What The Heck Should We Eat?
Possibly the best thing you can do to help yourself eat better is not about choosing a particular type of food at all. It's about the quality of what you eat. The hosts distill the state of nutrition science down to a few helpful basics. Experts include: Dr. Walter Willett, Michael Pollan and Dr. Rani Polak.
-
Dr. Walter Willet M.D., Dr. P.H., is a Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. The focus of his research is the long term health consequences of food choices and lifestyle risk factors for various diseases. He is the most cited nutritionist internationally.
Bio | Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy
Michael Pollan is an author and journalist known for his books on the science of psychedelics and the effects of eating on the way we live.
Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food | Books | Twitter
Dr. Rani Polak MD, MBA, Chef
Dr. Rani Polak is the Culinary Healthcare Education Fundamentals (CHEF) Coaching program at the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and the Center of Lifestyle Medicine at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel. He aims to help people improve nutrition through culinary coaching.
Bio | LinkedIn | Twitter | Delicious Diabetic Recipes -
Speaker 2: [00:00:20]Produced by the iLab at WBUR, Boston. [3.2s]
Eddie: OK.
Juna: OK, so.
Eddie: From the top.
Juna: So let's get to the real stuff we all want to know which is what the heck to eat. If you open your Instagram or turn on the news, there's always some new celebrity pushing a new fad diet, whether it's vegan or keto or carnivore. Blah blah blah. The list goes on. One way that we can compare them all pretty succinctly is if we look at their macro nutrient profile. Eddie, can you elucidate what are macro nutrients?
Eddie: Juna, I'll do my best. Before we talk about macronutrients, let's get back briefly to the calorie piece. Calories are simply the amount of energy in the food. All diets that you mentioned and all the ones that will soon evolve can work at least temporarily because you're going to be cutting calories. The macronutrients that you mentioned are fat, protein and carbs. So let's go through this. If you see an Instagram and there's something about bread and pasta, you're thinking --
Juna: Carbs.
Eddie: And if you hear something about changing or eating less or more oil, you're thinking --
Juna: Fat.
Eddie: And for protein --
Juna: Chicken, fish,
Eddie: And I'll throw in legumes and other plant-based sources of protein.
Juna: Wait I have a question. So why do so many of these diets have such devoted fan bases like there's always somebody who's like lost 40 pounds on low-carb or lost 15 pounds on low-fat. I did some research, and it turns out it's not that these diets have some magical combination of foods like I used to think, but it's more the foods these diets don't include. Like what diet have you ever seen that says eat as much pizza as you want or drink all the soda you can drink? If you're eliminating an entire food group or an entire time period of eating, of course, you're going to lose weight in the short term because way more food is off-limits and you're intaking a lot less.
Eddie: I think I know where you're going with this, Juna?
Juna: I think you do, Eddie. But just to be clear, Food, We Need To Talk.
Eddie: I'm Dr. Eddie Phillips
Juna: and I'm Juna Gjata.
Eddie: And let's go on talking about diets. One of the first things that happens, Juna, is that we become more mindful. Whatever it is you're trying to eliminate, you're going to have to stop, look, think and analyze what you're planning on eating to say, "is it fitting my diet or not?"
Dr. Walter Willett: Going on an extreme diet does make us pay attention to what we are eating, and mindfulness does seem to be important and not just eating everything that's put in front of us. Because unfortunately, in this country, there's lots of bad stuff that's put in front of us many times.
Eddie: This is Dr. Walter Willett, professor at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.
Dr. Walter Willett: Also, some of these diets, like the Atkins diet, do have a kernel of truth in them. And that's because most people have been eating large amounts of refined starch and sugar. And the Atkins diet did take that out of their diet. However, eating a lot of huge amounts of red meat, sausage or butter is not an optimal diet.
Juna: First things first, let's tackle the diet that most of us are on, which is the Standard American Diet. Or, as I so fondly like to call it, SAD. [laughter]
I asked Dr. Willett what is the biggest problem with the Standard American Diet as it stands today?
Dr. Walter Willett: Carbohydrate quality. Overall, we get about half of our calories from carbohydrates, and of that half, about 80 percent comes from refined starch, sugar or potatoes, which actually are very rapidly converted into sugar when we eat them.
