Power Foods for the Brain (21 page)
Read Power Foods for the Brain Online
Authors: Neal Barnard
Oats.
If you’ve heard television commercials promoting the ability of oats to lower cholesterol levels, well, it’s true. Their
soluble fiber
does the trick. Oatmeal and oat-based cold cereals (such as Cheerios) can shave extra points off your cholesterol.
When it comes to oatmeal, skip the instant and “quick” varieties and have old-fashioned instead. It still cooks up in just a few minutes. Steel-cut oats are also fine. Cook oatmeal with water, not milk. If you like your oatmeal creamy, stir the oats into cold water and wait for a minute or two before bringing them to a boil. If you like it crunchier, boil the water first, then stir in the oats. Top with cinnamon, raisins, sliced bananas, strawberries, or whatever your tastes call for.
If you chose cold cereals, top them with soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, or other nondairy milk rather than cow’s milk.
Beans.
Not only are beans rich in protein, calcium, and healthful nonheme iron, they also have plenty of cholesterol-lowering soluble fiber. You don’t need a huge serving. Four ounces is more than enough. People who eat beans regularly have cholesterol levels that are, on average, about 7 percent lower compared with their bean-neglecting friends.
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So have baked beans, black beans, hummus (made from chickpeas), split pea soup, lentil soup, or whatever other varieties you like. If beans cause a bit of gassiness, just have smaller servings and be sure they are cooked until very soft. Over time, this tends to sort itself out.
Barley.
Barley is often used in soups and in breakfast cereals,
and it lowers cholesterol, too, for exactly the same reason. Barley has plenty of soluble fiber. Add it to your own soup recipes, or mix it with rice. It tastes great and lowers your cholesterol as a bonus.
Soy.
Soy milk, edamame, tofu, and tempeh were perfected in Asia, and have now found a huge audience in the West. Apart from the fact that they replace cholesterol-laden meats and dairy products, soy products seem to have a cholesterol-cutting effect of their own.
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Almonds and walnuts.
People who eat almonds and walnuts regularly tend to have lower cholesterol levels compared with people who skip them.
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As I mentioned above, I suggest limiting nuts to about 1 ounce per day and using them as an ingredient or topping rather than a snack.
Cholesterol-lowering margarines.
Certain margarines block the absorption of cholesterol from the intestine. Benecol Light, for example, is made with plant
stanols
that come from pine trees, and it has a cholesterol-lowering effect. But like nuts, these products are fatty and should be used sparingly.
At the University of Toronto, Dr. David Jenkins put these foods to the test. He asked a group of patients to avoid animal products and to include foods like oats, beans, barley, soy products, almonds, walnuts, and special margarines in their routines. Their LDL (“bad”) cholesterol dropped like a stone, falling nearly 30 percent in four weeks—essentially the same drop as is seen with cholesterol-lowering drugs.
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This is not a low-carbohydrate diet, and for good reason.
Your brain runs on carbohydrates.
Just as your car runs on gasoline, your brain and all the rest of you needs
glucose,
the natural sugar that is released as starchy foods are digested.
The healthiest, slimmest, longest-lived people on Earth—and those who tend to keep their mental faculties lifelong—are those who include plenty of carbohydrate-rich grains, beans, noodles, fruits, and starchy vegetables in their routine.
If you have subscribed to the “carbohydrates-are-fattening” myth, the fact is that they have only 4 calories per gram, compared with 9 calories per gram for any kind of fat or oil. So why have carbs gotten a bad name? The reason is that we tend to combine them with grease. A cookie, a cake, or a pie does have some carbohydrates in the form of flour or sugar. But it is the stick of butter or cupful of shortening in a batch of cookies or a cake that really packs in the calories.
So carbohydrates are not fattening. Even so, the carbohydrate category is enormous, including everything from fruit, pasta, and breads to candy and sodas, and some carbs are better than others. Here are tips for choosing the best ones.
Natural and unprocessed.
Brown rice has all the fiber nature could pack into it. But when the outer bran layer is removed to turn it into white rice, the fiber is mostly gone. Same with wheat when it is refined to produce white flour. Generally speaking, whole grains are better than those that have had their natural bran milled away.
