Dr. Mercola January 24 2009 67,222 views
In a new study, women more than doubled their fruit and vegetable intakes and dramatically increased their consumption of "good" fats when they were counseled by registered dietitians and provided with a list of nutritional guidelines reflecting the traditional Mediterranean diet.
The six-month study divided 69 women into two groups. Women in one group continued their usual diet and did not receive any dietary counseling. In the other group, registered dietitians used an "exchange list" of foods that are common in a Mediterranean diet to make a plan for each participant. The list included suggested servings of several categories of foods, such as dark green vegetables.
The group that followed the exchange-list plan reached their nutritional goals within three months, and maintained the change for the six-month duration of the study. The comparison group, however, made few dietary changes.
The Mediterranean diet has been associated with health benefits such as lower risks for cardiovascular disease and cancer. Recent studies also have suggested that such a diet can increase longevity.
In many ways the Mediterranean diet is head and shoulders ahead of the standard American diet. It emphasizes fresh vegetables, which is something most people could use more of, while downplaying processed foods. (Reducing your intake of MSG, a neurotoxin, and high fructose corn syrup, which aggravates inflammation, will in and of itself have a positive impact on your health.)
Studies have shown that following the Mediterranean diet can help:
The main thrust behind this latest study was to devise an effective method to achieve the major nutrient intakes of the Greek-Mediterranean diet using American foods. They found that women were able to successfully change their dietary habits when guided by a nutritional counselor.
Using an "exchange list" for foods common in a Mediterranean diet, the participants were able to more than double their fruit and vegetable intakes and dramatically increase their consumption of healthy fats.
This is good news, and certainly something most everyone could do.
The list included suggested servings, or exchanges, of several categories of foods, including:
The Easiest Way to Increase Your Vegetable Intake
One of the absolute easiest and most efficient ways to optimize your vegetable intake is to juice your vegetables.
Not only will juicing help your body absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables by making them easily digestible, but you’re also avoiding the risk of damaging any of their sensitive micronutrients through cooking. Cooking and processing food destroys micronutrients by altering their shape and chemical composition.
It also allows you greater freedom to add a wider variety of vegetables to your diet that you may not normally enjoy eating whole. This way, you’re working with the principle of regular food rotation, which will lessen your chances of developing food allergies.
For more in-depth guidelines and information about juicing, I recommend you review the juicing section of my nutrition plan.
Selecting the Best Vegetables for Your Nutritional Type
You can easily optimize the benefits from your dietary choices by determining your nutritional type, and selecting fruits and vegetables that are best suited for your unique biochemistry.
According to Nutritional Typing principles, if you are a carb type, vegetable juicing is highly recommended if you want to regain your health. Juicing is also beneficial for mixed types, whereas protein types need to follow some specific guidelines to make it work for them.
If you are a protein type, juicing needs to be done cautiously. The only vegetables that should be juiced are your prime protein-type vegetables that are lower in potassium:
Regular lettuces and typically wonderful vegetables like collard greens, kale and Swiss chard are far too high in potassium for protein types and will tend to cause biochemical imbalances.
It is also important to keep your serving size of juice to no more than 6 oz., but don't be surprised if you find that as little as 3-4 oz. of juice feels like the right serving size for you. For a protein type, 3-4 oz. of juice is a significant amount.
Also, to make drinking vegetable juice compatible with protein type metabolism (which needs high amounts of fat), it is important to blend a source of raw fat into your juice. The types of raw fat I recommend most are:
In addition to adding a source of raw fat to your juice, you may also find that adding some, or even all, of the vegetable pulp into your juice helps to make drinking the juiced vegetables more satisfying.
In 1979 my Mom, we call her Mamoo, was taken to the hospital after a collapse. Doctor's diagnosis was congestive heart failure--heart, kidneys, lungs all involved. Lupus was added to the list. Doctors didn't give us any hope.
