Health Product Highlight: Natural By Nature Grass-Fed Milk

"Milk, it does the body good".
"Got milk?"

They should really be: "Grass-fed milk, it does the body good". "Got grass-fed milk?"

Those are the only two milk quotes I know, but thankfully they're all I need to make my point; if you're not lactose intolerant, you should probably be drinking more milk. However, don't drink skim milk that has been raised by cows who eat corn in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) because it's roughly the same thing as drinking sugar water. You get all of the calories with none of the benefits. Why you ask? Well the vitamins and protein in milk are fat soluble, so they need to be consumed with fat in order to be absorbed by the body. If you're drinking skim milk, you're just excreted all of the good stuff out.

So why am I advocating grass-fed milk? The same reason I advocated grass-fed butter (find post here). When cows consume a diet of grass, they're eating the way nature intended them to, and are therefore healthier. A healthy cow equals healthy milk. Healthy milk equals a healthy you. It's all connected. But why is grass-fed milk more healthy? I'm glad you asked, hypothetical person. Cows that eat a diet of grass have roughly five times the CLA of cows fed corn and other grain feeds. So, who cares? Everybody should, hypothetical devil's advocate.

According to scientists a lot smarter than me in this field, "Despite the high saturated fat content of dairy products, no clear association between dairy product intake and risk of myocardial infarction (MI) has been observed. Dairy products are the main source of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA; 18:2n−7t), which is produced by the ruminal biohydrogenation of grasses eaten by cows. Pasture-grazing dairy cows have more CLA in their milk than do grain-fed cows. Some animal models have reported beneficial effects of CLA on atherosclerosis. 9c,11t-CLA, which is present in meaningful amounts in the milk of pasture-grazed cows, might offset the adverse effect of the saturated fat content of dairy products". What this essentially means is that avoiding whole milk because of the saturated fat content is not necessary. The CLA offsets any potential damage the saturated fat may do.

Grass-fed milk was found to have higher concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids in another scientific study. Hopefully I don't have to go into detail about why we need more omega-3 fatty acids in our diet (but if I do that's a post for another time), but most of the diseases found today can be attributed to a poor omega-3:omega-6 fatty acid ratio. Having too few omega-3s and too many omega-6s is essentially the same as spinning one of those game show wheels and hoping it lands on the small pie-shaped sliver labelled "healthy".

Natural By Nature grass-fed milk, while not the ideal choice for everyone, is still a superior product that can be found at Whole Foods. While I would rather have access to raw grass-fed milk from cows that are also able to eat dandelion greens, berries, and the like, it's not easy to come across in New Jersey. Raw grass-fed milk is healthier, as the less processed something is, the healthier it is, but it isn't without its risks due to bacteria. So if you want to drink raw milk, do so knowing you may get sick. That's why I'm advocating Natural By Nature grass-fed milk; it has all of the benefits of grass-fed milk, tastes absolutely delicious, is the cheapest option at Whole Foods for grass-fed milk, and won't make you sick (unless you're lactose intolerant). So grab a glass of grass-fed milk and toast to the healthy liquid you're about to pour down your throat!

Eat healthy, stay happy!

-Ben

Healthy Eating: A Lifestyle Change

Forget everything you know about dieting. Anyone who expects to go on a diet for a few months, and then go back to their old ways of eating and still keep the weight off is living in a fantasy world. There's a reason why people often gain back the weight they lose, and more often than not that reason is a return to old, familiar habits.

I want you to embrace change, because if you want to eat healthy you will have to change your dietary habits. And not just for a month, two, or three, but for life. You need to seriously consider if that's a decision you want to make and stick to, because if you decide to eat healthy and then decide not to, you've only wasted your own time. A few months of healthy eating will not help you become healthy; in fact it will hardly put a dent into an unhealthy lifestyle.

There are a few tips and tricks to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, because I'll be the first to admit it isn't easy to pass up delicious baked goods.

