The Soy Conundrum: Part 1

This is a HUGE topic that would take volumes to adequately explore, but I’ll try to give you the highlights. If you’ve been following health trends, you are likely as confused as most Americans about soy. Is it healthy for human consumption? My answer is a tentative maybe. Here’s why...

How Soy is Grown: About 85% of all soy grown is now genetically modified. Even if you don’t care about the genetic material itself, what this tinkering has done has allowed these crops to be even more heavily sprayed with pesticides and herbicides which travel up the food chain. We are seeing more and more research coming in now about how these residues contribute to disease, especially in children.

Health Claims: Most of the health claims are marginal at best. When you actually read through the literature and the research, you’ll find there are small benefits to LDL reduction associated with eating soy (although it’s hard to determine if that is the reason or if it’s because participants traded conventional meats for soy a few meals a week and maybe it was really just the removal of the damaged fats and fat soluble toxins that did the trick). Most of the positive health benefits are found from using fermented soy foods, not from products like “Tofurky” or SPI (soy protein isolate).

Protein Quality: You will hear many proponents of vegetarian and vegan diets claim that soy offers a complete protein source. While it is true on a chemical level that soy offers a broad spectrum of essential amino acids, it also important to understand that soy contains chemicals that slow or prevent the digestion of proteins and significantly impair the bioavailability of their component amino acids.

Human systems simply don’t produce the all the enzymes essential to the complete digestion of soy protein or the breakdown of the “anti-nutrients” that get in the way. When we rely strictly on soy for protein, or have a very high intake of soy products in the diet, we risk long term amino acid and mineral deficiencies that create problems in all our systems including hypothyroidism, anemia and immuno-deficiency.

Anti-nutrients: These are substances that either impair nutrient bioavailability or are chemicals that directly impinge on human systems creating health problems in the long term. One of these problematic substances is phytic acid or phytate. Soy has one of the highest amounts of phytate of any legume or grain studied, and to make matters worse, the phytates in soy are highly resistant to breaking down by heat (unlike phytates found in spinach, for example). Phytic acid blocks the absorption of vital minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron, copper and zinc. Because we don’t have the capacity to break down phytates, we have to rely on other mechanisms to do it for us. Happily, bacteria can do this via fermentation. This is why fermented soy products are considered by most nutrition experts to be the best form for human consumption. Fermented soy products include tamari (soy sauce), miso and tempeh.

Unfermented soy also contains enzyme inhibitors that block one of your body’s main proteases: trypsin. This is essential in the digestion and breakdown of proteins. Diets high in trypsin inhibitors can precipitate pancreatitis (and other pathological conditions of the pancreas), amino acid deficiencies and gastric distress as the undigested proteins make their way through the intestines.

If you choose to use soy, please choose organic, non-GMO, fermented products, and rotate your protein sources so you don’t rely exclusively, or even heavily, on soy. It is essential that growing children NOT use soy exclusively as their bodies try to build bones and brains. There are plenty of other legumes out there and when combined with a grain you will have a complete amino acid profile, and a broader spectrum of nutrients.

Get Informed. Get Help if you need it. And Get REAL.

(also published on the Patch.com)

Reader Question: "What foods are the most important to eat organic?"

An excellent question and let me say, you aren't the only one confused about this! First let’s clear up some misconceptions about what organic is and isn’t. What exactly does “organic” mean anyway? According to the USDA National Organic Program website, “organically grown” means the food was grown and processed without any synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. However, this doesn’t exclude fertilizers or pesticides that are naturally derived, so, this doesn’t mean the foods were never sprayed with anything. Currently “organic” also means no sewage sludge, irradiation or genetic modification can be used in the production of the food or ingredient (whew!).

