WHFoods Weekly Newsletter

[World's Healthiest Foods]() Weekly Newsletter - May 8, 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. Happy Mother's Day! Dear Friend of World's Healthiest Foods, This week, we continue to highlight the easy-to-prepare, delicious breakfast recipes in our upcoming WHFoods 7-Day Meal Plan to help you on your way to optimal health. As the "most important meal of the day" it will provide you with protein, carbs and healthy fats to start the day and carry you through until lunch. I encourage you to try this week's featured recipe and see how easy it is to combine great nutrition with great taste! [Poached Eggs on Toast with Avocado and Tomato]( What You Should Know About Labeling of Organic Foods I promote selecting organically grown foods whenever possible, but it can sometimes be difficult to understand their labeling. Labeling standards are based on the percentage of organic ingredients in a product. Below are explanations of organic food labeling: - "100 percent organic" must contain only organically produced ingredients. - Products labeled "organic" must consist of at least 95 percent organically produced ingredients. - Products meeting the requirements for "100 percent organic" and "organic" may display the USDA Organic seal. See [The Labeling of Organic Foods]( for the rest of the story. Have a wonderful week of a Healthier Way of Eating, George [Food of the Week] What's New and Beneficial About Avocados Recent scientific studies provide even more reasons why you should include avocados as part of your healthiest way of eating. Carotenoids in Avocados Many of our WHFoods provide you with carotenoids. These orange-yellow pigments offer you outstanding health benefits - but only if they are absorbed into your cells. Consuming a little fat along with carotenoids greatly helps improve their absorption. However, many of our best foods for obtaining carotenoids - for example, sweet potatoes, carrots, and leafy greens - contain very little fat (less than 1 gram per serving). To improve carotenoid absorption from carotenoid-rich foods, researchers have experimented with the addition of avocado to meal choices including salads, side servings of leafy greens, side servings of carrots, or tomato sauce. The amount of avocado added has varied from study to study but averages approximately 1 cup or 1 small/medium avocado providing 20-25 grams of total fat. As expected, this added avocado has been shown to increase carotenoid absorption from all of the foods listed above. Anywhere from two to six times as much absorption was found to occur with the added avocado! But in addition to this increased absorption was an unanticipated beneficial result seen in a recent study: not only did avocado improve carotenoid absorption, but it also improved conversion of specific carotenoids (most importantly, beta-carotene) into actual vitamin A. (This unexpected health benefit of increased conversion was determined by the measurement of retinyl esters in the bloodstream of participants, which were found to increase after consumption of carrots or tomato sauce in combination with avocado.) Avocados do contain carotenoids, in and of themselves. And thanks to their fat content, you can get good absorption of the carotenoids they contain. However, if you happen to be consuming an avocado-free meal or snack that contains very little fat, yet rich amounts of carotenoids, some added avocado can go a long way in improving your carotenoid absorption and vitamin A nourishment. Salad greens - including romaine lettuce - and mixed greens like kale, chard, and spinach are great examples of very low fat, carotenoid-rich foods that would have more of their carotenoid-richness transferred into your body with the help of some added avocado. How You Peel Avocados can Make a Difference The method you use to peel an avocado might make a difference to your health. Research on avocado shows that the greatest phytonutrient concentrations occur in portions of the food that we do not typically eat, namely, the peel and the seed (or "pit.") The pulp of the avocado is actually much lower in phytonutrients than these other portions of the food. In addition, all portions of the pulp are not identical in their phytonutrient concentrations;specifically, the areas of the pulp that are closest to the peel are higher in certain phytonutrients than more interior portions. For this reason, you don't want to remove any more of that outermost, dark green portion of the pulp than necessary when you are peeling an avocado. Accordingly, the best method is what the California Avocado Commission has called the "nick and peel" method. In this method, you actually end up peeling the avocado with your hands in the same way that you would peel a banana. The first step in the nick-and-peel method is to cut into the avocado lengthwise, producing two long avocado halves that are still connected in the middle by the seed. Next you take hold of both halves and twist them in opposite directions until they naturally separate. At this point, remove the seed and cut each of the halves lengthwise to produce long quartered sections of the avocado. You can use your thumb and index finger to grip the edge of the skin on each quarter and peel it off, just as you would do with a banana skin. The final result is a peeled avocado that contains most of that dark green outermost