Holistic Nutrition Bytes

Transitioning into Autumn

admin — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:22:34 +0000

Can you believe it is already September? Summer is a time to relax and enjoy sunshine (unless you live in San Francisco where it’s basically cold & foggy), but fall means back to school and preparing for the winter months ahead. I’ve heard of quite a few folks complaining of “summer colds.” Here is how to stay healthy during the seasonal transition into fall.

Keep your body in balance by eating seasonally. Summer stone fruits, berries, and lighter raw greens give way to heartier root vegetables, warming foods, and more cooked foods. Include Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and cooked greens like kale & collards. Apples and pears and figs will begin cropping up now too –all terrifically high in fiber. Try skin brushing to stimulate the lymph and detoxify the skin. Take warming epsom salt baths and drink ginger tea to help digestion.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, autumn correlates with the lung system, which dominates the skin, respiration, body fluids metabolism, blood circulation, and immunity. Eating the heartier root vegetables pureed into warming soups helps keep these body systems healthy. Try butternut squash or parsnip/pear or potato soups. Delicious. Keep warm with warming ginger tea that, in addition to aiding digestion, is also a gentle detoxifier that promotes good circulation and immunity.

If you are feeling run down, the first step is to get more rest. Studies show that people who sleep less than seven hours per night are three times more likely than those who sleep at least eight hours to catch a common cold after being exposed to a cold-causing virus! Avoid processed foods and sugar and up your intake of vitamin C with citrus, red pepper, kiwi, and brussels sprouts. Also, get plenty of probiotics, because they build good gut flora, and the majority of your immune system is in your gut! Drink kefir if you tolerate dairy, or eat cultured foods like kraut or kim chi.

A good tonic to prevent or shorten duration of illness is my favorite way to feel better. Try elderberry/yarrow flower/peppermint tea. Elderberry is a superior immune tonic; yarrow helps break up phlegm, and peppermint is soothing. Try a tincture with astragalus; medicinal mushrooms like reishi, maitake, or cordyceps; and schizandra berry, and echinacea. Increase zinc intake, too; it’s crucial for good immune function, and many people don’t get enough, especially vegetarians. Zinc is found predominantly in animal protein, especially beef & lamb. The only good veg source is pumpkin seed. Consider taking a multi vitamin-mineral supplement if you are vegetarian. You’ll get a full spectrum of B vitamins that are often hard to find in veg sources, as well as zinc.

See my recipe archive for the butternut squash soup. It is sublime. Here is another great fall soup recipe. Make a batch and eat on it during the week. It’s also delish.

Perfect Pear & Parsnip Soup
Do you know what parsnips look like? Giant white carrots. When roasted, they are sweet and pair well with roasted carrots or hold up well in stew. Find them with the other root veggies.
2 –3 medium parsnips
1 large ripe Bosc pear, peeled and seeded and diced
2 medium shallots, sliced
2 TBSP. organic butter or coconut oil
2-1/2 cups vegetable stock, or water (more as needed)
2 tsp. fresh grated ginger
zest from one lemon
sea salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste
Boil parsnip (skin on) in water until tender. Meanwhile, heat a pan with butter and sauté the shallots until translucent. Add in the diced pear and cook for about 2 – 3 minutes and season lightly with salt & pepper. When the parsnip is ready, peel the skin and place in a blender. Add in the cooked pear mixture, the lemon zest, and grated ginger. Add in the stock or water and blend until smooth. (You may need to add in more liquid if the consistency is too thick). Adjust seasoning with more sea salt & pepper. Reheat in a pan and serve hot with fresh herbs or chopped nuts as garnish.

Read Your Body

admin — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:38:46 +0000

Your body is giving you all kinds of clues about the status of your health. Are you reading them? Here is a little guide detailing how to read your body.

