Food for Life: How the New Four Food Groups Can Save Your Life (27 page)

•
The Fruit Group
. Fruits range from apples, bananas, oranges, and other familiar foods to kiwis from New Zealand, cherimoya from Ecuador and Peru, and carambola (starfruit) from southern China. They are rich in vitamins, carbohydrate, and soluble fiber—powerful artillery against heart disease, cancer, and weight problems. Fruit is great as a dessert, as a breakfast, or as a major part of any meal.

•
The Legume Group
. The term refers to beans, lentils, and peas. Americans are familiar with navy beans and a few other varieties, but many cultures have made skillful use of the full range of legumes. Lentils are turned into delicious soups or curries. Chickpeas are pureed with garlic and scallions to become Middle Eastern hummus (a dip for pita bread) or formed into a patty for a spicy falafel. Black beans, gently flavored with tomatoes, peppers, and onions, are a savory staple of Latin American cuisine.

These foods are rich in protein, carbohydrate, fiber, and minerals, and, of course, they are low in fat and have no cholesterol, and are a good source of stable omega-3 fatty acids.

You may be wondering why beef, poultry, dairy products, and oils are included in nutrition guidelines issued by the federal government and health groups but not in the New Four Food Groups. Part of the reason is intense promotional campaigns. The Beef Check-Off program spends $45 million a year to promote and research just one product: beef. Dairy subsidies average more than a half-billion dollars per year. The Department of Agriculture is required by federal law to promote agricultural commodities, even if they are at odds with your health.

The influence of the meat industry is widespread and sometimes hidden. When the New Four Food Groups were unveiled by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the American Medical Association issued a press release criticizing the plan. In July 1991,
The Veal Checkoff Report
, a newsletter from the National Live Stock and Meat Board, carried a story entitled “Why Didn’t the Industry Respond?” which stated that the Meat Board decided not to fight the New Four Food Groups because they could arrange for the AMA to do that for them:

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be an end in sight to the influence of such groups on nutritional information. And we see the results everywhere in the enormous U.S. rates for obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other health problems.

What kinds of meals come from grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes? Breakfast might start with fresh fruit: melon, grapefruit, oranges, bananas, pineapple, or any other variety you like. Fruit can be your entire breakfast or just the beginning.

Let’s add some hot cereal: old-fashioned rolled oats, cream of wheat, or in the quintessential Southern breakfast, grits (ground corn hominy). Hot cereals offer particular advantages. They are usually made from whole grains and are enjoyable without milk. There are new and delicious varieties on the shelves at health food stores. Creamy rice cereals are especially tasty. Let’s top them with cinnamon or strawberries, raisins, or other fresh fruit.

For those who are trying to break a sausage habit, new and delicious nonmeat selections will ease the transition. At health food stores or the gourmet or dietetic sections of supermarkets, look for nonmeat sausages or bacon that taste like the real thing. They are available canned or refrigerated. Most of them should not be part of your permanent breakfast, though. Although they are lower in fat than meat products, most are not as low as whole grains, fruits, beans, and vegetables.

For lunch, let’s start with some minestrone, split pea, or lentil soup. Add a bean burrito, a hummus sandwich, or a cucumber, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with a little mustard. For dessert, enjoy an apple, orange, pear, banana, or any other fresh fruit.

For dinner, how about angel hair pasta with a delicate basil sauce, spaghetti marinara, mushroom stroganoff (yes, you can make it without sour cream), or rice pilaf? Look especially for whole-grain pastas, as opposed
to traditional white varieties that lack fiber, and avoid egg noodles. And do try spinach pasta.

As an alternative, couscous and other grains are now available in the boxed rice section of many grocery stores. They are a snap to make and extremely versatile. Follow the serving suggestions on the package or see the recipes in
Chapter 8
.

Let’s add a spinach and endive salad, and generous portions of broccoli, carrots, green beans, or sweet peas.

The variety of healthful and delicious foods is endless. In
Chapter 8
you will find menus and recipes, both for people who are in a hurry and do not like to spend time in the kitchen and for people who love to cook.

General guidelines for food group proportions follow. Keep in mind that these are broad guidelines. A 200-pound athlete will need to eat more than a 120-pound student. Your own appetite will tell you when you have had enough, and you have nothing to fear from your appetite. When you eat from the New Four Food Groups, you may eat whenever you want and as much as you want, assuming you are not stuffing yourself in response to emotional stress.

You do not need to have all four food groups in the same meal. The number of servings given is general, for the long run. You may wish to eat foods at different times of the day. Some people, for example, like to have fruit in the morning rather than later in the day, and that is perfectly fine. There is also no need to “complement” proteins, as we will see shortly.

Unprocessed, whole-grain products (e.g., brown rice, whole-grain cereals, corn kernels) are preferable to grains that have been ground up into flour or stripped of their bran. In the process of refining the bran is discarded, so brown rice becomes white rice, and flour that would have yielded whole wheat bread now results in white bread.

When many of us think of grains, we think of wheat. But it is a good idea to acquire a taste for other grains, such as brown rice, which are nutritious, less frequently allergenic, and may be more helpful in terms of mineral absorption.

Most Americans are not big rice eaters, but I strongly suggest that you learn the simple recipe for brown rice. It is a great start for those working on losing weight or lowering their cholesterol.

Some people think of bean dishes as the replacement for the steak they are no longer eating, and so they take huge servings of beans. I recommend a greater emphasis on grains, vegetables, and fruits, with a more modest quantity of legumes.

