbow colors of fruits and vegetables A: Antioxidants I: Include lean proteins and plant-based proteins N: Nuts (almonds, walnuts, Brazil nuts, and cashews) F: Fiber-rich foods, fish, and fermented foods O: Oils O: Omega-3-rich foods D: Dairy (yogurt and kefir, certain cheeses)

Beans contain both insoluble and soluble fiber and are very high in resistant starch. While the benefits of fiber are well-known, resistant starch is proving to be another highly desirable dietary component. Although it is technically a starch, it acts more like fiber during digestion. Typically, starches found in carbohydrate-rich foods are broken down into glucose during digestion, and the body uses that glucose as energy. Much like fiber, resistant starch “resists” digestion and passes through the small intestine without being digested. Because of this, some researchers classify resistant starch as a third type of fiber.

Do it very gradually, a little bit more every day. That way, you’re less likely to experience intestinal distress. In other words, if your current diet is heavy on no-fiber foods such as meat, fish, poultry, eggs, milk, and cheese, and low-fiber foods such as white bread and white rice, don’t load up on bran cereal (35 grams dietary fiber per 3.5-ounce serving) or dried figs (9.3 grams per serving) all at once. Start by adding a serving of cornflakes (2.0 grams dietary fiber) at breakfast, maybe an apple (2.8 grams) at lunch, a pear (2.6 grams) at mid-afternoon, and a half cup of baked beans (7.7 grams) at dinner. Four simple additions, and already you’re up to 15 grams dietary fiber.

The next healthiest but suboptimal starch comes from broken grains, also known as flours. Whole wheat bread, for example, is denser and more caloric than wheat berries in their original form, but whole wheat flour itself is not inherently fatty or unhealthy. If you’re trying to lose weight, staying away from broken grains is probably a good idea because broken grains are more concentrated in calories and generally don’t have as much fiber as whole grains, so they’re absorbed quickly in the system. The worst starch comes in refined foods and is combined with fats and sugars in products like muffins and cake. These starchy foods will put weight on you fast, but it’s largely because of the added fats and sugars.

Eat fiber rich food! Fiber not only reduces cholesterol and keeps you regular, but it also fools your brain into thinking you are full. It holds water so your stomach feels full. You won’t go overboard with too many calories because you feel satisfied—thus, no weight gain. And fiber is only found in plant-based foods like whole grains, beans, veggies, and fruits.

As far as the body is concerned, white flour is not much different from sugar. Unless supplemented, it offers none of the good things (fiber, B vitamins, healthy fats) in whole grains—it’s little more than a shot of glucose. Large spikes of glucose are inflammatory and wreak havoc on our insulin metabolism. Eat whole grains and minimize your consumption of white flour.

I never leave home without my cayenne pepper. I either stash a bottle of the liquid extract in my pocket book or I stick it in the shopping cart I pull around with me all over Manhattan. When it comes to staying right side up in this world, a black woman needs at least three things. The first is a quiet spot of her own, a place away from the nonsense. The second is a stash of money, like the cash my mother kept hidden in the slit of her mattress. The last is several drops of cayenne pepper, always at the ready. Sprinkle that on your food before you eat it and it’ll kill any lurking bacteria. The powder does the trick as well, but I prefer the liquid because it hits the bloodstream quickly. Particularly when eating out, I won’t touch a morsel to my lips ‘til it’s speckled with with cayenne. That’s just one way I take care of my temple, aside from preparing my daily greens, certain other habits have carried me toward the century mark. First thing I do every morning is drink four glasses of water. People think this water business is a joke. But I’m here to tell you that it’s not. I’ve known two elderly people who died of dehydration, one of whom fell from his bed in the middle of the night and couldn’t stand up because he was so parched. Following my water, I drink 8 ounces of fresh celery blended in my Vita-mix. The juice cleanses the system and reduces inflammation. My biggest meal is my first one: oatmeal. I soak my oats overnight so that when I get up all I have to do is turn on the burner. Sometimes I enjoy them with warm almond milk, other times I add grated almonds and berries, put the mixture in my tumbler and shake it until it’s so smooth I can drink it. In any form, oats do the heart good. Throughout the day I eat sweet potatoes, which are filled with fiber, beets sprinkled with a little olive oil, and vegetables of every variety. I also still enjoy plenty of salad, though I stopped adding so many carrots – too much sugar. But I will do celery, cucumbers, seaweed grass and other greens. God’s fresh bounty doesn’t need a lot of dressing up, which is why I generally eat my salad plain. From time to time I do drizzle it with garlic oil. I love the taste. I also love lychee nuts. I put them in the freezer so that when I bite into them cold juice comes flooding out. As terrific as they are, I buy them only once in awhile. I recently bit into an especially sweet one, and then I stuck it right back in the freezer. “Not today, Suzie,” I said to myself, “full of glucose!” I try never to eat late, and certainly not after nine p.m. Our organs need a chance to rest. And before bed, of course, I have a final glass of water. I don’t mess around with my hydration.

Beans SIDEKICKS: All beans are included in this SuperFood category, though we’ll discuss the most popular and readily available beans such as pinto, navy, Great Northern, lima, garbanzo (chickpeas), lentils, green beans, sugar snap peas, and green peas TRY TO EAT: at least four ½-cup servings per week Beans contain: Low-fat protein Fiber B vitamins Iron Folate Potassium Magnesium Phytonutrients

The deeper I delved into the confused and confusing thicket of nutritional science, sorting through the long-running fats versus carbs wars, the fiber skirmishes and the raging dietary supplement debates, the simpler the picture gradually became. I learned that in fact science knows a lot less about nutrition than you would expect--that in fact nutrition science is, to put it charitably, a very young science.

The importance of eating enough prebiotic fiber is one of the reasons you hear the bad advice to eat plenty of grains, legumes, and beans. These foods do contain prebiotic fiber, which does great things for your metabolism. Unfortunately, as I highlighted in The Bulletproof Diet, they also contain plant defense compounds called lectins, which damage your gut lining and cause inflammation and autoimmune conditions.

nonalcoholic fatty liver disease has become the most common chronic liver disease in the world, increasing from 25 percent of the global population in 1990 to close to 40 percent by 2019. NAFLD is full-blown metabolic dysfunction in kids and adults, representing liver cells filling with fat, which worsens insulin resistance. Key contributors are processed foods, refined sugars, refined grains, sweet beverages, high-fructose corn syrup, fast food, low fiber and phytochemical intake, habitual eating close to bedtime, sedentary behavior, and oxidative stress. Liver transplants have gone up close to 50 percent in the past fifteen years, and while alcohol and hepatitis C used to be the leading causes, now NAFLD is taking the lead in women as the cause of liver failure and is a top cause for men. Fatty liver disease is now the most common cause of liver transplant in young adults in the United States. We are failing our children.