Let’s start at the top with your hair. Is your scalp dry? Do you have dandruff? Too much sugar in the diet–the sugar feeds the organisms that live on your scalp, triggering them to produce the excess flakes. Dandruff is worsened by a lack of essential fatty acids (EFAs) & B vitamins. Also try an apple cider vinegar rinse to correct your scalp’s PH. For EFAs, take fish or krill oil and include salmon, leafy greens, flax oil, and walnuts. Does your hair lack luster? Is it dry and brittle? Again, low EFAs + need B vitamins (especially biotin), iron, and protein. Even if you’re getting it, you may not be absorbing it if your digestion is faulty! Faulty digestion is caused by eating foods to which you’re intolerant, causing inflammation & malabsorption. Also caused by gut infections like yeast, parasites, and bacteria (all very, very common).

Let’s move down to your face. Rosy cheeks or broken capillaries on your nose? Low hydrochloric acid (HCl, or stomach acid. Needed to break down your food.) Treat with a digestive enzyme. Do you have rosacea? Could be due to food allergies, low stomach acid, too much booze or spicy foods. Acne? Try a cleanse–poor skin is often a reflection of a congested liver. Also, zinc deficiency or possible food allergies you might not be aware of. Bags under the eyes? Congested liver, sluggish lymph–too many toxins! (do a cleanse!) Dark circles? Try removing gluten or dairy–food allergy sign. Outer eyebrow thinning? Classic sign of low thyroid. Do you have eczema? Again, food allergies (most likely wheat) and low EFAs. Psoriasis? This auto-immune disorder can be treated by identifying food allergies and doing gut repair–the majority of the immune system lies in your gut, so a overactive immune system can be traced back to gut issues–most likely leaky gut caused by food allergies and inflammation, parasites, bacteria, and pathogenic overgrowth.

Yellowish skin? Liver issue. Dry skin? Low thyroid + need more EFAs. Raised spots on your upper arms that won’t go away? This is called keratosis pilaris and means that you need to up your vitamin A through dark green & yellow veggies & fruits.

Look in your mouth, a great predictor of your overall health. First, stick out your tongue. Is it coated? This is a sign of yeast or candida overgrowth in the body, corrected by an herbal candida cleanse and cleaning up the diet–no sugar or refined foods like white flour. Is your tongue pale? Anemia. Are the edges scalloped? Food allergies. Bleeding gums? Low vitamin C. Cracked lips? Take a B vitamin complex. Cold sores? Treat topically with aloe vera and take lysine to clear them up.

Earlobe creases? This is an interesting one: if you have creases (usually at 45 degree angle) on your earlobes, you could be at a greater risk for cardiovascular disease. Clean up your diet, take CoQ10, and work with a practitioner. Cracked skin behind the ears? Get more EFAs and Zn.

Moving right along, take a look at your fingernails. White spots? Low zinc. Cracked nails? Get more protein and check your thyroid. Brittle nails? Get more B complex.

Varicose veins? Strengthen your veins & capillaries by getting more bioflavonoids through citrus especially. Also add fiber and magnesium. Easy bruising? Get more iron, vitamin C, and vitamin K. Cracked, callused feet? More EFAs and Zn.

So get in front of the mirror and take a look!

How Did You Get into Nutrition?

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:27:58 +0000

I am asked this question several times weekly, so I decided to write about it!

I attended an animal rights workshop when I was 15 (I grew up on a farm raising and training show horses, so animals are near and dear to my heart), and it really opened my eyes to the issues of factory farming, and how animals intended for food are raised and treated. What I learned was shocking, both in terms of the health of the animals and the humans that eat them. So I became a proud vegetarian. Not really putting much thought into what I was eating at age 15, I survived on little more than rice and ramen noodles for the base of my meals. I thought, hey, I’ll just cut out meat. I remember falling asleep in class, having to take long naps when I’d get home from school before I went riding, and my hair became brittle. I became anemic due to my poor diet and was put on iron pills.

A bell went off: what you eat determines your health status. This seems obvious & basic, but I’m telling you, so many people don’t make this connection or even care. McDonald’s is tasty and cheap, until you begin to pay for the medical bills years after treating your body badly. So anyway, I began reading about how to have a healthy vegetarian diet. I learned about combining grains and beans, getting enough protein, and eating more greens. I added in soy for extra protein. This worked great for me–for a while.

