Good Food Bad Food…
a primer for the anti-aging
gastronomy neophyte
Thereis good food and there is bad food. There
is food that when consumed will nourish our bodies, make our hair and skin
glow, our fingernails and teeth strong, our bones straight and our eyes bright.
Good food makes us think quicker, see
better, run faster, grow taller, move with grace and live longer with a high
degree of wellness.
What,
then, does bad food do? When we consume
bad food, our bodies are not nourished, our cells are deprived and our organs
pay the price. Consuming bad food
results in inflammation, fat building, malnutrition, bad skin, bones, teeth,
hair and nails, slow thinking, aching joints and eventual age related chronic
disease. All of which is
preventable. You could say that
healthcare reform begins in your kitchen.
If
you are reading this blog, I assume that you have the same interest as I have
in the benefits of preparing and eating foods that keep us young, foods that
slow the aging process. The aging
process to which I refer is cellular aging, a complicated process of cell
replication that takes place in our bodies as new cells replace old. But, simply put, cellular aging was once
described to me in this way. Think of
your favorite photograph, a self portrait of you at your best. Now make a photocopy. You can see that it is not exactly as perfect
as the original. Now take the copy and
make another copy. You can see this one
is even less perfect than the second one.
The sharpness dulls, the contrasts lessen. Now take that copy and make another copy and
so forth and so on. That is what happens
to our cells as they replicate.
So,
you can see that if we cause our cells to become damaged or imperfect, as they
replicate, the damage and imperfections are magnified time and again. That is why at fourteen years old we feel
well and physically fit eating a diet of hamburgers and fries, but at forty-four
years old, our arteries are lined with plaque, our joints ache and our fasting
glucose has risen from 85 to 115, a mere one point per year. Who would notice?
I
noticed, first, in my forties when I began to experience osteoarthritis, then
in my fifties when I began to experience swelling in my ankles and pain in my
back, and finally nearing sixty, when my medical history described me as pre
obese, pre diabetic, pre hypertensive, pre high cholesterol, and pre
hypothyroid. I was suffering from
symptoms of non specific origin (although my physicians were quick to assign
labels such as adult onset diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, hypothyroidism,
adult onset asthma, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and pseudo gout), symptoms
that included swelling in knees, fingers and ankles, muscle pain, extreme
fatigue, chronic sinusitis, hair loss, dry skin, occasional short term memory
loss as I searched for forgotten words. I was prone to skin infections and my weight
had ballooned out of control. I had none
of these problems in my past history.
Always
the skeptic, I rejected my physician’s offer of pharmaceuticals, one for each
of the symptoms, his glib assessment that my symptoms were part of the
inevitable aging process and his advice to accept it as a natural part of
life. Instead, I took the advice of my
wise and learned chiropractor, Dr. Eleanor Rolnick, who gently but persistently
advocated for nutrition as a remedy.
Her advice, her patient and outstanding care and the concern and
attention of her staff (and by that I mean her Girl Friday, Pam Gaudette)
started me on a path to wellness. Thank
you, my friends.
As
a chef educator I have had the experience of teaching in our public schools,
teaching young adults how to cook. We
are all aware of the obesity epidemic and the rapid increase of adult onset
diabetes and assume it is the result of fast food giants and soda pop. It is,
but not that alone. It is also the fault of the parent who prepares quick fix
foods, the pop tarts, hamburger helper and pizza, sandwiches with 12 oz of meat
and 6 oz of cheese, refined flour products, and all the over salted over
sweetened foods from quick service restaurants.
These are the foods my students dined on every day.
Even
the weight conscious teens, the young women especially, who strive to be model thin and are told to
eat less meat, more pasta, salad and cheese, even they are at risk. Alfredo anyone? Do you know what a fig is, or what tortilla
chips are made from or have you ever roasted a red beet? "What's a beet", one of my students
asked.
It didn’t take much research for me to
discover the connection between my years of feasting on the western diet of
meat and bread, meat and pasta, pasta and cheese and cheese and bread and my
burgeoning weight. I was convinced that
my adult onset symptoms were also, in fact, the result of years of consuming
inflammatory foods even when I thought I was dieting.
Diets
like Atkins, the Zone, South Beach, and the Mediterranean diets successfully led
to weight loss, but you talk about yoyo diet.
That was me, down ten, up five, down five up ten. Never once did it occur to me that the whole
time that I was feeding my body food to lose weight, what I was really losing
was my health. Yes, most of these diets
encourage fewer carbohydrates, but they recommend replacing them with excess
meat and dairy. Or, they discourage fat,
eliminating meats and replacing them with grains. In either case, these inflammatory foods accelerate
cellular aging.
The only publicized diet that I know
of that resembles the anti aging diet is one followed by my older sister,
Michael’s mother, who like her son, at age eight was diagnosed with juvenile
diabetes. After 60 years of eating good
food, she now looks 10 years younger than me, is far more physically fit and is
never bothered by the nagging aches and pains that I battled for decades.
