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5 Food Pairings For Maximum Nutritional Benefits

Food combining can do more than soothe a fussy tummy.

Pairing certain nutrient profiles has the potential to add up to improved absorption—and better health (while some pairings can worsen digestion). Follow these formulas for maximum nutritional benefits at every meal.

1. HUMMUS + RED PEPPER = BOOST FOR LOW IRON
“The majority of dietary iron comes from nonheme, or plant, sources, but unfortunately, it’s not usually well absorbed,” says Peggy Kotsopoulos, a New York City–based holistic nutritionist. However, vitamin C helps improve the absorption of nonheme iron. The iron-rich chickpeas in the hummus and vitamin C–rich red pepper make a great snack for women, who often need more iron, she says.

2. TOMATO + AVOCADO = IMPROVED EYE HEALTH
Tomatoes are loaded with lycopene, a key nutrient for eye health that also gives the fruit its red hue. This antioxidant is fat-soluble, though, so it assimilates better in the body if it’s eaten with some fat. “Research suggests you absorb more from the carotene-rich food when you eat it with a smart fat, like avocado,” says Elaine Magee, a Boise, Idaho–based registered dietitian. There are so many ways you can pair these two powerhouses, but we love avocado toast with sliced tomatoes.

3. COTTAGE CHEESE + PINEAPPLE = POSTWORKOUT MUSCLE REPAIR
It’s important to refuel the right way following a serious Spinning class or an intense jog. After your workout, have a snack that includes protein (like cottage cheese) and a high-gastrointestinal carbohydrate (like pineapple). “Together, they replenish muscle and liver glycogen stores and cause an insulin release, which in turn helps push amino acids straight to muscle cells, which helps build and repair exactly where you need it,” says Kotsopoulos.

4. KALE + MUSHROOMS + OLIVE OIL = BETTER BONE DENSITY
Among the many nutritional benefits of kale is vitamin K, which helps transport calcium from your blood to your bones, acting as the glue that makes bone-enriching calcium stick. Studies have shown that a combination of vitamin K and vitamin D (found in mushrooms) helps prevent bone fractures, even in people already experiencing bone loss. Add some olive oil to a meal with these fat-soluble vitamins (an omelette, perhaps) and—bingo—major bone-health benefits. But not just any olive oil will do; opt for the extra-virgin version. “You’ll get more of the 30-plus phytochemicals from an olive oil that’s minimally processed,” says Magee.

5. SALMON + ALMONDS = HEART HEALTH
Omega-3 fatty acids, especially those found in cold-water fish, like salmon, may reduce the risk of blood clots, promote normal blood pressure and lower the risk of heart disease. If you pair salmon steak with ground almonds (or another nut, such as walnuts), a plant-based source of essential fatty acids, you’re packing a more powerful wallop for cardiovascular health. “And they naturally go together,” notes Magee. (Think almond-crusted baked salmon!) There’s a lot of wisdom in cuisine from certain cultures, especially from areas of Asia and the Mediterranean, where these types of pairings often come up, she says.

DID YOU KNOW?
The components in some foods work in combination with themselves when eaten whole, says Magee. “Apples are a good example where the compounds in the skin complement those in the flesh,” she explains. “You’re much better off to eat them with the skin on.” Same goes for ground flaxseeds and oats. “You’re missing out on so much if you eat only flax oil or oat bran—your body wants it all!”

BY: KAREN ROBOCK
pairings

 

If You Want a Nutritious Breakfast,
There Are Better Food Pairings Than Avocado And Toast.

Skip the avocado toast — there are healthier food pairings

If you’re trying to eat a healthy breakfast, put down the avocado toast. Choosing the right food pairings is as important as picking healthy foods when it comes to nutrition.

Writing for the Daily Mail, nutritionist Rob Hobson of Healthspan broke down how pairing the wrong foods together can negate their health benefits.

“The food pairing choices you make will have a very real effect on your energy, how quickly you feel hungry again after eating – and therefore your weight,” Hobson wrote for the Mail.

For an example, he cited a recent Illinois Institute of Technology study on avocado toast. Avocado can help control blood sugar and suppress hunger on its own, but when eaten with white bread, the carbohydrates in the bread mostly negated those benefits. The study showed that fats like avocado are healthy, and that carbs should be eaten only in moderation – and not in their processed form, Hobson said.

Another example: Beef chili with beans. Beef is high on iron, Hobson noted, but the phytates in beans can bind with that iron and keep it from being absorbed. Adding in plenty of vitamin C-rich vegetables like red bell peppers can boost iron absorption.

