2
Why We Love Whole Foods
Starting your whole-food, plant-strong journey is exhilarating, exciting, and delicious, but almost nobody gets it right from the get-go. This is certainly not your fault. We’ve all been fed such an overwhelming amount of conflicting messages and ideas about what it means to eat healthy that the vast majority of Americans are confused. In fact, a recent poll asked people which they found easier: doing their taxes or eating a healthy diet. The majority said taxes were easier.
After writing The Engine 2 Diet, I asked people to e-mail me at info@engine2.com with questions. I also encouraged people to send me their food logs if they weren’t losing weight or getting the results they had hoped for. It was quickly apparent that people didn’t understand the difference between eating a junky plant-based diet and eating a whole-food, plant-based diet. The good news is that everything about eating whole foods is easy, sensible, and delicious. In this chapter I’m going to underscore the major differences between eating lousy processed plant food and eating healthy, whole, superstrong plant food!
When I receive e-mails like the one below, I realize how easy it is to go astray.
I’ve been plant-strong since February—but not seeing any results. I don’t really like vegetables, and I’ve been eating a lot of plant-strong processed food like Amy’s Burritos, pizzas, Tofurky sandwiches, soy ice-cream, PB&J and pop. I’m hoping I can see some results soon and I want to learn what to eat instead of the frozen meals. Thx.
Pop quiz: name one whole-plant food in that list above. Having trouble? Good. There is no Tofurky plant out there in nature, and Amy’s Burritos don’t grow naturally in Amy’s garden. And I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to soy ice cream. The truth is, just because you’re not eating animal products doesn’t mean you’re eating healthy food.
So what does whole food mean, anyway? As Dr. T. Colin Campbell, renowned biochemist and author of the best-selling book The China Study, says in Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, “The ideal human diet looks like this: Consume plant-based foods in forms as close to their natural state as possible… Eat a variety of vegetables, fruits, raw nuts and seeds, beans and legumes, and whole grains.”
In other words: whole foods are foods in their natural plant form.
Let’s take another look at some of those foods mentioned in the e-mail above. Instead of eating Tofurky, why not just eat some tofu, tempeh, or edamame? They’re all made directly from whole soybeans, and each has its own unique flavor profile, look, and personality! I’m not even going to ask what was on the pizza besides the starchy, processed white flour and cheese, all soaking in treacherous oils. Meanwhile, that peanut butter and jelly sandwich may well be the most calorie-dense snack you can eat other than sipping pure oil.
Just because a food is technically plant-based does not make it plant-strong. Darth Vader is technically Anakin Skywalker, but he’s been so deformed by the dark side that he bears no resemblance to his former self. Processed foods are the Darth Vader of plants. French fries are technically potatoes, but these poor potatoes have been abused and distorted and corrupted—that is, “processed”—into French fries. We take the almighty potato, which in 2008 was deemed vegetable of the year by the World Health Organization, and torture the poor thing until it’s lost almost all of its nutritional integrity. With a little help from the deep fryer, this lean and strong vegetable, containing only 2 percent fat, turns into a weak food that’s now 51 percent fat, showered in salt, and ultimately dipped into another corrupted, processed, and adulterated vegetable: ketchup, which is typically laden with high-fructose corn syrup or cane sugar.
As a famous rock star once said, “I’d rather be baked than fried!”
On the other hand, a whole baked potato, with its nutritious skin intact, has more vitamin C than an orange, more potassium than a banana, and as much fiber as a bowl of oatmeal.
Take another turn through the grocery store and you’ll see an entire aisle of so-called healthy plant-based products. For example, many people think that Daiya cheese, a popular cheese alternative, must be healthy because it’s nondairy. But Daiya is actually 70 percent fat, and the second ingredient staring up at you without a shred of guilt is canola oil. Earth Balance spread is making the rounds as healthier than butter, but it has the same number of calories per tablespoon (100) as butter, and the first ingredient is an expeller-pressed natural oil blend (soybean, palm, canola, olive). The product is 100 percent fat. Why is this healthy?