Juna: For a long time, I thought that carbs were the devil, that they were literally the cause of all weight gain. So if there were muffins or something at the store and they were labeled low carb, I was like, "Aha, this must be a healthy muffin because it is a low carb muffin." What is the deal with carbs? Are they actually evil or like what?
Eddie: So, Juna, it's not that carbs are the problem, it's refined carbs. So if you eat fast-digesting carbs like pasta, white bread, Twinkies, cereals, sugary drinks, it goes right into your bloodstream, your blood sugar spikes and you feel great for maybe an hour or two. And then your blood sugar goes way down. You're hungry again and you're reaching for another fast-acting fuel source. It's like throwing paper on a fire. You're going to get a little flash, but it just doesn't last long and you end up being hungrier for the rest of the day.
Juna: OK, so what about fruits and vegetables, though? Because aren't like fruits and vegetables, all carbs and like, I mean, doesn't everybody say eat fruits and vegetables? Hello.
Eddie: Yes. And I'm going to tell you, eat fruits and vegetables.
Juna: What?
Eddie: Here's the deal with the fruits and vegetables. Of course, we want you to eat those. They're really good for you. They are carbohydrates, but they're not the refined kind. They come along with a lot of fiber.
Juna: Why is fiber something we need to get enough of?
Eddie: Because it's going to slow down the absorption of the sugar. You're not going to get a high from the blood sugar going up and then the crash a little while later. Also, when you're eating your vegetables, it's going to make you feel full.
Juna: That's important.
Eddie: Right? And the fiber is going to help your gut motility. That means you can move your bowels. That's important. It's also why an orange, let's say, is so much better for you than drinking orange juice. It's the same amount of sugar, but one has fiber, that would be the fruit, and one doesn't. The other thing, when you're eating an unrefined food, like a fruit or vegetable, as it comes to us through nature, it's not been stripped away of the nutrients like vitamins and minerals.
Juna: So that's exactly what Dr. Willett advised when I asked him to construct the ideal plate.
Dr. Walter Willett: About half of the plate by volume, fruits and vegetables. The other half of the plate can be roughly divided into carbohydrate sources like grains. But what's really important is, if we're going to eat grains, that most of those be whole grains. And then the protein part of the plate is actually more plant-based protein like nuts, seeds, soy products, other kinds of beans and some fish in there as well.
Juna: Before we derail and start talking about the grains and the protein and stuff --
Eddie: Let's talk veggies.
Juna: OK, so I don't know why vegetables get such a bad rap because I think they're so tasty if you cook them right. And literally there's so many ways to sneak them into your food these days. For example, I have seen these at many stores where they will put cauliflower into a food processor, and then it makes us like rice textured cauliflower. So that's a really simple way to sneak cauliflower into any dish. Or you can get like zucchini spiralized into noodles --
Eddie: Spiralized?
Juna: That makes it into like these long, thin strips, and they are like noodles and then you just put whatever you put on your regular noodles or whatever, or you can put vegetables in your smoothies. They are so like, easy to incorporate, so there's really no excuse for not having them.
Eddie: So here's the word on carbs. They are definitely not all evil, and there are certain carb sources, like the veggies that you were just talking about, that come with many more benefits. You're going to get your vitamins, you're going to get your minerals, you're going to get your fiber all packed into a low-calorie package.
Juna: And they help your skin and nails and whatever look good because they have all the vitamins.
Eddie: Also, you're going to need those carbs to fuel your day, to do your exercise, to do your activities of daily living.
Juna: And my favorite part of vegetables is the fullness part because I know I like to feel full and like, I mean, how much broccoli can you really eat? But I think we should address the elephant in the room, which is fat. So for a million years, fat was the devil like everything was low fat, and now it's like super trendy for everything to be high fat. And it's so confusing because like what in the heck is the deal with fat?
Dr. Walter Willett: The nutrition community back in the late 70s, 1980s believed that all types of fat in the diet were bad and the main cause of heart disease and most cancers in the Western populations.