So what are some better food pairings? Hobson offered up several suggestions:

  • Sweet potatoes and Greek yogurt. Sweet potatoes keep blood sugar stable thanks to slowly digested carbs, and Greek yogurt packs protein.
  • Oats and banana. Oats are a fiber and can keep you feeling full longer. Bananas are a prebiotic and may help control a hormone that makes you hungry. Nut butter and banana make another good pairing.
  • Smoked salmon and scrambled egg. This “double whammy” of protein and healthy fats (including omega-3 fatty acids) can help you feel full longer. Egg on whole-grain bread is another good option.
  • Vegetable soup with beans, lentils or peas. The water content in soup can help you fill up faster, and the protein and fiber in legumes can extend that feeling of fullness.

Other great food pairings are yogurt topped with dried fruit and nuts, salad with quinoa, or beans and brown rice.

“[Satiety is] particularly important for weight management as it can help to ward of hunger pangs and the temptation to snack between meals,” Hobson wrote. “Therefore, understanding which foods are more satiating and how to put meals together using them will help you to control how much you eat later on in the day.”

By Kyla Cathey    Earth.com staff writer     05-26-2019  
source: www.earth.com


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17 Food Combinations that Can Boost Your Health

Hard boiled egg + salad
Out of all the numerous topping options at the salad bar, pick up a hard boiled egg. The fat in the egg yolk helps your body best absorb carotenoids, disease-busting antioxidants found in veggies, according to 2015 research in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Count it as one more reason you should definitely eat the yolks.

Fries + veggies
You don’t want to have to choose between the steamed veggie or fries as a side. Why not get them both? Pairing a nutritious and less-nutritious food choice (officially called a ‘vice-virtue bundle’) can help you stick to your health goals, suggests research in the journal Management Science. One tip to balance the calories—keep your portion of fries/dessert/onion rings small or medium, suggest researchers. If you can order only one size and it’s jumbo, ask for half to be packed upie immediately in a to-go box—or portion out half the plate for a companion. The researchers found that people didn’t actually want to eat enormous piles of treats anyway.

Marinade + steak
Grilling is a quick and healthy way to get dinner on the table, no doubt. However, cooking meat at high temps (a la grilling) creates potentially cancer-causing compounds called heterocyclic amines (HCAs). The delicious solution: marinate your meat. Especially when you use certain herbs and spices in your marinade, including rosemary, it can reduce HCAs by up to 88 percent, according to a study from Kansas State University.

Olive oil + kale
Even though the buzz around heart-healthy fats like olive oil is good, you may still be trying to cut down on oil in an effort to save calories. But it’s time to start sauteeing your veggies again. ‘Vegetables have many fat-soluble vitamins, like A, D, E, and K, which means they need fat to be absorbed,’ explains culinary nutrition expert and healthy living blogger Jessica Fishman Levinson, MS, RDN, of Nutritioulicious. In addition to kale, make sure you cook carrots, sweet potatoes, and broccoli with a little fat too.

Almonds + yogurt
Vitamin D is credited with so many health benefits, including boosting your bones, mood, and immune function. Many yogurts supply one-quarter your daily need for D per cup. To make the most of it though, toss some slivered almonds on top before digging in—especially if you’re eating non- or low-fat yogurt. The fat in the nuts helps raise the levels of D found in your blood 32 percent more compared to having no fat at all, reveals research in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Sardines + spinach
The fatty fish is abundant in vitamin D, while spinach offers magnesium. In 2013 research, magnesium was shown to interact with the vitamin to boost levels of D in your body. Long-term, this may even help reduce risk of heart disease and colon cancer.

Turmeric + black pepper
You’ve no doubt heard the buzz around the anti-cancer properties of curcumin, the molecule in turmeric that gives the spice its yellow hue. Problem is, it can be difficult for your body to absorb and truly reap the benefits. Combining turmeric with black pepper—which isn’t hard to do in cooking—is a great way to up your body’s ability to use it by 2,000 percent, research shows.