Here’s what I mean by eating whole foods. Instead of sodium- and sugar-rich tomato juice, just eat a whole tomato, perhaps with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and a dash of pepper. Instead of that processed sugar bomb they call Raisin Bran, just have some oatmeal, quinoa, or rice like the recipes here–here. Instead of eating vegetable chips that are chirping with added sugar, salt, and oils, go out and gorge on some whole vegetables.
These days only about 6 percent of Americans’ calories come from whole-plant foods such as broccoli, brown rice, wheat berries, bananas, oranges, apples, beans, and potatoes. Over the next seven days I want you to swing that plant-strong pendulum around so instead of a paltry 6 percent, you’re moving it to DEFCON 1 and calories that are a full 100 percent plant-based. I want you to be adventurous with meals, including baked potato and sweet potato bowls with brown rice, bell peppers, scallions, steamed kale, and a clean red sauce like the Red Pepper Hummus here. In fact, we like sweet potatoes anytime of the day, as the foundation in a breakfast bowl (see here–here), with the Chopped and Cubed Salad (here), or in the Sweet Potato Bowl (here). With the Engine 2 Rescue Diet, the food you eat is in its whole form, not isolated bits and scraps that have zero nutritional value.
In other words, just because a food is plant-based doesn’t mean it’s healthy. There are plenty of plant-based junk foods out there. For example, what about the “certified vegan” Dr. Praeger’s Thai Veggie Burgers? Mother Nature certainly didn’t certify this food: One patty’s got nearly 200 mg of sodium, 8 grams of fat, and a long ingredients list that includes canola oil. Despite all that processing, it is healthier than a real hamburger, but that doesn’t mean it’s strong-food healthy.
So be vigilant. Don’t be fooled by frozen vegan entrées that have more sodium than the Red Sea; vegan buttery spreads that have more fat than Fat Albert; vegan chips and crackers that have more oil than the Arabian Peninsula; vegan cookies and cakes that have more sugar than a Krispy Kreme factory; and vegan hot dogs, hamburgers, and other pseudomeats that have more isolated soy proteins than a tub of muscle milk.
No matter what the label says, highly processed foods aren’t your friend, even if they’re technically plant-based. They are your foe, and I want you to steer clear of them over the next seven days. In the best-case scenario, these empty foods are missing vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other nutrients. In the worst case, they actively promote the development of chronic disease and fuel existing chronic conditions and disease. Meanwhile, we drink almost 25 percent of our calories (you will be reading more about this in chapter 3); we put processed and extracted oils in and on everything just like the big food manufacturers do, which accounts for another 20 to 25 percent of our calories; and we consume 40 teaspoons of added sweeteners daily, which is another 25 percent of our calories.
This is why all oils are black holes of nutritional nothingness. Eat the whole food for maximum nutritional oomph!
In his book The Campbell Plan, T. Colin Campbell’s son, Dr. Tom Campbell, refers to processed and refined plant foods as “plant fragments.” When you take a closer look at how America eats, you realize that the majority of our calories are coming from three ingredients: white flour, white sugar, and oil. As dietician Jeff Novick likes to say, when you bake all three of these together, you get one big donut. And that’s essentially where the vast majority of America’s calories are coming from—processed and refined flour, sugar, and oils. America lives on one big donut, and our collective health reflects just that!
Instead, bring on the whole foods and let’s ditch the processed plant fragments. Be strong and eat whole, strong-plant foods!
During the Rescue Week we are focused on eating 100 percent plant-based foods that are as minimally processed as possible.… This means as close to grown as possible. This is why I want to make it super clear: No oil! None! Unless the oil occurs naturally in strong whole foods, don’t go near it!
Let’s keep this one simple, because I’m tired of repeating it: all processed oil is unnecessary and unhealthy!
Wait a minute. What about olive oil? Olive oil comes from olives. Olives are plants. Therefore, olive oil is good for you, right?
