Plant Foods Provide the Nutritional Building Blocks
for Optimum Health
To understand why the McDougall Program is
such powerful medicine, you must start by recognizing that plant foods are the
most abundant sources of nutrition on earth. Nutrients are the raw materials
your body needs to function properly and can generally be split into two types
– the ones your body can make by itself and the ones it can derive only from
your food. The latter are called “essential” nutrients.
There are 13 essential vitamins. Eleven are
made in abundance by plants. The two that are not produced by plants are
vitamins D and B12, both of which are stored in your tissues for long periods
of time. You’ll get enough vitamin D with adequate exposure to sunlight and B12
can be easily supplemented. I tell pregnant and nursing women, and people who
follow my diet strictly for more than 3 years, to take five micrograms of
vitamin B12 daily.
Animal Foods Have Little Nutritional Value
There’s no comparison between animal foods
and plant foods when it comes to providing immune-boosting and cancer-fighting
nutrients. Animal foods are either exceedingly low or devoid of antioxidants
and tend to offer concentrated amounts of individual nutrients, like protein or
calcium, while being deficient in many others. By contrast, plant
foods are rich in antioxidants and provide a wide spectrum of vitamins,
minerals, and other health-promoting nutrients.
Only plants contain powerful substances
called phytochemicals, which scientists are now discovering protect us from
cancer, heart disease, and an array of other serious illnesses. Plants are also
the primary source of all minerals in our diet. Minerals are derived from the
earth and make their way into the food supply via plants. The only reason
animal foods contain any minerals at all is because the animals eat plants, or
they eat animals that eat plants. And plants offer our only sources of dietary
fiber, which binds in our intestines with fat, cholesterol, environmental
pollutants and disease-causing hormones to eliminate these dangers from the
body. Fiber also decreases intestinal transit time and promotes healthy bowel
elimination.
You Don’t Need Milk to Get Calcium
Plant foods contain generous amounts of
calcium. A cup of cooked collard greens contains about 360 mg of calcium, while
a cup of milk contains about 300 mg. A cup of cooked kale contains 210 mg.
There is NO disorder known as “dietary calcium deficiency” – in other words,
there is plenty of calcium in all plant food diets to meet the needs of both
children and adults alike. Osteoporosis is not a disease that results from too
little calcium, but primarily from acids derived from too much animal protein
that rob the body of calcium and thus weaken bones. A diet based on starches
with a plentiful supply of fruits and vegetables, combined with modest
exercise, will preserve skeletal strength and even regain lost bone mass.
All the Protein You Need – Without the Meat
Protein is extremely misunderstood. First,
you should know that plants contain protein and all of the essential amino acids
needed to build it. Second, animal foods are not necessary to get the protein
your body needs – indeed, all the protein you need and more can be easily
derived from plant foods alone.
The World Health Organization (WHO)
recommends men, women, and children get five percent of their calories from
protein. The chart below reveals the protein levels of selected plants and as
you can see it’s virtually impossible to fail to meet the WHO’s daily
requirements.
Percentage of calories
derived from protein
|
Food
|
%
|
Rice
|
8
|
Corn
|
12
|
Baked Potato
|
10
|
Pinto Beans
|
24
|
Broccoli
|
43
|
Cauliflower
|
33
|
Zucchini
|
17
|
Orange
|
9
|
Strawberries
|
8
|
Americans are Getting Too Much Protein
Americans consume 6 to 10 times as much
protein as they need. All that excess protein overworks the liver and kidneys
causing both to become enlarged and injured. Excess protein consumption also
causes the kidneys to pull large quantities of calcium from the body, causing
bones to weaken and kidney stones to form.
Scientists have found that animal proteins
are particularly damaging to the body because so many of their amino acids
contain sulfa, which is far more toxic to the liver and kidneys than vegetable
proteins. One of the most time-honored approaches to healing the kidneys and
liver, in fact, is to eat a low-protein diet, especially a diet low in animal
proteins. When the protein content of the diet drops, kidneys are strengthened
and very often healed.
