The South Beach Diet Supercharged: Faster Weight Loss and Better Health for Life (10 page)

There has been a real revolution in the quality and depth of nutrition information, and it’s going to make you, your family, and your fellow Americans healthier. Until recently, we didn’t know which foods had the most nutrients because many of the nutrients in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, good fats, and other foods hadn’t been discovered yet. Even the role of fiber, which is now known to be crucial to our health, was virtually unknown until a few decades ago. And the knowledge that vitamin supplements cannot compensate for a nutrient-poor diet is an even more recent development.

Thanks to this explosion of knowledge, we know that there are thousands of micronutrients working together in whole, unprocessed foods that help to maintain and optimize our health. Large studies have established that people who eat more fruits and vegetables have less chronic disease, including heart disease. We also know that to obtain the greatest benefits from fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and other good carbohydrates, it’s best to eat a wide variety of each. So let’s explore some of the exciting new nutritional science that’s driving this revolution.

Good Carbs, Great Benefits

When you reach your 100th birthday, you’re going to thank me for urging you to eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and other good carbohydrates. South Beach Diet favorites, such as berries, cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, kale, cauliflower), wheat and oat bran, and even chocolate (my favorite) and red wine have all been making consistent headlines for their positive effects on our health.

Not only are fruits and vegetables chock-full of fiber, they’re also great sources of vitamins, such as C and E; minerals, such as iron, magnesium, and calcium; and phytonutrients, the good health-boosting chemicals found only in plants. Phytonutrients are concentrated in the pigments (often in the skin) that give fruits and vegetables their color. To get the full palette, you need to eat a variety of brightly colored fruits and vegetables every day.

I’ve often said that Americans are overfed and undernourished—in fact, this phrase is the title of the next chapter, which warns about the ramifications of the poor diet being fed to our children today. Our meager consumption of fruits and vegetables is just one example of how we are starving ourselves of life-giving nutrients.

The USDA recommends that we eat two or more servings of fruits and three or more of vegetables each day, but according to a 2007 study published in the
American Journal of Preventive Medicine
, only 11 percent of Americans do so. Ironically, our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who had to forage widely for their food, ate a much greater variety of fruits and vegetables than we modern men and women do, even though we only have to go as far as the nearest supermarket. What’s even more shocking is that, despite all the miracles of modern medicine, there’s some convincing evidence that the hunter-gatherers were, in many respects, healthier than we are. That’s because, as the research shows, they did not suffer from the chronic and degenerative diseases that plague us today. Most likely this is because of the variety of whole foods they consumed. It’s been shown that later societies, which depended on just one major source of nutrition, such as wheat or rice, were shorter in stature than early man, had weaker bones, and often had evidence of nutritional deficiencies.

Plant Power

There are thousands of phytonutrients commonly found in foods, and we have barely scratched the surface in understanding what they do. Studies show that many phytonutrients act as antioxidants, which protect us against cell-damaging free radicals, chemicals that are produced when we use oxygen to make energy. In excess, free radicals are proinflammatory and attack healthy cells and tissues, which can ultimately lead to heart disease, cancer, premature aging, Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, and numerous other ailments. Antioxidants help maintain the right level of free radicals in your body.

You can compare antioxidants, which are found mainly in the skin of fruits and vegetables, to the rustproofing that’s used on a car. If you lose the protection, your car rusts and ages prematurely. If we do not have adequate antioxidants in our diets, we in a sense start to rust and age like that car. Have you ever noticed that smokers seem to look older than people their age who don’t smoke? Their skin is frequently wrinkled, and they are often prematurely gray. In addition, smokers’ muscles, bones, and organs tend to age faster than those of nonsmokers. Smoking is well known to stimulate the production of inflammatory free radicals. It could be said that smokers are rusting!