After praying into the night, I was assured Mamoo would recover, and proceeded to do the following::
In the hospital administrator's office, the man heard about my determination to take a juicing machine (I had a Champion) up to her intensive care unit and prepare fresh juices outside her room. "She needs fresh, raw food to heal and rebuild her body" I said. "Hospital food has practically none of that. She will not survive otherwise" I told him. "Well, it's never been done before" he said, "but if you get the doctor's permission I guess it won't hurt."
Later the doctor said, I DON'T KNOW APPLES FROM APPLES. Talk to the dietitian. If she OKs it, then so will I."
Talking with two dietitians, one was openly skeptical. The other was openly curious, and wanted to give me the green light.
I also demanded that my natural health counselor (trained in the Reams Biological Theory of Ionization (RBTI) and a juicing expert, be brought in to consult with the dietitians. She looked at two weeks of menus, xed out almost everything on them, and made positive suggestions such as apple sauce, avocado and oatmeal, which I added to the juicing diet. When the feeding tube was removed, I lugged the juicer up to the Respiratory ICU and began Mamoo's new lifestyle. Twice a day this continued until Mamoo left the hospital five weeks after entry. You should have seen the radiant smile on her face as she was delivered to my waiting car!
For the first two weeks at home, three family members took turns staying with her and making sure she was fed and juiced. By that time, Mamoo was juicing on her own.
Several weeks later, she celebrated Christmas with the family--and I mean WE REALLY CELEBRATED!
We were blessed with eleven more wonderful years with "our family angel."
That's a beautiful story about your Mamoo! Very encouraging! Thanks for sharing! :)
I own a Champion and juice fruit and veges and drink it. It is brilliant. the pulp I mix in with the food I cook for my dog, he loves it too! Sometimes, if I juice fruit only, I drink the juice and use the pulp to make jam. Ingrid
What on earth had your mom's diet been?
I personally would discount the prayers, but they may well have made you feel better.
As for the juicing.. ummmm.. she may well have recovered anyway, even with the feeding tube.. (btw what do they put in to the feeding tube?).
This is hardly a scientific experience, but I am glad your Mom is thriving.. .
But I do eat a mountain of raw and cooked fruit and vegetables.. and at 63 years old, still havent been admitted to hospital with the stuff your mom had.
After initial years of persuading my own kids and grands to eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, my kids are now as bad as I am. The grands salivate over their vegetables..
A Vita-Mix blender is incredibly powerful and easily blends up an entire pitcher full of produce (fresh AND frozen) in seconds. It is NOT a juicer - it blends the whole fruit or vegetable.
I should also say that in order to get it to blend properly I have to add a little water to the fruit and vegies first, which also results in a thinner, more drinkable mixture. I can put 2.5 to 3 lbs. of produce (plus 12-16 oz. of water) in the pitcher all at once and blend it complete in less than a minute. It is an amazing tool...
We have had 3 of the Vita-mix's in the last 30+ years. We would use it everyday for things like grinding wheat berries, puree tomatoes for canning, etc. We even used it to liquifiy kitchen scraps so we could immediately fertilize plants in the garden. It grids coffee beans in about 4 seconds. We use it to blend butter and flax seed oil with a dab of coconut oil for our own homemade "buttery spreads". It makes the best creamy soups, too. I love it and would find it difficult to prepare food with out one.
Just got a Vita-Mix and oh so worth it. I have increased my vegetable consumption and healthy fruit consumption. The recepies are are easy, and this has been very helpful because I'm short on time usually and don't have time to always cut veggies up and cook. Definately worth considering when you want to have more whole foods in your life.
I have a great idea for everyone reading this. Just eat raw fruits and vegetables whole. Juicing is fine now and then but you need all of the pulp, also. Not to mention when juicing you have an extra chore to do with cleaning the blender afterward. For older people that have trouble chewing juicing is perfect and may be their only means of getting vital nutrients from fruits and vegetable. But, for most others eating them whole is your best bet.
ann1122 - I agree that nothing is better than eating fruit or vegetables whole, as the enzymes in our saliva mixes with the food while chewing and thus maximizes absorbtion. Good point...
