“Diet and Nutrition”
Natural Cures Food Nutrition Facts

Q- I think we could move into diet and nutrition and what I would like to do with your permission is take this down to the “nitty gritty” because a lot of people hear these words and terms and they don’t know what they mean. So what is a calorie?

A- A calorie is the amount of heat that is required to raise one cubic centimeter of water one degree.

Q- How about a carbohydrate, what is a carbohydrate?

A- Carbohydrates are molecular linkages of sugar molecules. If you take a starch, which is a carbohydrate and you link those sugar molecules together. If you look at the ingredients they are always listed in the order of predominance. In that listing you will see an ingredient called maltodextrine.

A maltodextrine is a hybrid ingredient that is neither a sugar nor a starch. You know a simple sugar can be like glucose and a starch is a long chain of glucose molecules. You link all those together and you finally get something called a starch. In between where you have the simple sugars and you have the complex substance starch you have these things called maltodextrine.

Q- What about fat?

A- You know again it comes back to the whole idea of how many units are in this molecular chain. If you break down a fat you break it down into something called a fatty acid. They can all be broken down into smaller units. In the case of starch it can be broken down into simple sugars or these maltodextrines, which can be broken down into simple sugars.

The point I am trying to make is any of these macronutrients can be broken down into smaller units. Just like starch is broken down into simple sugars, the fat is broken down into fatty acids and the proteins are broken down into peptides or amino acids.

Each one of those macronutrients can be subdivided. In the case of proteins, proteins are made up of amino acids. Not all proteins have all amino acids that are important because there are essential amino acids. If you are consuming proteins and the essential ones are missing you will suffer. You could end up with some disease because those are missing, in some cultures around the world where food isn’t so plentiful and they aren’t ingesting the right nutrients. You know one that I can think of is called Kwashiorkor.

You will see often times where little kids will have the distended tummies. The rest of their bodies are fine and it just comes down to the fact that they have a nutritional deficiency.

You know in the case of fat you can actually measure the quality of nutrients. People will volunteer to be involved in a clinical feeding trial and they will hook these people up to all kinds of measuring devices everything from body temperature to how much moisture they exhale.

They weigh and eliminate brine in their feces and they weigh it and they record everything they can about these patients. They will feed these people a controlled diet and so they will feed them a controlled amount of protein. They can measure those four elements how much is excreted and how much how much weight a person gains and basically they can determine how much of that protein is utilized by the body.

When they do that they can determine the quality of the protein and it’s based on the amino acid that makes up the protein. They can determine how well that the body absorbs protein. Then they can assign a number value to the protein and how well it is absorbed.

Some proteins are absorbed extremely well and an example would be egg albumin, which is the white of an egg rather than the yolk. The egg white protein has an extremely high biological availability and all of the essential amino acids in the right balance. You can take a protein like gelatin and gelatin has the amino acids that it is made of you will find that it is deficient in an amino acid called triptophane and because it is lacking in that it isn’t balanced. If it is combined with other sources of protein it is okay.

The bottom line is if you are looking at fat or protein it is important to look at the composition of them. You can read the declarations of the food labels and especially in snack items the protein will be there but often times the manufacturer is looking for inexpensive ingredients they can find.

Often times the protein is inefficient and they don’t have the quality and are deficient in amino acids. It is important to know that all fat and proteins are made up of these building blocks and it is important to know to have a balance of all of these building blocks for the fat to be good for you and the protein to be good for you.

Q- Is it true then that you can eat more and lose weight by combining different foods?

A- No. People say that there are certain foods that take more calories to burn than they provide or that certain food items are going to cause more calories to be burned. It is a misconception and I can fully understand why people think the way they do.

People don’t want to put the time and the energy or the money into losing weight. It is a lot of work. People want to lose weight and they know that some of the food they eat is unhealthy and they don’t want to put the time and energy into changing things.

It takes planning and time. Instead of visiting the fast food restaurant on the corner on the way home you go to the produce aisle in the grocery store. It might take you a little more time and cost you a little more money but it’s worth it. You know the fast food restaurants super size everything. The artists and executives that design the ads know that our mentality is that the more food we can get for our buck then the better we are going to like it. It wasn’t so long ago that you would go in and order a pop and you would get 8 oz or 12 oz and now it’s not uncommon to get 24 or 36oz because they super size everything.

Q- Tell me are there any specific foods that burn fat?

A- Basically, if you want to burn fat or lose or maintain your weight everything comes down to energy balance. It gets back to when you asked me to define a calorie and if you look at the macronutrients the carbohydrates, proteins and fat are assigned a certain level of energy and for example protein each gram of protein will contain four calories.

Q- Then what should we be counting? Should we be counting calories carbohydrates or fat?