1. Don't buy anything unhealthy - If there's something unhealthy in your house, it's ridiculously tempting to eat. However, in the grocery store, you can always say to yourself, "I want it, but I don't need it and it's not worth the money". This rationalizing has made me put things back on the shelf more often than not.

2. Instant gratification - Before eating anything you know you shouldn't, ask yourself how eating this will feel when you're eating it, five minutes after you've eaten it, a few hours after you've eaten it, and a year after you've eaten it (especially important in preventing weight gain for the long-term). Then decide if it is important for you to feel instant-gratification weighed against the negative way you'll feel for much longer.

3. The nutrition approach - Ask yourself what nutritional benefit will the food give me? If it won't give you any, determine why you're eating the food. Some eat for pleasure and some eat because they're bored. Based on why you're eating, determine what foods will be best for that reason (pleasure = cookies or brownies, boredom = chips, pretzels, and other snack foods) and then follow tip number one and do not buy those foods. If you eat when you're bored, but you have no snacks to eat, you will gradually break that habit; the same goes for pleasure eating. Instead of eating for pleasure, exercise for pleasure and then when you want that pleasure-fix, you'll work out instead of eating unhealthy foods.

Eat healthy, stay happy!

-Ben

Health Product Highlight: Ezekiel Sprouted Corn Tortilla

Food For Life Sprouted Corn Tortillas
INGREDIENTS: Organic Sprouted Whole Kernel Corn, Filtered Water, Sea salt, Lime.

Healthy Mexican food? YES! Perhaps none of you thought it was possible to have a truly healthy Mexican feast due to tortillas and tortilla chips often being fried (usually in canola oil; learn why canola oil is bad in my post of ingredients to avoid). However, fear not, as there is a healthy alternative - Food For Life's Sprouted Corn Tortillas. I have been using this product for the past few weeks and can say with absolute certainty that the taste will make you believe you're discovering corn tortillas/tortilla chips for the first time. They taste incredibly fresh and once you start eating them, you'll never go back to regular corn tortillas again; I promise you. There's a reason they taste so fresh. This is what Food For Life has to say about their corn tortillas - "Different than most corn tortillas today, these unique tortillas are made from freashly sprouted 100% organic whole kernel corn. We use no corn meal or corn flour".

The only downside is they are in the frozen section of whole foods, so you have to defrost them or thaw them. Also, if you want tortilla chips, you'll have to cut them and then bake them before using them as tortilla chips. This downside is minor and well worth the extra five to ten minutes it would take to prepare. So you probably want to know why sprouted grains are so much more healthy than regular grains. I'll let the people from Food For Life say it as they say it better than I ever could:

"The process of germination changes the composition of grain and seeds in numerous ways. Sprouting increases vitamin content. Sprouting neutralizes phytic acid – a substance present in grains – that inhibits absorption of nutrients and more important Sprouting neutralizes or "predigests" if you will, grains through enzymatic activity. The enzymes produced during our natural sprouting process "in effect" breaks down amino acid protein bonds to promote digestibility of the entire grain.

Sprouted grain bread has numerous advantages over "enriched" wheat flour breads. These breads are made from the endosperm of the wheat kernel (the inside portion), which contains primarily carbohydrates and few vitamins and minerals. The milling of grain into white flour requires the removal of the bran and the germ. This results in the loss of natural fiber, bran and 22 vitamins and minerals. To compensate, five vitamins and minerals (thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, iron and folic acid) are added back in, "enriching" the flour. Sometimes calcium is added back as well".

The best part about this is they are only $2.99 at Whole Foods, and sometimes go on sale for 2/$5, or $2.50 each; both the regular and sale prices reflect what you would roughly pay for a bag of tortilla chips. So the next time you crave Mexican food, embrace your cravings with some Food For Life Sprouted Grain Tortillas. I swear by them, and s should you.

Eat healthy, stay happy!