Wrong!
Not a chance!
Ain’t gonna fly!
Now, I don’t want all the folks who live and die by their extra-virgin olive oil to curse me and throw this book out the window. Let’s take a deep breath and take a closer look at olive oil so we can understand why it isn’t the miracle health product you’ve been led to believe.
When you squeeze the oil out of olives to make olive oil, you end up with a concentrated source of calories that is 100 percent fat and devoid of almost all vitamins and minerals. Just a single tablespoon of olive oil contains about 120 empty calories. Did you know that it takes more than 1,300 olives to produce a single 32-ounce bottle of olive oil? Meanwhile, 1 innocent little tablespoon of olive oil is the fat equivalent of about 45 olives (and a black hole of nutritional nothingness).
Some olive-oil lovers out there like to say, “Hey, wait a minute, Rip. Olive oil has vitamins E and K. How can you say olive oil is entirely empty calories?” Okay, you got me. You’re right. It’s true, olive oil does have trace amounts of those vitamins… but you’d have to guzzle 10 tablespoons of it to meet your daily requirement for both. You’d also have to guzzle half a pound of olive oil—about 2,000 calories’ worth—in order to reach your daily recommended intake of omega-3 fatty acids. I can’t think of a better way to stop your heart than by quaffing down a half pound of oil!
But the calories that olive oil contains are not just empty calories—they’re downright dangerous calories. As I’ve mentioned many times to many people, noted physiologist Ray Peat has written, “All oils, even if they’re organic, cold-pressed, unprocessed, bottled in glass, and stored away from heat and light, are damaging. These oils have no shelf life at all… and when they’re warmed to body temperature, they disintegrate even faster. Once ingested, they bind with cells and interfere with every chemical reaction in the body. The results are hormone imbalances, inflammation, and all kinds of illness.”
And don’t believe those “heart-healthy” labels you see on olive oil containers. While olive oil might technically be better than, say, corn oil or canola oil, that doesn’t make it healthy. That’s like Philip Morris saying their cigarettes are healthy because they have filters. In fact, olive oil is the opposite of heart-healthy. A study published in the journal Clinical Cardiology found that olive oil significantly hindered the ability of people’s arteries to dilate. In other words, oil restricts blood flow to and from the heart.
Similar studies have shown that blood flow decreases drastically for many hours after a fatty meal. Is it any wonder that so many of us “crash” after a heavy meal? It’s also no wonder that, as Brigham and Women’s Hospital researchers reported after studying more than 2,000 cardiac patients, the risk of heart attack jumps by 400 percent immediately following a heavy, fat-rich meal. And how many of us down a heavy, fat-rich meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner year after year and decade after decade? Lots!
Think about the water pipes in your house. Normally, water flows freely through the pipes and out your faucets. Now, what happens if you pour oil into the water supply? The thick, viscous oil clogs the pipes, slowing the flow to a crawl. In fact, a notice in our Austin, Texas, utility bill asked us not to pour oil and grease down the sink because of the damage it does to water pipes. Blood vessels are just like water pipes: blood should flow freely and unobstructed, like water. But adding oils to your diet clogs your body’s own plumbing, impairing the ability of your vessels to deliver nutrients throughout the body and to supply your cells with oxygen.
Oil consumption leads to inflammation and plaque buildup no matter how healthy you may look and feel. A study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition revealed that a high-fat diet boosted inflammatory proteins in the blood by 25 percent even though the study subjects lost weight. Conversely, among subjects who lost the same amount of weight on a low-fat, high-carb diet, inflammatory protein levels dropped by 43 percent. The resulting inflammation leads to heart disease.
For example, a study by University of Crete researchers found that Crete residents with the highest intake of monounsaturated fats, primarily from olive oil, were far more likely to have heart disease. Another study, this one published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, determined that all oils—including saturated, monounsaturated (olive oil), and polyunsaturated (flax oil)—were associated with an increase in the plaque buildup that clogs arteries and leads to heart attacks. To add insult to injury, according to the National Institutes of Health, oil suppresses your immune system, which makes you vulnerable to infections and impairs your body’s ability to stop the growth of cancer cells.