Sometimes there isn't enough time to eat as much fresh produce as we need - a sad symptom of out time - so the Vita-Mix is convenient and saves time. It IS NOT a juicer, so the entire fruit or veg is ground up and consumed. Also, most times I only need to rinse the pitcher out with hot water and stick it in the dish drainer - cleanup takes 10 seconds. I then have 2-3 lbs. of blended nutrition that I can sip over the next few hours while I do other things. I try to hold a gulp in my mouth for a few seconds to allow saliva to mix in, but sometimes I just bolt it down - it's all good... I wouldn't use it if the advantages didn't outweigh the negatives.
Please note that I don't have anything to do with the Vita-Mix corporation, and the one I'm using was given to me by my mother after my father passed on. I didn't even want it at first. After serious health issues of my own cropped up, blended fruit and vegs became the cornerstone of my remarkable recovery.
Rob
Is the Vita Mix glass where it comes in contact with the juices? Do you know of a blender or juicer container that does not contain polycarbonate plastic in either the blender itself or the storage container?
I agree with you about eating food whole. Not because of the same reasons. Just that when you drink a food it is less filling. If you eat something solid then your stomach has to process it and that takes longer and makes it work harder. Leaving you full longer so you eat less. (At least that is the Idea) Juceing is good if you have problems digesting, or you are thin and do not get enough out of your food solid. If you are over weight like most Americans, then you need to eat food whole.
My Mom has an old Vita Mix, and it is amazing, it is Like compairing those big $200-$300 mixers to the cheap hand mixers. She also has one of those expensive jucers that takes the pulp out..The vita mix is better because you get all the pulp in your juice, making it a "whole" food instead of taking the pulp and fiber out like other jucers..
I am a protien type so I do not eat fruit much. And the veggies I eat are lower carb. I am one of those people who are always starving, so I have to eat my food whole. Griding up food would just make me hungrey faster. The only way I can stay away from food is by eating lots of fat when I eat, then I am not hungy for hours.
Rob, do you (anyone else feel free to chime in) know if the Vita-Mix destroys enzymes? I know that some blenders/juicers do so because the motor gets too hot. I tried to find the answer in their FAQ but they didn't address it.. Thanks
I think you really need to consider that it could be down to what percentage of your diet is Mediterranean. A glass of vege juice mixed with an american diet is not a Mediterranean diet. Imagine if your body was a car and you had water in the petrol tank - putting more concentrated gasoline in there with it isn't going to help much - yet this is what people try and achieve with vitamin supplements.
What people need is a balanced diet, and measuring vitamin levels is an indicator of this. Putting extra vitamins in to improve your indicators is like cheating on a test. I'm sure you noticed recently that milk needs a certain protein level and farmers tried to use supplements to fake it - with disasterous results.
Think of it this way, would you enjoy trying to eat plain toast first, then eating the equivalent amount of butter after - rather than eating buttered toast. Foods complement each other.
Changing your diet isn't easy either as your taste pulls you certain ways depending on what you ate recently. Once you start eating differently you won't like the same things you used to. Invest in the change, or don't bother. The most important thing is to keep positive either way as you can survive well on a bad diet if you have low stress and are generally happy.
Eating well helps in many areas I recommend it, but don't do it because you think you have to because you don't. (I'm not a doctor or a nutritionist just well read)
Why are some people so "all or nothing".
So, if you choose, or can't afford, to be "perfect", than doing anything is a waste?
Reasoning such as this is why our country is in such deep trouble. Reminds me of an old saying,
How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.
Juicing and supplements are quite a few steps toward perfection-and since I know I'm not perfect, I'll just strive for as close as I can manage.