Aida swung by with cookbooks, dietary stipulations, menus. To nouvelle and classique French fare we added Neolithic recipes free of dairy, medieval Italian recipes heavy on squash and almonds, early agrarian recipes so crammed with husky, fibrous grains that they would, in Aida's words, Make you shit till you see god. Modern additions included a vegan diet beloved of the world's best cricket player, astronaut supplements for bone density, foods charcoal-infused and nitrate-free.

Image intensifiers, which ultimately became “night vision” Fiber optics Supertenacity fibers Lasers Molecular alignment metallic alloys Integrated circuits and microminiaturization of logic boards HARP (High Altitude Research Project) Project Horizon (moon base) Portable atomic generators (ion propulsion drive) Irradiated food “Third brain” guidance systems (EBE headbands) Particle beams (“Star Wars” antimissile energy weapons) Electromagnetic propulsion systems Depleted uranium projectiles

He watched her small hand hike up her skirt, saw her reach under to cup her sex. Once her fingers were covered in slick, she met his eyes, smearing her hand down his neck, directly over the spot where he stank of his beloved. Gathering more of her wetness, Claire soaked the patch of his shirt until she could only smell herself. It was not good enough. Unable to comprehend anything beyond black rage, Claire clawed the fabric and ripped Shepherd’s shirt to threads. Her nose went back to his exposed chest and she let out the most threatening growl an Omega could make. If he was hushing her, or reprimanding, touching, or in shock, Claire was absolutely oblivious. Every fiber of her being demanded she stake claim, that she scratch her marks all over his body, that she leave a sign all other females would see. She left him bloody. Breathing hard, she reared up until eye level with the man. “Now you will fuck me, hard, in every way that pleases me. And when it is done, you will get me food, because I’m fucking hungry!” He was on her with such force the breath was knocked from her body. Shepherd did exactly as his mate demanded, pounding into her with a fury that set her howling amidst their shredded clothing. In Shepherd’s experience, there had never been a coupling like it.

You were right. Food is communal. Mom once told me that it was no accident that Jesus's first miracle was at a wedding. It was a sign that he was the Master of the Feast---and all celebrations involve a feast. Some of the best, most thankful moments of our lives involve food----almost all, really." I tapped Emma, resting on Jane's lap. "You see it in Austen. She only mentions food as a means to bring characters together, reveal aspects of their nature and their moral fiber. Hemingway does the same, though he skews more towards the drinks. Nevertheless, it's never about the food----it's about what the food becomes, in the hands of the giver and the recipient.

Refined carbohydrates are the starches and sugars obtained from plants by mechanically stripping off their outer layers, which contain most of the plant’s vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber. This “food” (regular sugar, white flour, etc.) has very little nutritional value. Foods such as pastas made from refined flour, sugary cereals, white bread, candies and sugar-laden soft drinks should be avoided as much as possible. But do eat whole, complex carbohydrate-containing foods such as unprocessed fresh fruits and vegetables, and whole grain products like brown rice and oatmeal. These unprocessed carbohydrates, especially from fruits and vegetables, are exceptionally health-promoting.

they kept moving all night, stopping only occasionally to scoop some water from a stream or listen to see if anyone was following them or near them at all. As dawn came, Jacob was exhausted. But the two men did not stop moving. They were not running now. They were walking, but Avi set a brisk and steady pace. Jacob wanted to stop. He wanted to ask Avi if they could rest, even for a little while. But he had been told not to say a word, and Jacob knew their very lives depended on his obeying. At least the pain in his feet and in his belly from lack of food and the fatigue permeating every fiber of his being kept his mind off the fact that he would never see his parents or his sister again.

And just as agriculture has displaced species-dense communities with its monocrops, its diet has displaced the nutrient-dense foods that humans need, replacing them with mononutrients of sugar and starch. This displacement led immediately to a drop in human stature as agriculture spread - the evidence couldn’t be clearer. The reasons are just as clear. Meat contains protein, minerals, and fats, fats that we need to metabolize those proteins and minerals. In contrast, grains are basically carbohydrates: what protein they do contain is low quality - lacking essential amino acids - and comes wrapped in indigestible fiber. Grains are essentially sugar with enough opioids to make them addictive.

Bring on the veggies In 1980, the first Guidelines directed consumers to “Eat foods with adequate starch and fiber.” By 1990, that had become “Choose a diet with plenty of vegetables, fruits, and grain products.” Today, the new, direct directive is to make half of your plate vegetables and fruits. Maybe the whole plate: The Guidelines say right out, no mincing words here, those vegetarian-style diets are associated with a variety of health benefits including lower weight, a lower risk of heart disease, and — best of all — a longer life. Finally, two new charts, Appendix 8 and Appendix 9, detail (respectively) “Lacto-ova Adaptations of USDA Food Patterns” (meal planning for vegetarians who eat dairy products)

God said, 'Let there be light.' Here's a paraphrase: Let there be electromagnetic radiation with varying wavelengths traveling at 186,282 miles per second. Let there be radiowaves, microwaves, and X-rays. Let there be photosynthesis and fiber optics. Let there be LASIK surgery, satellite communication, and suntans. Oh, and let there be rainbows after rainstorms. 'Let there be light.' These are God's first recorded words. This is God's first recorded miracle. Light is the source of vision; without it we can't see a thing. Light is the key to technology; it's how we can talk to someone halfway around the world without so much as a second's delay because light can circle the globe seven and a half times a second. Light is the first link in the food chain; no photosynthesis equals no food. Light is the basis of health; the absence of light causes everything from vitamin D deficiency to depression. Light is the origin of energy; in Einstein's equation E = MC squared, energy (E) is defined as mass (M) times the speed of light (C) squared. The speed of light is the constant. And light is the measuring stick for space-time; a meter is defined as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. Light is the alpha and omega of everything, and that includes you.