Enough is enough. Let’s keep this simple. Oil is for car engines, not human bodies. Don’t dip in it, drip it, pour it, mix it, drizzle it, cook it, or buy products with it. As my father says, oil is the “gateway to vascular disease. It doesn’t matter whether it’s olive oil, corn oil, coconut oil, canola oil, or any other kind. Avoid ALL oil.”
WHOLE FOODS HAVE STRONG AND MOBILE FIBER
Plants are the Big Daddy when it comes to fiber, which comes in two forms: soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber dissolves in water and is found in foods such as oats, nuts, beans, barley, flax, carrots, apples, and oranges. Insoluble fiber doesn’t dissolve in water. It moves intact through the body and is found in leafy greens, root veggies, and whole-grain foods.
Both forms of fiber are essential, and no matter which kind you choose, plants are fiber kings. Then again, there isn’t much competition: There’s zero fiber in meat. Zero in dairy products. Zero in eggs.
There’s a mountain of fiber in plant-based foods!
Why eat fiber? Well, the number one reason is all about number two. Eat plants and discover a world in which constipation is a thing of the past. That’s right: Fiber is essential in keeping you unclogged and regular. It’s the key to a symbiotic and loving relationship with your intestinal tract.
Fiber is the indigestible stuff of plant food that sticks around with you from mouth to toilet, absorbing water toxins along the way and making your bowel movements easy like Sunday morning. And I don’t want to hear any crap about having to go to the bathroom more often. In general, the more often you poop, the healthier you are. If you’re squatting on the john fewer than three times per week, you’re officially suffering from constipation. Your bowel movements should happen daily, and, ideally, more than once. Consider this a newfound blessing and count each one as such; most people are cursed with a broken-down gastrointestinal tract and are in a world of hurt caused by the wrong, weak, fiberless foods.
And don’t just poop often. Poop big. As one study by University of Cambridge researchers involving twenty-three populations across a dozen countries found, the lighter your bowel weight is, the more likely you are to develop colon cancer. That’s right—strong food means strong big wonderful cow-patty-size poops!
The benefits of fiber don’t just affect your rear end. High fiber intake has also been shown to control cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure levels, and to reduce the risk of breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. Boosting your fiber intake by 7 grams a day can reduce your risk of stroke by 7 percent—that’s just one serving of baked beans. In a recent study, Yale University researchers found that premenopausal women eating more than 6 grams a day of soluble fiber (just a cup of black beans) had 62 percent lower odds of breast cancer when compared with women who ate less than 4 grams.
As I’ve discussed in my previous books, one of the many disastrous consequences of following the standard American diet is eating minimal to no fiber. On day one of the Seven-Day Rescue, you’ll start consuming between 50 and 75 grams of fiber every single day! As one of our pilot study participants said, “I consumed more fruits and vegetables on the first day of this program than I had the previous month!” And when you eat whole, plant-strong food with all of its glorious fiber naturally intact, you’ll be forming a whole new relationship with your gastrointestinal tract, your colon, and your rectum. They will thank you for greasing up the skids with plant fiber, and you’ll be thanking them for the money you’ll be saving at CVS and Walgreens.
Whole Grains
I’m sick to my stomach with all this anticarbohydrate propaganda that’s been making the rounds lately. Listen up: Carbs are an absolutely essential part of your diet. Without them, you die. No carbs, no energy. What you should be careful of, however, is where you get them from—namely, get them from whole grains, not from processed grains.
Whole grains are an essential part of a healthy diet. Just look at the evidence. Two massive Harvard University studies following nearly 120,000 people for about fifteen years found that those who eat lots of whole grains are much more likely to live longer. That’s probably because whole grains can reduce your risk of heart disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and stroke, among many other chronic diseases.
Notice I said whole grains, not processed grains or refined grains.
