The highest concentrations of the omega-3 fats EPA and DHA are found in mackerel, herring, lake trout, salmon, tuna, sardines, swordfish, and white fish, more or less in this order. Mackerel typically contains ten times more EPA and DHA per serving than swordfish or white fish. A 3.5 oz. (100 g) serving of mackerel could give you as much as 2.5 grams of combined EPA and DHA.
The best seeds for omega-6 fats are hemp, pumpkin, sunflower, safflower, sesame, and corn. Walnuts, soybeans, and wheat germ are also rich in omega-6 fats.
BEST FOODS FOR ESSENTIAL FATS
Omega-3
Omega-6
Flax (linseed)
Corn
Hemp
Safflower
Pumpkin
Sunflower
Walnut
Sesame
EPA & DHA
GLA
Salmon
Evening primrose
Mackerel
Borage oil
Herring
Black currant seed
Sardines
Anchovies
Arachidonic add
Tuna
Meat
Marine algae
Dairy products
Eggs
Eggs
Squid
So what should you eat to get an optimal intake of these essential fats? There are three possibilities: eat seeds and fish; eat seed oils, which are more concentrated in essential fats but don’t provide other nutrients such as minerals, which are found in the whole seeds; or supplement concentrated fish oils and seed oils such as flax, evening primrose, or borage oil.
Seeds and fish
If you want to do it with seeds, put one measure each of sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds, and three measures of flaxseeds, in a sealed jar. Keep it in the refrigerator, away from light, heat, and oxygen. Simply adding one heaping tablespoon of these seeds, ground in a coffee grinder, to your breakfast each morning guarantees a good daily intake of essential fatty acids. I’d recommend also eating 100 g of oily fish twice a week.
Seed oils
If you want to do it with oils, the best place to start is with an oil blend that offers a 1:1 ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 fats. You want an oil blend that is cold-pressed, preferably organic and kept refrigerated before you buy it. These are now widely available in health food stores (see Resources). You need about a tablespoon a day of such an oil and can add it to salads and other foods (without heating) or just take it straight. Hemp seed oil is the next best thing. It provides 19 percent alpha-linolenic acid (omega-3), 57 percent linoleic acid, and 2 percent GLA (both of the latter omega-6).
Essential fat supplements
As far as supplements are concerned, for omega-6 your best bet is borage oil or evening primrose oil. Borage oil provides more GLA and you need at least 100 mg of GLA a day. Fish oils are best for omega-3 and you need at least 200 mg of EPA and 200 mg of DHA—or 400 mg of these two combined. So, either supplement one GLA capsule and one fish oil capsule rich in EPA and DHA, or find a supplement that combines EPA, DHA, and GLA and take two a day.
Top tip—eat seeds
Smart animals—from parrots to people—eat seeds. Seeds are incredibly rich in essential fats, minerals, vitamin E, and protein. You need a tablespoon a day for 100 percent health. Here’s the magic formula:
Fill a glass jar with an airtight lid half with flaxseeds (rich in omega-3) and half with a combination of sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds (rich in omega-6).
Keep the jar sealed, and place in the refrigerator to minimize damage from light, heat, and oxygen.
Put a handful in a coffee or seed grinder, grind up, and put on cereals or soups.
The benefits of olive oil
While olive oil contains no appreciable amounts of the essential omega-3 and omega-6 oils, much of it is cold-pressed and unrefined. This makes it better for you than refined vegetable oils like the sunflower oil you can buy in the supermarket. Also, while there is a strong association between a high intake of saturated fats, mainly from meat and dairy products, and cardiovascular disease, the reverse is true for olive oil. People in Mediterranean countries, whose diets include large quantities of olive oil, have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. However, this may be due to a number of positive factors in their diet, including a high intake of fruit and vegetables and relatively more fish than meat. The use of cold-pressed olive oil, which contains tiny amounts of phytochemicals, also results in fewer trans fats (see this page) being consumed.
Cook with coconut butter or olive oil
While I’ve extolled the virtues of the essential polyunsaturated fats in seed and fish oils, these highly active nutrients are very prone to damage and hence are not good for high-temperature cooking such as frying. If you do fry, sauté, or bake foods, it is best not to use polyunsaturated fats because these generate oxidizing free radicals. It is much better to use a saturated fat, the best being coconut butter, or a monounsaturated oil, the best of which is olive oil. These don’t generate the harmful free radicals.
Coconut butter is much better for you than regular butter or lard (meat fat). This is because it is what’s called a short-chain saturated fat, rather than a long-chain saturated fat. While health problems such as increased risk of heart disease have been associated with a diet high in animal fats, the same has not been shown for coconut butter or coconut milk. I use coconut butter and olive oil for sautéing foods, both of which add flavor.
Seed jar.