Broadly speaking, components of processed foods and animal products, such as saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol, were found to be pro-inflammatory, while constituents of whole plant foods, such as fiber and phytonutrients, were strongly anti-inflammatory.938 No surprise, then, that the Standard American Diet rates as pro-inflammatory and has the elevated disease rates to show for it. Higher Dietary Inflammatory Index scores are linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease939 and lower kidney,940 lung,941 and liver function.942 Those eating diets rated as more inflammatory also experienced faster cellular aging.943,944 In the elderly, pro-inflammatory diets are associated with impaired memory945 and increased frailty.946 Inflammatory diets are also associated with worse mental health, including higher rates of depression, anxiety, and impaired well-being.947 Additionally, eating more pro-inflammatory foods has been tied to higher prostate cancer risk in men948,949,950 and higher risks of breast cancer,951,952 endometrial cancer,953 ovarian cancer,954 and miscarriages in women. Higher Dietary Inflammatory Index scores are also associated with more risk of esophageal,955 stomach,956 liver,957 pancreatic,958 colorectal,959 kidney,960 and bladder961 cancers, as well as non-Hodgkin lymphoma.962 Overall, eating a more inflammatory diet was associated with 75 percent increased odds of having cancer and 67 percent increased risk of dying from cancer.963 Not surprisingly, those eating more anti-inflammatory diets appear to live longer lives.964,965,966,967 But how does the Dietary Inflammatory Index impact body weight? Obesity and Inflammation:

Autoimmune Disease—the “Leak” in Your Gut Autoimmune diseases are a disaster and there are no good medicines available (steroids work, but the treatment is worse than the disease). They’ve been around for centuries, but there’s been a clear uptick in the last fifty years. Why? Two hypotheses have been proffered to explain it: the barrier hypothesis (our skin or lungs are letting in antigens) and the hygiene hypothesis (we don’t eat dirt and are too hygienic). But in fact, in the gut, they’re the same thing; because the gut is the dirtiest place in the world—one hundred trillion bacteria to have to fend off at all times—you don’t need an intestine, you need a fortress. We’ve known for a while that leaky gut is akin to chinks in the walls of that fortress. Antigens, like enemy soldiers, escape through those chinks into the bloodstream, where T cells and antibodies react against them. But in a case of mistaken identity, these immune cells then accidentally identify parts of your body as foreign invaders and generate an immune response to kill them off, a process termed molecular mimicry. Then there are two new twists. First, it appears that one autoimmune disease, called ankylosing spondylitis, produces antibodies to a gut bacterium called Klebsiella pneumoniae. Conversely, a different autoimmune disease called rheumatoid arthritis produces antibodies to a second gut bacterium called Proteus mirabilis. Now, this might not seem that earth-shattering, but recent work has shown that the refined carbohydrates in processed food feed those two bacteria in particular, and that carbohydrate restriction improves both of these diseases. Indeed, a low-sugar, high-fiber Mediterranean diet has been shown to be efficacious at prevention and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Furthermore, introduction of fiber to the diet appears to improve asthma (frequently an autoimmune disease), likely by improving gut function and reducing inflammation.

Well then, first would be the abalone and sea urchin- the bounty of the sea! Ah, I see! This foam on top is kombu seaweed broth that's been whipped into a mousse!" "Mm! I can taste the delicate umami flavors seeping into my tongue!" "The fish meat was aged for a day wrapped in kombu. The seaweed pulls just enough of the moisture out of the meat, allowing it to keep longer, a perfect technique for a bento that needs to last. Hm! Next looks to be bonito. ...!" What rich, powerful umami!" Aha! This is the result of several umami components melding together. The glutamic acid in the kombu from the previous piece is mixing together in my mouth with the inosinic acid in the bonito! "And, like, I cold aged this bonito across two days. Aging fish and meats boosts their umami components, y'know. In other words, the true effect of this bento comes together in your mouth... as you eat it in order from one end to the other." "Next is a row... that looks to be made entirely from vegetables. But none of them use a single scrap of seaweed. The wrappers around each one are different vegetables sliced paper-thin!" "Right! This bento totally doesn't go for any heavy foods." "Next comes the sushi row that practically cries out that it's a main dish... raw cold-aged beef sushi!" Th-there it is again! The powerful punch of umami flavor as two components mix together in my mouth! "Hm? Wait a minute. I understand the inosinic acid comes from the beef... but where is the glutamic acid?" "From the tomatoes." "Tomatoes? But I don't see any..." "They're in there. See, I first put them in a centrifuge. That broke them down into their component parts- the coloring, the fiber, and the jus. I then filtered the jus to purify it even further. Then I put just a few drops on each piece of veggie sushi." "WHAT THE HECK?!" "She took an ingredient and broke it down so far it wasn't even recognizable anymore? Can she even do that?" Appliances like the centrifuge and cryogenic grinder are tools that were first developed to be used in medicine, not cooking. Even among pro chefs, only a handful are skilled enough to make regular use of such complex machines! Who would have thought a high school student was capable of mastering them to this degree! "And last but not least we have this one. It's sea bream with some sort of pink jelly... ... resting on top of a Chinese spoon." That pink jelly was a pearl of condensed soup stock! Once it popped inside my mouth... ... it mixed together with the sea bream sushi until it tasted like- "Sea bream chazuke!

And, even more important for our purposes, these facts are sturdy enough that we can build a sensible diet upon them. Here they are: FACT 1. Populations that eat a so-called Western diet—generally defined as a diet consisting of lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains, lots of everything except vegetables, fruits, and whole grains—invariably suffer from high rates of the so-called Western diseases: obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Virtually all of the obesity and type 2 diabetes, 80 percent of the cardiovascular disease, and more than a third of all cancers can be linked to this diet. Four of the top ten killers in America are chronic diseases linked to this diet. The arguments in nutritional science are not about this well-established link; rather, they are all about identifying the culprit nutrient in the Western diet that might be responsible for chronic diseases. Is it the saturated fat or the refined carbohydrates or the lack of fiber or the transfats or omega-6 fatty acids—or what? The point is that, as eaters (if not as scientists), we know all we need to know to act: This diet, for whatever reason, is the problem. FACT 2. Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don’t suffer from these chronic diseases. These diets run the gamut from ones very high in fat (the Inuit in Greenland subsist largely on seal blubber) to ones high in carbohydrate (Central American Indians subsist largely on maize and beans) to ones very high in protein (Masai tribesmen in Africa subsist chiefly on cattle blood, meat, and milk), to cite three rather extreme examples. But much the same holds true for more mixed traditional diets. What this suggests is that there is no single ideal human diet but that the human omnivore is exquisitely adapted to a wide range of different foods and a variety of different diets. Except, that is, for one: the relatively new (in evolutionary terms) Western diet that most of us now are eating. What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick! (While it is true that we generally live longer than people used to, or than people in some traditional cultures do, most of our added years owe to gains in infant mortality and child health, not diet.) There is actually a third, very hopeful fact that flows from these two: People who get off the Western diet see dramatic improvements in their health. We have good research to suggest that the effects of the Western diet can be rolled back, and relatively quickly.