A- If you look at carbohydrates it is the same scenario. Each gram of carbohydrates contains 4 grams of fat. This is why fat is so important. It is almost twice that of protein and carbohydrates.

So one gram of fat contains roughly 9 calories. So if you start talking about the Atkins diet, it depends on how you set up the study. You can get any variety of results you want. You know the Atkins diet is one to pick on because the early studies showed that people lost more weight initially and overall the diet was more effective than other diets.

Some where along the line people were starting to figure out that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. What seems to be the case now when you start looking at the numbers is when you have enough people on the diets it becomes statistically significant. What it seems to boil down to is Atkins restricts your intake to mainly fat and protein and by eliminating carbohydrates from the diet it takes away so many of the food choices that are available.

You know, even lovers of protein and fat what they find that restrictions your variety and choices are taken away and what you do is actually limiting your caloric intake. Just because you don’t have the wide variety of choices you can make any more. So it works initially and that is one of the reasons why people are so attracted to it.

95% of diets fail and what it really comes down to if you want to lose weight it has to be something that you decide to make as a lifestyle change. You know, a diet is only temporary. You go on it and what are you going to do eventually? You are going to go off it. In my definition that is not a lifestyle change that is a temporary fix. You know that is human nature. You go on the diet and eventually you are going to go off it and revert back to you old eating habits and gain the weight back.

It all comes down to understanding a little bit more to understanding the foods that you are eating and a choice to make a lifestyle change. Also almost all of these diet plans introduce a new way of eating, a way that is abnormal to the way that you are used to eating and we are creatures of habit and we like the foods that we are used to.

And because we are creatures of habit we don’t adapt very well to changes like that. We can go on it for a while and because it is so abnormal it just doesn’t fit. If you are a busy mom and you are rushing your kids back and forth to school you then all of the sudden you have to prepare these kinds of foods and eat these certain foods it basically forces you off the diet.

It all comes down to the fact that you have to make a decision that you are going to change the way you eat and it doesn’t’ have to be an abrupt change you just need to understand more about what you are eating and what the energy value is and the nutrient value is of the foods you are consuming.

You know we talked about people and their eating habits and they are so ingrained, how can we change our eating habits. One of the things that I have noticed is that if you are doing something healthy for yourself, if you will just go out and walk 15 minutes a day the easier it will be to put aside the unhealthy ones.

When you do something like walk 15 minutes and then you are standing in front of the chocolate chip cookies you are more likely to start thinking should I eat those cookies or shouldn’t I, well I think it becomes a little more easier to make healthy choices. The more healthy choices you make the easier it is to incorporate more.

It’s almost like the unhealthy choices don’t fit anymore. They are incompatible with the healthy choices. You know, I have quoted that adage that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Well it’s almost the same applied to health and nutrition.

Lean muscle mass has a higher metabolic requirement. When you are just sitting around doing nothing and your body has more lean muscle mass you are going to burn more calories than if your body contains fatty tissue.

It’s kind of a cruel injustice but the fitter you get even at rest you are burning more calories. The basil metabolic requirement on a daily basis may be a very small percent of your total energy needs as compared to other ways you burn energy. The basil metabolic requirement is just how much energy you need to sustain your basic metabolic processes, like breathing, heartbeat and digestion and those things.

Q- What about alcohol? You know that we hear that one drink is okay or two drinks are okay and now it’s just red wine.

A- A small amount of alcohol ingested on a daily basis MAY have some positives in reducing your risk for heart disease or may help to lower blood cholesterol levels.

Red wine may be preferred because of the antioxidants that you get and the other chemicals that come along with the wine. Obviously there is something in the red wine as opposed to the white that makes it more beneficial. Alcohol is number one a source of calories and you know that it is quite high. The higher the level of alcohol in the beverage the higher the caloric intake is. One gram of alcohol would be five and a half calories. It isn’t as high as fat but not as low as protein and carbohydrates.

There are other aspects of that to think about, if you are trying to lose weight you need to question whether you need the extra calories. There are many other beverages that would provide many more nutrients. If you are trying to lose weight you need to question whether or not you need those extra calories from something that basically has no nutritional value. I would tend to be more negative about consuming alcohol because people tend to get out of hand when consuming it and the damage it can do to families as well as the individual.

So I would never be one to advocate the drinking of alcohol because it has no nutritional value or health value. You know any benefit that alcohol might provide you can get from something else.

Q- That brings up something that I completely skipped and that is a well balanced diet, just what is a well balanced diet?

A- Following the food pyramid is a good place to start and maybe it’s a good place to end for some people. If you take all the food somebody eats at the end of the week and then add them all up and how much variety there was, you will find that there really wasn’t that much variety.