Avocado + toast
If you’re participating in ‘Toast Tuesdays,’ you might have tried the much-obsessed over avocado toast. And it is delicious, FYI. The foods are a perfect match not just for their taste but because the fat from the avocado will slow the rate at which carbs are broken down, absorbed, and converted into sugar, points out Levinson. It’s simple: just spread avocado on whole grain toast and top with some sea salt and pepper (and even lemon juice or hot sauce) and you’re good to go. Add a fried egg for an extra protein boost.

avocado toast

Tomato sauce + spinach
Might as well pack more veggies into the sauce, right? Spinach contains iron, something you may need more of if you’re not eating meat (which is the most abundant source of the mineral). The catch? Iron is not easily absorbed from plant sources, so to tip the scales in your favor, you need to eat these plants with a source of vitamin C, according to Levinson. In this case, tomatoes provide the kick of vitamin C you need to best absorb your spinach. Try her recipe for tomato sauce with spinach, or opt for these other power duos: spinach salad with strawberries, beans and bell peppers, or tofu and broccoli.

Brown rice + lentils
If you’re vegetarian, you may have heard that you should eat certain foods together to ensure you’re getting a complete protein. It’s actually more important that you get a variety of plant proteins throughout the day rather than in one specific meal, says Levinson. Still, some combos are classics for a reason—together, they form a complete protein. Try a brown rice and lentil bowl, beans wrapped in corn tortillas, or nut butter slathered on whole grain bread.

Salmon + leafy greens
Greens to the rescue once more! Vitamin D and calcium are typically found together in dairy, and for good reason: Vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium, both of which are critical for bone health, points out Levinson. But if you don’t eat milk or yogurt, what do you do? Buy  salmon and eat it atop a bed of cooked greens of your choice (sauteeing them cooks them down, making it easier to eat a bigger serving).

Brown rice + garlic + onion
Here’s a reason to make a stir-fry tonight: Garlic and onion help increase the availability of iron and zinc in whole grains, according to Levinson. You can thank the sulfur-containing compounds within the stinky alliums (garlic and onion) for the mineral boost, say researchers.

Carbonation + water
Think we’re getting one by you? If you have trouble getting yourself to drink plain H20, hear us out about why bubbles and water make an ideal match. One German study found that people who made carbonated water at home (think SodaStream), drank more water than those who didn’t—and bonus!—consumed less fat during the day, too.

Red wine + black pepper
The spice does it again. Black pepper contains a compound called piperine, which may help improve the bioavailability of resveratrol (the disease-busting antioxidant in red wine) to tissues, suggests an animal study published in the journal Molecular Nutrition & Food Research. While it doesn’t seem like a natural pairing, simply drink a glass of vino with dinner, and keep the pepper mill handy. Bon appetit!

Green tea + lemon
When you give your cup a squirt of citrus, the vitamin C preserves green tea’s antioxidant catechins, helping them survive the harrowing journey through your digestive tract to where your body can absorb them—so you can reap the benefits from the brew—reveals Purdue University research.

Guacamole + salsa
Pass the chips, please. This is another perfect example of how the antioxidants in certain produce, like tomatoes, need a little fat in order to be absorbed. In fact, a study in the Journal of Nutrition found that eating avocado with salsa improved the absorption of lycopene and beta-carotene in the tomatoes by 4.4 and 2.6 times, respectively. It’s the perfect excuse to go for Mexican tonight.

Pistachios + raisins
When you think about it, trail mix makes lots of sense. Eating dried fruit and nuts together can help improve your metabolic health to help decrease your diabetes risk, suggests a review published in Nutrition Journal. Together, they supply fiber, vitamins, and minerals—and the fat from the nuts helps keep your blood sugar at an even keel. Try making your own custom trail mix instead of paying a premium for the pre-packaged kind.

 

Jessica Migala  2019-01-16
source: www.msn.com


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10 ways to get the most nutrients from your food.

Think raw is always best? Then you seriously need this.

Wondering if your nutrient intake stacks up? Check out these strategies to make sure you’re getting what you need.

Last year, I visited a good friend in Vermont. She and her family live in an old farmhouse on a bunch of land — enough for a massive garden, where she grows most of the plants they eat.

Picture rolling green hills, baskets of bright heirloom tomatoes, and little kids in galoshes. (Plus a layer of potting soil on most household surfaces).

My friend’s family eats from their own farm to table pretty much every night. She knows nutrients.
So it was really funny when she looked up from a steam pot one night and brazenly announced, “I like my green beans overcooked.” Like, limp. Like, wilted. Like you’re not supposed to like them.
The nerviness! The waste! The nutrients evaporating from those beans!

That’s what a lot of my “clean-food” obsessed peers would say, at least.

Is raw (or lightly cooked) really always best for your health?

I checked with three of Precision Nutrition’s nutrition experts: Ryan Andrews, Sarah Maughan, and Brian St. Pierre, all coaches in our men’s and women’s nutrition programs (and all credentialed beyond belief).

