The Dash Diet Weight Loss Solution: 2 Weeks to Drop Pounds, Boost Metabolism, and Get Healthy (A DASH Diet Book) (11 page)

Coconut oil is almost 100% saturated fat, and makes a good foundation for increasing

blood cholesterol levels. That is probably not your goal. And it is absorbed better than regular fats, since its short-chain fatty acids do not need to be broken down to be

absorbable. Also, it is probably not your goal to eat fats that are better absorbed into your body, which would increase your net calories. In places in the world with high

consumption of coconut oil, people tend to struggle with increased risks of obesity,

diabetes, and heart disease. My experience at the navy hospital, counseling patients from the Philippines and Southeast Asia, showed that these were common problems. Even thin women were more likely to develop diabetes during pregnancy, especially if they cooked much of their food with coconut oil. The current thinking is that diets high in saturated fats are associated with increased risk for diabetes, which may in part be due to increased inflammatory response to these fats. Palm oil is another tropical fat that is high in saturated fats. Many food manufacturers have eliminated trans fats by replacing

shortening with palm oil. And while we do certainly want to reduce trans fats in our

diets, we do not want to increase saturated fats at the same time. Replacing one bad fat with another is not going to make us healthier.

Following the DASH diet will help reduce our “accidental” exposure to these bad fats.

How? For most of us, who struggle with reaching and maintaining a healthy weight,

there is not a lot of room in the DASH diet for the extra calories from baked goods and pastries. In the DASH Diet Weight Loss Solution, dessert is more likely to be fruit and/or some kind of no-added-sugar dairy food.

Essential fatty acids are those that we must obtain from our diet, since our

body cannot create them from other fats. The essential fats are alpha-

linolenic acid and alpha-linoleic acid.

The Mainstream Viewpoint on Fats

What are heart-healthy fats? Fats that are the most heart-healthy are the long-chain fatty acids DHA (docosapentaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) found primarily in

cold-water fish, and the long-chain monounsaturated fat (MUFA) oleic acid, which is

especially prevalent in nuts and olives. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was thought that

polyunsaturated fats were the healthiest. People were strongly encouraged to choose

vegetable oils such as corn oil and soybean oil. These are also known as omega-3 fatty acids. Now it is generally believed that excess consumption of the PUFA omega-3s,

especially in relation to omega-6 fats, can increase inflammation.

However, the fish oil PUFAs, DHA and EPA, are believed to reduce inflammation.

Consumption of fish oil supplements has been associated with lower rates of heart

disease mortality and all-cause mortality. For many people, fish oil supplements are also helpful for reducing triglycerides, which is an early warning sign of developing insulin resistance.

Olive oil and other oils rich in MUFAs also reduce the risk of inflammation, and are

associated with lower rates of heart disease and some types of cancer. For example,

women in Greece who consume the highest amounts of olive oil have the lowest rates of breast cancer. And olive oil is a hallmark of the Mediterranean diet, which is well known to reduce heart disease mortality. (Actually, the DASH diet can be considered to be an Americanized version of the Mediterranean diet.)

While low-fat diets were strongly recommended by most health guidelines in the late

1980s and most of the 1990s, the unintended consequences were found to be not so

helpful as a health-promoting strategy. Fats were replaced by starches, which can be very healthy when they come from whole grains, but not so helpful in excess or from refined grains. Excess starches also are not beneficial in the sedentary American lifestyle when most of us have inadequate daily activity to burn off the calories. Starches break down to glucose, which can require lots of insulin to process. If people are not doing enough physical activity to have trained muscles that are efficient at burning and storing the carbs as glycogen, the excess glucose will get stored as fat, and mostly around the belly region.

Many adults (and teens) have trouble efficiently responding to insulin to clean the

glucose out of the blood, which is known as insulin resistance (IR). During the early stages of IR, the body will ramp up production of insulin. In children, insulin is a growth hormone, but in adults it is a fat-storage hormone. So eating more starchy foods than we burn off each day leads to more fat buildup, especially belly fat. If you look around at your family, friends, and community, you probably see way too many people who are at

risk for developing insulin resistance and prediabetes. Now you can understand why we are in the middle of an escalating epidemic of diabetes.

