Re: Good dietary advice from a magazine!
- From: Quentin Grady <quentin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 10:43:48 +1300
This post not CC'd by email
On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 13:53:41 -0000, "Nicky"
<ukc802466929@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>I've just come across an article in November's Prima magazine (UK) that
>looks to me like it contains and actually builds on Quentin's and Annette's
>advice! Could you knowledgeable guys comment on it?
>
>- eat boiled carrots with fat; you absorb 60-70% of the fat-soluble beta
>carotene (immune system booster) as opposed to 2-3% when eaten raw without
>fat.
G'day G'day Nicky,
Thank you for the compliment. While I'll offer some comments based
on what I've read I will endeavour not the act as some arbitrator of
what it right and wrong. There is so much information out there that
is next to impossible to keep up with all of it.
If one eats carrots raw they have a much lower glycemic index. It
should be virtually impossible to get dangerously high levels of blood
glucose from eating raw carrots. Carrots, even cooked carrots have a
low glycemic load. This happens because although the glycemic index
is high in cooked carrots, the percentage carb is low. The soluble
fibre in carrots is not gel forming. If what is being suggested is
that one should always cook carrots I think that is pushing things to
far. There is a place for cooked and raw carrots in the diet.
Not all carrots have beta carotene. Beta carotene is orange. There
are carrots that are yellow. These contain lutein. There are even
red carrots that have lycopene. For some reason the Japanese prefer
red carrots. The original carrots were purple. We are begriming to
see crosses between these original carrots and modern carrots in the
Farmers' markets. They are being trialed for some NZ government
agency that has extended the concept of "five a day" to have "five
colours a day".
>- eat tomatoes with oil rich in Vit E (e.g. sunflower) to get lycopene from
>the tomatoes and the Vit E working together to prevent cholesterol-clogged
>arteries
One needs to treat this one with some caution. Tomatoes and olive oil
are part of the Mediterranean tradition. Combining tomatoes with
sunflower oils sounds like a bit of an experiment to me. Sunflower
oil produced from the standard varieties of sunflower tend to be rich
in omega-6 fatty acids. These are the precursors of inflammatory
eicosanoids, the absolute bane of diabetics. One reasonable
hypothesis strongly implicates inflammation as one of the
prerequisites of coronary disease. The vitamin E doesn't get the
lycopene from tomatoes. Any oil would do. IMHO polyphenols that
recycle fat soluble Vit E and allow it to successfully network with
the water soluble antioxidant Vit C are more important. That said,
hey, eat some sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds with some sun dried
tomatoes.
>- eat grilled tuna (selenium) and broccoli (sulphoraphane) - these
>micronutrients together provide 13x cancer protection than when eaten
>separately.
Haven't heard that one before. If Vit E were superman, selenium would
be his batman helper. I sometimes tell people who worry about mercury
in fish to eat eggs. The suphur helps make the mercury less available.
It isn't easy to get a handle on the mercury in fish question. The
standard chemical used for assessing mercury was shown to be twenty
times more toxic than the partially suphur bonded form actually
present in fish. Some countries don't monitor the mercury levels in
fish as they should. Some issue vague warnings such as not eating
fish from geothermal areas more than once a week. The conventional
wisdom is to avoid fish near the end of the food chain eg tuna. Small
fish that feed mostly on plankton are safer as the mercury is less
concentrated.
>Get selenium from brazil nuts and poultry too;
>sulphoraphane-rich veggies include cabbage and watercress.
Any crucifers ie vegetables with cross shaped flowers have
sulphoraphane and related compounds. The original wild types found in
places like Crete and Sicily tend to have more. Some efforts have
been made to backcross modern varieties which have less to these wild
types. IIRC sulphoraphane is tasteless however it had been bred out
along with some bitter compounds.
>- eat poached salmon (Vit D) with calcium-rich youghurt to increase the
>amount of calcium absorbed in the gut.
Not sure. Probably. Vit D isn't simple. Free range chicken have
activated Vit D. The caged birds don't. People remove the skin to
avoid fat and remove the Vit D along with it. Sometimes we are too
clever by half.
Tinned salmon is one of those oddities where one might well be getting
a better deal than with farmed fresh salmon. The pink colour should
be astaxanthin which protects the beta cells of those that still have
some from further apoptosis ie self suicide. In some countries the
regulations are less strict and the are able to add a related
colouring that doesn't have the protective effects we so much desire.
The tinned salmon is made from wild salmon so has the genuine
astaxanthin.
>- eat cashew nuts (iron) with orange juice (Vit C) - the C helps vegetable
>sources of iron pass through the gut wall more easily.
Like most people I can think of better sources of iron than cashew
nuts.
>- eat raw spinach with avocado to increase the lutein uptake from the
>spinach (protects against macular degeneration).
This is slightly funny. Avocados are the richest fruit source of
lutein. Take a look at avocado flesh and notice the yellow and green
mix. Lutein is one of the compounds helpful in protecting the retina
of the eye from blue and ultraviolet light. The macula is the
sensitive spot in the centre of the retina that is responsible for
fine vision. The retina uses three pigments lutein, zeaxanthin and
meso-zeaxanthin. Lutein is mostly associated with the parts of the
eye responsible for peripheral vision. Zeaxanthin is more concentrated
in the central foveal region. Put simply the writer has missed
zeaxanthin which is more important for preventing macular
degeneration. The eye is so desperate for zeaxanthin that is converts
some lutein into meso-zeaxanthin as a work around. OK, spinach is a
good source of lutein but it is a dicey source of zeaxanthin. The
problem is the name spinach is applied to a large number of related
crosses. Some are excellent sources of zeaxanthin, some have
virtually none. I haven't seen a published analysis of which varieties
are which. Once again any oil eg olive oil would help with the
extraction.
>Another good source is green beans.
>
>I've just found the credits, in about -6 pt in the corner of the page -
>Angela Dowden, not one of their staff writers.
>
>I was just blown away with the apparent quality of that advice!
While I've made a few comments that have contradicted some specifics
the general principles contained in it are sound. Foods can be
combined to get greater benefits. Oil is often important for
extracting bioflavonoids. The amounts required aren't large ...
according to folks like Pritikin. Countries that combine say
anchovies with something like parsley to make sauce seem to gain
benefits from doing so. The details appear to me to be less important
that adopting the general principles. The trick is to make green
vegetables palatable so that we continue to make them part of our way
of eating.
>Nicky.
--
Quentin Grady ^ ^ /
New Zealand, >#,#< [
/ \ /\
"... and the blind dog was leading."
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/quentin
.
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