As a 'real food' advocate I write/talk/promote/teach about eating real food. The term 'real food' is a real trendy talking point at the moment and is actually defined differently for different people/groups. So I thought I would take a second to explain what that means to me.
food [food] n 1. something that nourishes, sustains, or supplies.
real [ree-uhl, reel] adj 1. true and actual; not artificial
How we eat/what we eat
- Whole foods that are more a product of nature than a product of industry
- Fruits and vegetables
- Full fat dairy products (look for minimal and recognizable ingredients)
- Brown rice
- A variety of beans
- Naturally raised meats (but that look like their origin, so that weeds out things like deli sandwich meat)
- Sustainable Seafood
- Pastured Eggs
- Water, milk, tea, 100% fruit juices and a very small amount of organic coffee– mostly water
- Dried fruit, seeds, nuts and popcorn
- Honey is the main sweetener, but I also use maple syrup, brown rice syrup, and coconut sugar
What we don't eat:
- White processed foods like white sugar, white rice and white bread
- Refined sweeteners such as sugar, corn syrup, cane juice, or artificial sweeteners
- Nothing out of a box, can, bag, bottle or package that has more than 5 ingredients listed on the label
- Nothing with ingredients that I couldn’t purchase individually at a
store — if I can’t pronounce it or recognize it as food, I try to avoid
it
- Processed oils
- Fast foods
- Low fat and non fat foods
- Food with gluten
I know that it seems like a big task to take on - To buy
no processed foods but like anything it is just creating new habits for yourself.
Many people defend their diets by saying "all things in moderation"....and as much I agree with this, I really believe that most people don't realize that the way they are eating couldn't be further from 'moderate'.
I read once that McDonalds is so bad for you that you should eat there twice a year
at most. That it takes the next 6 months for your body to recover from eating it. So even eating it twice a year, your body is in a constant state of recovering and healing from that one meal. Does that sound like moderation?
As an example, one 'healthy' buy. That
healthy bread that you are deliberately choosing because it is a 'healthy' choice - is it healthy? It would not meet the standard of eating 'real food' for many reasons, one being the number of ingredients and the quality of those ingredients
Various whole grains** (most of which are GMO'd)
Highly refined grains**
Sugar/Glucose-Fructose (Canada's labeling for High Fructose Corn Syrup) - linked to one of the causes of diabetes, obesity and cause of a condition known as metabolic syndrome, which includes abnormal weight gain, significant
increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition,
especially visceral fat around the belly.
Extra added gluten -some believe the raise in gluten intolerance is due to adding gluten to foods. Gluten is the protein found in most grains and is more digestible when eaten in the whole foods form. By refining the grain and separating out the gluten it is no longer a whole food and leaves out the important other ingredients that help with the digestibility of the gluten
Soluble Raisin Syrup - essentially
more sugar (made from soaking raisins in water and reducing to a syrup)
Soybean oil - a refined soy product, known to be a pseudo-estrogen
Mono-glycerides (a chemical emulsifier sometimes labeled as E471) A hydrogenated oil sourced from vegetable oils or animal fats. When the public caught on that partially hydrogenated oils were
unhealthy because of their affect on your cholesterol and their increase in the risk of strokes, diabetes and heart troubles, the FDA started to require labeling for trans fat content, BUT
only if it contains more than .49 g per serving, AND only if it comes
from triglycerides. Unfortunately, this is not too difficult rule to get around…simply
decrease the serving size, or disguise the trans fats somehow…by using
monoglycerides and diglycerides so they aren’t required to label the
food as containing trans fats. Another interesting result is that although the bread can and often is labeled as suitable for vegetarians it may actually contain animal products.