Around this time I began working for Planned Parenthood and developing an interest in women’s health. I read all I could about women’s health (Christiane Northrup) and nutrition (Dr. Andrew Weil). I remained a vegetarian for many years (13 total), all through college. I worked at my university’s women’s center and developed an interest in journalism, contributing to various publications.

When I moved out to San Francisco, I experimented very briefly with veganism and never felt worse. I was constantly tired and moody, and I began noticing some issues with my soy-heavy diet. I read more: Julia Ross, Phyllis Balch, Kaayla Daniel, Ann Louise Gittleman, and learned that a diet heavy in processed soy can adversely affect hormone levels (read more about my soy story here). I eliminated soy and added meat back in and instantly felt better, and my hormonal issues resolved. I decided to make a career out of nutrition since I was already dispensing so much advice!

I began studying nutrition at Bauman College and learned that the body’s needs change all the time, and everybody has different physiological needs, because we are all biochemically different! Some people fare well as vegetarians; some need meat. If you are under stress, suffer from depression or anxiety, or are recovering from surgery, you need a more high quality protein-based diet, and beans and rice aint gonna cut it. I get a lot of calls from vegetarians that have major hormonal problems, depression, or infertility and don’t understand why, because isn’t a vegetarian diet the healthiest way to go? That’s another post for another time, but suffice it to say that part of being a nutritionist is to determine the best diet for YOU as an individual, along with how to choose the highest quality foods. And part of my job is to encourage mindfulness around eating so that you know what your body needs. Contact me for more info on my services.

What Does Pollution Have to do with Hormones?

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 04:17:57 +0000

Estrogen. It’s one of a woman’s two main sex hormones. Men have estrogen too! Too much is bad though, and I’ll tell you why. Read this if you suffer from bad PMS, painful periods, or infertility, or if you have a wife or girlfriend that suffers from these conditions.

Estrogen regulates the menstrual cycle and causes things to grow during puberty. It creates curves. It also stimulates cell growth in preparation for pregnancy. Progesterone opposes estrogen, protecting against its possible undesirable side effects. Progesterone and estrogen exist in a ratio in the body, and progesterone is actually needed to make estrogen. Progesterone is super important because it helps with sex drive, sleep, prevents anxiety, burns body fat, and is the hormone needed to get and stay pregnant. Here’s the thing, though: when estrogen & progesterone become imbalanced, health problems can surface. And more often than not, that means too much estrogen and not enough progesterone. Women (and even men, too) are experiencing massive problems with their female hormones: heavy menstrual cycles, endometriosis, ovarian cysts (remember, estrogen makes things grow, including cysts, endometrial lining, whatever), painful periods, bad PMS, PCOS, infertility, irregular periods, periods in girls starting as early as 8 or 9 years old. What is the cause?

In our food supply, in our environment, in our medications, in our water–we are bombarded by too much estrogen. Synthetic estrogens called xenoestrogens are making this problem worse. They are shaped like our body’s own estrogens and cause our estrogen levels to sky rocket. Xenoestrogens are present in the hormones given to animals so that they fatten up before slaughter. We eat the meat & ingest the hormones. Pesticides on fruit and vegetables & environmental pollution & plastic water bottles & household chemical cleaning agents contain xenoestrogens. Add to that hormonal birth control, which is a hefty dose of estrogen (birth control needs to suppress progesterone, the pro-gestational hormone that allows for pregnancy), and the fact that 2/3 of us are overweight (fat has an enzyme that converts adrenal hormones to estrogen), and we are ESTROGEN DOMINANT.