Turns out, the story is a lot more interesting than “cooked vs. raw”.
As you prepare, bite, chew, and digest, you create a series of mechanical and chemical changes that affect:

  • a food’s nutritional content (i.e. the nutrients it contains) and
  • each nutrient’s “bioavailability” (i.e. the degree to which it can be absorbed by your body).

This means:

  • Some nutrients are indeed best available when the foods containing them are eaten raw.
  • But other nutrients are best available when the foods containing them are cooked, or broken down by cutting or crushing, and/or eaten alongside other foods.

Here are the 10 best ways to get the most nutrition from your food.

1. Eat locally grown food soon after it’s been picked.

Eating locally grown and “straight from the earth” maximizes the vitamins and minerals (and deliciousness) you get from your produce.

Plucking them from the soil (or vine, or bush, or tree) means separating them from their nutrient source. The longer they’re separated, the more nutritional value they lose.

Some experts estimate that by the time you pick up a “fresh” fruit or vegetable at the grocery store, it may have lost 15-60 percent of many vitamins … unless you can buy and eat it within 72 hours of harvest.

Forget organic vs. traditional — that’s another debate altogether — when it comes to nutrients, local is king. That’s why hitting a local farm, or farmers market, ensures that you’re getting the most nutrient-dense product.

My only problem: I live in New Jersey. And not the “Garden State” part, either. Shop Rite (or “Shop Wrong”, as a neighbor calls it) is much more convenient than our cute but very limited farmer’s market.

Plus, there’s winter. Not a ton of freshly harvested produce to be had in the American northeast from November to June.

Thankfully, there are a lot of other ways to get the most nutrition from the food you eat — without having to sell your home and move out to the country.

2. Soak, chop, crush, blend.

These basics of food prep can make vitamins, minerals, and other compounds more available in a few ways:

  • Cutting up fruits and vegetables generally frees up the nutrients by breaking down rigid plant cell walls.
  • Crushing and chopping onion and garlic releases alliinase, an enzyme in these foods that helps form a nutrient called allicin. Allicin, when eaten, helps form other compounds that may protect us against disease.
  • Soaking grains and beans reduces phytic acid, which might — in part — block your absorption of iron, zinc, calcium, and magnesium.

If you’ve already been doing these things, great. Now you know why they work.
3. Store fruits and vegetables the right way.

When thinking about storage, balance two things:

  • Make it easy to eat your plants: Keep fruits and vegetables where you’re most likely to access them.
  • Slow down nutrient loss: Heat, light, and oxygen degrade nutrients.

That’s why you should store…

  • all vegetables — except those of the root variety — in the refrigerator until you need them.
  • all fruits except berries — this includes tomatoes and avocados — at room temperature away from direct light.
  • all cut fruits and vegetables with a squeeze of lemon juice on them and in an airtight container. (Cut produce rapidly oxidizes and vitamin C, an antioxidant, slows decay.)
  • all herbs — with their amazing phytonutrients — chopped up and frozen in an ice cube tray with water. (Maughan says she sees a lot of clients leave them unused — and eventually unusable — when they’re stored in the produce drawer.)

4. Eat most sources of water-soluble and heat-sensitive nutrients raw.
Heat breaks down vitamin B1, vitamin B5, folate, and vitamin C, so you get more of these when you eat certain foods raw.
Thus, foods like:

  • sunflower seeds, peas, beet greens, and Brussels sprouts (sources of vitamin B1),
  • broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and avocado (sources of vitamin B5),
  • spinach, turnip greens, broccoli (sources of folate), and
  • bell peppers, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts (sources of vitamin C)

are generally best eaten raw to maximize absorption of these water-soluble nutrients.
For example, raw spinach contains 3 times more vitamin C than cooked spinach.
You lose water-soluble B-vitamins and vitamin C when you boil them. So, if you’d like to cook these types of foods, cook them at low heat without exposing them to too much water.
This includes:

  • blanching;
  • steaming;
  • sautéeing;
  • roasting; and/or
  • microwaving.