Thirty-Nine Ways to Lower Your Cortisol 1 Meditate. 2 Do yoga. 3 Stretch. 4 Practice tai chi. 5 Take a Pilates class. 6 Go for a labyrinth walk. 7 Get a massage. 8 Garden (lightly). 9 Dance to soothing, positive music. 10 Take up a hobby that is quiet and rewarding. 11 Color for pleasure. 12 Spend five minutes focusing on your breathing. 13 Follow a consistent sleep schedule. 14 Listen to relaxing music. 15 Spend time laughing and having fun with someone. (No food or drink involved.) 16 Interact with a pet. (It also lowers their cortisol level.) 17 Learn to recognize stressful thinking and begin to: Train yourself to be aware of your thoughts, breathing, heart rate, and other signs of tension to recognize stress when it begins. Focus on being aware of your mental and physical states, so that you can become an objective observer of your stressful thoughts instead of a victim of them. Recognize stressful thoughts so that you can formulate a conscious and deliberate reaction to them. A study of forty-three women in a mindfulness-based program showed that the ability to describe and articulate stress was linked to a lower cortisol response.28 18 Develop faith and participate in prayer. 19 Perform acts of kindness. 20 Forgive someone. Even (or especially?) yourself. 21 Practice mindfulness, especially when you eat. 22 Drink black and green tea. 23 Eat probiotic and prebiotic foods. Probiotics are friendly, symbiotic bacteria in foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, and kimchi. Prebiotics, such as soluble fiber, provide food for these bacteria. (Be sure they are sugar-free!) 24 Take fish or krill oil. 25 Make a gratitude list. 26 Take magnesium. 27 Try ashwagandha, an Asian herbal supplement used in traditional medicine to treat anxiety and help people adapt to stress. 28 Get bright sunlight or exposure to a lightbox within an hour of waking up (great for fighting seasonal affective disorder as well). 29 Avoid blue light at night by wearing orange or amber glasses if using electronics after dark. (Some sunglasses work.) Use lamps with orange bulbs (such as salt lamps) in each room, instead of turning on bright overhead lights, after dark. 30 Maintain healthy relationships. 31 Let go of guilt. 32 Drink water! Stay hydrated! Dehydration increases cortisol. 33 Try emotional freedom technique, a tapping strategy meant to reduce stress and activate the parasympathetic nervous system (our rest-and-digest system). 34 Have an acupuncture treatment. 35 Go forest bathing (shinrin-yoku): visit a forest and breathe its air. 36 Listen to binaural beats. 37 Use a grounding mat, or go out into the garden barefoot. 38 Sit in a rocking chair; the soothing motion is similar to the movement in utero. 39 To make your cortisol fluctuate (which is what you want it to do), end your shower or bath with a minute (or three) under cold water.

This rich pork flavor, which lands on the tongue with a thump... It's Chinese Dongpo Pork! He seasoned pork belly with a blend of spices and let it marinate thoroughly... ... before finely dicing it and mixing it into the fried rice!" "What? Dongpo Pork prepared this fast?! No way! He didn't have nearly enough time to simmer the pork belly!" "Heh heh. Actually, there's a little trick to that. I simmered it in sparkling water instead of tap water. The carbon dioxide that gives sparkling water its carbonation helps break down the fibers in meat. Using this, you can tenderize a piece of meat in less than half the normal time!" "That isn't the only protein in this dish. I can taste the seafood from an Acqua Pazza too!" "And these green beans... it's the Indian dish Poriyal! Diced green beans and shredded coconut fried in oil with chilies and mustard seeds... it has a wonderfully spicy kick!" "He also used the distinctly French Mirepoix to gently accentuate the sweetness of the vegetables. So many different delicious flavors... ... all clashing and sparking in my mouth! But the biggest key to this dish, and the core of its amazing deliciousness... ... is the rice!" "Hmph. Well, of course it is. The dish is fried rice. If the rice isn't the centerpiece, it isn't a..." "I see. His dish is fried rice while simultaneously being something other than fried rice. A rice lightly fried in butter before being steamed in some variety of soup stock... In other words, it's actually closer to that famous staple from Turkish cuisine- a Pilaf! In fact, it's believed the word "pilaf" actually comes from the Turkish word pilav. To think he built the foundation of his dish on pilaf of all things!" "Heh heh heh! Yep, that's right! Man, I've learned so much since I started going to Totsuki." "Mm, I see! When you finished the dish, you didn't fry it in oil! That's why it still tastes so light, despite the large volume and variety of additional ingredients. I could easily tuck away this entire plate! Still... I'm surprised at how distinct each grain of rice is. If it was in fact steamed in stock, you'd think it'd be mushier." "Ooh, you've got a discerning tongue, sir! See, when I steamed the rice... ... I did it in a Donabe ceramic pot instead of a rice cooker!" Ah! No wonder! A Donabe warms slowly, but once it's hot, it can hold high temperatures for a long time! It heats the rice evenly, holding a steady temperature throughout the steaming process to steam off all excess water. To think he'd apply a technique for sticky rice to a pilaf instead! With Turkish pilaf as his cornerstone... ... he added super-savory Dongpo pork, a Chinese dish... ... whitefish and clams from an Italian Acqua Pazza... ... spicy Indian green bean and red chili Poriyal... ... and for the French component, Mirepoix and Oeuf Mayonnaise as a topping! *Ouef is the French word for "egg."* By combining those five dishes into one, he has created an extremely unique take on fried rice! " "Hold it! Wait one dang minute! After listening to your entire spiel... ... it sounds to me like all he did was mix a bunch of dishes together and call it a day! There's no way that mishmash of a dish could meet the lofty standards of the BLUE! It can't nearly be gourmet enough!" "Oh, but it is. For one, he steamed the pilaf in the broth from the Acqua Pazza... ... creating a solid foundation that ties together the savory elements of all the disparate ingredients! The spiciness of the Poriyal could have destabilized the entire flavor structure... ... but by balancing it out with the mellow body of butter and soy sauce, he turned the Poriyal's sharp bite into a pleasing tingle!

Several of her students were engrossed in their work, but when she asked one of them, a PhD student named David Merrill, to give me a quick demo of his project, he readily agreed. Merrill walked us over to a three-foot-wide mockup of a supermarket shelf stocked with cartons of butter, Egg Beaters, and cereal, and he happily slipped on a Bluetooth-enabled ring he had been tinkering with when we interrupted him. He pointed directly at a box of cereal, and a light on the shelf directly below it glowed red. This meant, he told us, that the food didn’t fit the nutritional profile that he had programmed into the device. Perhaps it contained nuts or not enough fiber. He told me that there were a lot of “really cool technologies” making this happen—an infrared transmitter/receiver mounted on the ring, a transponder on the shelf with which it communicated, and a Bluetooth connection to a smart phone that could access the wearer’s profile in real time, to name a few. It was easy to see how this “augmented reality interface,” as Merrill called it, could change the experience of in-store shopping in truly a profound way. But what really impressed me during this visit was the close working relationship he clearly enjoyed with Maes. He called her “Pattie,” and my impression was that they engaged in give-and-take like true collaborators and colleagues.

