WHFoods Weekly Newsletter

[World's Healthiest Foods]() Weekly Newsletter - February 6, 2017 The George Mateljan Foundation is a not-for-profit foundation with no commercial interests or advertising. Our mission is to help you eat and cook the healthiest way for optimal health. Dear Friend, This week we highlight one of the newly created recipes from our upcoming WHFoods 7-Day Meal Plan: [Seafood Asparagus with Garlic Mirin Sauce](. The goal of our new WHFoods 7-Day Meal Plan is to help you eat more healthfully in 2017. And one way we try and accomplish this is to maximize the intake of vegetables. At WHFoods, we place greater emphasis on vegetables than most common public health recommendations. In fact, we are not aware of any widely publicized vegetable recommendations that focus on vegetables as much as we do. You will find public health recommendations that combine fruits and vegetables into one category and match our serving recommendations for vegetables by considering them together with fruits, but at WHFoods we have specific recommendations exclusively for vegetables! Our reasons for placing so much emphasis on vegetables are two-fold. First, we cannot find any other food group that can compete with vegetables in terms of overall nutrient richness. The diversity of nutrients in this food group is astonishing, and the concentration of certain nutrients can be astonishing as well. Second, we cannot find any other food group that can provide this nutrient richness for so consistently few calories. While our WHFoods fruits only average about 10% more calories than vegetables, you won't find any of our whole fruits dipping down below 30 calories per serving. But you will find that 11 of our vegetables have fewer than 30 calories per serving. This combination of factors means that vegetables can provide you with maximum nutrient richness while using up as few of your daily calories as possible. Read more on [Why WHFoods Recommendations for Vegetables Exceed Most Other Recommendations](. George [Food of the Week] What's New and Beneficial About Spinach Bright, vibrant-looking spinach leaves are not only more appealing to the eye, but more nourishing as well. Recent research has shown that spinach leaves that look fully alive and vital have greater concentrations of vitamin C than spinach leaves that are pale in color. The study authors suggest that the greater supply of vitamin C helps protect all of the oxygen-sensitive phytonutrients in the spinach leaves and makes them look vibrant and alive. Many people are concerned about the nutrient content of delicate vegetables (like baby spinach) when those vegetables are placed in clear plastic containers in grocery store display cases and continuously exposed to artificial lighting. One recent food study has shown that you don't need to worry about the overall status of antioxidants in baby spinach that has been stored and displayed in this way. In this scientific study, the overall nutrient richness of the baby spinach when exposed to constant light was actually higher than the overall nutrient richness of baby spinach leaves kept in total darkness. The period of time in the study was 9 days, and the spinach was kept at 39°F/4°C (a temperature on the lower end of the scale for most home refrigerators). These findings are good news for anyone purchasing baby spinach in "ready-to-eat" containers. One new category of health-supportive nutrients found in spinach is called "glycoglycerolipids." Glycoclycerolipids are the main fat-related molecules in the membranes of light-sensitive organs in most plants. They're indispensable for the process of photosynthesis carried out by plants. However, recent lab research in laboratory animals has shown that glycoglycerolipids from spinach can help protect the lining of the digestive tract from damage - especially damage related to unwanted inflammation. You can expect to see more studies about this exciting new category of molecules in spinach and its potential health benefits. In a recent study on the relationship between risk of prostate cancer and vegetable intake - including the vegetables spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, mustard greens, turnip greens, collards, and kale - only spinach showed evidence of significant protection against the occurrence of aggressive prostate cancer. ("Aggressive prostate cancer" was defined as stage III or IV prostate cancer with a Gleason score of at least 7. Gleason scores are based on lab studies of prostate tissue and common tumor-related patterns.) The study authors did not speculate about specific substances in spinach that may have been involved in decreased prostate cancer risk. However, we know that certain unique anti-cancer carotenoids - called epoxyxanthophylls - are plentiful in spinach, even though they may not be as effectively absorbed as other carotenoids like beta-carotene and lutein. You can count on seeing future research on neoxanthin and violaxanthin - two anti-cancer epoxyxanthophylls that are found in plentiful amounts in the leaves of spinach. [Read More]( [Recipe of the Week] Try This Recipe of the Week 1-Minute "Quick Boiled" Spinach This week, I want to share with you the Nutrient-Rich Way to Cook Spinach with my 1-Minute "Quick Boiled" method, which helps preserve nutrients and makes Spinach taste great! (Taken from page 417 of the 2nd Edition of the World's Healthiest Foods book.) [Read More]( [Nutrient of the Week] Spinach is an Excellent Source of Vitamin B2 Spinach is rich in health-protective nutrients such as vitamin B2 (riboflavin). [Read More]( [Hot Topic] How does applying heat take away the nutritive values in the cooking, baking process? Like humans, all plants and animals thrive within certain temperature ranges and experience problems if they are exposed for prolonged periods of time to temperatures outside of their normal range. When we consume plants and animals as foods, they are no longer living on their own, and they become even more susceptible to temperature changes. Many plants that would do just fine and retain their nutrients when growing at room temperature need to be stored in the refrigerator after being picked because many of their nutrients become more temperature sensitive. Relatively small amounts of heat can reduce nutrients from harvested foods in four basic ways. For the rest of the story ... [Read More]( Here's to another week of the Healthiest Way of Eating and Cooking! George [WHFoods Book 2nd Edition] The World's Healthiest Foods, 2nd Edition is complete and ready to order with 2 free gifts valued at $51.95. All international orders (including Canada) must be placed through Amazon.com. More from happy book owners: Thank you so much for your help. I have your new wonderful book and love it! I also purchased a copy for my friend. - Susanne [Read more about our book]( $39.95 [buy now]( visit our homepage at Newsletter circulation: over 120,000 Copyright © 2017 The George Mateljan Foundation, All Rights Reserved George Mateljan Foundation, PO Box 25801, Seattle, Washington 98165 [Unsubscribe]( | [Change Subscriber Options](