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General Guidelines for Healthy Living #2

Carbohydrates and Fats:

Regarding Carbohydrates

There are two kinds. One's bad, the other's not. Refined carbs which are usually, but not always white, are bad. You might as well eat right out of the sugar bowl, because these refined carbs turn into sugar in your body. Refined carbs are cookies, crackers, dry cereal, bagels, pasta, popcorn or any other food that's white and not "whole". Even if it says wonderful things on the label, like "17 vitamins and minerals per portion!", it's still bad. Try to limit if not totally eliminate your consumption of these foods. I will also put white potato (baked Idaho's, new potatoes, Yukon gold potatoes) under the category of bad carbs as they are just big balls of white sugar in sneaky disguise as a vegetable. Yams, on the other hand, are great for you.

Unrefined carbs are better for you, but most of them will still stimulate your glycemic response and raise your blood sugar, so don't eat a ton of these either. These semi-OK carbs are whole grains like oats, rice, rye, millet and quinoa. I prefer that everyone - yes, you - stay away from all products made with wheat as wheat has been adulterated to such a degree that I don't even know what it is anymore and whatever it is, almost everyone is sensitive to it to some degree. Try quinoa, millet, amaranth and steel cut oats in moderation. (I have a good recipe for millet-amaranth cereal. Ask me for it.) If you find that you feel fine eating lots of these grains, then go ahead, but some of us feel shaky and weak if we over-do grains as it messes with our insulin response. And the reason is this:

Very simply, there are two primary metabolic types and we land either in the veggie and carb loving category or the protein and fat category. (This has nothing to do with the blood type diet.) It seems that the veggie and carb loving people can do whole grains and carbs more successfully than can the protein and fat people. I can test you for metabolic type, but, honestly, you will be able to tell which type you are just by how you feel eating certain foods. Here is a simple test: One morning have fruit and toast with jam for breakfast. How do you feel? When do you get hungry? Do you feel grounded? Next morning, have eggs and bacon for breakfast. How do you feel? When do you get hungry? Do you feel grounded?

Vegetables and fruits are also carbs, but these are the good guys, especially the green leafies. Unless otherwise specified, I recommend unlimited portions of veggies and 3 fruits a day. Some people are espousing an 80% raw diet as the answer to all health problems. Others say go vegan or macro. But I say, see how you feel on whatever you are eating and go from there. Some of us simply need more ballast and require meat or heavier foods.

Regarding Fats

In general we don't eat enough of the good fats and too many of the bad fats and the good fats are wonderful anti-inflammatories while the bad fats inflame us. We have all been beaten into an Entenmeyer's (no fat-high sugar) submission by the no-to-low fat paradigm of the last 30 years which ironically is when the obesity epidemic began. Many of us not only became much too fat, but we developed Type I diabetes, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol levels when all the low-fat foods, margarines and fake sugars became nutritionally de rigueur. Years ago, I found myself gasping in shock when a friend put heavy cream in her coffee - probably in the 80's; I was aghast that she would not take better care of her health and why didn't she use those flavored fake milks with no fat? How things have changed!

It's now time to fight back regarding the low fat craze. I am now going to recommend that you eat heretofore forbidden fats so brace yourself. I suggest that you cook with either EVOO, organic coconut oil or ghee made from organic butter. Use only these three oils in your kitchen for cooking. Start using and loving butter on your vegetables and on that occasional piece of good toast or on your yam. Throw all other oils out, esp. the white hard fats if for some lame reason you still have those in the pantry. Exception: Coconut oil will be hard and white on your shelf, but it's a good fat. Neither exogenous fats nor eggs will significantly raise your cholesterol levels. It's been proven.

Go through your kitchen now and throw out everything that has "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated" on the label. These are very serious poisons to our body and actually CAUSE heart disease.

You should be concerned primarily with two kinds of supplemental fats; Omega 3's and Omega 6's. Omega 3's come from fish and flax and the 6's come from evening primrose, borage or black current seed oil. But, there are other great oils: Gamma Linolenic (GLA) and Conjugated Linoleic (CLA). (Omega 9 is in olive oil.)

I suggest that people graze all the oils, if possible. The 3's in the form of flax, the 6's in the form that I mentioned in the paragraph above, and if weight loss is desired, the GLA and CLA are particularly good for that. Barleans is a good brand for flax and make sure you refrigerate it, because flax oil will get rancid very fast, as do the seeds. Buy the golden flax seeds whole and grind them for the week in a designated grinder then keep the ground seeds refrigerated in a glass jar.

I have found a wonderful tasting liquid oil called Barlean's Swirl and it can be found at Whole Foods in the cold case that contains all the liquid oils. It tastes like dessert. I buy the vegan blueberry-pomegranate but they have a sweeter vegan strawberry-banana as well. If you have trouble swallowing oil caps, I guarantee you will be able to do this one and a tablespoon a day will do just fine. I also have a very fine 3-6-9 vegan oil capsule called YES which many of you are testing quite well on.

I have become suspect about all fish oils regardless of what the manufacturer says. I can't imagine that they can be all that pure, so I am now recommending organic flax for the 3's., and yes, I know that some of us have some trouble converting the flax into a usable omega 3. But, try it. Here's my problem with fish oil: Fatty fish are known repositories not only of mercury, but of PCB's and dioxins. The latter are stored in fatty tissue with a half life of up to 11 years, meaning that for 11 years after that ingestion of contaminated fish or fish oil, the chemicals are wreaking havoc in your body. Eight fish oil provider companies i.e. the bulk of the fish oil providers, were found to have both dioxins and PCB's in their products, while flax omega 3's tested for zero PCB contamination.

Krill oil has become very popular lately and, so far, I can't see anything terribly wrong with krill except the... taste. However, krill is plankton from the sea and I just don't know how many contaminants there are in the krill. The big mercury-filled fish eat plankton so I suppose you could assume that the krill also has mercury. I just don't know the answer yet. But, you could also eat wild-caught salmon once or twice a week, too, either fresh in season, frozen or canned (www.vitalchoice.com is a good brand). Also, sardines in olive oil, anchovies and black cod are safe fish. Hemp seeds are quite tasty as well, sprinkled on a salad, eaten out of the bag or put in your smoothie.

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