LIMIT FRUIT. Adhere to our carb management cutoff and limit yourself to no more than 15 g net carbohydrates per meal. Choose fruit with the least carbohydrate content and greatest nutritional value. From best to worst, choose from: berries of all varieties, cherries, citrus, apples, nectarines, peaches, and melons. One-half cup of blueberries, for example, contains 15 g total carbohydrates and 3 g fiber = 12 g net carbohydrates. This meets the 15 g or less net carbs limit (but don’t forget to factor in other foods you consume along with the blueberries, as it all adds up).

Inulin or fructooligosaccharide (FOS) powders, found in health food stores, are an especially convenient way to obtain such fibers.

So let’s review all the ways the Dorito Effect appears to be turning us into nutritional idiots: • Dilution. As real food becomes bland and loses its capacity to please us, we are less inclined to eat it and very often enhance it in ways that further blunt its nutrition. • Nutritional decapitation. When we take flavors from nature, we capture the experience of food but leave the nutrition—the fiber, the vitamins, the minerals, the antioxidants, the plant secondary compounds—behind. In nature, flavor compounds always appear in a nutritional context. • False variety. We naturally crave variety in food—it’s one of nature’s ways of making sure we get a diverse diet. Fake flavors make foods that are nutritionally very similar seem more different than they actually are. • Cognitive deception. Fake flavors fool the conscious mind. A mother enticed by a Dannon Strawberry Blitz Smoothie as an after-school snack for her eight-year-old child will taste it and reasonably believe the product contains strawberries, even though it contains none. • Emotional deception. Flavor technology manipulates the part of the mind that experiences feelings. Fake flavors take a previously established liking for a real food and apply it, like a sticker, to something else—usually large doses of calories—creating a heightened and nutritionally undeserved level of pleasure. • Flavor-nutrient confusion. By hijacking flavor-nutrient relationships, fake flavors, by their very nature, set a false expectation. A major aspect of obesity is an outsized desire for food, one that very often cannot be extinguished by food itself. By imposing flavors on foods without the corresponding nutrients, are we creating foods that are incapable of satiating the people who eat them? So many of the foods we overconsume—refined carbs, high-fructose corn syrup, sugar, added fat—would not be palatable without synthetic flavor. We gorge on them because they taste like something they are not.

Americans are consuming a diet that is at least half sugars in one form or another—calories providing virtually nothing but energy. The energy density of these refined carbohydrates contributes to obesity in two ways. First, we consume many more calories per unit of food; the fiber that’s been removed from these foods is precisely what would have made us feel full and stop eating. Also, the flash flood of glucose causes insulin levels to spike and then, once the cells have taken all that glucose out of circulation, drop precipitously, making us think we need to eat again. While the widespread acceleration of the Western diet has given us the instant gratification of sugar, in many people—especially those newly exposed to it—the speediness of this food overwhelms the ability of insulin to process it, leading to type 2 diabetes and all the other chronic diseases associated with metabolic syndrome.

Whole-fruit consumption is also self-limiting, because the fiber makes it more filling. For example, it would be quite difficult to eat five apples, but it’s a breeze to drink the sugar contained in five apples when juiced.

I brought nothing,” Shevek said. Though the suit had been bleached almost to white and bad shrunk a bit, it still fit, and the harsh familiar touch of holum-fiber cloth was pleasant. He felt like himself again. He sat down on the bed facing the doctor and said, “You see, I know you don't take things, as we do. In your world, in Urras, one must buy things. I come to your world, I have no money, I cannot buy. therefore I should bring. But how much can I bring? Clothing, yes, I might bring two suits. But food? How can I bring food enough? I cannot bring, I cannot buy. If I am to be kept alive, you must give it to me. I am an Anarresti, I make the Urrasti behave like Anarresti: to give. not to sell If you like. Of course, it is not necessary to keep me alive! I am the Beggarman, you see.

Overall, it is fair to say that any plant-based food has many more similarities in terms of nutrient compositions to other plant-based foods than it does to animal-based foods. The same is true the other way around; all animal-based foods are more like other animal-based foods than they are to plant-based foods. As you can see, plant foods have dramatically more antioxidants, fiber and minerals than animal foods. In fact, animal foods are almost completely devoid of several of these nutrients. Animal foods, on the other hand, have much more cholesterol and fat. They also have slightly more protein than plant foods, along with more B]2 and vitamin D, although the vitamin D is largely due to artificial fortification in milk. But if one looks a little more closely, the fat and the protein of nuts and seeds are different: they are more healthful than the fat and protein of animal foods. They also are accompanied by some interesting antioxidant substances

The advantages of eating plants are that one can reliably predict where to find them, they are often relatively abundant, and they don’t run away. A big disadvantage of plant foods, especially non-domesticated plants, is that they are high in undigestible fiber and have a comparatively low nutrient density. Back-of-the-envelope

The Coast peoples were hunters and gatherers. The land and sea around them was so rich in food that they did not need to cultivate crops. Their only domesticated animals were dogs, used mainly for deer hunting or for fibers: one woolly breed of dogs was kept in pens and sheared twice a year. Anthropologists once considered cultures so heavily dependent upon naturally occurring products for their sustenance to be primitive in comparison to those based on agriculture, yet therein lay an anomaly. The environment yielded such a surplus of natural resources that Coast Indians had no trouble feeding themselves and finding enough leisure time to improve and elaborate their material culture and to conduct a lively trade. At the same time they developed a highly stratified and class-conscious social structure atypical of other North American maritime hunting and gathering groups.

I think we might as well believe in Christ as believe in anything,” Beatrice said. “I mean, Christ makes as much sense and anything else I can think of.” “Like Success,” Rodney said. “Or Self,” I said. “Or Family,” Beatrice said. “Or Woman. Love. Disease. Heartbreak. Death. God. Goals. Reification. Fried food. High fiber optics. Disinvestment. Cancer. AIDS. Genes, skin, tissue, soul.

