Quoted message said:PROTEIN AND FAT
You need to get sufficient protein. I eat relatively high protein
because I get most of my blood glucose from protein since I eat so
little carb. But your body also needs it for many, many functions
including supporting lean body mass.
I consider 4oz meat or 1 cup of yogurt or cottage cheese to be a
serving of protein and I eat protein at every meal (even my "cereal"
is high-protein cause of the protein powder). To me, this is a
mimimum amount of protein I need daily - 3 servings of protein. I
ate even more immediatly after the surgeries as protein is needed to
build tissue and hence speeds healing.
Protein foods usually come with fat, so the choices for the best
protein foods tends to be based on the best fats. Fish and nuts are
the best sources of protein.
Fish has the form of omega3 acid that we use directly, and some of us
don't convert from the plant sources so well. I've never cared much
for fish, but have been trying to add it in ways I don't actually
despise. Albacore tuna packed in water is good (packed in oil will
mean the good fats will dissolve and pour off when you drain it). If
you don't want the calories of mayo, you can mix it with ranch
dressing and it's pretty good. I've discovered tilapia is a very
mild fish I can eat occasionally spiced up with garlic and such and
it's not too bad. When I want to splurge, I buy scallops, but
they're too expensive to eat regularly. Add whatever you like, or
whatever you can tolerate if you don't actually like fish much. Get
it in several times a week, the more often, the better. Oily fishes
are best, but most are pretty strong-tasting: salmon, sardines, tuna,
mackarel. Shellfish is good also as the only really good source of
vitamin B12.
While plant omega3s don't always convert to the type we use, there's
a lot of evidence that they're good for us in and of themselves.
This is where nuts and seeds come in. Note that peanuts don't really
count, they're a legume, not a nut. We're talking walnuts, almonds,
macadamia nuts, pistachios, hazelnuts, brazil nuts, sunflower seeds,
sesame seeds, whatever you like. This time of year, the whole nuts
are always available and I've always loved having a bowl on the table
through the holidays. All year, you can buy them already cracked,
fresh or roasted, salted or not. It's harder to find, but you can
also buy nut butters, almond butter and cashew butter and tahini
(sesame seed butter) are most easy to find. And I've already
mentioned the notion of meals, almond meal and flax meal being good
things to eat. You can also buy lots of good nut oils, which are
really tasty (but generally have to be refrigerated, especially flax
oil and walnut oil). Lots of ways to add nuts to your diet.
As far as a plant source of omega3s, flax is king. Figuring out some
way to get flax into your diet is very worthwhile. However, you have
to add flax gradually as it's almost entirely fiber and fat, hence
can have a major laxative effect.
Meat is not the enemy, unless it crowds out fish and nuts in your
diet. But again, there's better and worse choices. Meat from
animals raised on pasture contains a lot more CLA, GLA, omega3s and
bioactive form of vitamins A and D than stuff raised in feedlots. If
you take the time to search out sources of pasture-raised meat, the
fat is a good thing and can be eaten freely as very wholesome food.
If you eat more typical sources of meat, stick to the leanest cuts of
red meats and remove the skin from poultry as that fat is much less
healthy stuff.
I have similar advice for eggs, best to spend the bucks for
free-range omega3 eggs. Eggs are one of the best and cheapest
protein sources around. Dietary cholesterol intake has almost no
correlaiton with serum cholesterol levels, so you can eat eggs
liberally - but get the good ones.
As far as processed meats go, it's best to buy stuff without nitrates
and nitrites. My grocery carries a brand of uncured bacon as well as
Hormel's line of natural lunch meats. Not the best possible meat
choices, but when you need processed stuff, it's a lot better than
most of what's out there.
I also use protein powder. I think the soy and whey powders taste
gross, but if you like them, go for it. They make fast meals when
you're in a hurry. I use an unflavored, unsweetened milk isolate
protein powder as it's cheap and very versatile and taste better to
me than soy or whey products.
As for dairy, I personally eat a lot of yogurt and cottage cheese and
some hard cheese and butter. I use half-and-half in my coffee and
some cream and creme fraiche in various recipes. If you're buying
products from pasture-raised animals, all the stuff I said about meat
applies and the fat is a good and healthy thing. If you're buying
from more ordinary sources, you're better off with low-fat or skim
products.
There's additional benefits to buying raw cheese if you can manage
it. Raw cheese, yogurt, kefir, vinegar, saurkraut, pickles, soy
sauce, tofu... basically all fermented foods are very good for a host
of reasons, the bacteria do good things for you.
Coconut oil is a strange oil. It's a saturated fat, solid at room
temperature, but turns out to be pretty healthy. The health benefits
seem to be related to the length of the chains the fatty acids are
made of. I have no explanation biochemically for why medium length
trigylcerides are healthier than long chain ones and find it frankly
counterintuitive given what I know about fatty acid metabolism from
my biochemistry background, but a lot of research shows it's so even
though I can't explain it. Coconut oil is a bit tricky to add to
your diet. Virgin coconut oil has a coconut flavor to it so works for
anything you want to taste that way; expeller-pressed coconut oil has
a more neutral flavor and I prefer it myself as I don't really want
everything to taste coconut-flavored. You can cook eggs or buckwheat
pancakes in it, replacing butter. I make almond and flax muffins
with it (recipes on my page). I also make a "coconut bark" which is
basically a chocolate candy (again, recipe is on my page).
If you like avocados, they're a great type of fat. I personally like
eating them right out of the skin, but also make guacamole of various
types. They're very caloric, so when I'm feeling lazy, I can call an
avocado a meal (albeit it's short on protein for a meal).
If you need more fat in your diet for the calories (especially if
eating lean meat and low-fat dairy), best choices for additions
beyond the above are olive oil, avocado oil and rice bran oil. All
of these are good for salad dressing and or stirfrying in. It's
important to stick to oils that have not been hydrogenated (and thus
contain trans fats). You want all your oils to be labeled either
"virgin" or "expeller-pressed" or something similar that makes it
very clear the stuff hasn't been highly heated during processing or
otherwise hydrogenated. I understand most canola oil in the US is
hydrogenated to improve shelf life, which is a damned shame as it'd
be a wonderful oil otherwise. I've not yet been able to find virgin
canola oil.
The ABSOLUTE baddy in fats that you should avoid are trans fats.
That a product says 0 trans fats is irrelevant. Labels measure trans
fats in grams, and it's milligrams levels that are dangerous, so 0 g
of trans fats isn't good enough. This stuff is poison! Any product
containing "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated" ANYTHING is
bad, don't eat it at all.
High heat makes "homemade" trans fats, so frying should be fast
stirfrying to reduce the damage to the fats. Or use more saturated
fat for frying. Coconut oil works. I often use homemade broths from
which I do not skim the fat (because it's from pasture-raised animals
and thus good stuff).