Low glycemic index.
Certain foods cause your blood sugar to rise more quickly, while others are gentler on your blood sugar. The glycemic index sorts out which are which. The glycemic index was invented in 1981 by Dr. David Jenkins—the same innovative scientist who showed how a portfolio of foods could slash cholesterol levels.
The glycemic index is calculated by feeding a given food to volunteers and then tracking whether their blood sugar rises steeply or gently. Foods that cause blood sugar to spike—that
is, “high-GI” foods—can be a problem for people with diabetes. They can also cause triglycerides to rise, and some people feel that they accentuate cravings. In contrast, low-GI foods—foods that are gentle on your blood sugar—are easier on your system.
The GI champions are beans and green leafy vegetables. They have admirably low GI values, as do barley, bulgur, and parboiled rice.
Some foods are surprises. Even though fruits are sweet, most have a very low GI. And pasta has a low GI, too. Yes, even white spaghetti. The reason is that it is so compacted in the manufacturing process that it digests very gradually and its glucose molecules are slow to pass into your bloodstream.
There are just a few high-GI foods to look out for. Here they are, along with good replacements:
•
White and wheat breads.
They tend to increase blood sugar. Rye and pumpernickel breads have lower GI values and are better choices.
•
White baking potatoes.
Big white potatoes tend to spike blood sugar. In contrast, yams and sweet potatoes are gentler on your blood sugar.
•
Most cold cereals.
Puffed up, sugary cereals spell blood sugar problems. In contrast, bran cereal is easy on your blood sugar, as is oatmeal.
For many people, the glycemic index of foods is a secondary issue; that is, they can handle both high- and low-GI foods pretty well. However, if you have diabetes, weight problems, or high triglycerides, you’ll do well to favor low-GI foods.
By now, you might be thinking that it sounds like a tall order to rethink your menu. After all, I’m suggesting you break some habits you’ve carried with you for a very long time. Let me show you a trick that we use in our research studies to help people adopt a new diet. It’s easy. We just break the transition into two steps:
First, check out the possibilities.
Don’t change your diet yet. Take a week or so to see what you like. The idea is to find foods that fit the guidelines we talked about and that fit your tastes, too. I suggest taking a piece of paper and writing down four headings: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack. Under each heading, fill in foods that are free of animal products and are healthful overall—foods that you might like to try. Browse through the recipe section and see what calls to you.
Breakfast might be Blueberry Buckwheat Pancakes or Waffles topped with bananas or fresh blueberries and maple syrup. Or how about a bowl of old-fashioned oatmeal with sliced strawberries and crushed walnuts? Perhaps bran cereal with almond milk and banana chunks? If you’re a sausage lover, skip the Jimmy Dean and make it Gimme Lean. Yes, that’s the veggie sausage that has taken over a big corner of the market because it tastes just like sausage, without the oink or the cholesterol.
Take a minute, think what you might like for breakfast, and write it down.
For lunch, soups and salads are quick and tasty. How about Easy Quinoa Tabouli Salad, Easy Colorful Pasta Salad, or a big green salad, starting with whatever fresh greens your tastes call for, plus slices of tomato, cucumber, and fresh shiitake mushrooms (or any other variety)? Top with chickpeas and a sprinkling of slivered almonds. Then, how about Turkish Lentil Soup,
Mushroom Barley Stew, White Bean Chili, or Fresh Pea Soup? Perhaps a Baked Veggie Falafel sandwich, any of the many meatless versions of burgers and hot dogs, or perhaps a BLT (made with veggie bacon) with Dijon mustard on whole-grain bread.
If fast food is your thing, any submarine sandwich shop would be happy to make you a veggie sub with lettuce, tomato, spinach, olives, cucumbers, peppers, and a drizzle of red wine vinegar, and they’ll even toast it for you. At the taco shop, skip the meat taco and have the bean burrito (hold the cheese).