Eddie: So Juna to answer your question, I'm going back to Dr. Willett from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and he says that there wasn't much good data to support the belief that fat was bad.
Dr. Walter Willett: And as the evidence has evolved, it really has shown that the percentage of calories from fat in the diet is actually really not important. It's the quality of fat.
Eddie: You just heard him say the quality of the fat. He's talking about healthy fats like avocado, olive oil, nuts, eggs and even a little bit of whole fat dairy if you're not dairy intolerant. These are the kind of fats that keep you full. This is going to fill you up. It adds great taste to your food, but high-fat foods like desserts and processed stuff. That's probably not the best idea.
Juna: Probably not the best idea. So my favorite part about fat is definitely that it keeps me full because when I was eating low fat, I was literally starving all the time. And then as soon as I started eating a normal amount of fat, not even high fat, just like a normal amount, I felt so much more full. And it turns out that's because fat acts a lot more like a log. So that fire you were talking about, whereas refined carbs are like that paper that just goes, “pshew pshew” you know, lights on fire super quick and then goes out. Fat just keeps on burning all day long. I guess the last thing we should talk about is protein. And let me guess, quality also matters.
Eddie: You got it. So you want to focus on high-quality sources of protein. We can mention fish, which are full of omega three fatty acids, poultry or even those nutrient dense organ meats, which a lot of us like to ignore. If you want to go vegetarian or vegan and avoid all animal products, you're still going to get plenty of protein just from plant sources. Do you have any doubts about that?
Juna: Maybe a little.
Eddie: OK, then why don't you look at our cousins, like gorillas? All right, they're massively strong. And what do they eat?
Juna: Plants?
Eddie: That's it. So if you have any shred of a doubt left Juna, go look up "vegan bodybuilders." These women, these men, are massively strong on a plant-based diet. And speaking about the protein that they're getting from their plants, they need it in order to repair and rebuild their muscle.
Juna: Protein is important if you're exercising, especially.
Eddie: Always, but yes.
Juna: So what if I told you that you could sum up all nutrition advice in seven words.
Eddie: Seven words? We've been talking about this for ten minutes and we're just touching the tip of the iceberg.
Juna: Seven words, but you're just going to have to wait a minute because we're going to a short break.
_____________________
Eddie: OK Juna, I'm still wondering, how can anyone possibly fit all the principles of nutrition into just seven words?
Juna: I know. But after decades of research and looking at studies and writing several bestselling books, the world renowned food writer and journalist Michael Pollan has summarized everything he learned about nutrition in this seven word haiku: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Michael Pollan: When I say "eat food," I mean, eat food as your ancestors recognized it, eat food that has been minimally processed, food that's been eaten for a long time that's part of traditional diets. Doesn't have to be your traditional diet, it can be anywhere in the world. Eat real food. Avoid edible food-like substances. "Not too much." You know, we're eating too much. And lastly, "mostly plants," because one of the things we know is that a substantially plant-based diet is better for you. We don't know why. You know, is it the antioxidants in the vegetables? Or the fact that those plants are pushing meat off the plate? Doesn't matter.
Juna: And the best piece of nutrition advice that Michael Pollan has to offer us.
Michael Pollan: Cook. Learn to cook. Nothing will do more to change your diet than if you prepare food yourself. It's finally the only way you can take back control of your diet from the corporations who are trying to feed you junk.
Eddie: Juna, did you just notice how Michael Pollan talked about food? He didn't mention the macronutrients that we were going on about. He didn't talk about protein or fat or carbs. Food is where we should put our attention.
Juna: OK, I think that makes a lot of sense because if you're cooking, you will probably be using whole foods, right? Because nobody is cooking with Oreos and Twinkies. We're cooking with vegetables.
Eddie: You can find recipes...
Juna: Let's put those recipes aside. OK, let's stay focused on task. If you're cooking, most likely you're cooking with whole foods, right?
Eddie: Yeah. So it turns out that just the act of cooking is one of the healthiest activities that you can do. I'm going to introduce you to [00:13:47]Dr. Rani Polak. [0.7s] He's a published chef. He's a family physician, a certified health coach, and he's a former fellow of mine. That's why I know him so well. He invented chef coaching to help patients improve their relationship with food and to cook more at home.