-Ben

Deadly Ingredients: When Chemistry Strikes

This post is all about which ingredients to avoid, no matter what. There are some ingredients that you should avoid that I won't put in here, such as refined sugar because realistically, you can't always get away from it and having something with refined sugar a few times a month won't really affect your body all that much. The key though is to only have a couple (a couple being TWO) things a month, not eating a bag of Hershey's miniatures in a day. So here are the all time worst ingredients you can ever see in your food.

1. Partially hydrogenated oils or hydrogenated oils - These oils, also known as trans-fat, are essentially engineered to make you gain weight where you absolutely do not want it: your stomach, the most dangerous place to gain weight loss. They are called trans-fats because the double bond is in a trans configuration (directly parallel to each other) instead of the cis configuration (opposite each other). You can find this murderer of thinness in things like commercial peanut butter, candy bars, fries, any sweets, highly processed foods, etc. Also, if the label says 0 grams of trans-fats, don't just take the company's word on it. Check the ingredients. The FDA allows companies to say that a product contains 0 grams of trans-fats even if it doesn't. The FDA states that "...trans fat does not have to be listed if the total fat in a food is less than 0.5 gram (or 1/2 gram) per serving and no claims are made about fat, fatty acids or cholesterol content".

2. High fructose corn syrup - Everyone should know this one by now. Essentially, high fructose corn syrup is a highly refined sweetener that causes massive blood sugar spikes. These blood sugar spikes are related to weight gain. You can find high fructose corn syrup in virtually any type of food product. Fortunately, this one, while it may seem hard to avoid, is not as hard to avoid as you think. In order to do it you will have to shop in the healthier sections of your grocery or start shopping at Whole Foods. Be warned though that even some products at Whole Foods have high fructose corn syrup in them most likely. Always read the ingredients label.

3. Enriched flour (any kind) - Enriched flour is essentially flour that has been stripped of all of its nutrition to get it that desirable white color so many consumers want, and then re-enriched with the things that were taken out of it previously. Enriched flour is bad because it is essentially like eating high fructose corn syrup - it turns to sugar in the body almost instantly and causes massive blood sugar spikes, which again, lead to weight gain. If you pick something up that says whole wheat flour in the ingredients, don't stop looking for enriched flour; often times a company will use both in order to save money or make the product taste better to the general over-developed sweet toothed population.

4. Canola oil (Rapeseed oil) - This will be a hard one to avoid, since it is in a lot of things. You are going to have to severely change your diet if you want to follow this list and follow your way to health and a thinner body. You see, canola oil is a made up name for rapeseed oil, because the companies who make canola oil figured no one wanted to consume something called rapeseed oil. I can't say I blame them, I wouldn't ever want to consume something called rapeseed oil either. The reason why it is so bad is that when it is used in processed foods that are heated, canola oil changed its' configuration into a trans-fat. While it is touted as having a beneficial omega-3 fatty acid profile (it does), it is often used in baked goods and things that are cooked because it has almost no flavor and is very cheap. So it essentially becomes a partially-hydrogenated/hydrogenated oil, which as you read above, is not a good thing to put into your body. The problem is that the bonds in canola oil are not stable enough to withstand the heat.

5. Artificial flavorings and colorings - Red 40? Yellow and Blue something? Imitation vanilla flavor? The scary part about these ingredients is you have NO idea what you are putting in your body. The imitation vanilla flavor could be cat piss for all you know. Never ever eat something if it has the words artificial anywhere on the package or in the ingredients. Not only do you spare your body from adverse effects, but you also eat better food. What do you think tastes better, imitation vanilla flavoring or actually Madagascar vanilla beans?

