Food Principle #2: Eat Nutrient-Dense Foods

Every single day, indeed every minute, there is damage happening to your body. Blood corpuscles get crushed in your feet, the lining of your stomach gets dissolved by your stomach acid, liver cells get destroyed detoxifying your body. At the same time, your body is in a constant state of renewal and repair.

If the rate of repair in your body is greater than the rate of damage, you are healing and every day becoming stronger. If the rate of damage should exceed the rate of repair, then you move into a state of degeneration or decline. This is the essential principle that underpins the loss of health with age and the process of steady decline.

Have you ever noticed how some people are remarkably strong, agile and clear of thought even in advanced years? And in contrast, I’m sure we all know of people who feel (and maybe even look) like they are 80 when they are only 30 years old.

What is the difference?

Essentially, it is the relative rate of damage versus repair consistently over decades. Decades of consistent damage greater than repair results in progressive degeneration which people will commonly call aging. It isn’t. It’s mostly quite unnecessary.

So what you need to do is simple. Maximise the rate of repair and minimise the rate of damage.

This is why I have developed the Food Principles for you. Food Principle #2: Eat nutrient-dense food makes a major contribution to both reducing damage and increasing repair.

Macronutrients

I’m sure you all know of protein, carbohydrate and fat. These are called the three ‘macronutrients’ because they occur in large amounts in food – tens to hundreds of grams a day. In our modern western world, there is never any shortage of these macronutrients available to us. We do need to eat these three in some kind of balance but I really don’t think that focussing on this too much is that important.

So long as you eat something with protein in it at every meal (meat, dairy, eggs, nuts or seeds) and so long as you don’t try to eat low-fat, you will be fine as far as macronutrients are concerned.

The real problem in Australia is a serious lack of micronutrients.

Micronutrients

Micronutrients are things like vitamins, minerals, essential oils and anti-oxidants. These are things that we might eat as much as 3-6 grams per day for essential oils down to a tenth of a thousandth of a gram for selenium. Even though we only need them in small amounts, they are still vital to the proper functioning of your body. If they are insufficient, over time, we will become weak, lose brain function and develop disease.

The intelligence of your body uses these micronutrients to build and repair and also to minimise damage.

And Australians are deficient in micronutritents. In 2005, the Australian Bureau of Statistics analysed the micronutrient intake of Australians¹. They estimated the amount of 12 micronutrients in the Australian Diet. I then compared these with the published Recommended Daily Intake or RDI’s. The RDI is the amount that has been determined by the Australian and New Zealand governments as the “minimum amount of a nutrient that you can expect will avoid a deficiency state in most people”². Most natural health practitioners and nutritionists agree that the RDI, while sufficient to avoid an obvious deficiency state like scurvy, is certainly not enough to realise optimal health. My analysis revealed that more than half of Australians failed to get even the RDI of 5 of those 12 micronutrients. Worse still, every one of the 12 micronutrients measured was found to be deficient in large number of Australians.

One of those nutrients was folate. The signs of deficiency are often subtle and include depression, weakness, headaches, heart palpitations, irritability and low birth-weight babies³. Depression is a major problem in this country with some one million people (5% of the population⁴) managing it at any given time. Since 50% of women and 30% of men in this country are not even getting the RDI of folate, is this any surprise?

More than half of Australians fail to get even the RDI for zinc. Deficiency results in hair loss, acne, loss of eyesight, taste and memory. Many of these are things that people assume to be normal with teen years or old age. I guess you could say it is ‘normal’ because most Australians are deficient in zinc. But not optimal.

The most important step you can take to maximise your nutrition is to choose food that is high in nutrients – what I call nutrient-dense foods.

Nutrient-Dense Foods

As you might expect, not all foods are created equal when it comes to their nutritive value. Say you eat one kilogram of food per day. Does it make sense that you would want to make sure that every gram you eat contains as much life-sustaining nutrients as possible? Eliminating the bulk of nutrient deficiencies, and better yet maximising the nutrients available to the intelligence of your body to work with, is simply a matter of choosing nutrient-dense foods.