What the World Needs Now is Carbohydrates – and Lots of Them
Carbohydrates are our primary source of
energy. They alone provide energy for red blood cells, and certain cells of the
kidneys, and they’re the preferred fuel for the central nervous system, including
the brain. Fat, on the other hand, is a secondary source of energy that can be
used by some tissues, such as muscle, but is more often stored for use in times
of famine.
Humans were designed by nature to crave
carbohydrates. With their unique combination of sweet flavor, energy and
nutrition, carbohydrates regulate our hunger drive. There are no carbohydrates
in red
meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, or eggs, and most dairy products contain
little if any. Cheese, for example, contains only two percent. This is an
important reason why people who eat a diet rich in animal foods rarely feel
satisfied and become compulsive overeaters. Unless you eat enough
carbohydrate foods, you’ll remain hungry and crave more food.
Unprocessed plant foods like brown rice,
potatoes, squash, broccoli, and apples (just to name a few) are loaded with
complex carbohydrates – long chains of sugars that must be broken down inside
your intestine before they can be used as fuel. The process of digesting these
complex carbohydrates is slow and methodical, providing a steady stream of fuel
pumped into your bloodstream as long-lasting energy. On the McDougall diet, 70%
– 90% percent of your calories are derived from complex carbohydrates,
providing you with all the nutrients you need for optimum health, plus a high
level of vitality and endurance.
A Lesson in Nutrition
Nutrients are substances that our bodies
need for their maintenance, repair, and growth. Our foods contain the following
basic nutrients: carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and water.
A. The Four Macronutrients
1. Carbohydrates are the body’s
most efficient way to get everything it needs. Produced by plants through
photosynthesis, carbohydrates are made from compounds of carbon, hydrogen and
oxygen called sugars or saccharides. Molecules of these simple sugars attach
together to make long branching chains called complex carbohydrates. These large carbohydrate molecules are
commonly referred to as starch.
When eaten, enzymes disassemble these
chains back into the simple sugars. These simple sugars then pass easily
through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream for distribution to all the
cells in your body. Metabolic processes change these simple sugars into energy.
Dietary fibers are even longer chains of
complex carbohydrates – so complex that they don’t get entirely digested. Most
fibers eventually end up in the colon and form the bulk of your stool. Many
people think fibers are only the husks of grains and the long stringy
components in fruits and vegetables, but dietary fibers are present in all
plant tissues. Even peeled potatoes, for example, contain lots of fiber.
2. Fats are also complex
molecules made up of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. While not as easily digested
as sugars, fats remain an important nutrient and source of energy. Fats are
divided into two categories: saturated
fats (solid at room temperature), most commonly found in animal tissues,
and unsaturated fats (liquid), most
commonly found in plants. Our bodies can synthesize most fats from
carbohydrates. These are said to be “nonessential” fats because we don’t need
to get them from what we eat. There are only a few unsaturated fats we need to
be healthy that our bodies can’t make by themselves. To get these “essential”
fats, we have to eat them.
3. Proteins provide the raw
materials for a large part of the functional and structural components of our
bodies. Only as a last resort are they used as a source of energy. All proteins
are built from various combinations of the same 22 relatively simple molecules
called amino acids. Think of amino acids like the letters of an alphabet that
can form a whole dictionary of words with different meanings. Those “different
words” are all the different proteins found in nature. Proteins are found in
all foods, both plant and animal, and our bodies can make most of them from
scratch. Only eight of the 22
amino acids are “essential.” Just like the unsaturated fats above, we have
to get these eight essential amino acids from our food for us to enjoy good
health.
4. Water makes up a large
part of our foods, too. Although it yields no energy, water is an essential
element for life. It’s not just a passive solvent in which salts, compounds and
gasses interact; water participates actively in forming building blocks of
cells and is the environment in which cells live. About 60 percent of your body
is actually water!
Because these four nutrients make up the
largest portion of any food by weight, they are often referred to as
macronutrients. Our foods also contain two micronutrients – vitamins and minerals
– that make up only a tiny percentage of our food by weight.