As of 2002 there are three sub-designations that are important to know about: “100% organic”, “organic” and “made with organic ingredients”. The “100% organic” designation is the only one that is just that. All the ingredients must be certified organic. In the case of “organic”, all agricultural ingredients must be certified organic except where a special “National List” allows them not to be. These non-organic ingredients can’t make up more than 5% of the total (not counting water and salt). In the case of “made with organic ingredients”, at least 70% of the finished product has to be certified organic (not counting water and salt). Any other ingredients that are not required to be organic on the National List can’t be produced but “excluded methods” (another special list).

Tricky? You bet! Political? Absolutely! Consumer friendly? Nope. That said, it’s still a good idea to eat as organically as you can afford to for your long-term health and the overall health of our interlinked ecosystems. But, what do you do when you can’t afford to eat all organically all the time? Here are a few simple things to keep in mind. First, the lower on the food chain you eat, the less intensely concentrated these toxins become before you consume them. As you move farther away from the original interaction between dirt, seed, sun and rain (ex: chard > beetle > chicken > egg; or grass > cow > milk > butter) the more the toxic residues from fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, hormones, antibiotics, and more become, so as the human at the top, you ingest much higher quantities via eggs or butter than you do via chard or oats. Spend your hard earned cash on organic butter (and other dairy), meats, poultry, and eggs. Breathe a little easier about whole grains, most veggies and most fruits. For a really good list of the top most contaminated and the top cleanest conventionally grown fruits and veggies, get the Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean 15” lists. They even have an ap for your phone so you have it with you when you grocery shop. For starters, only buy organic apples and spinach, but don’t worry so much about broccoli or avocados.

Lastly, when you start reducing "food products" with lots of ingredients on the labels and start eating more whole foods, you eliminate places where toxins can easily get hidden. Keep it REAL! Bon appetite!

(also published on the Patch.com)

Linked Up

Hi All! It was a hectic month of moving house and torrential rain storms. Finally up for air and back on the board.

A friend and colleague suggested that I post some of the links I find useful in the wide web world of food and nutrition, so here goes:

The USDA Nutrition Database is good basic info on food contents: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

and Nutrition Data is a searchable database of foods that uses the USDA information to create a broad analysis of nutrients, energy availability, and more: http://nutritiondata.self.com/tools/nutrient-search

The Environmental Working Group is an independent research and reporting group that isn't owned by Monsanto so they aren't afraid to report the truth of what they find: http://www.ewg.org/

The Glycemic Index Foundation has valuable info on the glycemic index and glycemic load of most carbohydrates in our food supply: http://www.glycemicindex.com/

The Harvard School of Nutrition is among the first of the more conservative sites to wake up to the problems created by the over emphasis on high-carb diets, and they are a good conservative scientific voice about nutrition in general: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/index.html

Lance Armstrong's site has a good, easy body fat estimator (they call it a calculator, but it's hard to do that with just numbers and a formula, you need a way to actually measure): http://www.livestrong.com/tools/body-fat-calculator/

The Organic Consumers Association has their finger on the pulse of food news: http://www.organicconsumers.org/

There, that's a solid start! Do you have any favorites?

Get Curious. Get Info. Get REAL.

Maintaining Weight and Wellness During the Holidays

Below is the press release going out this week to Bay Area news centers, many thanks to William Freed of Motv Marketing!

Get REAL! for the Holidays!

Get REAL! – Realistic Eating & Active Lifestyle™ Presents Three Quick Tips to Maintain Weight and Wellness During the Holidays

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. – December 7, 2010 –  Getting through the holidays while maintaining a healthy weight poses a challenge for even the most fit of individuals.  For the rest of us, the eating and drinking associated with holiday get-togethers can mean packing on pounds that can add to lifelong weight gain.*  To avoid those extra holiday pounds, Get REAL! – Realistic Eating & Active Lifestyle™ presents three simple and memorable holiday tips for maintaining holiday health and wellness:

• Drink Water – lots of it!  A simple rule is one glass of water per cocktail or glass of beer/wine.  You’ll avoid lots of alcohol calories, fill up faster and be less tipsy at the end of the night.  Not to mention, feel better in the morning!

