Tag Archives: health food

Basket full of pills?

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We often have people ask for guidance on how Matt made his recovery from ulcerative colitis. And I would say that, fairly often, they have received blood testing results that reveal various deficiencies that are likely contributing to their health issues.
 
And so it makes sense that they seek out the supplement forms of whatever nutrients they’re lacking.
 
Or does it?
 
I remember when I worked for a local health food store, I’d see people literally fill a shopping cart half full of bottles of pills, and then head to the checkout, with not a single whole food item in their basket.
 
Not one food.
 
From a health food store.
 
And this was back in the food dark ages, before Wal-mart carried their so-called grass-fed beef or much in the way of organic veggies, so I very much doubt they were getting good, clean food elsewhere.
 
I found it both shocking and tragic. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions and they did eat lots of whole, naturally-raised foods; perhaps they had a farm like me, and only ventured to town to get those items they couldn’t produce.
 
But I’m going to guess that was probably not the case.
 
I think we have this wrong idea that if we’re deficient or suffering some ailment, it’s as simple as isolating that one thing we need and taking THAT.
 
But what if it’s more complex than that? What if science hasn’t discovered all there is to know about the various compounds and chemicals in food? (Hint: it HASN’T.)
 
I have an antique book fetish, especially antique farming books! I once found a book on poultry production that was published around 1921. It has a section that discusses vitamins, and it says something to the effect of, “We are aware of these new things called vitamins, and we know they’re important, but we’re not really sure of anything else about them.” It hasn’t even been 100 years since vitamins were widely accepted as useful. Ponder that for a moment!
 
What if someone came up to you and told you this: “I have made this discovery of this great new thing—it can transform everything about you—your hair, your skin, your intestines, your reproductive health.” And then they told you that The Thing was to go home, scrub and peel some potatoes and carrots, and make yourself a pot of homemade chicken soup.
 
Talk about anticlimactic, right? How could chicken soup solve my problems?? I thought you were going to tell me about some great new scientific discovery!
 
But aren’t we all guilty of looking for something newer and shinier to solve our old problems? You can ask Matt about my “meal planning” history, and he’ll laugh out loud. I’m always coming up with new ideas to solve my age-old problem of not being disciplined enough to write out a meal plan and knuckle down and DO IT. 
 
When it comes to finding a farm, researching their practices, going to the farm stand, buying what’s in stock, then having to prep and cook and store and clean, and finally, after all that, the 3-year-old still complains that he doesn’t like it! It’s so much EASIER to just buy the bottle of pills, isn’t it? That saves you from eating weird foods you don’t feel like eating just because they “have vitamins.” Hey, if we could all subsist on chocolate, popcorn, ginger ale, and multivitamins, why not? But I think there’s more to the story…
 
I did a fun little podcast many years ago with a dietitian friend of mine, and she told the story of the time she was taking a course on children’s nutrition. Scientists had isolated a compound in blueberries that promotes immunity. So they took the compound and tried to spray it onto breakfast cereals (that’s where most of the “fortified” nutrients come from, you know), but they couldn’t produce the same results from the isolated additive as from the actual blueberries. She wanted to shout out in the class, “Just eat the blueberries!”
 
EXACTLY. Maybe it’s not the random chemicals we’ve identified in foods. Maybe it’s the foods themselves.
 
What if instead of taking iron, you ate iron-rich foods like liver, which also contain things like zinc and manganese and various enzymes and fatty acids that all help that iron molecule make it to where it belongs in your body?
 
I’m NOT saying that supplements aren’t useful or necessary. We often get into predicaments where our bodies simply cannot get enough of “the things” they need from food alone. Some supplements, like probiotics and fermented cod liver oil, help us get more out of our food over the long haul, and are really more like foods themselves than just isolated chemical concoctions. Even if we find that we need to supplement a mineral here or there, doesn’t it makes sense to try to eat foods that contain “the thing” naturally, in order to augment our supplementation?
 
In other words, I don’t think it works to continue eating processed junk, and simply take a multivitamin. Supplements do NOT cover a multitude of bad foods. 😉 Sometimes getting healthy is really as simple and non-glamorous as going to bed on time, moving your body every day, and eating normal, real food made at home from good ingredients (like chicken soup!). I’m afraid that, like with most things worth having, there’s no silver pill. Thank goodness the solution tastes way better than any supplement! 🙂

Is Spinach Really A Superfood?