Dr. Rani Polak: The science shows people who cook for themself usually consume healthier ingredients. Less calories, smaller portions. People who cook at home enjoy more, not just from the cooking, from eating with your family and with your friends.
Juna: This all sounds great and stuff, Eddie. But listen, Linda. I don't think that cooking is like a feasible thing for everybody to be doing all the time because like -- Well I'll just speak on my behalf, like if you have a really busy work schedule, it's just hard to set aside that time. Or I'll speak on others behalf, what if you have kids and like if you're cooking all the time, like how in the heck can you do everything you need to do in the day?
Eddie: Juna, I hear you. Like, I'm really interested in healthy food, as you can imagine from all of our conversations. And I don't feel like I'm a good cook. It also seemed really like unreasonable to me that we would spend an hour preparing food that I could gobble down in 10 minutes.
Juna: Five minutes for me, just saying.
Eddie: But then we asked Rani what his solution is to that.
Dr. Rani Polak: Batch cooking. So, you know, when you cook soup, you can cook 10 portions and freeze eight portions and then defrost it when you are lacking time. Cook more any ingredient that you cook. For example, you make rice and then freeze it and then use the rice throughout the week or throughout the month. So we call it repurposing. Cooking one ingredient for specific dish and repurpose the leftovers to other dishes.
Eddie: So I love how we're moving beyond leftovers, which is sort of like unintentional, to actually repurposing.
Juna: Aha, what a PR dream.
Eddie: But it helps because we have repurposed food in our freezer. And let me tell you, because I'm still not sold on the idea of cooking for an hour to eat for five or 10 minutes. When you come home and you are hungry, your willpower is low, it's late in the day, the kids are screaming, you've got something else to do that evening. That's when you open up your refrigerator and your freezer and you see the frozen rice or the soup that you made two weeks ago sitting there waiting and all you have to do is defrost it. That's where the magic comes in.
Juna: So what can you do with this meal prepping thing besides rice or is that it?
Eddie: Now you can do anything. So think about even, like, vegetables.
Dr. Rani Polak: Antipasto is the family of vegetable dishes, taking vegetables, cut them into cubes and roast them in the oven with olive oil and salt and pepper. And then they can live in the fridge for up to five days and you can snack them, you can add them as a side dish. That's great.
Eddie: So I think we're starting to wrap this up a little bit. We've got the protein, we've got the carbs. We've talked about healthy fats --
Juna: But Eddie! We have not covered dessert. The most important thing.
Eddie: Those Blondie's coming back,
Juna: Not the Blondie, but there must be something else that we can eat that's "healthy," quote, that's a dessert.
Eddie: How about some fruit?
Dr. Rani Polak: One way to enhance the flavor of the fruit is to warm it up. So if you grill, let's say, slices of apple or slices of pear, they will feel much sweeter.
Eddie: And Juna, Rani talks about this all-natural dupe for ice cream.
Dr. Rani Polak: If you take grapes and put them in the freezer, you can just snack frozen grapes. It's unbelievable I mean, you don't need to buy ice cream anymore.
Eddie: OK, Rani's my friend, but I'm not so sure about this one. I mean, I am not giving up my ice cream.
Juna: I think it comes close. You know, like sometimes if you're like kind of wanting ice cream, you can get away with the grapes, right?
Eddie: You can. There are always healthier alternatives. They actually talk about doing like dessert flips. Right? Rather than having a big piece of chocolate cake with a little piece of strawberry on it. You could take a big strawberry and dip it in chocolate.
Juna: Oh, that's really clever.
Eddie: Speaking of sweet things, there's one thing that we have to cover before we close for today, something that maybe gets pretty close to an evil food. Here's Walter again.
Dr. Walter Willett: At this point in time, probably the biggest problem in the US diet, I would say is sugar sweetened beverages. That usually comes in the form of soda, but now even some of the sweetened coffees have massive amounts of sugar in them as well.
Juna: Sweetened coffees, excusez moi? Apparently, the human body isn't meant to deal with sugar in its liquid form, says Michael Pollan.