CHART 11.2: NUTRIENT COMPOSITION OF PLANT AND ANIMAL-BASED FOODS (PER 500 CALORIES OF ENERGY) Nutrient Plant-Based Foods* Animal-Based Foods** Cholesterol (mg) — 137 Fat (g) 4 36 Protein (g) 33 34 Beta-carotene (mcg) 29,919 17 Dietary Fiber (g) 31 — Vitamin C (mg) 293 4 Folate (mcg) 1168 19 Vitamin E (mg_ATE) 11 0.5 Iron (mg) 20 2 Magnesium (mg) 548 51 Calcium (mg) 545 252 * Equal parts of tomatoes, spinach, lima beans, peas, potatoes ** Equal parts of beef, pork, chicken, whole milk   As you can see, plant foods have dramatically more antioxidants,

They are both centered on plant-derived foods, such as grains and vegetables. By eating so much fiber and so little animal fat, their total cholesterol levels averaged under 150 mg/dL,6,7 similar to people who eat contemporary plant-based diets.8

Some of the best sources of insoluble fiber are berries, beans, lentils, okra, spinach, cocoa, sweet potatoes, whole grains (which we’ll talk about momentarily), apples, walnuts, and almonds.

95 percent of us are not even getting the minimum recommended amount of fiber in our diets...We are the mot fiber-deprived society of the modern era, and there are no signs of that letting up.

Oil Is Not a Whole, Natural Food and Does Not Grow on Trees Although vegetable oils (such as olive, sesame, soybean, and canola oils) are relatively low in saturated fat and higher in unsaturated fats, you should use these processed foods minimally or not at all. Oils lack the beneficial factors that whole nuts and seeds contain. Nuts and seeds contain fiber, minerals, antioxidants, and other phytochemicals in addition to healthy fats that contribute to cardiovascular health.60 Most of these nutrients are missing in refined oils.

Along the same lines, eating beet sugar does not have the same biological effects as eating a beet. One is dangerous because the nutrients and fibers have been removed, and the other supports health. Like the beet sugar, oil is a processed food; the nutrients and fiber have been removed.

Creamy Blueberry Dressing Serves: 4 2 cups fresh or frozen (thawed) blueberries ½ cup pomegranate juice ¼ cup raw cashew butter or ½ cup raw cashews 3 tablespoons Wild Blueberry Vinegar* or other fruit-flavored vinegar Blend all ingredients in a food processor or high-powered blender until smooth and creamy. PER SERVING: CALORIES 106; PROTEIN 2g; CARBOHYDRATE 16g; TOTAL FAT 4.3g; SATURATED FAT 0.7g; SODIUM 5mg; FIBER 2.4g; BETA-CAROTENE 22mcg; VITAMIN C 2mg; CALCIUM 14mg; IRON 0.8mg; FOLATE 15mcg; MAGNESIUM 31mg; ZINC 0.6mg; SELENIUM 1.9mcg

Home-Style Tomato Sauce Serves: 4 3 cups diced tomatoes 8 unsulfured, unsalted dried tomatoes, finely diced 1 small yellow onion, diced 8 cloves garlic, minced 1 tablespoon MatoZest* or other no-salt Italian seasoning blend, adjusted to taste Freshly ground black pepper, to taste 2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped In a saucepan, cook tomatoes and dried tomatoes over medium-low heat until soft, about 10 minutes. Place in a food processor or blender and purée. Heat 2 to 3 tablespoons water in a medium skillet and sauté the onion and garlic for 2 minutes or until tender. Add the puréed tomato mixture, MatoZest, and pepper. Bring to a gentle boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 1 hour. Add basil and adjust seasonings to taste, adding a little more MatoZest if you wish. PER SERVING: CALORIES 53; PROTEIN 3g; CARBOHYDRATE 11g; TOTAL FAT 0.5g; SATURATED FAT 0.1g; SODIUM 15mg; FIBER 2.6g; BETA-CAROTENE 666mcg; VITAMIN C 24mg; CALCIUM 41mg; IRON 1mg; FOLATE 34mcg; MAGNESIUM 27mg; ZINC 0.4mg; SELENIUM 1.1mcg

Italian Dressing with Roasted Garlic Serves: 4 4 to 8 cloves garlic, roasted (see Note) 1 cup unsweetened soy, hemp, or almond milk ½ cup raw cashew butter 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar or more to taste 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard 2 tablespoons fresh parsley 1 teaspoon dried basil ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes Pinch of dried oregano ⅛ teaspoon black pepper or to taste Blend ingredients together in a high-powered blender or food processor. Adjust seasonings if necessary. Note: Garlic can be roasted with the entire bulb intact and skin on, or it can be roasted using peeled and separated cloves. Roast at 300˚F for about 25 minutes or until soft. PER SERVING: CALORIES 239; PROTEIN 10g; CARBOHYDRATE 14g; TOTAL FAT 17.4g; SATURATED FAT 3.3g; SODIUM 119mg; FIBER 2.3g; BETA-CAROTENE 131mcg; VITAMIN C 7mg; CALCIUM 112mg; IRON 2.4mg; FOLATE 27mcg; MAGNESIUM 105mg; ZINC 2.8mg; SELENIUM 6.9mcg

Russian Fig Dressing Serves: 4 ⅔ cup no-salt-added or low-sodium pasta sauce ⅔ cup raw almonds or 6 tablespoons raw almond butter ¼ cup raw sunflower seeds 6 tablespoons Black Fig Vinegar* or balsamic vinegar 2 tablespoons raisins or dried currants Blend ingredients in a food processor or high-powered blender until smooth. PER SERVING: CALORIES 243; PROTEIN 8g; CARBOHYDRATE 18g; TOTAL FAT 16.9g; SATURATED FAT 1.4g; CHOLESTEROL 0.9mg; SODIUM 20mg; FIBER 4.6g; BETA-CAROTENE 170mcg; VITAMIN C 1mg; CALCIUM 90mg; IRON 1.9mg; FOLATE 38mcg; MAGNESIUM 104mg; ZINC 1.3mg; SELENIUM 5.7mcg

French Minted Pea Soup Serves: 3 10 ounces frozen green peas 1 small onion, chopped 1 clove garlic, chopped 3 tablespoons VegiZest*, or other no-salt seasoning, adjusted to taste 3 cups water 1 bunch fresh mint leaves (save a few leaves for garnish) 3 regular dates, pitted ½ cup raw cashews ½ tablespoon Spike no-salt seasoning, or other no-salt seasoning, to taste 4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice 4 cups shredded romaine lettuce or chopped baby spinach 2 tablespoons fresh snipped chives Simmer peas, onions, garlic, and seasonings in water for about 7 minutes. Pour pea mixture into a high-powered blender or food processor. Add remaining ingredients except for the lettuce and chives. Blend until smooth and creamy. Add lettuce or spinach and let it wilt in hot liquid. Pour into bowls and garnish with chives and mint leaves. PER SERVING: CALORIES 313; PROTEIN 14g; CARBOHYDRATE 45g; TOTAL FAT 11.4g; SATURATED FAT 1.9g; SODIUM 153mg; FIBER 11.6g; BETA-CAROTENE 4496mcg; VITAMIN C 39mg; CALCIUM 192mg; IRON 9mg; FOLATE 210mcg; MAGNESIUM 156mg; ZINC 3mg; SELENIUM 8.1mcg