But what are whole grains, exactly? At the grocery store, it’s hard to tell which products are healthy and which aren’t. Here’s a hint: Just because a product’s label says “wheat” doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Subway likes to sell you on its “nine-grain wheat bread,” but it’s just as refined and sugar-laden as its other breads. Likewise, you’ll see all sorts of “multigrain” and “rustic-wheat” bread products at the store that purport to be healthy, but they’re just loaves of crap.
Genuine whole grains are unrefined, which means they haven’t had their bran (the outer layer of the grain) and germ (the tiny nugget nestled deep inside the grain) removed. You know, the nutritious parts. Imagine gutting the inside of a Rolex. The watch might still look the same on the outside, but the essential parts are no longer there. That’s what happens with refined grains. Both the bran and the germ are torn out of the grain, not to mention other essential nutrients like fiber. Why would food manufacturers do such a horrible thing?
Removing the bran and the germ greatly extends the shelf life of the bread, that’s why. Grocery stores can pack their shelves with white bread, white rice, pasta, muffins, breakfast cereals, and countless other products. But while food manufacturers are padding their bottom line, the rest of us are left padding our bottoms. That’s because refined grains are stripped of satiating fiber, which leads to overeating and weight gain. Try bingeing on oatmeal sometime. Good luck with that, since all that fiber fills you up fast. The opposite happens with processed carbs. Try watching people down breadsticks and pasta Alfredo by the bowl at the Olive Garden. Their bodies are craving what little fiber these impostor grains have, and the result is weight gain. It should be no surprise, therefore, that a meta-analysis in the European Journal of Epidemiology found that eating whole grains is associated with a much lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Here’s my rule: Don’t trust what manufacturers say on their packaging. Anything that screams multigrain, natural-wheat, seven-grain, snap-crackle-and-pop grain—or whatever those marketing geniuses come up with—is probably bunk. Leave it on the shelf. Food companies are getting even sneakier these days by using raisin juice and other food dyes to turn their Frankenstein loaf into a healthy-looking shade of brown. Just because it looks healthy doesn’t mean it is healthy!
Here’s another simple rule: If the ingredients list is longer than your shopping list, stay far away. For example, here are some of the ingredients from good old all-American Wonder Bread:
High-fructose corn syrup, wheat gluten, salt, soybean oil, yeast, calcium sulphate, vinegar, monoglyceride, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium dioxide), soy flour, diammonium phosphate, dicalcium phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, yeast nutrients (ammonium sulfate), calcium propionate
Now compare that to the ingredients list of oatmeal:
Oats
It has only one ingredient because you’re eating the whole food: oats from the oat plant. There’s no Wonder Bread flower, a muffin bush, or a vine of Little Debbies.
That said, not all packaged grain products are necessarily bad, but how do you tell the difference? For the answer, let’s call in Patrick Skerrett, coauthor of Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating and the former executive editor of Harvard Health Publications. Patrick recommends a 1:10 rule: For every 10 grams of carbs per serving in a product, there should be at least 1 gram of fiber. As Patrick writes:
That’s about the ratio of fiber to carbohydrate in a genuine whole grain… Divide the grams of carbohydrates by 10. If the [number of] grams of fiber is at least as large as the answer, the food meets the 1:10 standard. I find this a lot easier than reading through an ingredient list, which can be long and baffling (plus there are at least 29 different whole grains that can appear in the ingredients list).
Let’s put Patrick’s rule into action. One Thomas’ English Muffin has 25 grams of carbohydrates and 1 gram of fiber. If you divide the number of carbs (25) by 10, you get 2.5, more than your muffin’s 1 gram of fiber. Ezekiel Sprouted Whole Grain English Muffins, on the other hand, have 15 grams of carbs to 3 grams of fiber. If you divide the number of carbs (15) by 10, you get 1.5. Boom, your 3 grams of fiber is bigger. Much better. How about our old pal Wonder Bread? Thirteen grams of carbs to 0 grams of fiber. Yup, zero.