Michael Pollan: We didn't evolve to get substantial amounts of calories from liquids.
Juna: Caramel macchiato?
Michael Pollan: Well, yeah. Starbucks. Great example. We think they're selling caffeine, they're really selling sugar. And we go in there thinking, we're not buying a soda, we're buying coffee. But in fact, we end up having, you know, soda like quantities.
Juna: Darnit!
Michael Pollan: I'm so sorry, I know I'm bumming you out.
Eddie: So if sugar sweetened beverages are a regular part of your diet, Juna, one massive change you can simply but not easily is to cut back on those. And it doesn't have to be all at once. You can start to slowly drink less and less until maybe some day you're not drinking any at all. Maybe water becomes your beverage.
Juna: OK. Can I give you a really good example of this?
Eddie: I’d love it, yeah.
Juna: So freshman year of college, every single day I would get a caramel macchiato, which is like, I think it's like 40 grams of sugar. And I'm happy to report, six years later, I now get a cold brew with no sugar and no milk. And I love it. But hello, it took six years.
Eddie: So you made the change.
Juna: Gradually, I made the change.
Eddie: So let's go back to the plate because now we're talking about food, not about the macronutrients. OK, so let's rebuild that dinner plate. So half of it, half of it's going to be
Juna: vegetables and fruit.
Eddie: Yeah, next quarter,
Juna: Is going to be a quality source of carbohydrates such as whole grains.
Eddie: And then the last quarter,
Juna: A quality protein source.
Eddie: Excellent. I'm going to add in a little bit of healthy fat because it's going to be delicious and it's going to fill me up.
Juna: Great.
Eddie: OK, I'm going to leave the last word for Dr. Walter Willett.
Dr. Walter Willett: I think the most important thing is to have a diet that's varied, mostly plant based, and find a way to put this together in a way that can be enjoyable and be something that we can stay with for the rest of our life.
Juna: So basically, nobody wants to be miserable, so it should be enjoyable and you should be able to do it forever because we're not doing an eight week body challenge, right? So we talked to a lot of really important foodie nutrition-y people for this episode. But when I asked them what is the most important piece of advice you can give people to impact their health forever? Like one thing they could do–
Eddie: That's not food?
Juna: Anything.
Eddie: Quit smoking.
Juna: No, it wasn't quit smoking.
Eddie: Stress.
Juna: No it wasn't stress.
Eddie: Sleep?
Juna: No, OK, you're terrible at this because this is your domain. It was --
[00:20:41]
Speaker 1: Exercise.
Speaker 2: Exercise is good.
Speaker 3: Exercise as much as I possibly can. [3.0s]
Michael Pollan: [00:20:45]The best benefit for the least amount of time would definitely be -- [3.8s]
Juna: Exercise.
Eddie: Cool, OK.
Juna: So I think that is what we should talk about in the next episode. Will you be there?
Eddie: I'll be there.
Juna: If you'd like many more than seven words on the subject of nutrition. Jog on over to your Instagram and follow us @FoodWeNeedToTalk. We post helpful stuff all the time, but most importantly, we post fun stuff. Also, if you haven't subscribed already, head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe. And if you like it, leave us a review because it helps us reach more listeners.
Eddie: And if what you've heard leaves you with a burning question, send a voice memo to foodweneedtotalk@gmail.com and we'll try to answer you in future episodes. We have just two words for our guests Dr. Walter Willett, Michael Pollan and Dr. Rani Polak.
Juna: Thank you.
Eddie: Thank you.
Eddie: Food We Need To Talk is a production of WBUR.
Juna: Our producer and editor is [00:21:43]George Hicks. [0.3s]
Eddie: Our final arbiter and editor is [00:21:45]Elisabeth Harrison, [0.5s] and our founding godmother is [00:21:48]Carrie Goldberg. [0.3s]
Juna: I'm Juna Gjata.
Eddie: And I'm Dr. Edie Phillips, see you next time.
Juna: Mostly plants. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants...
Eddie: Let's go have dinner.
Juna: We've got to stop this, we literally need to stop this now.