5. Know which foods are best when cooked.
Baby carrots cooked with garlic, honey and thyme. Delicious!
There’s actually a wide range of nutrient loss from cooking — anywhere from 15 to 55 percent. In most cases, you lose the most nutrients by boiling in water.
But some foods actually deliver the most nutrients when cooked.
For example, cooking:

  • significantly increases bioavailability of lycopene, found in tomatoes. Research shows that lycopene increases by 25 percent when tomatoes are boiled for 30 minutes.
  • significantly increases the bioavailability of beta carotene, found in red/orange/yellow plants like tomatoes, carrots, sweet potato, and spinach. Cooking helps here by breaking down the plants’ cell walls.
  • denatures protein in eggs and meat, making them much more digestible.
  • makes iron and other minerals more available for absorption by decreasing oxalates, an acid that makes the minerals inaccessible by binding to them.
  • reduces certain harmful food components, such as cyanide (found in yuca) and possible anti-nutrients (found in grains and beans), making way for all the good stuff those foods have to offer.

Pro tip: If you do end up boiling veggies, keep the liquid for something like soup stock. This way you can eat those nutrients later and they’re not really “lost”.
As always, keep the big picture in mind: Boiled potatoes are still far better than French fries.

6. Pair food strategically to maximize nutrient absorption.

Many world cuisines put particular foods together. (Think of greens with lemon and olive oil in Italian cooking, or the complex spice blends in Caribbean, African, or South Asian cooking.)

Perhaps over 20,000-odd years of trial and error, cooks figured out instinctively that a “balanced” diet with a wide variety of foods is the best kind.

Putting the right foods together doesn’t just taste awesome, it also helps you absorb all nutrients in the foods you do eat.

salad

Here are a few examples.

  • Pair fat with fat.
  • Eat foods that contain the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K with dietary fats, which help dissolve the vitamins and ready them for absorption.

Therefore, foods like:

  • sweet potatoes, carrots, and squash (vitamin A),
  • eggs and mushrooms (vitamin D),
  • spinach, Swiss chard, and asparagus (vitamin E), and
  • kale, spinach, and broccoli (vitamin K)

all go better with 1-2 thumb-sized portions of healthy fats like:

  • mixed nuts;
  • avocado;
  • olive oil;
  • coconut oil; and/or
  • butter.

Cool note: Foods like salmon (which contains vitamin D), egg yolk and liver (vitamin A) and sunflower seeds (vitamin E) take care of themselves, since they’ve got their own healthy fat.
Pair iron with vitamin C.

Iron from non-meat sources is known as nonheme iron. Nonheme iron is not as well absorbed as heme iron, which is found in animal foods (such as red meat or dark poultry).
To absorb the nonheme iron from our plant friends up to 6 times better, pair them with foods rich in vitamin C.

This works in two ways:

  • Vitamin C can help the plant food “let go of” the mineral.
  • Vitamin C can block other dietary compounds that can inhibit absorption.

Therefore foods like:

  • spinach,
  • kale,
  • soybeans, and
  • lentils

all go better with:

  • a squeeze of lemon juice,
  • orange slices,
  • strawberries, or
  • chili peppers.

Think: Spinach salad with orange slices, strawberries, and a lemon juice vinaigrette. Or braised kale with chilis and a squeeze of lemon.

Pair iron and zinc with sulfur.

Finally, foods rich in iron and zinc are usually best eaten with foods rich in sulfur. Sulfur binds to these minerals and helps you absorb them better.

Therefore foods like:

  • liver, beef, and turkey (rich in iron)
  • oysters, beef, and turkey (rich in zinc)

all go better with garlic, onion, and egg yolks. (Visit your local deli to get Bubbie’s delicious chicken liver and egg yolk pâté.)

7. Keep it simple.

Don’t start creating spreadsheets to track all of this. Keep it simple and sane.
It’s still better to eat broccoli any way you can get it than to not eat it because it’s not “perfect”. As Brian “Voice of Reason” St. Pierre likes to say:

“60 percent of something is still better than 0 percent of nothing.”

It’s also important to factor in things like the quantity. For example, it’s a lot easier to eat five cups of cooked spinach (and all the nutrients therein) than five cups of raw spinach.

Sometimes the cooked and raw versions of a food are equally nutritious, just in different ways. For example, raw spinach might have more iron, but it also has more of the chemicals that block your absorption of iron.

Here’s a great rule of thumb in case you carry a little of the “to cook” or “not to cook” angst.

  • Water soluble vitamins (vitamins B and C) lose the most nutrients when cooked.
  • Fat soluble vitamins (vitamins A, D, E, K) lose the fewest nutrients when cooked.
  • Just eat some darn vegetables already.

8. Don’t discount frozen foods.

Does frozen broccoli have the same nutritional value as the stuff you just picked from the earth and ate raw? Maybe not. But how often do you eat raw, straight from the earth?