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I was recently reminded that the world at large perceives that vegetables are healthier than meats, though no one really seems to know why. You often hear the word “superfood” associated with health-food-store favorites like kale, spinach, blueberries, and walnuts. You never think about foods like salami and cheddar cheese, mostly because they are salty, fatty, and generally considered to be deliciously unhealthy.

But on a per-calorie basis (because whether we practice it or not, we can probably all agree that the purpose of eating is not to avoid hunger, but rather to collect nutrients for our bodies), which foods are most nutritious?

Being a graduate from an engineering program, I wanted to look at the numbers. At first glance, as I’ve talked about before, the nutrient contents of many animals foods far outweigh many of the popular, so-called healthful foods. Check out the results. Wow!

  • 2.8 times as much vitamin A in Beef Liver than in Spinach!
  • 30% more phosphorus in chicken liver than walnuts!
  • Infinitely more vitamin D in Salami than any of the plant foods (vitamin D is only found in animal foods).

Sure, walnuts won for magnesium content, and kale won for Vitamin C. Even spinach had way more vitamin K than any of the animal foods (but I have my own theory on that, and it has to do with animals being able to eat grasses and greens—the USDA numbers came from factory farmed animals, no doubt. I suspect that grass-fed animals would have large amounts of vitamin K in their meats, etc). Plant foods offer many micronutrients, flavors, and variety to our diets, but are they really “healthier” than animal foods?

Let’s compare them on a per-calorie basis. We will follow the evidence where it leads.

So then I fanangled my spreadsheet and spinach was the winner on most counts on a per-calorie basis, by a long shot.

Ouch. My theory just went out the window. We all want maximum nutrition, minimal calories, right? But wait a minute. Spinach is a low calorie food, mostly because it’s 90% water. So I can get plenty of nutrients per calorie, but I have to eat LOTS of spinach to get a significant number of calories that are so richly associated with nutrients.

Let’s compare NUTRIENTS versus mass of these two foods, then, and see how much spinach I’d have to eat to get the same overall nutrients as I would from a serving of beef liver.

Though spinach is much more nutrient-dense on a per-calorie basis than beef liver, spinach is not as calorie-dense. So to compare apples to apples, let’s figure out how much spinach it would take to get the equivalent nutrients. First I converted it to weight, but hardly any modern American cooks use a scale in the kitchen—for food, we like volume. So I converted grams to cups, based on the USDA’s estimate that one cup of raw spinach contains 30 grams of this green “superfood.” Now for the comparison.

For some nutrients, like potassium and folate, it only took a few cups of spinach (2.1 and 4.5). That’s easy. That’s like a salad or a slice of spinach quiche. Yum!

But for many of the other nutrients, including phosphorus, zinc, riboflavin, niacin, B6, and Vitamin A, it was more like 9 cups or 33 cups or even 80 cups, or 5 pounds, of spinach! That’s a lot of spinach! A cow could handle that, but not humans with our small mouths, small stomachs, and short digestive tracts! And even then, I’d be missing some vital micronutrients, like niacin. So if I’m stuck eating spinach, maybe I’ll take a multivitamin for the niacin (or just eat some salami). But at least I could keep my calorie intake low, right? Let’s see…

It’s not a totally valid way of looking at it—as they say, if your feet are on ice and your head is on fire, on average you feel pretty good—but I was curious what the overall average amount of spinach was to reach the beef liver nutrient content. Just under 20 cups of spinach! OK, so maybe if I cook the spinach down really well, that’s not so bad.

But back to calories. After all, humans are (or are supposed to be, right?) into low calories, high nutrients. So if I managed to eat 20 cups of spinach to get the same general nutrient content as a 100 gram, or quarter-pound serving of beef liver, I would consume approximately 138 calories. Wait a minute. A quarter-pound serving of beef liver only has 175 calories. We’re talking less than 40 calories difference for (roughly) the same nutrient content!

Now, I am not arguing that you should eradicate spinach from your diet and only ever eat beef liver again. I’m not even agreeing that the calorie theory works (i.e. eat fewer calories, lose more weight), because I don’t think it does. What I am saying, though, is that it is incorrect to assume that plants have more nutrition–per bite, per calorie, per pound, whatever—than animal foods. Overall, they don’t. Plants contain great things for human nutrition and provide lovely textures, flavors, smells, and nutrients to our diets—but according to my research, they shouldn’t be used in place of animal foods—they should be used to complement them!

So next time you see a “superfoods” list come out on the news, consider your capacity for eating, and choose foods that provide the nutrients AND calories that you need to thrive, without you having to spend all day chewing!