flesh, which provides you with the best possible phytonutrient richness from the pulp portion of the avocado. Avocados Promote Heart Health Recent research on avocado and heart disease risk has revealed some important health benefits that may be unique to this food. Avocado's reputation as a high-fat food is entirely accurate. Our 1-cup website serving provides 22 grams of fat, and those 22 grams account for 82% of avocado's total calories. And they do not necessarily provide a favorable ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fat; you get less than 1/4 gram of omega-3s from one serving of avocado and 2.5 grams of omega-6s, for a ratio of 10:1 in favor of omega-6s. However, despite these characteristics, the addition of avocado to already well-balanced diets has been shown to lower risk of heart disease, improve blood levels of LDL, and lower levels of oxidative stress in the bloodstream following consumption of food. In one research study, participants in two groups all consumed a diet with the same overall balance, including 34% fat in both groups. But one avocado per day was included in the meal plan of only one group, and that group had the best heart-related results in terms of blood fat levels. Most researchers are agreed that the high levels of monounsaturated fat in avocado - especially oleic acid - play a role in its heart-related benefits. Nearly 15 out of the 22 grams of fat (68%) found in one cup of avocado come from monounsaturated fat. (And by contrast, less than 3 grams come from the category of polyunsaturated fat, which includes both omega-6s and omega-3s.) This high level of monounsaturates puts avocado in a similar category with olives, which provide about 14 grams of fat per cup and approximately 73% of those grams as monounsaturates. In addition to its high percentage of monounsaturated fat, avocado offers some other unique fat qualities. It provides us with phytosterols including beta-sitosterol, campesterol, and stigmasterol. This special group of fats has been shown to provide important anti-inflammatory benefits to our body systems, including our cardiovascular system. Impact of Avocados on the Average U.S. Diet Recent studies have analyzed the overall impact of avocado on the average U.S. diet, with some fascinating results. In one broad-based, national study, all participants who reported eating any avocado during the last 24 hours were compared to all participants who reported eating no avocado during that same time period. The avocado-eating U.S. adults were found to have greater fiber intake (over 6 grams more for the day); greater potassium intake (439 milligrams more); greater vitamin K1 intake (57 micrograms more); and greater vitamin E intake (2.2 milligrams alpha-tocopherol equivalents more) than U.S. adults who ate no avocado. Interestingly, all of the nutrients listed above are nutrients for which avocado receives a rating of "good" on our WHFoods nutrient rating system! It's worth adding here that U.S. adults consuming avocado also averaged 43 milligrams more magnesium, 5.6 grams more monounsaturated fat, and 3.2 grams more polyunsaturated fat. The study authors also noted that avocado eating was associated with better overall diet quality, as well as better intake of vegetables and fruits as a whole. [Read More]( [Recipe of the Week] Try This Recipe of the Week 3-Minute Avocado Dip Enjoy this tasty version of guacamole that takes only 3 minutes to prepare! (Found on page 137 of the 2nd Edition of theWorld's Healthiest Foods book.) [Read More]( [Nutrient of the Week] Avocados are a Good Source of Folate Avocados are rich in heal-protective nutrients such as folate. [Read More]( [Hot Topic] Do you consider grains to be a priority food group for healthy eating? No, we do not consider grains to be a priority food group. At the same time, however, we do not believe that grains are an automatically problematic food group. In fact, we believe that whole grains can be enjoyable to consume and can make significant contributions to a person's nourishment and overall health. We include eight different grains among our 100 WHFoods for these reasons. Over the years, various popular diets have recommended restriction of carbohydrates both for weight loss and improved health, and these diets have often advocated restricted grain intake as a means of lowering carbs. A recent example of this approach is the wheat belly diet, which generally restricts carbohydrates to 15 grams every 6 hours, and ends up with a total of about 40-60 grams of carbohydrate per day, depending on genetic, lifestyle, and other factors. The primary strategy for reduction of carbs in the wheat belly diet involves elimination of wheat, and secondarily, restriction or removal of other grains. This diet plan also predicts an average reduction in calories of about 400 calories per day through wheat and/or grain removal. This last aspect of the wheat belly diet (predicted calorie reduction) makes sense to us, given the fact that 6 ounces of wheat flour contain more than 400 calories, and the average U.S. adult consumes the equivalent of 6 ounces of wheat flour per day. [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: Thanks again for the "World’s Healthiest Foods" book. I refer to it all the time. Every day I tell people about your book and newsletters. - Elaine [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](