In addition to those dietary & environmental factors, stress makes this issue worse because it disrupts your other hormones, which in turn affects your estrogen levels. The hormones are a very complex and sensitive orchestrated dance, you see. Very susceptible to stress, diet, lifestyle. So if you are overweight, eating a lot of sugar and non-organic meats and produce laced with pesticides (or no veggies or fruit at all), not getting to bed early or suffering from insomnia, you are prone to estrogen dominance. It’s bad because it leads to the conditions I listed above (period problems, PCOS, fibroids) and can eventually lead to hormonal cancers like breast cancer, uterine, or ovarian cancer. These cancers are a result of too much estrogen.

What to do about it? Clean up your diet. Eat organic. Eat a plant-based diet with organic meats. Get enough greens. Don’t over-booze (booze causes estrogen dominance, too). Address your lifestyle: use chemical-free cosmetics & skincare stuff, natural cleaning products, and balance your hormones! How? Reduce stress, take wild yam or chasteberry if you suffer from any estrogen-dominant conditions, and do a liver cleanse a couple times a year. Your liver metabolizes hormones and if it is congested, your hormonal balance will suffer. We cannot prevent exposure to pollution, but a clean liver will help your body process these toxins. Get a water filter, too. Estrogens coming from meds have been found present in drinking water. Yuck. Contact me if this sounds like you, or even if you are doing everything right and you still suffer from the below symptoms. I help women achieve hormonal balance & overcome estrogen dominance.

Estrogen dominance symptoms:
Breast cancer • Breast tenderness • Cold hands and feet • Decreased sex drive • Mood swings • Dry eyes • Depression, anxiety, irritability • Fatigue • Fibrocystic breasts • Irregular menstrual periods • Headaches • Hypoglycemia • Insomnia • Infertility • PMS • Osteoporosis • Uterine fibroids • Uterine cancer • Water retention, bloating • Weight gain • Hair loss • Fat gain around hips and thighs • Polycystic ovaries • Endometrial cancer • Memory loss, foggy thinking • Thyroid dysfunction • Prostate cancer • Ovarian cancer

A Look Inside the Fridge

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:20:17 +0000

Ever wonder what the inside of a holistic nutritionist’s refrigerator looks like? I’m not going to show you mine, because it really should be scrubbed a bit more thoroughly first, but I’ll tell you what’s in it. Then I’ll tell you what shouldn’t be in yours.

I wish my fridge was this clean.

Open the door! On the top shelf we have preserved meyer lemons, a gift from a dear friend who picked them right out of her backyard, salted them and sealed them in a mason jar. Excellent when used (the peels) in crockpot slow roasted meats, diced in rubs and marinades or in salad dressings. Next to that we have a jar of cultured vegetables: fermented beets, cabbage, and ginger. The culturing/fermenting process brings to life many gut-friendly good probiotics & enzymes. Excellent as a condiment with meals & a very health -promoting food. Same friend made a big batch (I know, right?), and gave me some. Easy to make at home. Also on the top shelf we have organic eggs, apple cider vinegar, Hibiscus tea, a jar of homemade sugar free strawberry-rhubarb jam, and leftover coconut milk I used in a smoothie. There’s also white miso paste I use in dressings, marinades, and soup of course!

In the side, we have organic butter (preferably raw, but this isn’t) & ghee, various condiments like dijon mustard, tamari (wheat free soy sauce), worcestershire, red wine vinegar, and rice vinegar. There is also a small jar of cherry chutney that a neighbor gave me after taking a chutney-making class. It was delicious on the pork tenderloin I made last week!

On the second shelf, we have a prepared roast chicken I bought from Whole foods (have been eating on it all week) and also various meats like chicken thighs, chicken/cilantro sausages I bought from the Whole Foods deli case, and leftover wild Coho salmon from my dinner last night. My produce box came yesterday, so the shelves are pretty packed. There is a huge bag of zucchini squashes (stay tuned for a gluten & dairy free zucchini bread recipe once I perfect it), a big bunch of chard, a bunch of kale, 3 ears of corn, and fresh basil I’ll use to make pesto (with miso & walnuts for a dairy free version). I got strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, some from the market and some from the box. All organic, of course. My box came with tomatoes, which I don’t care for, and corn, which I normally don’t eat (it’s actually a grain that can spike blood sugar), but I couldn’t resist making a fresh corn, basil, and tomato salad with olive oil and sea salt and pepper, and boy was it summery delicious.