If you are eating nutrient-sparse foods and have nutritional deficiencies, how do you imagine that will affect your desire for food? Your brain knows that nutrients come from food and that you are nutrient depleted. The only way your brain knows to fix this situation is to eat, so you become hungry. Eating nutrient-sparse foods – like grains and low-fat food – leaves you soon feeling hungry. Eating nutrient-dense foods keeps you long satisfied as your body’s nutrient needs have been met.

Nutrient-sparse foods unfortunately are not sparse when it comes to macronutrients and calories so they make you fat. This is one of the major reasons obesity is such a big problem in our society today. Since they fill you up but don’t meet your body’s nutrition needs, you could even say they are starving your body of health-giving nutrition while efficiently feeding your fat cells.

It won’t come as a surprise to you now, but low-fat diets have finally got the official stamp of rejection. In 2008, the Cochrane Library published a paper called, “WITHDRAWN: Advice on low-fat diets for obesity.”⁵ The Cochrane Library does regular reviews of the research literature to draw conclusions used for public policy and even they have now stated categorically that low-fat eating is not good for weight loss. I’ve been telling my patients this for the last 15 years.

So here is my solution: with each mouthful you eat, ask yourself: “Am I feeding or am I starving my body?” Every mouthful counts.

But does that mean you can only eat broccoli? No. The design of your body is not cruel. There are plenty of nutrient-dense foods you can eat that taste great.

Superfoods

In fact, some foods are so rich in nutrients, you can fairly call them ‘Superfoods’. You may have heard this term used in relation to weird things like bee pollen, seaweed or goji berries but in fact, your supermarket is just full of superfoods among the regular products that you might buy, if only you know which ones they are. Today, I’m going to make sure you know just which foods in your supermarket are the most health-giving of all.

There are many different important micronutrients and one of those is a class of nutrients called antioxidants. Oxygen is used by the cells of your body to produce energy more efficiently but oxygen is also toxic causing serious cumulative damage to your cells especially to the mitochondria which are the main energy generators in your cells and to your most precious DNA. The role of the antioxidant is to trap the oxygen before it can cause this damage.

In 2007, the US Department of Agriculture published a landmark report listing the antioxidant power of 277 common foods⁶. They used what has now becoming the standard for measuring antioxidant power, the ORAC scale (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity). The antioxidant power of many common foods is quite remarkable and the lack of antioxidant power of some other common foods is equally remarkable. I have analysed this report in the Australian context and made a list of the ten most powerful anti-oxidant foods that money can buy. They are more powerful than mangosteen juice, goji berries or the acai fruit. These are all very rich sources of antioxidants, but no better than the ones in my list below, they are not readily available in Australia and they are very expensive.

Some of the powerful antioxidant foods are spices that you can only eat 1 or 2 grams of while others you can eat in greater quantity. Ground cloves and ground cinnamon top the list for pure ORAC power but you can only eat so much of them. Cocoa powder is 4 times less powerful but you can easily eat 10 times as much. What I have done is to list them here in descending order of how much antioxidant power you can get from a reasonable serve:

The top 10 ORAC Superfoods in your supermarket:

1. Dark 85% chocolate (Aust)
2. Cocoa, dry powder, unsweetened (Aust)
3. Red wine
4. Oranges
5. Apples, raw with skin
6. Pecans, walnuts and pistachios (Aust, US)
7. Artichokes
8. Ground cinnamon (Aust)
9. Dried oregano (Aust)
10. Plums, black diamond, with peel, raw

(I've made it easy for you by putting links to where you can get these in brackets after each superfood. If you are in Australia/NZ/SE Asia, click on 'Aust', otherwise, click on 'US')

In fact, studies have shown that cocoa is such a powerful antioxidant that on its own, it can reduce blood pressure and improve blood vessel function. When it comes to bang for your buck, cocoa powder wins hands down. Now remember, this is not drinking cocoa which is 60% sugar along with who-knows-what other additives. Just straight cocoa. I recommend eating some every day. Maybe some hot chocolate; choco-oats are a favourite for breakfast with my kids.