Golden Austrian Cauliflower Cream Soup Serves: 4 1 head cauliflower, cut into pieces 3 carrots, coarsely chopped 1 cup coarsely chopped celery 2 leeks, coarsely chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced 2 tablespoons VegiZest* or other no-salt seasoning blend, adjusted to taste 2 cups carrot juice 4 cups water ½ teaspoon nutmeg 1 cup raw cashews 5 cups chopped kale leaves or baby spinach Place all ingredients except cashews and kale in a pot. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until the vegetables are just tender. In a food processor or high-powered blender, blend half of the soup liquid and vegetables with the cashews until smooth and creamy and return to the pot. Finely chop the kale or spinach and add to the pot; simmer for 10 more minutes. PER SERVING: CALORIES 369; PROTEIN 15g; CARBOHYDRATE 48g; TOTAL FAT 16.7g; SATURATED FAT 1.6g; SODIUM 238mg; FIBER 18.1g; BETA-CAROTENE 17,409mcg; VITAMIN C 104mg; CALCIUM 359mg; IRON 4.5mg; FOLATE 233mcg; MAGNESIUM 149mg; ZINC 2.4mg; SELENIUM 3.5mcg

Split Pea and Lentil Soup Serves: 6 1½ cups split peas, rinsed ½ cup lentils, rinsed ¼ cup pine nuts, lightly toasted, plus additional if desired for garnish 2 large onions, chopped 3 cloves garlic, chopped 4 stalks celery, chopped 3 cups coarsely chopped mushrooms 5 carrots, diced 1 cup carrot juice 3 cups low-sodium or no-salt-added vegetable broth 3 tablespoons fresh, chopped dill 2 tablespoons salt-free Italian seasoning blend ½ teaspoon dried marjoram ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper Bring 3 cups of water to a boil, add split peas and lentils and return to a boil. Reduce heat, partially cover the pot, and simmer for 40 minutes or until split peas and lentils are tender. Place cooked lentils and split peas and toasted pine nuts in a high-powered blender or food processor and blend until smooth. While split peas and lentils are cooking, add remaining ingredients to a large soup pot and cook over low heat until vegetables are tender, about 15 minutes. Add blended split pea mixture to soup pot and mix well. If desired, garnish with additional toasted pine nuts. PER SERVING: CALORIES 342; PROTEIN 20g; CARBOHYDRATE 57g; TOTAL FAT 5g; SATURATED FAT 0.5g; SODIUM 163mg; FIBER 21.4g; BETA-CAROTENE 8001mcg; VITAMIN C 14mg; CALCIUM 112mg; IRON 4.9mg; FOLATE 252mcg; MAGNESIUM 115mg; ZINC 3.1mg; SELENIUM 6.3mcg

Foods rich in prebiotic fiber include tubers, rutabagas, parsnips, radishes, roots, the chicory family (such as radicchio and endive), okra, artichokes, pressure-cooked beans and legumes, leeks, asparagus, onions, basil seeds, flaxseeds, and more. In addition, two of my preferred sweeteners are Just

Combinations of different foods, macronutrients, and fiber (which costs calories to process, too) will influence how much energy is required to digest the meal and what your net caloric profit actually is.

The Antioxidant Canon, for Westerners In 2010 the UK’s Daily Mirror published a list of foods recommended by experts to combat aging. Among these foods readily available in the West are: Vegetables such as broccoli and chard, for their high concentration of water, minerals, and fiber Oily fish such as salmon, mackerel, tuna, and sardines, for all the antioxidants in their fat Fruits such as citrus, strawberries, and apricots; they are an excellent source of vitamins and help eliminate toxins from the body Berries such as blueberries and goji berries; they are rich in phytochemical antioxidants Dried fruits, which contain vitamins and antioxidants, and give you energy Grains such as oats and wheat, which give you energy and contain minerals Olive oil, for its antioxidant effects that show in your skin Red wine, in moderation, for its antioxidant and vasodilatory properties Foods that should be eliminated are refined sugar and grains, processed baked goods, and prepared foods, along with cow’s milk and all its derivatives. Following this diet will help you feel younger and slow the process of premature aging.

What we eat and how much also affects our hormone levels. Our growth-hormone levels are naturally reduced by sugars and fats. That means eating a lot of cheesecake or other fatty desserts not only puts more fat into our bodies, but also diminishes our ability to burn it. It is a double penalty in which fat begets fat. Avoiding sugary foods also helps prevent the energy drop and hunger that result from insulin clearing the blood of nutrients. Eating about ten grams of protein after mild exercise, or twenty grams after more strenuous workouts, helps control hunger, as will adding plenty of fiber to one’s diet. Not

Natural foods have a balance of nutrients and fiber that, over millennia, we have evolved to consume. The problem is not with each specific component of the food, but rather the overall balance. For example, suppose we bake a cake with a balance of butter, eggs, flour and sugar. Now we decide to remove completely the flour and double the eggs instead. The cake tastes horrible. Eggs are not necessarily bad. Flour is not necessarily good, but the balance is off. The same holds true for carbohydrates. The entire package of unrefined carbohydrates, with fiber, fat, protein and carbohydrate is not necessarily bad. But removing everything except the carbohydrate destroys the delicate balance and makes it harmful to human health.

STEP 5: INCREASE YOUR CONSUMPTION OF PROTECTIVE FACTORS FIBER CAN REDUCE the insulin-stimulating effects of carbohydrates, making it one of the main protective factors against obesity, but the average North American diet falls far short of recommended daily intakes. (For more on fiber as a protective factor, see chapter 16.) Numerous studies and observations have confirmed the weight-lowering effects of dietary fiber. Natural whole foods contain plenty of fiber, which is often removed during processing. Fruits, berries, vegetables, whole grains, flax seeds, chia seeds, beans, popcorn, nuts, oatmeal and pumpkin seeds provide ample fiber.