Most people do not need to measure serving sizes, but nutritionists may wish to do so in menu planning. For such purposes, recommended daily quantities are listed.

Let’s see how different people might put together a healthful meal.

Andy is a college student who has a half-hour for lunch. He stops into a taco shop and orders a bean burrito and rice, with an apple for dessert. There is no vegetable within 100 yards of the place, so unfortunately, he doesn’t have one. He will have vegetables at dinner, however, and fruits between meals.

Bob starts with a chickpea salad, followed by mushroom stroganoff. On the side is broccoli and green beans. Dessert is fresh peaches.

Carla goes out to dinner with her boyfriend at a Chinese restaurant. She empties her bowl of rice onto her plate, and tops it with portions of the two entrees they share: broccoli in garlic sauce and home-style bean curd (tofu mixed with vegetables). Dessert is orange slices.

Diane is cooking for a group of neighborhood children. Dinner is spaghetti with tomato sauce, with salads of chickpeas and greens. After dinner, they have apple slices.

Diane got stuck cooking for the kids two nights in a row. Tonight the
menu is green salad, savory baked beans, cornbread, and fresh fruit for dessert.

As for myself, I travel frequently and often eat at restaurants, particularly Italian, Mexican, Chinese, and Indian. When I am home, I prefer to eat very simply. When I plan a meal, half the plate will be a grain, usually short-grain brown rice. About one-quarter to one-third will be vegetables—and there will usually be two different kinds, such as broccoli and carrots. The remaining quarter will be beans, such as black beans, chili, or a curry. Fruit, for me, is usually a dessert or a between-meal snack. Sometimes, I substitute a potato or other starch for the grain.

When the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine proposed the New Four Food Groups, the idea was that grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes should be the foundation of the meal. Clearly, meat, dairy, oils, nuts, seeds, alcohol, and so on should not be the main part of the diet. The next question is, should they be consumed at all?

There is a great deal of scientific evidence that meat and dairy should be left out completely. And vegetable oils are not exactly health foods, either. When you make these part of your routine, you are on your own. Let’s look at the reasons why:

All meats contain saturated fat. This is especially true of “red meat” and poultry, and even a significant portion of fish fat is saturated. In addition, all meats contain cholesterol, and it is mainly in the lean portion. Even the “leanest” meats contain cholesterol and fat.

This is not just a theoretical problem. Researchers have studied people who eat lean meats and compared them to vegetarians. The vegetarians have a decided advantage in terms of lower cholesterol levels and lower risk of heart problems.

Several studies have shown that people with heart disease who follow a diet of lean meat, chicken, and fish continue to get worse over time. When Dr. Dean Ornish managed to shrink the plaques in patients with heart disease, he could not do it with such a diet. Fish, chicken, and lean meats are too weak to do the job. He used a much more powerful program: a vegetarian diet plus other life-style changes, as described in
Chapter 2
.

When it comes to cancer prevention, how much fiber is there in meats? Zero. That goes for all animal products. And there are virtually no complex carbohydrates either, and no vitamin C. What this means is that animal products tend to displace these vital nutrients from the plate.

Livestock producers describe their products as sources of protein, vitamins, and minerals, but the fact is, these nutrients are available in healthier forms from plants. Meat actually contributes too much protein, as noted in
Chapter 1
, which causes calcium to be lost from the bones, aggravates kidney problems, and may even increase the risk of certain forms of cancer.

The vitamin content of meat is more than counterbalanced by its load of fat and cholesterol. Researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo
²
found that, although meats contain vitamin A—a chemical which theoretically helps protect against some forms of cancer, such as cancer of the esophagus and lung—people who consume meats have higher risks of these cancers, not lower. The form of vitamin A meat contains (preformed vitamin A, rather than its precursor beta-carotene) lacks some of beta-carotene’s anticancer and immune-boosting effects, and the fat in meat and its lack of fiber contribute to cancer risk. The bottom line is that, even with their vitamins and minerals, meats increase—not decrease—the risk of disease.

It is easy to forget that meats are muscles. Their purpose in nature is to move a cow’s leg, a chicken’s wing, or a fish’s tail, and for those purposes they are perfect. But just as Goodyear does not build vitamin C into its tractor tires, nature does not pack fiber and vitamin C into a chicken’s leg muscles. Muscles are designed to move body parts around, not to be ideal nutritional supplements.

To build muscle, your body does not need to eat some other animal’s muscles. Bulls, stallions, elephants, and gorillas get their massive strength from eating vegetation.

Do not think that chicken and fish will give you a health food diet. Chicken’s cholesterol content is the same as for beef, about 100 mg in every four ounces, and the fat in chicken is only slightly less than in beef and is still typical artery-clogging animal fat. And in addition to all the above problems, one in three chicken packages at the retail store contains live salmonella bacteria, which can cause a flulike illness, not to mention thousands of deaths every year.

There are some special concerns about fish. Contamination has become a very serious problem. Take PCBs, for example. PCBs are industrial chemicals
used in electrical equipment, hydraulic fluid, and carbonless carbon paper. When you eat fish or other animals contaminated with PCBs, the chemical accumulates in your body and stays there. PCBs are the uninvited guests who showed up at your biological party and don’t know when to leave. They are linked to cancer, and spell big trouble for a developing fetus.
Consumer Reports
found PCBs in 43 percent of salmon, 50 percent of whitefish, and 25 percent of swordfish.
³