Phytonutrients do much more than protect you from premature aging, however. They also have the power to:

Beat inflammation and improve sex.
Take polyphenols, for example. These phytonutrients seem to be particularly good for heart health because they are anti-inflammatory and relax the blood vessels, which improves bloodflow and lowers blood pressure. If you follow nutrition news, you know that there’s been a great deal of buzz about pomegranate juice, which studies show may reverse atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and even improve erectile dysfunction (it’s all about the polyphenols and bloodflow). I usually recommend that people eat whole fruits for their fiber rather than drink fruit juice, but in the case of pomegranates, I make an exception. That’s because most people have trouble getting the pomegranate seeds out of the whole fruit, and drinking the juice for its potent polyphenols has proven health benefits. I like mixing pomegranate juice, which can be quite tart, with sparkling water for a refreshing spritzer.

In addition to improving bloodflow, the polyphenols found in black, white, green, and oolong tea and red wine have several other health benefits. Tea can lower bad LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, and red wine can raise good HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol. One study even showed that regular ingestion of green tea, which is rich in a type of polyphenol called catechins, may decrease body fat and help weight loss. You can enjoy tea, caffeinated (in moderation) or decaffeinated, on all phases of the South Beach Diet and can sip a glass or two of wine with a meal on Phases 2 and 3.

And for those of you who, like me, are chocoholics, I’ve saved the best news for last. Several studies have shown that dark chocolate can lower blood pressure, again probably due to the beneficial effect of its polyphenols on bloodflow. I’m not giving you a license to gorge on chocolate. But when you do enjoy it, it’s best to choose brands of dark chocolate that contain the most cocoa and the least sugar. While you won’t be able to eat dark chocolate on Phase 1, you can take heart in knowing that enjoying the occasional piece is allowed on Phases 2 and 3.

Protect the eyes and prostate.
Carotenoids, found mainly in yellow, orange, and red fruits and vegetables and in dark green vegetables, are another family of phytochemicals that have been studied extensively for their health benefits. Two carotenoids, lutein and zeaxanthin (both abundant in dark green vegetables), are associated with lower rates of macular degeneration and possibly cataracts. Another carotenoid, lycopene, found in tomatoes, pink and red grapefruit, and papaya, has been associated with lower levels of prostate cancer.

Keep you sharp.
Anthocyanins are potent antioxidants found in blueberries, purple grapes, plums, eggplant, cherries, and red wine. If these antioxidants work as well in humans as they do in mice, eating these foods may preserve your brain well into old age. In a 2006 study conducted by the USDA, a blueberry extract was fed to mice that had a genetic mutation causing them to develop the same kind of amyloid plaques found in the brains of human Alzheimer’s patients. Eight months later, the mice performed as well on a maze function test as their normal peers, an indication that their brains were still plaque free. USDA studies have also shown that rats fed blueberries showed fewer signs of physical and mental aging than rats that did not eat blueberries.

Fight cancer.
Cruciferous vegetables, including broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, and kale, are chock-full of cancer-fighting phytochemicals, including indoles and isothiocyanates. Consumption of these foods has long been associated with lower rates of breast cancer. More recently, a 2007 study published in the
International Journal of Cancer
found that people who ate the highest level of isothiocyanates daily had much lower rates of bladder cancer than those who did not.

These are just a few examples of the nutritional power of phytonutrients. Needless to say, there have been many attempts to isolate a particular phytonutrient from a food source and put it in supplement form. In fact, you’ll find store shelves full of supplements claiming to have harnessed the healing power of foods. The fact is, the studies on supplements have not yet yielded the same kind of positive health results as the studies of food. That’s probably because when you remove a particular nutrient from a food, you also lose its potentially beneficial interactions with the food’s other nutrients. My advice is that if you want to benefit from nature’s pharmacy, you need to eat whole foods as nature made them.

Bread Can Be Your Friend

Many people new to the South Beach Diet, especially those who have been on high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets, are often taken aback when, beginning on Phase 2, they learn that they are allowed to eat bread, cereal, and pasta—and not just on special occasions but every day. They wonder how they can continue to lose weight and also eat these carbohydrates, which they erroneously believe are responsible for this country’s obesity epidemic, not to mention our epidemics of diabetes and heart disease.