Prebiotics are essentially food for helpful bacteria, certain types of fiber that we cannot digest but the good bacteria in our guts can. For probiotics to be effective, it is helpful for them to have prebiotic foods available in the gut to digest. Probiotics break down prebiotics to form short-chain fatty acids that help reduce gut inflammation, block the growth of cancerous cells, and help the growth of healthy cells.

What you eat directly influences your gut bacterial health. When you eat plant-based foods, the dietary fiber feeds your microbiome. When they are content and well fed,

Protein, fiber, carbohydrates. And caffeine. All the essential food groups, except nicotine,

French toast, maple syrup, coffee. Protein, fiber, carbohydrates. And caffeine. All the essential food groups, except nicotine,

Eat fermented foods regularly to introduce probiotics into your diet, such as yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, and naturally-fermented “pickled” vegetables. Ensure fermented vegetables are raw or unpasteurized (and from a reputable source); cooked or pasteurized products no longer contain live cultures. ●      Eat foods rich in prebiotic fiber, which serves as food for the probiotics in your gut, such as vegetables (especially locally-grown cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, kale, and Brussels sprouts), fruit (especially berries and slightly under-ripe bananas), nuts, seeds (especially chia seeds), and legumes.[240] ●      Include bone broth and slow-cooked meat in your diet regularly. The gelatin these foods contain helps maintain a healthy gut lining and thus improves your resilience to foodborne pathogens.

Most of the calories that men in these societies provision come from hunting or fishing. So in many hunter-gatherer groups it's not unusual for men to contribute up to 90 percent or more of the protein eaten by their families and band. These valuable nutrients and fat, however, come from vertebrate meat. And hunting requires many years of investment to master; even then, return rates are often low and quite variable. among contemporary foraging groups, vertebrate meat can range from anywhere between 30 percent and 80 percent of the diet. So women's work is extremely important since women extract more constant and predictable food resources, including roots, nuts, seeds, invertebrate meat, and plant fibers that require a large amount of effort to process. Therefore, both sexes depend very much on one another to divide their labor between the staples needed to survive and the high-value nutrients required to thrive.

Women benefit from including in their diet non-GMO traditional soy foods such as miso, natto, tempeh, and tofu; flaxseeds; cruciferous vegetables; and lots of fiber.

In essence, my smoothie concoctions not only allow me to eat an incredible amount of low-fat, high-fiber, nutrient-dense foods in one sitting (unlike juicing, which discards the majority of the produce, and thus the fiber), it does so by essentially “pre-digesting” the foods for me, sufficiently breaking them down before ingesting. That, in turn, promotes a high degree of easy absorption, rendering the nutrients readily available for my body to use.

Neural mechanisms (mind-muscle connections) are actually more important for women’s adaptations to strength training than they are for men’s. So by doing power moves and low-rep, high-weight strength training, you enhance the number of fibers recruited for a contraction but don’t really grow the size of your muscles very much. The short of it is that you end up with a stronger, more powerful contraction with less muscle bulk.

mean high-intensity power training—heavy lifting for pure strength. This kind of training stimulates your neuromuscular system, activating the maximum amount of muscle fibers. It also keeps those high-energy, powerful type II muscle fibers engaged, which is essential because those are needed for speed, and they’re the first to go.

The study found that, calorie for calorie, those eating vegetarian diets were getting higher intakes of nearly every nutrient: more fiber, more vitamin A, more vitamin C, more vitamin E, more of the B vitamins thiamin, riboflavin, and folate, as well as more calcium, magnesium, iron, and potassium. Furthermore, many of the nutrients that are so rich in plant-based diets are among the very ones that most Americans normally don’t get enough of—namely, vitamins A, C, E, not to mention fiber, calcium, magnesium, and potassium. At the same time, people who avoided meat also ingested fewer harmful substances, such as sodium, saturated fat, and cholesterol.74

Not even 3 percent of Americans meet the recommended minimum daily intake of fiber, meaning Americans are not eating enough whole plant foods, the only place fiber is found in abundance.

As I’ve discussed, prebiotics are the food components that feed and nourish the good bacteria in the gut, like fiber and resistant starch.

On the other hand, intact fiber—found in Real Food—has many benefits, and not just short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). In the processed food industry, the germ of the grain (the nucleic acids, flavonoids, polyphenols) is removed along with the fiber because they can go rancid (see Chapter 19). Protecting the liver means maintaining the fiber and keeping the germ intact as well. Two simple precepts—protect the liver, feed the gut. Real Food (low-sugar, high-fiber) does both. Processed food (high-sugar, low-fiber) does neither. Processed food is the primary suspect in our current health and healthcare debacle, because it doesn’t improve our eight subcellular pathologies, our three nutrient-sensing enzymes, and our two physiologic precepts.

First, plant protein doesn’t have the same blend and quality of amino acids that animal-based protein does. Individual whole food plant sources don’t have all nine es- sential amino acids: furthermore, they add many non-structural amino acids which can cause inflammation in some humans. What they do have is not in as high a concentration as animal- based sources. Plant-based sources have more carbohydrates (starch and fiber) than protein so you must eat a lot more of them to get the same amount of protein as you would from an animal source.

Months later, I’d learn that iskiate is otherwise known as chia fresca—“chilly chia.” It’s brewed up by dissolving chia seeds in water with a little sugar and a squirt of lime. In terms of nutritional content, a tablespoon of chia is like a smoothie made from salmon, spinach, and human growth hormone. As tiny as those seeds are, they’re superpacked with omega-3S, omega-6S, protein, calcium, iron, zinc, fiber, and antioxidants. If you had to pick just one desert-island food, you couldn’t do much better than chia, at least if you were interested in building muscle, lowering cholesterol, and reducing your risk of heart disease; after a few months on the chia diet, you could probably swim home.

In general, high-carbohydrate, high-fiber, low-fat foods make insulin work more efficiently and reduce the amount of insulin needed by the body and produced by the pancreas. On

One reason refined foods elevate insulin is the absence of fiber. As you saw earlier, fiber improves insulin efficiency, meaning that less is necessary to do the job.

Do you see the difference between these recommendations and those of more traditional authorities who recommend eating less food to lose weight? With my program you are encouraged to eat more food. Only by eating more of the right food can you successfully be healthy and well nourished and feel satisfied. On this plan you consume more than ten times the phytochemicals and ten times the fiber that most Americans consume. Keep in mind that it is the undiscovered nutrients in whole natural foods that offer the greatest protection against cancer.

In a remarkable study published recently, hundreds of children were followed for a period of twenty-four years, from junior high school to adulthood. Researchers found that low fiber intake early on was associated with stiffening of the arteries leading up to the brain—a key risk factor for stroke.