The dangers of trans fats
Refining and processing vegetable oils can change the nature of the polyunsaturated oil. An example of this is provided by the process used in making margarine. To turn vegetable oil into hard fat, the oil goes through a process called hydrogenation. Although the fat is still technically polyunsaturated, the body cannot make use of it. Even worse, it blocks the body’s ability to use healthy polyunsaturated oils. This kind of fat is called a trans fat because its nature has been changed—it is like a key that fits the body’s chemical locks but will not open the door. Most margarines contain these so-called “hydrogenated polyunsaturated oils” and are best avoided. So too are manufactured foods that contain hydrogenated fats, so check ingredients lists on labels carefully. I use pumpkin seed butter instead of butter or margarine as a spread. It tastes delicious.
Frying, as mentioned earlier, is another way to damage otherwise healthy oils. The high temperature makes the oil oxidize so, instead of being good for you, it generates harmful free radicals in the body (explained fully in chapter 15). Frying is therefore best avoided as much as possible, as is any form of burning or browning fat. If you do fry, use a tiny amount of olive oil or butter because they are less prone to oxidation than top-quality cold-pressed vegetable oils. The latter should be kept sealed in the refrigerator, away from heat, light, and air and only used cold in salad dressings or instead of butter on your baked potato or peas.
General guidelines for getting the right kind and amount of fat in your diet
Eat seeds and nuts—the best seeds are flax, hemp, pumpkin, sunflower, and sesame. You get more goodness out of them by grinding them first and sprinkling them on cereal, soups, and salads.
Eat cold-water carnivorous fish—a serving of herring, mackerel, salmon, sardines, or, occasionally, fresh tuna two or three times a week provides a good source of omega-3 fats.
Use cold-pressed seed oils—choose either an oil blend or hemp oil for salad dressings and other cold uses, such as drizzling on vegetables instead of butter.
Use pumpkin seed butter as a spread instead of butter or margarine.
Minimize your intake of fried food, processed food, and saturated fat from meat and dairy products.
Supplement fish oil for omega-3 fats and borage or evening primrose oil for omega-6 fats.
In practical terms, you may want to pursue a combined strategy to ensure an optimal intake of fats for your brain. Here’s what I recommend:
A tablespoon of ground seeds
most days (five out of seven)
Cold-pressed seed oil blend
in salad dressings and on vegetables
Pumpkin seed butter
on bread
Cold-water carnivorous fish
twice a week
EPA/DHA/GLA supplement
once a day
10
Sugar—The Sweet Truth
The human body is designed to run on carbohydrates. While we can use protein and fat for energy, the easiest and most “smoke-free” fuel is carbohydrate. Plants make carbohydrate by trapping the sun’s energy in a complex of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Water from the roots provides the hydrogen and oxygen (H2O), while carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air provides carbon and more oxygen. Vegetation consists mainly of carbohydrate. We eat the carbohydrate and, in the presence of oxygen from the air, break it down and release the stored solar energy that then provides energy for the body and mind.
When you eat complex carbohydrates like whole grains, vegetables, beans, or lentils, or simpler carbohydrates such as fruit, the body does exactly what it is designed to do. It digests these foods and gradually releases their potential energy. What is more, all the nutrients that the body needs for digestion and metabolism are present in those whole foods. Such foods also contain a less digestible type of carbohydrate, classified as fiber, which helps keep the digestive system running smoothly.
While a cat likes the taste of protein, humans are principally attracted to the taste of carbohydrate—sweetness. This inherent attraction toward sweetness worked well for early man because most things in nature that are sweet are not poisonous. It worked well for plants too. They hid their seeds in their fruit, waiting for animals to pass by, eat the fruit, and deposit the seed some distance from the original plant, along with an “organic manure” starter kit!
But we have discovered how to extract the sweetness and leave the rest—bad news for our nutrition. All forms of concentrated sugar—white sugar, brown sugar, malt, glucose, honey, and syrup—are fast releasing, causing a rapid increase in blood sugar levels. If this sugar is not required by the body, it is put into storage, eventually emerging as fat. Most concentrated forms of sugar are also devoid of vitamins and minerals, unlike the natural sources such as fruit. White sugar has around 90 percent of its vitamins and minerals removed. Without vitamins and minerals our metabolism becomes inefficient, contributing to poor energy and poor weight control.
The carbohydrate family.
Fruit contains a simple sugar called fructose, which needs no digesting and can therefore enter the bloodstream quickly, like glucose or sucrose. However, unlike them it is classified as slow releasing. This is because the body cannot use fructose as it is, since cells run only on glucose. As a result, the fructose first has to be converted by the body into glucose, which effectively slows down this sugar’s effect on the metabolism. Lactose, milk sugar, is similar. It is made up of glucose and galactose. The glucose is fast releasing while the galactose is slow releasing. Some fruit, such as grapes and dates, also contain pure glucose and are therefore faster releasing. Apples, on the other hand, contain mainly fructose and so are slow releasing. Bananas contain both and therefore raise blood sugar levels quite speedily.