At dinnertime, the sky’s the limit. Salads and soups for starters if you like. Then how about Gnocchi with Basil and Sun-dried Tomatoes, Spaghetti with White Bean Marinara Sauce, Asian Stir-Fry with Apricot Teriyaki Sauce, Mexican Polenta Casserole, or Portobello Burgers? If it’s pizza night, leave off the cheese and meat toppings and have all the veggie toppings, with extra sauce. And finish it off with Super Raspberry Protein Brownies, Baked Apples, Vanilla Berry Sorbet, or Chocolate Pudding.
The idea for now is just to see what you like. So jot down some ideas for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, and then take a week or so to test out recipes, convenience foods, or restaurant choices that fit our nutritional bill and satisfy your tastes.
A three-week test-drive.
Once you know which foods you like, the next step is to take your new menu for a three-week test-drive. During this time, the idea is to follow the guidelines 100 percent—skipping the animal products and added oils, and really focusing on healthful foods. This is a twenty-one-day vacation from whatever less-than-perfect habits have clung to your pants leg all these years.
After three weeks, size up your progress. Chances are you will have shed unwanted weight, your cholesterol and blood pressure will be better, and your energy will be up, too.
You might also discover that your tastes are changing. You did not count on that, but it happens. The old, unhealthy foods start to seem—well, old and unhealthy. Your taste for grease is rapidly falling away. And you’re on the path to better health.
Whether you can sense it or not, all the “side effects” of your menu change are good ones. The arteries in your heart are opening up, your cancer risk is plummeting, the likelihood you’ll ever develop diabetes is falling (or if you have diabetes now, it is coming under better control). Weight control becomes easier than ever. And you’re discovering new tastes that will soon become your best friends.
Modern life is getting faster. More and more people have their breakfast in the car on the way to work and survive on fast food at lunchtime. “Home cooking” doesn’t go much further than microwaving a pizza. We keep the same pace on our days off. People nowadays eat on the go practically nonstop.
Now, you are probably imagining that I will tell you to stop, take a breather, and live in the moment. But that is not my message. Life is not slowing down, and neither are you. And why should you? There is no reason you cannot enjoy a fast-paced life and eat healthfully at the same time. If you are spending hours at the store, let me offer a few tips to get you out the door quickly:
| • | Stock up, and shop less frequently. If you pick up larger quantities of healthful staple foods and keep them on hand, you can cut way down on your trips to the store. Rice, oats, and other grains keep well. Ditto for frozen vegetables, canned beans, pasta, and tomato sauce. Look for tofu in shelf-stable packaging (as opposed to water-packed tofu); unopened, it lasts for months. The same is true for soy milk, rice milk, and other dairy-free milk products. |
| • | Get in, get out. If you have a shopping list in hand as you walk in the store, you’ll be out the door faster and will be less susceptible to impulse purchases. You’ll also save yourself a repeat trip for items you forgot to buy. |
| • | Let the store do the work for you. Many stores sell varieties of premixed salad greens, along with frozen precut broccoli, cauliflower, beets, and so on, all of which will save you time in the kitchen. If you enjoy carrot juice, baby-cut carrots will save you the labor of scrubbing regular carrots. |
| • | Get groceries at the salad bar. If you just need a few items, check out the salad bar. You’ll have exactly what you need, with zero preparation time and no waste. |
| • | Let your mouse do your shopping. In many cities, you can pick out your groceries online—even perishables, like fresh produce—and have them delivered to your door for a nominal charge. It’s simple, and once you’ve submitted an order, you can save your preferences and modify future orders as you wish. Peapod ( peapod.com ) and Safeway ( shop.safeway.com ) are two common services, and you’ll find others convenient to you. |
Foods give you the nutrients your brain and body need. But there are a few supplements you should know about, too.
Vitamin B
12
.
As I mentioned in
chapter 4
, everyone should have supplemental B
12
in their diets. This is not optional. The US government recommends it for everyone over age fifty, and I would recommend it for everyone, regardless of age.
Vitamin B
12
is in many fortified cereals and fortified soy milk, and those sources are perfectly fine. For convenience, the easiest source is a multiple vitamin. Choose a brand that does
not
have added minerals. Drugstores and health food stores also sell supplements with just B
12
alone or “B complex” (that is, a mixture of B vitamins), and they will do fine. Any brand you find in a store will have more than the 2.4 micrograms you need, and there is no toxicity from supplements with higher amounts.