Look out though. Most milk chocolate also contains a lot of sugar and chemical additives. Compound chocolate used in many chocolate bars is made with dangerous trans-fats. Read the ingredients carefully.

You will also see many products trying to ride on the back of this antioxidant awareness. You can find bars in the ‘health food’ shop with goji berries... and puffed rice, high-fructose corn syrup, glucose, wheat flour, sugar and margarine. One healthy ingredient and then all the same old toxic ingredients. I strongly recommend you avoid most manufactured products. The healthiest products have just one ingredient. For example, the ingredients in real milk is: ‘milk’. The ingredients in real cocoa says: ‘cocoa’. The ingredients in green tea says: ‘green tea’. Once you see a list, you will often find toxic additives. Keep it simple.

Fruit with the skin is very rich in antioxidants. All spices and herbs are remarkably antioxidant-rich. Beans are also a great source. You will get more antioxidants by making sure you eat some of each of these foods every day than from any antioxidant supplement you might buy.

Vegetables, meat and dairy are rich sources of vitamins and minerals. Make sure you eat plenty of them. Again, flour-based foods such as bread, pasta, cakes and rice, etc. are really nutrient-sparse foods. They starve your body while they feed your fat cells and set you up for diabetes. If you do eat grains, eat them in small quantities and choose whole grains such as rolled oats or pearl barley in soups.

Superfoods for a Healthy Colon

I have a BluePrint devoted to the importance of keeping your digestive tract healthy – how to get it well and keep it that way. For now, just make sure you include some of the following foods in your diet every day: onion, garlic, leek or artichoke. Oat (especially oat bran) is also good for this.

Just a sec – eat steak, eat chocolate? ...

So just what am I saying here? Eat steak, it’s good for you – just make sure it is pasture-fed and preferably organic. Eat chocolate; it’s good for you too. Fry your eggs in butter – they taste best that way anyway, just don’t burn them. Sea salt is fine – just not table salt. Nuts are not fattening. Eating fat does not make you fat – you are much more likely to get fat eating low-fat (ironically – it’s a marketers dream and don’t they cash in on it!) Don’t worry about cholesterol or saturated fat in your diet.

Whoa! It sounds like I am saying that healthy food is actually the yummy food you want to eat anyway. That is exactly it – you have been designed to want the food that is good for you. It’s just that things have been twisted out of shape by technology – artificial sweeteners, msg, sugar, flour and trans fats.

As you can see, there are plenty of really healthy foods you can eat that taste great. Eating nutrient-dense foods is crucial to achieving optimal health. Remember, with each mouthful you eat, ask yourself: “Am I feeding or am I starving my body?”

Yours in Optimal Health,

Richard Sawyer.

Key Message

• Our body needs good nutrients as the building blocks for our Innate Intelligence to build and repair.
• Food is made of Macronutrients – protein, carbohydrate and fat. So long as you eat protein regularly and don’t eat low-fat, you really don’t need to pay the macronutrients much attention.
• Eat a nutrient-dense diet. Every nutrient-sparse food you eat makes you weaker. Every nutrient-dense food makes you stronger, healthier, live longer and think more clearly.

Making It Real

1. With each mouthful you eat, ask yourself: “Am I feeding or am I starving my body?”
2. Liberally use herbs, spices, cocoa and dark chocolate.
3. Eat onion, garlic, leek or artichoke every day.

References

1. McLennan W, Podger A. National Nutrition Survey. Nutrient Intakes and Physical Measurements. Australia. 1995.

2. Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand. 2006.

3. Haslam N, Probert CS. An audit of the investigation and treatment of folic acid deficiency. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 1998;91(2):72-3. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9602741.

4. National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing.

5. Summerbell CD, Cameron C, Glasziou PP. WITHDRAWN: Advice on low-fat diets for obesity. Cochrane database of systematic reviews (Online). 2008;(3):CD003640. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18646093.

6. Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) of Selected Foods - 2007. 2007.