6. Artificial sweeteners - Again, same as the artificial flavorings and colorings - you don't really know what you're putting in your body and these sweeteners have not been tested for the long term; YOU are the guinea pig. Almost 99% of them have turned out to be awful for your health anyways and cause more weight gain that consuming actual table sugar (which is pretty awful for your health). So don't drink diet soda that contains any artificial sweeteners. You're better off drinking soda sweetened normal sugar or pure cane sugar. There are good sweeteners out that that are great for the people who want to diet and not effect their blood sugar spikes. I'll go into detail more about them in future posts, but I want you to know what they are now - Stevia and erythritol. They are both natural sweeteners and have been tested and confirmed safe. While the US may not think so, that is because large corporations lobby against allowing healthier alternatives on the market as they are afraid of losing the herd of sweet tooth sheep. Stevia has been used very safely in Japan for the past forty years or so.

7. Fructose and Agave Nectar - Despite what you may think, agave nectar is NOT healthy. I already wrote a post about this. You can find it here - Agave Nectar, Syrupy Poison?.

8. BHT - It was found to be an anticipated human carcinogen by the Department of Health; need I say more? I think not.

So this is the list of the top things to avoid. These are still other ingredients to avoid, but they're not nearly as harmful as the ones above. These are the disease-causing ingredients that find their way into billions of bodies around the world every day. My question to you is, do you really want to be one of those billion?

As the blog develops, I will go into more detail about other ingredients to avoid based on personal preference and give healthy alternatives. An example of this in the future article would be instead of cooking or baking with canola oil, use coconut oil or butter, which are both highly stable saturated fats. I wrote about why butter is good for you previously: here's the link - Butter, Healthy?

Be on the look out for future articles about: ingredients to embrace, certain healthy products, how to eat healthier and incorporate healthy eating into your lifestyle, and advice and tips on how to say no to that delicious looking piece of cake or cookie. Get ready to be the odd one out who doesn't eat birthday cake or dessert at parties! It's a good club to be a part of, trust me.

Eat healthy, stay happy!

GMO's and Monsanto, Evil? Yes, Yes They Are.

Genetically modified food can be patented – this is a problem because if a company creates genetically modified food and then takes it out of the lab and puts it into nature, there’s almost no way of getting back all of the genetically modified food because of vertical and horizontal gene transfer (horizontal gene trans. Trade related intellectual property rights make that genetically modified crop the property of the company who creates it. So if the genetically modified organism is found on someone’s property who did not buy it, then they can be sued. Trouble is, crops are living organisms and they reproduce. Seeds can fly off trucks or plants can migrate in other ways. There’s no way to prevent a genetically modified organism from coming on to your land one hundred percent of the time.

Genetically modified organisms reduce biological diversity and may also cause health problems we’re not aware of yet because the FDA has said they were identical to food and thus required no testing. If you remember from my previous entry, the man who oversaw the decision to not label genetically modified organisms also worked for Monsanto, the company who is producing all of the genetically modified crops. It is unlawful to not let consumers choose whether or not they want to purchase a genetically modified organism just because the FDA said they were not harmful. The FDA should not have even allowed genetically modified foods on the market because they are untested. It’s not like technology where we advance – nature gives us perfectly great food already. Genetically modifying an organism by selectively breeding it is something that nature produces by manipulation – genetically modifying a crop by taking genes from a trout and putting in a tomato is not something that would be made by nature. Nature is not something that should be toyed with, let alone have the results of toying with it in most of the foods Americans consume.

It will be years before we can determine whether or not genetically modified foods are harmful, but they will become more and more prolific as time goes on. Over 90% of soybeans in the U.S. are the genetically modified organism that Monsanto put out. We will lose more and more genetic diversity as more and more genetically modified organisms are released into the world, and we will never be able to get back the original organisms that couldn’t compete with their genetically modified counterparts. Let’s just hope it doesn’t lead to a disaster.

Agave Nectar, Syrupy Poison?

