Claire

1) The chlorophyll alone would earn Leafy Greens a place on this list. (If you haven’t seen the short video clip Scotlyn linked in the comments of last post check it out.) But chlorophyll is extremely fragile and leaves are packed with antioxidants to protect it. When it breaks down the green fades and you can see the yellow or red  pigments underneath. 

The ratio of surface area to volume tracks the nutritional value of foods very well. Kale is more nutritious than broccoli for example (apparently broccoli leaves are the most nutritious part!) Eat them fresh or lightly cooked. Light cooking can make some leafy greens more digestible and some nutrients more bioavailable. Avoid overcooking, when veggies go grey the chlorophyll has broken down and you’ve lost the antioxidants too.

2) Kale usually tops the list of nutrient dense veggies. Like parsley and nettle, it’s a great antidote to a SAD diet. The whole Cabbage Family is a powerhouse of nutrition that goes far beyond the green. The white in cabbage and cauliflower is another antioxidant flavonoid, more stable and with similar benefits to the other colours. 

The cabbage family contains a group of powerful anti-cancer chemicals called sulforaphanes. Sulforphanes, like other anti-oxidants, are part of the plant’s defence mechanisms. They are the source of that distinctive cabbage odour and they are activated and released when the plant is damaged. Chopping, chewing, or massaging (as is done for kale salads) is needed to get them going. Sulforaphane is also easily damaged by overcooking but is remarkably stable in ferments.   

3) Garlic, discussed last time, is the most potent of the Alliums and the other members of that family, onions, leeks, shallots, and chives, all share some of the same medicinal properties. Allicin, that distinctive onion scent and infamous tear-jerker, and it’s metabolites, are sulphur based molecules. Antioxidant, anticancer, and anti microbial, garlic also supports both heart and brain health.

4) I covered Mushrooms in part 2 of this series. Here I will just say that studies of health outcomes for people who work in mushroom production in Japan (and presumably eat more than average amounts of mushrooms) have confirmed the health benefits of the many kinds of mushroom popular there. Unfortunately, there are no studies of the button mushrooms and portabellos popular here.  Unlike veggies, mushrooms benefit from being well cooked with some sources recommending cooking them in both fat and water.

5) Oil rich Nuts and Seeds are top sources of fat soluble vitamins and anti-oxidants. Sunflower seeds top the list for Vitamin E; Brazil nuts are number one for selenium. Selenium is a precursor to glutathione the primary antioxidant our bodies produce. 

Nuts and seeds also contain lipid micronutrients called phytosterols that have immune modulating properties. They calm down overactive immune systems. Extracts of beta-sitosterol,  from sunflower seeds, are used therapeutically for auto-immune conditions.

Nuts and seeds are best eaten whole and fresh. They go rancid quickly once their antioxidants are depleted. Apparently our tastebuds can detect rancidity levels as low as 2%; an indication of how bad rancid fats are for us. Seed oils can go rancid in our bodies if we don’t have the antioxidants to protect them. Flaxseed, hempseed and walnuts are the most fragile as they have the highest content of desirable polyunsaturated fats. 

6) Cold Water Fish and Seafood contain another kind of polyunsaturated fat that is essential for heart and brain and a myriad of other things. Deficiencies of “essential” nutrients will have an impact on all kinds of body functions. They are also packed with antioxidants to protect those fragile fats. The pink in salmon (and flamingos) is a carotenoid derived from krill and other plankton that need the polyunsaturated oils to function in cold water and a way of protecting from sun damage.

7) Fermented foods are hugely popular these days and for once I’m all in with promoting the trend. Fermentation is the only food preservation method that increases the nutritional value of food. Every other technique involves some loss of nutrients. Ferments add probiotics and enzymes; they make fibre more digestible and they release nutrients that would otherwise require long chewing or long cooking. Regular consumption of fermented foods increases the proliferation of gut flora; your best defence from ingested pathogens. A strong intestinal microbiome is a key support for strong immune function.

Fermented foods are good for digestion; they are anti-inflammatory; anti-toxin; anti-cancer. The strong flavours may be unappealing to some but the value to your body is so great that, given the chance, your tastebuds will  adjust.

8) As well as the flavonoids that give them colour, organically grown grapes produce anti-fungals on their skin which have specific anticancer properties. Commercial growers use carcinogenic anti fungal sprays that eliminate the need to produce these protective chemicals. Grape seeds, crushed in your molars when you eat grapes, are the primary food source of the immunity enhancing anti-cancer flavonoid resveratrol. Grape seed oil, often recommended for high temperature frying, has a high smoke point because it is so rich in antioxidants. The oil doesn’t burn until they’ve been destroyed.

9) Brown Rice is similar to the rice that was available before the advent of mechanical polishing. In addition to the insoluble fibre which feeds the intestinal flora and has a critical function in scouring the lower bowel, rice bran provides several of the  B-vitamins and contains a substance called gamma oryzonol which has a myriad of health benefits including immune support . 

Other whole grains also have some of these benefits. Oats, either whole, steel cut, or slow cooking rolled oats, has many similar benefits as well as specific benefit for heart health and weight management. But grinding grains into flour changes the picture considerably. Even quick cooked oats don’t seem to deliver the same results. Finely ground flours go stale (or rancid in the case of an oil rich grain like oats) quickly and the fast absorption of easily digested carbs can play havoc with blood sugar levels leading to food cravings and binge eating.