How about rice? Considering that rice alone feeds half the human population, it is one of the most important foods in the world. And this little grain can be extremely healthy, too, but only if you pick the right kind. It comes down to whether you’re eating strong brown rice or weak white rice.
Producing brown rice—or strong rice, as I call it—involves removing only the outermost hull of the grain, and nothing more. The germ and the bran remain intact, not to mention the layer of healthy essential fats. By eating strong rice, you are eating all the strong vitamins and minerals that are associated with the whole food, including manganese, selenium, phosphorus, copper, magnesium, and vitamin B3.
Now let’s look at weak—that is, white—rice. You’ll agree that it’s weak once you see just how deprived this so-called food is. After removing the hull, the rice grain is further milled to remove the bran and nearly all the germ—and just about all the nutrition. Then the rice is “polished” to improve shelf life, a euphemism for stripping the grain of its aleurone layer, which is filled with essential fats. You’re left with a white, almost translucent appearance, which makes sense since there’s basically nothing left in the rice but starch. Compared to strong brown rice, weak white rice loses 67 percent of vitamin B3, 80 percent of vitamin B1, 90 percent of vitamin B6, 50 percent of manganese, 50 percent of phosphorus, and 60 percent of iron. Weak rice also loses 100 percent of its fiber and nearly all its essential fatty acids.
In 2012, a meta-analysis of seven separate studies following 350,000 people for twenty years was published in the BMJ (British Medical Journal). It found that people eating higher amounts of white rice had a significantly higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. In fact, each additional serving of white rice was associated with an 11 percent increased risk of diabetes. You eat weak rice, it makes you weak. End of story.
Harvard University researchers similarly found that a daily serving of white rice was associated with a 17 percent greater risk of developing diabetes, but replacing just one-third of that serving with brown rice could lead to a 16 percent decrease in diabetes risk. In addition, due to its high fiber content, brown rice has been shown to decrease the risk of colon cancer as well as many other chronic diseases. Now that’s what I call a strong food!
In Part 2 you’ll find all sorts of plant-strong recipes centered around whole grains, especially the most muscularly strong food of them all—oatmeal! Not only does oatmeal help protect you against diabetes, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and many other chronic diseases, but it can actively help someone suffering from a chronic disease.
A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial (the gold standard for clinical trials), published in Plant Foods for Human Nutrition, emphatically proved that simply adding oatmeal to your diet can reduce the amount of liver inflammation, not to mention help you lose weight. A follow-up study published in 2014 by the European Journal of Nutrition verified these results and further concluded that adding refined grains to your diet instead actively increases your chance of liver disease.
Once you remove all processed foods from your diet, the change in your health will be instant and it will be dramatic. That might be what I love most about plant-based eating. Between 2002 and 2011, nutrition expert Dr. John McDougall put 1,615 patients, most with a history of chronic ailments such as high cholesterol and hypertension, on a crash seven-day program not unlike the Engine 2 Rescue Diet. Dr. McDougall’s patients were given whole-plant foods only—no meat, fish, eggs, dairy, or isolated vegetable oils. Instead, the meals were based around healthy carbohydrates including brown rice, oats, barley, quinoa, and potatoes, along with plenty of fruit and beans. There was no portion control or calorie counting. Only whole foods.
In just those seven days, the median weight loss was 3 pounds, and the median decrease in total cholesterol was 22 mg/dl (and a drop of 39 mg/dl among the most unhealthy patients). Patients with the highest initial blood pressure saw their systolic pressure drop by 18 mm/Hg and their diastolic pressure by 11 mm/Hg. Among those on diabetes or blood pressure medication upon entering the program, nearly 90 percent reduced their dosage or discontinued the meds entirely. And if that’s what happens after just seven days of eating nothing but whole foods, imagine what will happen over an entire lifetime.
The bottom line: Refined foods will make you weak and sickly. Whole foods will make you strong and healthy. And that’s nothing but the whole truth.