Agave nectar has recently been advocated as a great sugar alternative due to its low effect on raises in blood sugar. However, agave nectar is made up of roughly 70% fructose, which is harder for the body to utilize as energy. Instead of going right into the blood stream as energy, the liver has to process it and convert it into energy, but it is converted into triglycerides and then most likely stored as fat. Agave nectar has more fructose than high fructose corn syrup, which, if you know anything about nutrition, you know is essentially poison for your body. Also, while agave is touted as a natural sweetener, it is not. It is a heavily refined product that involves a lot of processing. Just because the label says "organic" and "raw", it does not mean it is healthy. Trader Joes sells organic American cheese, but American cheese is not actually cheese; it is a cheese-like product that is much more refined than actual cheese. Highly processed ingredients can be organic, but they will never be healthy for you. So for the few people out there in cyberspace that actually read my blog and care about eating healthy, don't eat agave nectar. Instead, use stevia as often as possible. Even evaporated cane juice, palm sugar, or brown rice syrup are not terrible for you. As always though, take it easy on the sweets.

Butter, Healthy?

I know I know, this is some kind of belated April Fools day joke of some sort. Surely I must be out of my mind! Even the government has said that butter is bad and has endorsed a low-fat diet, and butter is full of death-friendly fats right? There's no way that delicious, golden fatty food could be of any nutritional benefit to me, is there? Well I'm glad you asked, kind reader. As it turns out, butter is healthy and does play a role in improving a person's nutritional profile.

The fats in butter are stearic acid, lauric acid, and palmitic acid. Stearic acid is converted to oleic acid in the body, which you may recall as being the heart-healthy fatty acid found in olive oil that so many nutritionists and health experts have been recently praising. Lauric acid and palmitic acid do in fact raise your LDL (bad cholesterol), but interestingly they also raise your HDL (good cholesterol). Not only do they raise your HDL, they raise it to levels equal or greater than the levels they raise your LDL to. This of course means that you are increasing your blood cholesterol. Butter also contains CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) which has possible anti-cancer properties and plays a role in weight management and fat loss.

Wait, wait, wait! Am I telling you that butter can actually help you LOSE weight? Short answer? Yes, yes I am. But that's not all! Butter does increase LDL, though not as much as it increases HDL, so your cholesterol is already better, but the LDL it increases is large and fluffly LDL, which makes it benign (it has no adverse affects on the body) and is not the small, dense LDL that is malignant (it has adverse affects on the body). This of course means that the HDL increase is even more dramatic. When the government and every health expert/nutritionist was telling everyone to eat margarine instead due to its low fat, they were basically telling the general population to ingest poison, as margarine contains trans-fats, which UNLIKE butter, do cause heart problems.

There are, however, some specific guidelines to follow when consuming butter. They are the following:
1. Do not eat a lot. Just because it is not bad for you does not mean it is not calorie dense; it is, so eating a lot will cause weight gain, just like it will for any other food.
2. Always buy grass-fed butter, and as a matter-of-fact, always buy grass-fed dairy, period. Grass-fed dairy will have more beta-carotene (antioxidants), more omega-3 fatty acids (decreases chance of disease), and more CLA.
3. That's it. Simply follow those two rules when eating butter and enjoy.

Now, I feel as though I must end this post with a reputable brand of grass-fed butter, along with a delicious meal to spread said butter on. When buying grass-fed, I exclusively purchase Kerry Gold unsalted butter, which is made in and imported from Ireland. Another brand I know of that is reputable, but that I have never had the opportunity to purchase is Natural By Nature. There may be more that I am unaware of or have simply not tried. If there are and you know of them, feel free to tell me about them in the comments. I also want to state outright that I do not receive any compensation for endorsing any brands of food and that I will only ever endorse brands that I trust, have done research on, and personally consume myself.

Finally, how to eat your butter. I buy Ezekiel sprouted grain bread (low sodium variety) to spread my butter on as it is the healthiest bread I have found. After spreading the butter on, I also put a very generous amount of cinnamon on top of the butter because, well for one cinnamon is just plain delicious and two, it helps prevent spikes in blood sugar, which causes weight gain and diabetes. I urge you to start eating butter if you have been avoiding it (like I really have to urge you to right?) and I urge you to only eat it under the two guidelines I have given. Also, try my simple, but delicious snack idea if you like cinnamon dusted buttery toast. Happy eating!