• Eat Realistically – holiday drinking and eating is about celebration, not about deprivation.  Focus on eating lightly throughout the day not starving yourself before a big dinner, and eating protein to maintain energy and stoke your metabolism.  When indulging, get really picky about your choices.  Don’t just settle for a commercial sheet cake; hold out for great aunt Sally’s fudge made with love especially for you!  Experiment with smaller portions of high-calorie treats like cheese, bread and cookies/sweets. Studies show that it’s really the first two bites of anything that you get the most taste enjoyment out of anyway so make them count!

• Be Active and Reduce Stress – take a walk at lunchtime, take the stairs, walk around town to visit with neighbors/friends if possible.  Most any activity will increase your metabolism, so go for it!  Get plenty of sleep and avoid spending lots of time in front of TVs and glowing computer screens.

While following these tips is no guarantee that you won’t gain any weight during the holidays, they are a good start and part of a reasonable, achievable way to maintaining health and wellness, and reducing stress.  This practical approach is integral to Get REAL!™ – a lifestyle program created by Clinical Nutritionist and Counselor Kia Sanford, MS/CN, an expert in working with individuals and groups around the country to help people find an individual path toward long term health.

Get REAL!™ holds participatory workshops, field study and hands-on cooking experiences around the country, that enable students to “put it all together” and take control as they embark on a healthy way of living for the long term.  In addition to Get Real! ™, Ms. Sanford offers private, one-on-one services in clinical nutrition and psychotherapy through Kailo Nutrition & Counseling. For more information about Get REAL! ™, please visit www.GetRealLifestyle.com.

* According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, average holiday weight gain is less than two pounds, but can add to lifelong weight gain because it is never lost.  See:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=10727591&dopt=AbstractPlus

Re-Inventing Yourself

As we move into Autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere, now is usually the time we move from extroversion to introversion, from energy expanding outward to a more contemplative way of being in the world. I like to think of this transition as a time to think about the intentions we want to set for our winter cocoon so that when we split that shell and climb out in the Spring, our new wings are fully formed for the next season of expansion. Now is a great time to think about what aspects of yourself you are ready to shed like a maple leaf. What doesn't serve you anymore? What can you let go of so you can reach for something that pulls you forward in a positive way?

Often in my discussions with clients I find that there is a tendency to hold on with a death grip to the past, to those things that we know aren't good for us and yet are too afraid to let go of. Sometimes those things are habits of thought ("I'm not good at ____" or "I always/never _____"), sometimes habits of the body (having coffee instead of breakfast, inactivity, addictions), and sometimes they are things we carry for others (guilt, shame, "shoulds" handed down from family and culture). Often I find that we allow our habits to govern our lives, we think it's easier that way. The problem is that although many of these habits were developed in response to an original need (and we responded the best we could in that situation), those habits have outlived their usefulness and are now leading us down a path that causes more problems than it solves.

To externalize this idea, take a look at most political struggles, especially around environmental issues. One of the common responses to the question of "Isn't there another way to do this that could be more beneficial and less damaging?" is a response from the habit which says "Why should we change? We've ALWAYS done it this way! What worked for my father and grandfather is good enough for me!" The trouble with this response is that it isn't a response, it's a habitual reaction. It is identical to what I hear in sessions with clients: "I've always eaten this way and it's been fine" or "I've never liked vegetables and plain water". When you hear those words "always" and "never" echoing in your head, stop and ask yourself who's talking. Is it the adult you with your best interests in mind? Or, is it the old habit that doesn't want to be told it's been fired?

I encourage you to take some time as the leaves change and the weather cools to take stock of your habits. Are there any that no longer serve your highest good? Are there any that actually endanger your long-term health? Is there just one that you can envision changing into a beautiful red maple leaf falling from a healthy tree and becoming nourishing soil at your feet? Peel off the old and make room for the new REAL you...