Lactose (milk sugar) versus sucrose (sugar) versus maltose (malt). Galactose and fructose (shown in gray) are slow-releasing sugars while glucose is fast Hence lactose and sucrose are much slower releasing than maltose, a grain sugar that is quickly digested into two glucose molecules.
Refined carbohydrates such as white bread, white rice, and refined cereals have a similar effect to refined sugar, while oats are more “complex” and their release of sugar is slower. The process of refining or even cooking starts to break down complex carbohydrates into simple carbohydrates called malt (officially maltose), in effect predigesting them. When you eat simple carbohydrates you get a rapid increase in blood sugar level and a corresponding surge in energy. The surge, however, is followed by a drop as the body scrambles to balance your blood sugar level.
Balancing your blood sugar
Keeping your blood sugar balanced is probably the most important factor in maintaining even energy levels and weight. The level of glucose in your blood largely determines your appetite. When the level drops, you feel hungry. The glucose in your bloodstream is available to your cells to make energy. When the levels are too high, the body converts the excess to glycogen (a short-term fuel store mainly in the liver and muscle cells) or fat, our long-term energy reserve. When blood glucose levels are too low, we experience a whole host of symptoms including fatigue, poor concentration, irritability, nervousness, depression, sweating, headaches, and digestive problems. An estimated three in every ten people have impaired ability to keep their blood sugar level even. It may go too high, and then drop too low. The result, over the years, is that they become increasingly fat and lethargic. But if you can control your blood sugar levels, the result is even weight and constant energy.
Diabetes is an extreme form of blood sugar imbalance. This condition arises when the body can no longer produce sufficient insulin, a hormone that helps carry glucose out of the blood and into cells. The result is too much glucose in the blood and not enough for the cells. The early warning signs are similar to those of mild glucose imbalance, but they rarely go away as a result of simple dietary changes. One of the telltale signs is a continuous raging thirst as the body tries to dilute the excess blood sugar by stimulating us to drink.
Oats are more complex than glucose. Oats need digesting into single glucose units, which takes time and slows down the release of its sugars. This makes it slower releasing than sugar, which is a molecule of glucose and fructose that is slower in turn than a glucose molecule, which needs no digesting and directly enters the bloodstream.
Glucose-tolerance check
Answer the questions below, ticking those that you answer yes to. If you tick four or more, there is a strong possibility that your body is having difficulty keeping your blood sugar level even.
Are you rarely wide-awake within twenty minutes of rising?
Do you need a cup of tea or coffee, a cigarette, or something sweet to get you going in the morning?
Do you often feel drowsy or sleepy during the day or after meals?
Do you fall asleep in the early evening or need naps during the day?
Do you avoid exercise because you do not have the energy?
Do you get dizzy or irritable if you go six hours without food?
Is your energy level now less than it used to be?
Do you get night sweats or frequent headaches?
So what makes your blood sugar level unbalanced? The obvious answer is eating too much sugar and sweet foods. However, the kinds of foods that have the greatest effect are not always what you might expect.
The best way to achieve optimal blood sugar balance is to control the glycemic load, or what I call the “GL,” of your diet. This is way superior to “carbohydrate points” or the “glycemic index.” Put simply, the glycemic index (GI) of a food tells you whether the carbohydrate in the food is fast or slow releasing. It’s a quality measure. It doesn’t tell you, however, how much of the food is carbohydrate. Carbohydrate points or grams of carbohydrate tell you how much of the food is carbohydrate, but this doesn’t tell you what the particular carbohydrate does to your blood sugar. It’s a quantity measure. The glycemic load (GL) of a food is the quantity times the quality. The GL of a food is the best way of telling you how much weight you’ll gain if you choose a particular food.
Some foods that you eat a lot of, thinking they are good for you, have a high GL score so be ready for some surprises. Cornflakes and corn chips, for example, are very high, while ice cream and peanuts are not. One single date has the same effect on your blood sugar and weight as a small basket of strawberries.
As far as carbohydrates are concerned there are only two rules:
Rule 1: Eat no more than 50 GLs a day, 40 if you want to lose weight (10 per meal a
nd 5 GLs each for two snacks).
Rule 2: For main meals eat low-GL carbohydrates with protein-rich foods.
It isn’t just about what you eat, it’s also about the quantity you eat, how you prepare it, what you eat it with—and what you drink. Let me give you an example.
Glycemic response: spaghetti. Within forty minutes of eating spaghetti, blood sugar levels are at a maximum. The body releases insulin to help get the glucose out of the blood and into body cells. Two hours later both blood glucose and insulin levels have returned to normal.
The New Optimum Nutrition Bible Page 9