B. Micronutrients
Vitamins are organic compounds that are
synthesized for the most part only by plants and bacteria (though humans and
most large mammals can synthesize vitamin D with the help of sunlight). Because
of this, our supply of vitamins must come from plant foods and our own bowel
bacteria. “Vita” means life, and as the name indicates, vitamins are
essential for our existence. Without them we get sick.
Minerals are micronutrients that come from
inorganic matter, primarily the earth, and are also essential in our food for
good health. Minerals participate in thousands of metabolic reactions that take
place throughout the body. For example, iron in the enzyme hemoglobin
transports oxygen in our red blood cells. Some minerals are important elements
in our structural material, like calcium which is a large part of bones and
teeth.
C. Non-Nutrients
Our foods also contain various
non-nutrients, substances that are not necessary for life or good health. Many
of these substances, such as cholesterol, pesticides, herbicides, and
additives, present real threats to our health. Even though these non-nutrients
make up a small amount by weight of our foods, their health significance can be
great, causing problems like heart disease and cancer.
Carbohydrates: A Closer Look
Carbohydrates are made by plants and stored
in their leaves, stems, roots and fruits. Plant foods contain both simple and
complex carbohydrates in various amounts. Fruits are often more than 90 percent
carbohydrate, but most of their carbohydrates are the sweet-tasting simple
forms of carbohydrate, such as glucose and fructose. Green and yellow
vegetables store most of their calories as complex carbohydrates, but since
they contain very few total calories, the amount of complex carbohydrate they
provide in the diet is small. Whole grains (rice and corn), whole grain flours
(wheat and rye, as well as whole grain pastas made from them, such as wheat and
soba noodles), tubers (potatoes and yams), legumes (beans and peas), and winter
squashes (acorn and hubbard) contain large quantities of complex carbohydrates
and thus are known as starches. Rice, corn, and other grains, as well as
potatoes, typically store about 80 percent of their calories in the form of
complex carbohydrates. Beans, peas, and lentils are approximately 70 percent
complex carbohydrates.
Starches contain sufficient calories to
easily meet the energy requirements of an active person, and they’re also abundant
in essential amino acids (from proteins), essential fats, fibers, and minerals.
Many starches, such as the much-maligned potato, have a full complement of
vitamins as well, whereas grains and legumes need the help of fruits or green
and yellow vegetables in order to provide adequate vitamin A and C.
You’ve probably heard that marathon runners
and other endurance athletes “load up” on carbohydrates before an event in
order to store energy-providing carbohydrates for the long race. They do this
because it works. Loading up on
carbohydrates several times a day will give you the energy to race through your
busy life.
The only food from animals in which a
carbohydrate is found in significant amounts is milk which contains a simple
sugar called lactose, but lactose
can’t be digested by most adults, and consequently, can cause assorted
evidences of indigestion, such as diarrhea, stomach cramps, and hurtful amounts
of gas.
In general, Americans eat far too few
calories from carbohydrates – only about 40%. To make things worse, the kinds
of carbohydrates eaten most commonly are “empty calories” in the form of white
sugar, corn syrup, and fructose. A healthy diet, like the McDougall diet, is
closer to 80% carbohydrate from nutritious foods: starches, vegetables and
fruits.
Percent of calories found as carbohydrates in various foods
*When we hear or read the word sugar, most
of us think of granular white table sugar. Unlike the simple sugars found in
ripe fruit, this kind of sugar should be eaten only in limited quantities.
After the refining process, it contains no fibers, proteins, essential fats,
vitamins or minerals. It is purely concentrated sugar. Nothing could better
deserve the descriptive term “empty calories,” because calories are all it
provides. Although refined sugar can provide energy, too much refined sugar in
the diet can lead to tooth decay, obesity, and high levels of triglycerides.
When “empty calories” make up a substantial part of the diet, the result is a
nutritional imbalance that weakens the body’s defense and repair systems,
making us susceptible to diseases from infection to cancer.
Fibers are made only by plants and found
only in vegetable foods. There is no fiber in beef, pork, chicken, lobster,
cheese, egg, or other animal-derived foods.
Grams of fiber present in portions of food that yield 100
calories
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