There’s also salad mix, a bunch of multi-colored carrots that came in the box, a cucumber, and various other bagged greens (romaine came in the box, too). On the counter, there are a couple peaches waiting to ripen up along with some avocados.

You know what you won’t find? Nothing low or non-fat. I avoid dairy, so no yogurt for me (sad face), but if I could eat dairy, I would have plain organic greek yogurt and top it with berries and cinnamon. Mmmmmm. I’d also have raw goat’s milk and kefir. Are you still buying into this low or non fat thing? Those aren’t whole foods if the fat has been stripped from them. Your body needs the fat to be able to absorb the fat soluble vitamins A & D that you’re getting from dairy. Also, you won’t find any non-organic meats, soy milk, or over the counter salad dressings. Have you read the labels on those? Yuck. Salad dressings are highly processed and filled with chemicals and unsavory oils like canola and soy. Make your own! So easy.

I’ll make the pesto and probably wash some of the berries and freeze them to throw in smoothies. I’ll give the rest of the tomatoes to the neighbor and make a bunch of zucchini bread to give away. That way, I ensure that I am gifted back delicious things like preserved lemons, cherry chutney, and cultured veggies

Want to Know the Top 5 Foods that are Sabotaging Your Health?

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:54:25 +0000

Join us TONIGHT, Thursday, July 22 at 7pm PST for a tele-seminar: The Top 5 Foods That Can Sabotage Your Health Goals

All you need is a phone and an ear! Join us as we discuss our top 5 picks for the foods that can sabotage your health goals. Anyone anywhere can join this FREE call. Some of these foods are considered “health foods,” and you’re probably eating them on a daily basis. These foods can cause a build up of toxins, digestive problems, hormonal imbalance, weight gain, neurological issues or skin problems. Don’t miss the call–we will be on hand at the end of our talk to answer your questions. Call-in number: (641) 715 3300 and enter access code: 950150#

There is No Magic Pill

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:59:06 +0000

The FDA recently voted against releasing weight loss drug Qnexa, citing safety concerns. The drug is a combo of an amphetamine and an anticonvulsant (!); in trials, memory lapses, suicidal thoughts, heart palpitations and birth defects were reported as side effects. (Ed note: yowza, I would hate to have been one of those clinical trial participants!) In other news, Lorcaserin, another weight loss drug that delivers serotonin to the brain, will likely be approved due to a good safety record so far. Serotonin helps to regulate appetite, mood, sleep, and sex drive.

Look, people. There is no magic pill. Period. If you take a prescription weight loss pill, you are subjecting yourself to numerous side effects, some of which may have not shown up in clinical trials–yet. Remember Vioxx, the arthritis drug that was pulled off the market after people died from heart attacks & strokes? And Avandia, the diabetes drug that just got yanked due to risk of heart problems? Pharmaceutical drugs carry a high risk of side effects, and even if the FDA deems them “safe,” we are still the guinea pigs: clinical trials often do not last long enough to assess the scope of potential side effects.

Here is a revelatory idea: diet & lifestyle change. Before you stop reading, consider this: even if you are obese, thinking that no diet has worked for you, it’s time to uncover the underlying reasons for your obesity. Are you addicted to food? Can’t stop binging? Sugar addict? It’s no different from alcoholism or any other addiction–it is physiological & behavioral, and a pill won’t cure that. Uncover the reason behind your addiction: are you low in neurotransmitters (like serotonin) that regulate appetite? Do you have low thyroid? Do you have alcoholism in your family (same mechanism: sugar sensitivity issues that lead to binging on food or booze)? Have you been overweight all your life? It takes more than a drug to affect lasting change. One must learn behavioral changes, specifically, how to nourish vs nurture one’s self with food. Switching from comfort eating processed foods (think potato chips, cookies, fast food, ho-hos, ding-dongs) to nutrient dense whole foods (think organic meat, leafy greens, seasonal fruits–grains will be contraindicated if you have a sugar sensitivity, as grains break down more quickly into sugars), perpetuating the trigger food sugar craving cycle. The key is to remove your trigger foods (foods that cause you to binge, like sugar, bread, pasta, alcohol, or often all of these). Fix underlying imbalances that contribute to your addiction, like neurotransmitter or hormonal imbalance, and eat nutrient-rich foods instead of nutrient-void foods that leave you constantly hungry.