But back to the fats. Including a moderate amount of fat in one’s diet is beneficial. Fats help provide satiety and help us to avoid overeating. Fat helps with the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and other plant nutrients, including many of the antioxidants. Foods that are especially rich in these heart-healthy fats include nuts, seeds, olives, and many cold-water ocean fish. Grass-fed beef can be another source of healthy fats.

The Bottom Line on Fats

We have all heard about which fats are unhealthy and should be avoided. Saturated and trans fats are definitely bad choices, since they help our bodies make more cholesterol and can increase inflammation. Further, saturated and trans may raise our risk for

developing type 2 diabetes. The surprising thing is that we actually may be seeing more saturated fats in our diets than a few years ago. Shortening (a big source of trans fats) has been replaced in many foods with palm oil or coconut oil. As I have said, both of these foods are rich in saturated fats. Even worse, coconut oil is especially easy to digest and absorb. (Right. Just what we want—to do a better job of absorbing fats, instead of

eliminating them.) While some authors may claim that these fats are healthful, that is still up for debate. Independent of my own clinical experience, in much of the Pacific islands, where coconut oil is the dominant fat, there are very high rates of obesity and elevated risk of diabetes.

Polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) have been strongly promoted for heart health since the

early 1960s. Now the evidence suggests that high intake of PUFAs is associated with

increased inflammation. The exceptions to this are the marine long-chain PUFAs, also

known as omega-3 fatty acids, we mentioned earlier, DHA and EPA.

The fats that we want to include in our diets include MUFAs such as those found in

olive oil, peanut oil, and other nuts and seeds. Especially good sources include cashews, almonds, walnuts, and avocados. We also want to include the fatty cold-water fish that are rich in DHA and EPA, which include salmon, tuna, sardines, and swordfish. Since

with the DASH Diet Weight Loss Solution you are doing a lot of the food preparation, it becomes easy to choose the right fats. And since the diet plan has far fewer baked goods and pastries than the typical diet, it also will remove hidden trans and saturated fats from your diet.

Think about how you will incorporate the healthy fats in your diet. Which types of

fish will you choose for your meals? If you don’t like fish, perhaps you should ask your physician or dietitian about adding a fish oil supplement. These supplements are

associated with slightly “thinner” blood (that is, it is less likely to clot) and improved triglyceride levels. A major research study in Italy showed reduced rates of

cardiovascular deaths, which was expected and, surprisingly, lower rates of cancer deaths with fish oil. These are the only supplements that have ever been shown to reduce heart disease mortality.

Consider which foods that are rich in monounsaturated fats you will choose. If you eat nuts, which are your favorites? Which cooking oils will you buy? If you have these key foods on hand, you will find it easy to be incorporating the healthiest fats.

CHAPTER 10

Rock Star Foods

Minerals are believed to be key to the DASH diet. Hidden in the main DASH foods

are a rich variety of minerals. Of key importance are potassium, magnesium, and

calcium. Sodium (from salt) is another important mineral, but one that we would like to keep relatively low. The DASH Diet Weight Loss Solution is also rich in vitamins,

antioxidants, and other plant nutrients. Before we go any further, it is important to remember that it is the DASH diet food pattern that is important, not the isolated

individual vitamins, minerals, or antioxidants.

DASH Minerals

It is believed that one of the key reasons that the DASH diet helps to lower blood

pressure is that it is rich in foods that are high in potassium, magnesium, and calcium.

Now, you may wonder, why not just make a supplement containing these minerals?

Well, the researchers already tried that. And unfortunately, it didn’t work. Most trials of vitamin supplementation have also been disappointing, with some even showing

increased numbers of tumors with antioxidant supplements. New long-term research

studies (one a very large European nutrition study and another a large study of women in Iowa) have shown that regular use of over-the-counter vitamin and mineral supplements is associated with an increased, not a lower, risk of death.