People generally have a dozen foods they like to eat and they will end up eating the same foods day after day for most of their life and that are where you run into problems. You get stuck in a rut and fail to incorporate a vast variety into your diet and fail to get the nutritional balance that you should be getting. If you know nothing about food but incorporate a lot of variety into your diet the chances of your being malnourished because you don’t get the right nutrients goes down hill.

You know, just basically add all your favorite fruits and vegetables and throw in a couple of tablespoons of your favorite dressing and season it to taste. Mix it all up and you have an incorporation of all of that variety. You get all of the vitamins and the nutrients and the minerals that you need in just one meal instead of just ingesting one kind of food.

It all comes down to looking at your budget and having some knowledge of getting what you need and looking at the food labels.

With just a little bit of knowledge of how to read food labels and what you need you can make the right choices with the money that you have to work with.

Even the restaurants and the fast food chains are starting to offer more nutritious choices, likes salads. Subway is one that has really jumped on the bandwagon. You know the one with Jared standing there saying this deep fat fried sandwich contains 45 plus grams of fat I wonder how they got all that fat in there to begin with and compare it to the subway sandwich.

Q- Why is that we sometimes crave certain foods? Can it be that your body is sending you a message?

A- You know that in some developing cultures there is a craving that some people have and I believe it is called Pica. It is where a person will have a craving to eat a particular food item and it doesn’t always have to be a food item, it can be dirt or something that isn’t a food at all. The theory is that people will have a craving for certain things that will provide a nutrient that is lacking.

In our culture I don’t think it is metabolic for food cravings. You know if you are used to consuming sugary sweets and that is all you eat, your metabolism adapts and guides you to the foods you are used to consuming.

An example of that would be someone who has gone on a vegetarian diet and eliminate meat from their diet temporarily. Then they start to reintroduce meat and their stomach is upset. Their stomach is not used to digesting that kind of food. They have adapted to digesting just non-meat items. There are food digestive adaptations to the kinds of food that you eat. One would have to believe that those are the kinds of foods that you get used to.

Q- Do we become hungry because our stomach is empty or is it because of something else?

A- That is a tricky question. There are people who have studied this and can boil it right down to all kinds of enzymes and mechanisms that kick into play that stimulate appetite or depress appetite. Individual metabolism is so significant individually that I am sure that you can feel that on a general basis.

It is complex and is another whole area to think about why people are gaining weight, whether it is emotional or whether it is the amount of exercise they have done. You know that everybody that is out there studying this whole thing and trying to help people lose weight, each one of these communities have their own theories and their own recommendations. They all study it in a different way - some try to understand the psychology and some try to understand the nutritional aspects of it. You know, if it was well understood we probably wouldn’t be having the problems we are having today.

Q- We have discussed foods in general, but can you tell us, what are “functional foods”?

A- It is a term that gets bantered about by people who are food scientists or food companies that are talking about different kinds of foods. Usually when they are talking about a functional food it is a food analog, which is a food that has been put together by when it is manufactured.

You know a functional food through the company that I was working for may be let’s say internal tube feeding formula for a hospital. The composition of the product contains all the nutrition in the right proportions for protein and amino acids plus fat with the right fatty acids and the right vitamins and minerals and you put all that together and you have it has a particular food functionality.

There are foods that are designed to resolve particular health problems. Let’s take something common like lactose intolerance, people have trouble digesting the lactose they are missing an enzyme called lactaid. So an example of a functional food would be a food that was put together without any milk protein or lactose sugar. It functions with that person who is lactose intolerant. You can take that example and apply it to anyone else who has special feeding needs.

Q- Do they actually convert differently into energy than if they had this component in it?

A- No, functional food is just a catchy term that came up years ago by food companies looking for a certain marketing handle to promote different types of food they may want to manufacture. This term functional foods really originated 8 or ten years ago really by food manufacturing companies. It really doesn’t have any scientific meaning. It’s just a generic term used to describe foods that they want to manufacture. It is a little hype and one of the areas would be food that is high in fiber.

Often times food companies will include products that they have formulated that contain high amounts of fiber because fiber functionally is healthy in most forms anyway. Therefore they include all these high fiber foods that that have formulated under the functional food umbrella. It’s just another way of marketing foods.

Q- In the most basic form what are the basic nutrients?

A- There are, call them building blocks of good nutrition, the level of protein in your diet and a certain amount of carbohydrates to provide energy and a certain amount of fat. Those are the main building blocks and the body requires certain enzymes and vitamins and minerals. A good quality protein contains certain amino acids and then you break it down into smaller blocks called peptides. Basically it just comes down to protein, fat and vitamins and minerals to keep metabolic process continued.

CHAPTER 3. Digestion

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