Work with a nutritionist to replace the refined foods in your diet with foods that are right for your physiology. Eating processed, refined foods with sugar or corn syrup will exacerbate your cravings and leave you constantly hungry and constantly eating, frustrated, moody, irritable, and fatigued. But education about being in tune with how to feed your body is not something that comes with a pill. There is no substitute for doing the work! So get out there, figure out what you should be eating & get moving with exercise.

Monday Night Dinner

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:35:50 +0000

Dinner in a flash, after a hectic Monday at work, getting back into the groove. The verdict is in from clients: this recipe is awesome!

Coconut-cinnamon Chicken

Place 4 chicken breasts in a glass baking dish and pour 1 can coconut milk (lite is ok) and ¼ cup lime juice over them. Sprinkle with cinnamon (liberally), coating each breast. Add 3 tbsp shredded coconut to top. Bake 30 minutes at 400. Sea salt to taste. Serve over a bed of greens, like kale or chard, or with a mixed green side salad.

Case Study

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:59:18 +0000

I thought you guys might enjoy an actual honest-to-goodness real client’s case study so that you can join me in celebrating successes and also understand that nutrition consulting goes way deeper than just telling people what to eat. It’s an entire lifestyle overhaul: the holistic model means stress relief, exercise, positive relationships, good habits… all on top of the solid foundation of an organic whole foods diet.

Let’s call her “Willow.”

*not an actual photo of Willow

Female, 32, lives here in San Francisco
chief complaints: fatigue, weight gain
goals: weight loss, disease prevention, more energy
diet at our first meeting: Willow considers her diet healthy. Breakfast was oatmeal & a yogurt; lunch is turkey sandwich and carrot sticks, snack is wheat crackers & an apple; dinner is pasta with a salad. Willow tries to eat whole grains and minimal meat. She indulges in desserts on the weekend, but has wicked sugar cravings that she constantly fights (I was very impressed with her willpower).

Here is what we did:
I suspected that, due to Willow’s weight gain & bloating, she might be eating foods she’s sensitive to. The most common are gluten, dairy, soy, and eggs. We pulled her off gluten, dairy, and soy for a time and moved her diet to organic protein like chicken, fish, buffalo, (she wasn’t big on beef and lamb), lots of veggies, and gluten free grains like brown rice & quinoa. Willow was attempting to eat minimal meat but realized a mostly vegetarian diet was contributing to her fatigue. After just a couple of days, her bloating disappeared and she had more energy!

Because she complained of PMS along with fatigue, we tested her stress hormone levels and found that she had high cortisol levels that contributed to her weight gain. This signifies that she is in a constant state of stress–and it’s beginning to crash her system. The hormonal system can best be described as a symphony of different stress & sex hormones working together, and once stress hormones go haywire because you’ve been working too much, drinking too much coffee, or eating crappy foods, your female hormones can go off balance (read: PMS, irregular cycles, worsening of cramps). I designed a program for her to balance her stress hormones, and that includes supplements, lifestyle adjustments & stress relief (in her case, yoga).

Willow also did a digestive assessment and discovered she had a bacterial overgrowth that was contributing to her weight gain, fatigue, and hormonal issues. The scary thing to her was the she didn’t even have any symptoms! Digestive infections or bad bacteria overgrowth can cause inflammation, which the body perceives as further stress, and that causes hormone imbalance too in response. So I designed an herbal parasite cleanse for her, and she noticed an even more significant shift in weight loss and energy gained.