There is something about the whole DASH diet food pattern that makes for the health

benefits. A diet that is high in fruits and vegetables, along with whole grains, nuts, seeds, and beans, is going to be very high in fiber and rich in antioxidants and other nutrients.

Although there may be many weird theories about what to include in a diet, plant-based foods are almost always at the core of any diet plan. Certainly they are key to a healthy diet. Add in low-fat and nonfat dairy, and lean meats, fish, and poultry, and you have more of the beneficial minerals, with a meal plan that is still low in any of the concerning animal food components, such as saturated fat. Including healthy fats in your diet

improves the heart-protective benefits, and may also reduce inflammation. Most of the DASH diet foods do double or triple duty in making a healthy diet.

Tables listing some of the DASH foods that are rich in potassium, magnesium, and

calcium appear later in this chapter. In the following sections, we discuss the health benefits of each of the key food groups.

Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits and vegetables, of course, are great sources of minerals, vitamins, and fiber. They are usually some of the most nutrient-packed foods, and many are very rich in minerals, especially potassium.

Whole Grains

While whole grains are not very high in minerals, they are good sources, and do contain small amounts of some of the minerals that are needed in trace amounts. They are one of the most important sources of magnesium in our diets. And of course, whole grains have many other benefits, including fiber and antioxidant vitamins, and they are important sources of B vitamins.

Nuts, Beans, and Seeds

Way back in the 1990s, when fat was “bad,” we threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Not all fats are problematic, and nuts and seeds are certainly wonderful sources of all kinds of nutrients, including heart-healthy fats. Add in the protein in nuts, and you also have a powerful tool to quench hunger. Nuts and seeds are very good sources of key

DASH minerals, especially potassium and magnesium.

Beans, of course, are rich in fiber and protein, and they are also good sources of

important vitamins and minerals. Beans are wonderful sources of both potassium and

magnesium, which are key to the blood pressure–lowering benefits of the DASH diet.

Since beans are often used as meat alternatives, it is fortuitous that they are also rich in iron.

Low-Fat and Nonfat Dairy

Dairy is one of the key DASH diet foods. When the first study was done, one of the

three test groups had a diet with extra amounts of fruits and vegetables, without adding in extra dairy. They did not see the blood pressure–lowering effect of the full DASH plan.

Of course, we all know that dairy is the most important source of calcium in the typical American diet. But did you also know that dairy foods are also very rich in potassium and magnesium? Yes, milk has about 125 milligrams of sodium as well, but we don’t

want to exclude it from our diets in the pursuit of “low salt.”

If you are sensitive to lactose or milk proteins, you can choose dairy substitutes. Take care to choose products with equal calcium and vitamin D to their real dairy counterparts.

(For more information on food intolerances and allergies, see Appendix A.)

Lean Meats, Fish, and Poultry

When it comes to minerals, the protein-rich foods are important “Rock Stars.” Beef is our best source for iron since it is much better absorbed from meat than from plant foods, about 28% versus only 4%. Beef and many types of fish are great sources of potassium.

Additionally, meat, fish, and poultry have many other very important trace minerals that boost our health. Add all of these healthy nutrients to the benefits of building and

maintaining muscle, providing satiety to meals, and we can see that they can be part of a healthy diet. Certainly we are not insisting that animal foods have to be part of a healthy plan, but providing flexibility for those who do enjoy them. One of the main concepts behind the DASH diet was to take the benefits of a vegetarian diet and make the plan

flexible enough to appeal to most of us. So no proselytizing on this side, choose more plant-based foods and enjoy!

Mining for Your Best Mineral Sources

Below are lists of key foods that are rich in potassium, magnesium, and calcium. While these tables are not comprehensive, they will help give you an idea of important foods to incorporate into your diet for better health and weight loss. You should note that we did not include oxalate-rich foods such as spinach, Swiss chard, and beet greens, even