The
diabetic diet may not be referred to as anti aging or anti inflammatory, but
that is exactly what it is. The same
foods that are considered to be inflammatory are the foods that also cause
havoc with how our body processes sugars which in turn causes more inflammation
and symptoms of disease. So, whether it
is called the diabetic diet, the anti inflammatory diet, the anti aging diet,
or even the alkaline acid diet, it is one in the same.
Based
on the principle that foods which are alkaline producing are also anti inflammatory (good foods that
promote wellness and therefore are anti –aging) and those that are acid
producing are inflammatory (bad foods
which promote cellular aging), I embarked on a dietary change that lead to my
recovery. Alkalinity and acidity, the ph
to which I am referring is not the ph of the food itself, but the ph of the
food after it is metabolized by the body.
So, for example, a lemon has an acidic ph, but when processed in the
body it is alkaline forming. Don’t
confuse the two. There are dozens of
websites that explain in detail the science behind the acid or alkaline diet
including lists of foods with their corresponding ph as the result of the
metabolic process in the body. Do your
own research, and you will find that they correlate with lists of anti
inflammatory vs inflammatory foods as well.
Eating
a diet that consisted of at least 60% alkaline producing foods had a dramatic
effect. My blood glucose returned to 85 and
my hypothyroidism disappeared along with all of the other age related symptoms. And although it was not the goal of my new anti-aging
dietary habits, my weight dropped considerably as well.
As
time went on and I became more accustomed to eating and preparing an assortment
of vegetables, the proportion of
alkaline producing food was easily bumped up to 70% and 75% simply by adding
alkaline producing garnishes such as almonds or sunflower seeds, sprouts, chili
pepper flakes or my own sauces like blueberry ginger chutney or cilantro salsa
verde. It was not a matter of counting
calories or weighing out portions to reach those proportions, but much
simpler. It was just how much of my
plate was covered with what type of food.
As long as more than half of my plate was filled with alkaline producing
food, I was good to go.
Here’s
an example. The dinner plate of a
typical western diet is a center of the plate meat such as steak, pork or ham
(takes up ½ of the plate) with a sauce, splash of ketchup or applesauce, mashed
potatoes (1/4 to ½ of the plate) sprinkled with cheese and a spoonful of peas
(or none at all). The dinner plate of a
typical anti aging diet is a portion of protein such as chicken equal to about
4 oz. (1/4 or less of the plate) topped with fresh chili and cucumber salsa, an
even smaller portion of starch, if at all, such as brown rice (1/8 of the
plate) garnished with scallions, and the rest of the plate filled with steamed fresh
green beans sprinkled with cilantro, and a garden fresh tomato and watercress
salad drizzled with canola oil and fresh squeezed lemon. Our wellness requires a change of mindset
from the current concept of center of the
plate protein to center of the plate fresh
vegetable---from this
 |
| Center of the plate short ribs |
to this.
 |
| Center of the plate green beans |
In addition, it was
not a matter of either or, but how alkaline or acidic producing as well. For example, lemon and watercress are
extremely high alkaline producing, while blueberries are alkaline producing but
not as high as lemons or watercress. So,
knowing that, there are little tricks to having your cake and eating it too, so
to speak. If I want to indulge myself by
having a glass of red wine which is slightly acid producing, I add a big squeeze
of fresh lemon juice and throw in the lemon rind as well. Or if I am craving beef which is highly acid
producing, I accompany it with a gigantic watercress salad.
The
difficult part at first, was creating interesting, flavorful, and feel good
meals without the use of many of our favorites from our western diet. A hamburger patty and bun is 100% highly acid
producing. Spaghetti and meatballs is
100% highly acid producing as is pizza with pepperoni. I was raised in an Italian/Scottish
household where pasta of some kind was served almost every day unless we were eating
beef and barley soup. What is the food
group with the highest acid producing rating?
Grains! What is the meat with the
highest acid producing rating?
Beef! This created a challenge
for me.
We
love our companion pets, primarily ourcats and dogs and wouldn’t think of deliberately
feeding them food that causes inflammation or leads to chronic disease. No, we feed them only the best---the foods
that are especially prepared for them to promote shiny coats and bright
eyes. Why, then, do we not do as much
for ourselves?
I
can’t go back and redo my youth, undo the harm that has been done, but I can go
forward and continue reaping the benefits of eating an anti-aging diet, one
that is rich in good foods---foods that are anti-inflammatory, promote wellness
and reduce my risks for age related chronic disease like heart disease,
arthritis and diabetes. And, I can teach others to do the same.
Buon Appetito
e Buona Salute, Chef AngelaB
P.S. You can purchase As Good As It Gets, Cooking Skills for Life, Volume 1
available on Amazon now...
All proceeds from the sale of my books will be used to open the first EAT SMART restaurant in the upstate SC the first to offer anti-aging gastronomy.