Willow is about 6 months into her program and no longer crashes after lunch (she had been known to take a nap at her high-stress job), no longer experiences bloating, and has lost 8 pounds! More importantly, she has learned the proper foods for her physiology, why she needs more leafy greens and good fats, and why a vegetarian high-grain diet wasn’t ideal for her. We will continue to work together until she reaches her goals, but her successes keep her motivated and keep me happy.

Confused? Read on….

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:44:18 +0000

I had 2 depressing moments today. First off, this article in the SF Examiner trashing coconut oil and promoting canola oil was brought to my attention. Dr Oz says that coconut oil will put you on the fast track to a heart attack and that canola is a heath-promoting oil, oh– and eat low fat! Lots of grains and fish! Big sigh as my inbox filled up with clients writing: “You told me coconut oil was healthy! I’m so confused!”

Then on a totally different topic, I get a response from someone defending soy & canola oil, saying soy has been used in China for thousands of years, just as rapeseed oil (from which canola is derived) has been used in Europe for years.

Hold the phone, people. These sorts of responses make my heart drop a little as I realize that there is so much misinformation out there that it’s hard to know what to believe. I want to put it to you simply: if it hasn’t been around for thousands of years, don’t eat it. There is a lot of misinformation about both soy & canola. First off, soy is present in almost every processed food product (it is one of our most widely grown & heavily processed crops), and it’s the processed soy that causes problems, mainly hormonal issues. In Asian countries, whole, unprocessed soy is consumed fermented as miso or natto or tempeh, or as a condiment (think small amounts of tofu in miso soup), and not in every product at every meal as we use it here– in soy flour, soy protein, soy milk, soy crisps–all processed products. (reference: The Whole Soy Story, by Kaayla Daniels). I don’t think our ancestors were eating Soy Puffs.

Canola is genetically modified (hence–it’s not called “rapeseed oil” because it has been engineered by humans to contain lower levels of the toxic erucic acid). Canola is a highly processed product, and the heat processing kills any beneficial fatty acids and turns it rancid/oxidized, which is linked to arterial damage and inflammation. It is manufactured and deodorized with chemical solvents. (read more: Know Your Fats, by Mary Enig, biochemist).

As far as coconut oil deemed an “unhealthy fat,” look: I am so sick of this. Coconut oil is a natural, saturated, plant-based fat that is stable and holds up well to high temperatures. It will not go rancid and is not oxidized if you purchase virgin coconut oil. The research that supports the claim that naturally occurring saturated fat will lead to high cholesterol and coronary heart disease has been proven false (see the Framingham Heart Study). Man made trans fats present in processed foods & shortening & hydrogenated oils, however, and sugar/refined carbs (which turn to triglycerides – circulating blood fat- when consumed in excess the way most Americans consume it) will certainly clog your arteries and lead to heart disease. And this is what the majority of Americans are eating: processed fats, processed foods, and loads of sugar, and this is what is killing us, not coconut oil.

I know it can be confusing to decide what to eat, but I would never take nutrition advice from a doctor. They don’t study nutrition in medical school. Eat real foods that have been around for thousands of years. Does canola oil seem like a real food? Someone show me a canola plant. My coconut oil comes from a real live coconut, and my coconut oil SMELLS like coconuts, not like deodorized oil. Ugh. My olive oil smells like olives! But that nasty “vegetable oil” in a plastic jug smells like chemical solvents.

Nope, this is not a canola field. It is rapeseed. Theres no such thing as a canola field!

We are all biochemically different and we all require different amounts of carbs, proteins, and fats. Some people eating a diet high in grains will actually experience elevated cholesterol levels as the grains break down to sugar, while others will thrive on a diet with more grains. And here is another misnomer for you: high cholesterol doesn’t even cause heart disease, but OXIDIZED (damaged) cholesterol does. The typical Western diet with its highly processed food content is replete with oxidized fat that can contribute to heart disease.

Now I’m depressed. Are you still eating soy protein bars and using canola?