Calcium Propionate (a mold inhibitor) - a toxin to mold and a toxin for humans. In the small doses found in bread it can cause
- migraine and headaches
- stomach upsets
- skin rashes and nasal congestion
- depression, tiredness and irritability
- restlessness and inattention
Sodium Stearoyl -2-Lactylate (sometimes labelled as E920) - derived from hydrogenated vegetable oils and animal fats. see mono-glycerides
Acetylated Tartaric Acid Esters of Mono and Digycerides (sometimes labeled as DATEM) - emulsifier often derived from GM soya bean oil
**There is also growing evidence that grains, even in their whole form, are not good for you. In the North America, we're told that grains (especially whole
grains) are an important part of a balanced diet, necessary for
obtaining our daily requirement of healthy nutrients and fiber, and found as the largest portion of the food pyramid
According to a growing number of experts, including Dr.
Loren Cordain, a professor at Colorado State University and an expert on
Paleolithic lifestyles, humans are NOT designed to eat grains, and
doing so may actually be damaging to your gut. causing a condition called Leaky Gut.
Leaky gut is a condition that occurs due to the development of gaps
between the cells (enterocytes) that make up the membrane lining your
intestinal wall.
These tiny gaps allow substances such as undigested food, bacteria
and metabolic wastes, that should be confined to your digestive tract,
to escape into your bloodstream.
Once the intestinal lining is compromised, and
there is a flow of toxic substances "leaking out" into your bloodstream,
your body experiences significant increases in inflammation. Your immune system may also become confused and begin to attack your own body (autoimmunity).
Most often, leaky gut syndrome is associated with inflammatory bowel
diseases like Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, or celiac disease, but
even healthy people can have varying degrees of intestinal permeability
leading to a wide variety of health symptoms -- and this can be
influenced heavily by the foods you choose to eat.
Dr. Cordain explains
"There's no human requirement for grains. That's the problem with the
USDA recommendations. They think we're hardwired as a species to eat
grains. You can get by just fine and meet every single nutrient
requirement that humans have without eating grains. And grains are
absolutely poor sources of vitamins and minerals compared to fruits and
vegetables and meat and fish."
But the problem isn't only that there are superior
sources of nutrients; grains actually contain
anti-nutrients that may damage your health. Ironically, we're often told that whole grains are the best for
our health, the high-fiber bran portion of grain – part of the whole grain -- actually contains many of the
anti-nutrients.
Dr. Cordain
"Grains are the seeds of a plant. They're its reproductive material,
and plants don't make their reproductive material to give away for free
to other animals. If they did they'd become extinct, and so the
evolutionary strategy that many plants, particularly cereal grains have
taken to prevent predation is to evolve toxic compounds so that the
predator of the seeds can't eat them, so that they can put their seeds
in the soil where they're meant to be to grow a new plant and not in the
gut of an animal to feed it.
There is a growing body of scientific evidence showing that grains,
as well as legumes, contain these anti-nutrients and other problem substances
that may increase intestinal permeability. This anti-nutrients are:
Gliadin
Gliadin is the primary immunotoxic protein found in wheat gluten and
is among the most damaging to your health. Gliadin gives wheat bread its
doughy texture and is capable of increasing the production of the
intestinal protein zonulin, which in turn opens up gaps in the normally
tight junctures between intestinal cells (enterocytes).
In celiac disease the body will make antibodies to gliadin after it
is digested by the intestinal enzyme tissue transglutaminase, resulting
in severe autoimmune damage to the delicate, absorptive surfaces of the
intestines. It does not, however, require full blown celiac disease to
suffer from the adverse effects of this protein. In fact, it is likely
that our intolerance to gliadin and related wheat proteins is a
species-specific intolerance, applicable to all humans, with the
difference being a matter of the degree to which it causes harm.
This helps to explain why new research clearly shows gliadin increases intestinal permeability in both those with, and those without, celiac disease.
Lectins
Lectins are a key mechanism through which plants protect themselves
against being eaten, and are found in highest concentrations in their
seed form -- which makes sense, considering that seeds are the plants'
"babies" and whose survival ensures the continuation of their species.