Medicinal Effects of Foods - Part 3

I have many clients who come to see me worried about weight gain and what has become known in our culture as "emotional eating". These clients want to stop using eating as a way to medicate themselves. The thing is, everything we put in our systems has biochemical effects. Keep in mind that thoughts and emotions are "things" from a biological standpoint. They are real biochemical processes with ingredients and metabolic outcomes that can be tracked. The simplest form of medication that we've learned over the millennia is the use of food and drink to change the way neurotransmitters in the gut and brain behave. Because eating is something we must do, changing the way we relate to food as medicine is important. You can easily see why it would be important to quit smoking and you can make efforts to do so. But a person can't just quit eating. This is why it's so difficult to tease apart.

Let's start here: You can't take food and emotions apart. Because emotions and thoughts are built from the basic ingredients we take in. When looking at "emotional eating" it is important to really understand this statement. The foods (and other substances) you ingest become you. There are whole supermarkets full of "food products" that have little or no connection with what could be conceived of as Real Food. Just as real food becomes the biochemical building blocks of your muscles, your organs, your immune system, your thoughts and your emotions, so too do all the new-fangled chemicals that have entered our food supply in the last 100 years. It is vital that you start asking yourself "Is this what I want to build myself out of today?"

For most of us, sugar is our biggest weakness and the thing that has the biggest negative impact. Sugar is pro-inflammatory, depresses the immune system, contributes to mood instability, creates an acidic internal environment, worsens PMS symptoms, and hastens aging, just to name a few. But we love the stuff! Why? It makes perfect sense from a biochemical standpoint. The same bank of lights in the brain that gets turned on by serotonin (the neurotransmitter that makes us feel happy) also gets amped up by sugar. When we feel down, depressed, stressed, unhappy or need an escape, flooding the system with sugar can help to temporarily change our internal environment. The trouble is that sugar is like jet fuel: it burns hot and fast. Once the body has overcome the flood of sugar, the natural levels in the bloodstream are even lower than where they were before the sugar rush. A signal from the brain says "hey, running out of juice up here, need more of that feel good stuff!" and off we go to find another fix. The trick here is to short circuit the response and reach for foods that increase natural serotonin rather than settle for the quick fix that only temporarily bandaids the situation. In this case, reach for protein. The best choices would be eggs, turkey, elk, pork, crab, shrimp, and salmon (vegetarian options include 200 kcal portions of spirulina, spinach, and watercress) because they are high in tryptophan which is what the body uses to create serotonin.

There are whole manifestos available on the detrimental effects of food additives and toxic residues out there so I won't go into a dissertation here. (If you are interested in a few good references check out "Aspartame Disease" by H. J. Roberts; "Excitotoxins: the taste that kills" by Russell Blaylock; "Diet for a Poisoned Planet" by David Steinman; and "Sweet Deception" by Joseph Mercola). Suffice it to say, each of these toxins has an impact. If you are susceptible, the way they are incorporated into your system will have worse effects. For example, there are case studies showing that you can actually fool your doctor into believing you have multiple sclerosis by ingesting just the right amount of aspartame (aka Nutrasweet). Aspartame is actually a drug, not a food, and we are misusing it in America. Artificial sweeteners are the worst offenders largely because they have become so common in foods. I urge you to get these toxins out of your diet, and especially out of the food supply for children. We are already seeing dire consequences of long term use, and I hate to see what's in store for our teens who are gulping down gallons of diet sodas.

Take control of the sweet portion of your food supply and you will solve big groups of issues including the craving for the sweet taste itself. It takes about 2-4 weeks. That's all. But you have to be vigilant. If you need help, enlist a good nutritionist to walk you through the process. Making changes to the way you look at, think about, shop for, prepare, and eat food is extremely difficult. It's not as easy as "just do it". There are so many reasons WHY we eat and in order to get a handle on some of the biggies, it's ok to ask for help. Sugar and sweet cravings are biggies. It's not just about willpower so stop beating yourself up. It's about biochemistry and learning to create the internal environment you want.