Research shows that processing can decrease a food’s vitamin C content by 10-90 percent. But the reality is that frozen or canned fruits and veggies come in handy when you’re busy. And a little vitamin C is better than none.

“I’ve seen too many clients opt for pizza because they think the frozen broccoli is the nutritional equivalent of cardboard,” Andrews says. Don’t be those people.
Remember, too that fiber isn’t affected much by freezing or canning. So eat your veggies … however you can get them.

9. If possible, try an animal source.

Many animal-based sources of vitamins and minerals are more bioavailable than plant-based sources (which may bind up vitamins and minerals chemically, or require a lot of steps to be converted to what our bodies prefer).

For instance, as we’ve noted, the iron you get from meat is more available for absorption than the iron you get from plants:

  • Heme iron, found in animal protein, is encased in hemoglobin molecules, which protect the nutrient from getting degraded by other nutrients and minerals in your GI tract. That means you’re absorbing the iron intact via gut cells that are specifically designed to take up the nutrient.
  • Nonheme iron, from vegetable sources like spinach, starts to change the minute it comes into contact with other stuff in your intestines, meaning you can only absorb a small fraction of it.

The same is true of many other vitamins and minerals, such as calcium or vitamin A.

We think that’s a great reason to enjoy a nice ribeye or sashimi platter from time to time.
If you’re an exclusively plant-based eater, remember you might have to work a little harder to pry some of those vitamins and minerals from your produce buddies.

10. Monitor your tolerance.

Nutrients don’t do you much good if you’ve got an undetected food intolerance that keeps you from absorbing them.

Unfortunately, not everyone tolerates raw foods very well even if they’re technically “better for you” sometimes.

If you have GI symptoms such as gas, bloating, or problems with your stool, consider an elimination diet to figure out what you’re not tolerating, and see a doc (nutrient deficiencies are more common than you might think).

Once you eliminate the foods that affect you the most, you can better optimize your nutrient intake.

What to do next

Remember: We don’t believe in wondering and worrying, or making too much of a fuss about your food choices. Keep things sane and simple.

If you’d like to improve your nutrient intake a bit, here are some simple steps you can take, in order of importance:

1. Just eat.
Choose a wide variety of whole foods. The fresher and more colorful, the better. Do that and you’re 99 percent there.

2. Eat a combo of raw and cooked dishes.
Focus on the foods you enjoy, the way you like them prepared. That way you’ll actually eat them.

3. Want to level up?
If you’re already eating at least 5 fist-sized servings of veggies each day, and want to improve your nutrient intake without supplements, consider:

  • eating more locally grown produce,
  • consuming that produce soon after harvested,
  • eating most vegetables raw or lightly cooked,
  • eating other vegetables cooked,
  • storing your fruits and veggies appropriately, and
  • pairing complementary foods to maximize absorption.

4. Look to traditional or ancestral cuisines for cues.

These diets have often figured out how to make the most of micronutrients. For instance:

  • The famed Mediterranean diet includes both crushed garlic and cooked tomatoes, as well as the antimicrobial powers of the phytonutrients in fresh herbs. They also enjoy nutrient-rich organ meats.
  • South Asian and Caribbean cuisine does the same and throws in some anti-inflammatory turmeric and ginger plus painkilling hot peppers for good measure.
  • Arctic cultures such as Scandinavians and Inuit make sure to eat fish liver to give them enough vitamin D during the long, sunless winters. (The famous Icelandic sheep’s head dish, or svið, offers phosphorus and vitamin A to brave eaters who consume the eyes.)

As you learn more about nutrition, look at world cuisines and notice what foods they traditionally put together in dishes and meals. There may be a reason beyond just taste!

5. Think you have a food intolerance and/or nutrient deficiency?
Get to the bottom of those through dietary analysis or nutrient testing and work with a healthcare professional to get them corrected.

By Lee Helland

References
Ishiwu Charles N., Iwouno, Jude O., Obiegbuna James E., Ezike Tochukwu C. Effect of Thermal Processing on Lycopene, Beta-Carotene and Vitamin C Content of Tomato [Var.UC82B]. Journal of Food and Nutrition Sciences. Vol. 2, No. 3, 2014, pp. 87-92.
Nutrient bioavailability – getting the most out of food. European Food Information Council. 2010.
Fielding JM, Rowley KG, Cooper P, O’ Dea K. Increases in plasma lycopene concentration after consumption of tomatoes cooked with olive oil. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2005;14(2):131-6.