When animals consume foods containing lectins, they may experience
digestive irritation, along with a wide range of other health
complaints. The degree to which the adverse effects are expressed
depends largely on how long that species has had to co-evolve with that
particular form of plant food it is eating. Since humans have only been
consuming unsprouted grains and beans in large amounts for
approximately 500 generations, we still suffer far more than certain
rodents and birds, who have had thousands of generations longer to adapt
to this way of eating.
We are mostly exposed to lectins from grains, beans, dairy products
and nightshade plants, such as potato, tomato, and chili peppers.
However, bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) has a prominent role to play in lectin-induced adverse effects, due to the fact that it is a relatively new form of wheat,
and contains wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) – a particularly resilient and
problematic lectin, considering it is not eliminated through sprouting
and is actually found in higher concentrations in whole wheat.
Studies indicate that it has the potential to contribute to a wide
range of adverse health effects, including gut inflammation and damage
to your gastrointestinal tract:
Pro-inflammatory--WGA stimulates the synthesis of pro-inflammatory chemical messengers (cytokines) in intestinal and immune cells, and has been shown to play a causative role in chronic thin gut inflammation
Immunotoxicity--WGA induces thymus atrophy in rats, and anti-WGA antibodies in human blood have been shown to cross-react with other proteins, indicating that they may contribute to autoimmunity .
In fact, WGA appears to play a role in celiac disease (CD) that is
entirely distinct from that of gluten, due to significantly higher
levels of IgG and IgA antibodies against WGA found in patients with CD, when compared with patients with other intestinal disorders.
Neurotoxicity--WGA can cross your blood-brain barrier through a process called "adsorptive endocytosis," pulling other substances with it. WGA may attach to your myelin sheath and is capable of inhibiting nerve growth factor, which is important for the growth, maintenance, and survival of certain target neurons.
Excitotoxicity--Wheat, dairy, and soy contain
exceptionally high levels of glutamic and aspartic acid, which makes
them all potentially excitotoxic. Excitotoxicity is a pathological process
where glutamic and aspartic acid cause an over-activation of your nerve
cell receptors, which can lead to calcium-induced nerve and brain
injury. These two amino acids may contribute to neurodegenerative
conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, Huntington's
disease, and other nervous system disorders such as epilepsy, ADD/ADHD
and migraines.
Cytotoxicity—WGA has been demonstrated to be cytotoxic to both normal and cancerous cell lines, capable of inducing either cell cycle arrest or programmed cell death (apoptosis).
Disrupts Endocrine Function—WGA may contribute to
weight gain, insulin resistance, and leptin resistance by blocking the
leptin receptor in your hypothalamus. It also binds to both benign and malignant thyroid nodules,
and interferes with the production of secretin from your pancreas,
which can lead to digestive problems and pancreatic hypertrophy.
Cardiotoxicity—WGA has a potent, disruptive effect on platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule-1, which plays a key role in tissue regeneration and safely removing neutrophils from your blood vessels.
Adversely Affects Gastrointestinal Function by causing
increased shedding of the intestinal brush border membrane, reducing the
surface area, and accelerating cell loss and shortening of villi. It
also causes cytoskeleton degradation in intestinal cells, contributing
to cell death and increased turnover, and decreases levels of heat shock proteins in gut epithelial cells, leaving them more vulnerable to damage.
As noted earlier, the highest amounts of WGA is found in whole wheat,
including its sprouted form, which is touted as being the most
healthful form of all ... The traditional ways of addressing many of
these anti-nutrients is, in fact, by sprouting, fermenting and cooking.
However, lectins are designed to withstand degradation through a wide
range of pH and temperatures. WGA lectin is particularly tough because
it's actually formed by the same disulfide bonds that give strength and
resilience to vulcanized rubber and human hair.
So if this is the impact of just your healthy bread choice, how moderate do you think your diet so now?
References:
Pesticide Action Network Pesticide Database
Food Intolerance Network Factsheets
Wageningen University Food-info.net
Dr. Mercola
Green Med Info
The National Library of Medicine via Pub Med
The FASEB Journal