Get Smart. Get Fresh. Get Real.

On Your Mark... Get Set...

In my preparations to put together a workshop series on the proper combination of nutrition and exercise, I have spoken with numerous friends and clients about what sorts of topics might interest them. In the process I have been regaled with some very funny tales of competition and training woes that were related to poor food choices pre or post exertion. One of the ones that had the biggest impact on me was about a guy who had arrived at the starting line for a bike race without properly fueling up in the pre-dawn pre-race hours and now was starving. In a last minute effort to get some sort of fuel in before the starting gun, he inhaled a hot dog with all the fixings from a nearby vendor. You can probably already guess where this story ends up... The interesting thing is this person is a semi-pro rider but never got any guidance about eating to win.

It should be pretty obvious that even if you didn't know about all the chemistry behind digestion and absorption, you might listen to your body when it cringes at the thought of a pre-race hot dog. The brain gets us into trouble in so many ways when it thinks it knows best and over-rides the needs of the body (hence all the various addictions to sugar and caffeine and other potential nutritional pitfalls). What you want immediately prior to a hard workout or competition sporting event is something that the body won't have to work hard to breakdown into fuel. This is why companies like Cliff Bar have developed products like "Gu" which is pretty much straight glucose and some maltodextrin which is a loosely held together starch that the body can work on while the glucose goes straight to the blood stream. That hot dog is a digestive time bomb that first starts out as a barely chewed up lump sitting in the stomach. Once that starting gun fires, the signals from the body are to forget about anything except the adrenaline pumped task at hand: RIDE FAST! A few miles into this endeavor, that hot dog has been jostling around in the stomach waiting to be digested with acid building up by the minute. The time bomb explodes into either vomiting or diarrhea because the body needs to get rid of it in order to continue to push hard in the race. Now, the rider is doubled over, exhausted, and drained of reserves because the last little bit of fuel left from dinner the night before has been used up.

Let's help this poor rider rewind and replay his morning in a way that sets him up to win. Three hours prior to competition (yes, often in the wee hours of the dark), let's be sure to give our rider a well balanced breakfast complete with easy to digest foods like pancakes with bananas and a little almond butter. Two hours prior to the race start, let's be sure our rider has 16 ounces of electrolyte replacement drink (I'll post a recipe for one you can make at home). One hour prior to race start he's warming up his muscles by jogging lightly or riding short distances pushing a little and then backing off. During this warm up, he is drinking about 8 more ounces of water. In the 15 minutes prior to start, nothing should be going into the stomach. Now when the starting gun blasts, our rider doesn't have a lump of undigested food to contend with, and his muscles are bathed in ready glucose with more on the way. The enzyme systems needed to produce this ready supply of fuel are already on line and working at near full capacity.

On your mark.... Get set....

Food Revolutions - Rant Alert

I have to admit I'm a big fan of Jamie Oliver's attempt to bring healthful food to US kids (check out http://www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/jamies-food-revolution). But don't you think it's rather embarrassing that it takes someone from outside this country to make this shift happen? I challenge each and every one of you out there to take your power back from the companies that are draining you of your money and your sense. It's time to get a grip folks. It's not time to sit back and play another round of Grand Theft Auto while sucking down another liter of soda. What do you want your future to look like? Your PERSONAL health future? It starts now. It begins with every bite and sip you take. It starts with each extra step you take putting one foot in front of the other. If you really need to sit and watch something, watch "Food Revolution". Watch "Food Inc". Watch "King Corn". Watch "Supersize Me". If you can work some reading into your busy schedule, read "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Read "Real Food". Read "Good Calories, Bad Calories". There is a TON of information out there, it's time to put it into practice and take our power over our own health seriously. Get up, get out, get REAL!

Whew! Ok, I feel better now... Is anybody with me on this?