Anti-Nutrients

I just finished watching an awesome 28-minute video from Dr. Georgia Ede about nutrition. The discussion was supposed to be on depression, but as everything that is part of the body, nutrition also drives mental health or illnesses. So before I could count till five, she was discussing nutrition.

In case you are short on time, I have screen captured five essential slides from her presentation that I will post here and explain what is what.

This is what your brain composition is like:

• 2/3 of your brain is made of fat
• 20% of your brain is DHA fat, that is Omega 3 obtainable only from meat or seafood
• 20% of your entire body’s cholesterol is in your brain
• the rest are neurotransmitters, proteins, vitamins, and minerals

Here are 3 minerals showing how the brain uses them and for what. Note iodine. Most people don’t eat iodized salt. You should! Or take iodine supplements–or eat sea weed, which is high in iodine. Did you know that hypothyroidism may be prevented or even reversed by increasing iodine consumption?

The most fascinating slide by Dr. Ede is the one with the oyster. Eating an oyster gives you zinc, an essential mineral. If you eat that oyster on its own, you get all 100% of the zinc the oyster contains.

If you consume the oyster with black beans, you only absorb 25% of the same oyster’s zinc. The beans inhibit to mineral absorption by 75%! This is just one plant taken in isolation but all plants have some chemicals in them that act as anti-nutrients. Note that if you eat that oyster with grains (corn is grain), the zinc you are able to absorb from the oyster is: negative! That means that the grain actually removes zinc from your body in addition to not allowing the zinc from the oyster to reach you. Grains prevent protein synthesis and are the most harmful to eat by humans:

…wheat, barley, rye and corn can serve as convenient sources of a family of closely related inhibitors of protein synthesis which, when conjugated with lectins, antibodies, or hormones, could prove useful as chimeric toxins.

Read about Prolamins, the family of proteins in grain, of which you are familiar with two: gluten and gliadin, though these are only two. “3 ½ ounces of flour there are enough phytates to decrease iron absorption by 80-90%.”

Plants have chemicals in them that reduce the amount of nutrients we can absorb from the foods we eat. A vegan, whose protein intake comes mostly from grains, beans, nuts, and seed, lose iron, zinc, calcium, and magnesium. From soy, also consumed for protein, a vegan loses iodine and has a greater risk of becoming hypothyroid. Most green leafy veggies (particularly spinach) will end up in iron loss, and protease inhibitors, the plant’s natural defense mechanism against pathogens, inhibits protein absorption.

Look at the above table from her presentation and see the fantastic amounts of nutrients you can get from meat and seafood–just be sure to eat your meal without any vegetables and be sure to not eat a salad before your meal.

Personal Experience

I lived in France for almost a year–long time ago. I have often visited too since then, since I have family in France. Every time I was invited to dinner to any native French, the meat was the first course, served without any vegetables. After we ate as much meat as we could, we then were served the vegetables. After the vegetables we ate the salad if we still had room. There was no bread ever served and no desert! Instead of the desert, we were served a cheese platter with some fruits. Ever wonder why the French are so healthy even though they eat the fattiest food? This is called the French Paradox.

It doesn’t matter how much you eat or how much you exercise. What matters is what you eat and how you eat it!

Your comments are welcome as always and are moderated for appropriateness.

Angela