I can’t say it often enough: All carbohydrates are not the same. The overly processed refined starches and sugary processed foods that have been stripped of their fiber content are guilty as charged. These are the true culprits in the promotion of prediabetes, diabetes, and obesity. But whole grains are an entirely different story. There’s a world of difference between whole and refined grains. Whole grains are composed of the entire seed of the plant—the bran, germ, and endosperm. Refining typically removes the bran and germ, which contain B vitamins and other nutrients as well as fiber. It leaves the endosperm, which is mostly starch, and it’s the starch that converts rapidly into sugar during digestion.

When most people think of grains, they think of wheat, but whole grains include oats, barley, rice, quinoa, spelt, and rye. If you’ve been denying yourself a slice of bread or a serving of rice or cereal, you can stop doing so if you choose the whole-grain versions, which are actually very good for you. In fact, when it comes to your health, whole grains can:

Fight diabetes and heart disease.
Recent studies show that eating whole grains can actually lower the risk of diabetes and heart disease. In May 2007, a study published in the
Archives of Internal Medicine
reported that eating 29 grams of fiber daily in the form of grain products resulted in a 27 percent lower risk of developing diabetes than did eating roughly half that amount. Researchers noted that it wasn’t only the fiber that appeared to be protective but also magnesium, a mineral found in whole grains.

In June 2007, another study, published in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
, showed that eating whole grains can help prevent artery-clogging atherosclerosis. In the study, researchers measured the thickness of the carotid arteries of 1,178 men and women. This measurement is called intimal medial thickness and is a good predictor of heart attack and stroke. The people who ate the most whole grains had the best results on this test.

In the period since the USDA updated its Food Pyramid to emphasize whole grains, many new whole-grain products have appeared on supermarket shelves. There are now some wonderful whole-wheat pastas, whole-grain cereals, and breads that really taste great and are loaded with nutrients, including plenty of fiber. But if consumers don’t buy them, you can’t blame food manufacturers for not continuing to offer them. In fact, food manufacturers prefer to refine grains for two reasons: First, refining grains extends their shelf life; second, according to the producers, consumers are thought to prefer the smooth texture of refined flours over the texture of whole grains. I urge you to prove them wrong.

Remember, when you buy whole-grain pastas, breads, and other products, be sure the label says “100% whole wheat” or “whole grain,” and look for breads that contain 3 grams or more of fiber per slice.

Got Enough Milk?

Is it the calcium and vitamin D that make low-fat dairy foods a good choice? Or is it both of these nutrients and something else? Although the scientific community doesn’t have the answer yet, there is mounting evidence that something in dairy foods protects the heart and fights cancer. So drink your milk and eat your yogurt to:

Lower blood pressure and prevent prediabetes.
Several studies have shown a direct link between consumption of dairy products and a reduced risk of high blood pressure. And a 2007 study conducted at the University Hospital of Wales suggested that dairy products may do much more than that—they may also help prevent prediabetes, also known as metabolic syndrome. Researchers followed 2,375 men ages 45 to 59 for 20 years as part of a long-term health study known as the Caerphilly Prospective Study (CAPS). Those who consumed the most dairy products were less likely to suffer from metabolic syndrome. The researchers did not distinguish between low-fat and high-fat dairy foods, but as a cardiologist, I definitely do. We know that saturated fat, which is found in fatty meats, poultry skin, and full-fat dairy foods, is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. And even though this particular study showed positive results for any kind of dairy, I don’t advise people to use full-fat products. Furthermore, there is no need to. Thanks to a broad selection of reduced-fat cheeses and fat-free and low-fat milk and yogurt, it’s just as easy to buy these healthier products as it is to purchase full-fat versions. One of my new favorites, and one we include in a number of recipes in this book, is nonfat Greek yogurt, which is thicker than regular yogurt. Honestly, to me it tastes like full-fat sour cream.