10) Bone Broth is specific for boosting immune function. The quasi-mystical reputation of chicken soup for colds and flu is well deserved. Immune cells are produced in bone marrow. Broken bone broth is easy to make and well worth the effort especially if you are paying the premium for free-range or pasture raised animals products. (Save the fat too, every scrap has value). Freeze the bones with vegetable scraps (except cabbage family) until there are enough to make a pot of stock or add the bones directly to long cooking soup, stew, and chilli.  Soup bones are often available at a very reasonable price from local meat producers or butchers.

More could be said about all of these and many more could be added to the list. But I’m stopping here. I will end with a saying from traditional Chinese medicine from the book “Healing with Whole Foods” by Paul Pitchford: “Taking medicine when you become sick is like planting a garden when you get hungry.” 

That’s it. Eat, enjoy, stay well.

Much of the conventional advice on eating well defaults to the facile “eat a balanced diet.” The idea is that if we eat a mix of grains, meat, veggies and fruit all will be well. At first glance many traditional diets contain a balance of plant and animal foods: combinations of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. If we look closer it becomes clear that all cuisines, all around the world, make choices about how to “balance” these macronutrients. 

Weston Price’s monumental survey of food-ways around the world showed traditional diets that ranged from mainly meat with very little plant foods, to mainly fish with a few vegetables and no grains, to mainly vegetables and rice with very little meat/fish.  The only commonalities were that the food was fresh, local, and seasonal.

The people surveyed had been eating the same things all their lives and for many generations. All of them were healthy. Their diets were determined by what was available and were shaped by the demands of making a living in their environment. Degeneration didn’t set in until they started switching to modern industrial food.  

It’s worth taking some time to contemplate the journey of our modern industrial food from it’s source to our plates. As Scotlyn mentioned in her comment on my first post, this is a “spiritual and etheric journey” as well as a physical one. The food on our plates is an accumulation of the energies from the place it was grown or raised; the handling and processing it has received; and of the people who grew and processed it.

Scotlyn also pointed out the relationship between between the eater and the eaten and between the eater and the environment. These relationships are weakened by the long links of connection and damaged by the harms done in industrial production. Our relationships to the places we call home are strengthened by eating what is locally produced and seasonally available.

The value of a food can never be reduced to a single component or a single parameter. Food and eating has social and emotional elements as well. Even focussing on the physical aspects of food, as we are here, reveals many complexities. 

Whole foods always contain combinations of macronutrients. Animal products are high fat proteins; legumes are high protein carbs. Oil rich nuts and seed are a mix of fat, protein, and carbs. Vegetables foods tend to be mainly carbs (including both soluble and insoluble fibre), but also have more or less protein and fat. All of them also contain specific  micronutrients that have specific roles in maintaining health and immunity.

As I mentioned last time the focus throughout human history has been on getting enough food; calories not nutrients was what mattered. The modern world contains unique nutritional challenges. We live in toxic soup. Our bodies need vitamins, minerals, bioflavonoids, and other specific micronutrients in sufficient quantities to to cope with the load. The micronutrients are the key to maintaining strong immune systems in our toxic world. And yet this is where our industrial food systems and the confusion of mis-information about nutrition really fails us. 

“Fresh” vegetables lose vitality in the long journey from field to plate. Oranges picked green to facilitate handling ripen en route and arrive at the market without any detectable Vitamin C. Depleted soils fortified with chemical fertilizers don’t provide the trace minerals needed for healthy plants or people. Water soluble vitamins are lost during food processing. Animals in feedlots don’t get the nutrients they need to be healthy or produce high quality fats and proteins.

Nutritional fads and diet “wisdom” also take a toll. Animal fats, demonized as unhealthy for many years, are an important source of the fat soluble vitamins A and D.  Butter and body fat from grass-fed dairy and beef cattle contain Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) converted from omega 6 oils in the grass. CLA is beneficial for weight management and is thought to be protect the heart and have anti-cancer properties.

Animals, pastured in areas unsuitable to field crops, or as part of a field crop rotation, convert grass and other non-edible plant matter into high quality humanly usable food which provide micronutrients that have already been converted into forms our bodies can use. (Animal products are currently being demonized as contributors to climate change and I could go on at length about the fallacies involved there, but that’s a whole different topic.)

The chemicals that give fruits and vegetables their colours are specific micronutrients. Each colour group has its own unique role in promoting health and strengthening immunity.  Beta carotene, for example, the orange in carrots and squash, is a water soluble precursor to Vitamin A. It is used for one of a series of steps that breaks down toxins and neutralizes them so they can be eliminated. Other vitamins, particularly C and  E,  and the minerals, selenium and zinc, are needed to make sure this process doesn’t stall out while the toxins are not yet fully neutralized. All of the colours in fruits and vegetables enhance immunity. Each different colour group has different  benefits. 

Other plant foods have other micronutrients that work in other ways. Nuts and seed, rich in Omega 6 oils  produce sterols and sterolins that are immune modulators. Omega 6 oils are the most recent addition to the list of nutritional “evils” but as part of whole food, complete with the anti-oxidants that prevent them from becoming damaged, they also contribute to healthy immunity. 

Edible mushrooms are another source of immune supportive micronutrients. Mushrooms and other fungi are a unique life forms, more closely related to animals than either fungi or animals are to plants. (Technically “mushrooms” are the fruiting body of a massive underground creature called “mycelium”. The mushroom is the apple; the mycelium is the tree.) They produce a class of complex carbohydrates called “polysaccharides.” These ultra long chain sugars tune up our immune systems and improve immune function. They also produce many other  complex chemicals with a range of benefits to human health.

In the next (and, I hope, final) post on food and health I will go into specific foods for immunity and the micronutrients they offer. Fair warning though, my list bears only a slight resemblance to the lists of exotic foods usually classed as “superfood.”