Note Taking Nerd, maybe I'm wrong, but I got the impression from this article that we should be juicing as well as eating vegetables - not instead of. In other words, how to get MORE vegetables into your diet.
Some of the posters here are defending the eating of whole vegetables, but I don't think anyone said to stop doing that. I would say eat your normal meals, and add juices as a drink between meals.
AMEN Julieanne and well said.
All this talk of the Mediterranean Diet! I don't know.......my father's parents came from Italy. Their entire backyard was a garden. They produced their own seed for the next year's crops. Lots of greens......... Grandpa Angelo died in his '70's of colon cancer and Grandma Amelia suffered most of her life with diabetes, dying at 86 from congestive heart failure.
Everybody's looking for the magic diet but I think the answer is far more complex.
Dr. D'Adamo and Dr. Mercola are closest, I think, by recognizing that there is not a "one size fits all" solution. We each have to do our homework, listen to our (well cared for) bodies and stay active and involved.
The internet is a boon our parents (and grandparents) didn't have. If I can't find what I need locally, I can find it on the net! We are a very fortunate generation.
Only Truth, you hit the hammer on the nail. I am a firm believer in the blood type diet. Any diet that is a "one size fits all" type will help a segment of the population but will not help most people. Atkins was great for many but horrible for many others. Now the big rage is "raw foods", sure raw foods are good for some just not for the entire segment of the population.
Did your grandparents us pesticides and chemicals on the garden? Was the soil and water checked for toxins and contaminates?
There is more to gardening than saving seeds...
What else was in their diet besides produce? What was the overall Omega 3/6 ratio in the diet? Too much Omega-6 is a leading cause of heart disease. Also, did they have much physical activity? Another big factor.
and then there are the extras - a little ginger root, or fresh herbs etc, dependant upon what you are juicing.
Poured over crushed ice in the summer, or added to a soup in the last minute before serving in the winter.
Eg, tomato, carrot and cucumber with a little fresh basil and oregano is lovely either way.
Some juicers give a clear light result which is OK for someone who is unwell and with a low appetite, other juicers provide pulp as well for fibre.
As you can see by the date, my post is three weeks old - before Dr. Mercola added his comments on juicing. So to round out the picture: typically I do a green juice (one of the brassicas, like broccoli or cabbage... celery... spinach or chard... parsley... dandelion greens or herbs like basil, in season...plus carrots and one organic apple from my own orchard). In other words, I rarely juice fruits, though those Christmas cranberries were nice! I routinely include garlic and fresh ginger root with the veg juices, and I usually eat the pulp in some form as well - typically dumped into a soup when it has finished simmering and cooled a bit. Pulp goes down nicely when mixed with a little mayo and horseradish too. Experiment!
Islander wrote: But an even easier way to increase the number of fruits and veggies in your diet is to buy and use a juicer.
ALAN: Another way is to plant a garden. When you have an apple tree with 50,000 apples on it, or a squash vine with zukes reaching 3 feet long every hour, you find you are forced to get really creative as to how you are going to eat all this food.
What are we going to do with 500 grapefruit this week?
Reverend Alan, I have a garden, an orchard and a berry patch. Right now all are under a foot or more of snow.
About those grapefruit: can I give you my mailing address? ;-)
Seriously, can you sell, trade or barter? Get creative!
Hello Islander, I don't know anything about a foot of snow! I am in California LOL!
I tried shipping some citrus to relatives in Indiana but I was told by the shipper that they could not accept the delivery, there is some law against it.
And overnight air freight would make them cost more than anything purchased locally anyway, so we didn't try again.
I was just wanting to have fun suggesting that the best way to get more fruit and veggies eaten is to grow them and when you have a glut of them you have no choice but to eat them up. It's lunch time and you have 50 zukes, what are you going to eat?
We let members of our coop help themselves and one year one member took a lot of our citrus to the local farmers market and then split the money with us. That was nice. Nothing ever goes to waste around here.