Showing posts with label plants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plants. Show all posts

Friday, October 26, 2012

Eating Green to Prevent Cancer

Why do people who eat more plants get less cancer? The largest prospective study of diet and cancer in history, for example, found that vegetarians had lower levels of all cancers combined. This could be due to what they eat less of:

There are also components of plant foods they are getting more of that can help eliminate excess estrogen; extinguish free radicals; and boost our antioxidant, detoxification, and DNA repair enzymes. What we do eat may be as important as what we don’t eat.

The healthiest food is dark green leafy vegetables, which we should ideally eat every day. Greens can improve our eyesight, immune function, athletic performance, and even our physical appearance. The green pigment itself—chlorophyll—may even intercept carcinogens. See my NutritionFacts.org video pick above.

For more on protective compounds in plants, check out my video Phytochemicals: The Nutrition Facts Missing From the Label. Green pigments are just one sliver of the rainbow though. There are benefits to the yellow onesorange onesred ones, and blue ones. Sounds like a Dr. Seuss book!

In health,
Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my full 2012 presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: Anderson Mancini / Flickr

Related:
Best Phytosterol Dose and Source
Antioxidants: Plant vs. Animal Foods
#1 Anticancer Vegetable

Read more: Cancer, Diet & Nutrition, Eating for Health, Food, Health, Vegan, Vegetarian, Videos, chlorophyll, Dr. Michael Greger, NutritionFacts.org


Source : care2[dot]com

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The Real Paleo Diet

We evolved eating huge amounts of plants. It’s estimated that 200,000 years ago we got 600mg of vitamin C a day. That’s the amount of vitamin C found in 10 oranges. Every day we appear to have consumed the amount of vitamin E found in 2 cups of nuts, the amount of fiber found in 12 bowls of oatmeal, and the amount of calcium found in 5 cups of collard greens. They weren’t milking mammoths–that came from all the wild greens they foraged.

As I note in the above NutritionFacts.org video pick, we were exposed to such a quantity of whole healthy plant foods that we, as a species, lost our ability to make vitamin C. We still actually have the vitamin C gene in our DNA, but our bodies presumably just junked it because we were getting such massive daily doses that it wasn’t worth maintaining it. The problems occur when you take our evolutionary heritage, fine-tuned over the millennia, and plop it down into meat and potato chip country.

Advocates of the so-called Paleo diet are certainly right in railing against refined and processed junk, but may just use it as an excuse to eat loads of meat that bears little resemblance to flesh of prehistoric wild animals. The contaminant issue alone is compelling reason to eat as low as possible on the food chain. As I show in the video, the journal of the American Meat Science Association recently published a review cataloging the laundry list: arsenic, mercury, lead, cadmium, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, preservatives, and veterinary drugs such as antibiotic residues. Given what’s now in fish, for example, “it would be impossible to follow the Paleolithic diet while avoiding the risks associated with consuming mercury in amounts in excess of the suggested EPA threshold.”

The “paleo” diet patients I saw in my practice weren’t consuming weeds and eating in excess of 100 grams of fiber a day. They were eating burgers, not bugs. As concluded in a review I profile in the video, “Sufficient scientific evidence exists for public health policy to promote a plant-rich diet for health promotion.”

For those interested in digging deeper, there was an interesting Scientific American blog this summer entitled “Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians” and there’s an in-depth video series on YouTube debunking the paleo diet fad. I wrote a whole book on the Atkins incarnation, Carbophobia, now available free online. I also have two videos on low carb diets: Atkins Diet: Trouble Keeping It Up and Plant-Based Atkins Diet.

In health,
Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my full 2012 presentation Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.

Image credit: jarapet / Flickr

Related:
Poultry Paunch: Meat & Weight Gain
Animal Protein and IGF-1
Diet vs. Exercise: What’s More Important?

Read more: Diet & Nutrition, Eating for Health, Food, Health, Uncategorized, Videos, Dr. Michael Greger, NutritionFacts.org, Paleo Diet


Source : care2[dot]com

High Fiber Diet IS NOT Only for Weight Loss

Fiber is a very useful piece of food products and if we use them correctly, they can only bring us benefits

Plants are richest in fiber. There are animal products in which they are non-existent, so fiber diet focuses mostly on fruits, vegetables and cereals. And without being on a special diet, our menu has to be rich in fiber. Positive qualities are that food present fiber has fewer fats.

6 Benefits of Oatmeal

high fiber foods are good for health

Do not increase the amount of fiber extremely from the first day.

Fibers help us to fight with gastrointestinal problems, prevent hemorrhoids and are a good prevention against colon cancer. With regular consumption of foods rich in fiber you will not have problems going to the toilet, which for many people is very disturbing problem.
Fiber can be divided into two types – soluble and insoluble. In foods contain different amounts and ratios of them. More useful to us are soluble because they help us to maintain a healthy cholesterol level and diabetes control.
Soluble fibers form a layer around the food in the stomach and glucose and cholesterol are absorb more slowly by the body. Soluble fiber is abundant in oat bran, beans, lentils, fruit and vegetables in the bark fibers are precisely the crust. Insoluble fibers are useful too. They help to quickly cleanse the colon. Fiber helps us to feel full longer and prevent overeating and weight gain.

Do You Like Broccoli? You should!
Fiber diet also helps you to lose weight and for some health problems, but in all cases it is useful. Foods are rich in fiber and other nutrients and vitamins. In this type of diet you will not feel hunger, typical of some other diets.
How to change your diet?
Eat with whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, legumes. Increase the quantity of water intake. It is necessary to reduce and calories. So choose foods high in fiber, but low-calorie. Eat at least 6 times a day at regular intervals, without hurry and chew food well. Your menu should have 35 grams of fiber.
Do not increase the amount of fiber extremely from the first day. Too much fiber in the presence of a sensitive stomach can causing bloating and gas. So forget and any other liquids other than water during the diet because further exacerbate the sensitivity of your stomach. To be effective, the diet must have a minimum duration of one week.
Dried fruits also contain high amounts of fiber; add them to your diet. Avoid dairy products in your diet and choose low-fat ones and combine them with fruits, nuts, bran, seeds. Suitable vegetables to your diet are: tomatoes, onions, peas, beans, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, zucchini, and potatoes (especially fresh and unpeeled). Nutritious foods are pears, apples, oranges, bananas, peaches, allowing them to consume unpeeled. Do not give up meat, but let it be chicken or fish.

9 Foods for Lower Cholesterol
Sample menu:
Breakfast: Skimmed milk with wheat bran may be oats or rye, can only oatmeal without milk. Half the fruit according to your preferences
Between breakfast and lunch, eat oat biscuits and drink water as much as you want.
Lunch: Vegetable soup, no matter what the combination of vegetables, it is important that it is mentioned above, bean or lentil stew with a side of fresh vegetables, a slice of rye bread, a fruit for dessert or a handful of dried vegetables.
Snack: half a fruit on request, oat biscuits.
Dinner: Grilled chicken without oil garnished with steamed rice with vegetables, can boiled potatoes, fresh vegetables might sprouts, slice of rye bread. For dessert you recommended fruit, maybe a bowl of low-fat milk with oat bran.

Do you eat enough fiber?

What do you want to know about healthy eating?


Source : dailyhealtharticles[dot]com