 We're going to really get into the trenches here and we're going to decipher food labels and I'm also going to be talking about supplements. So we're going to kind of dive in as much as we can here. And this is roughly a two hour session. So, you know, get comfortable, take your stretch breaks as needed. But we're going to go the roughly the full two hours and that's also going to include some question and answer at the end. So feel free as you're, you know, thinking up some questions, you can put them in the chat box, I'll get to them at the end of the session here. All right, so as sister Fadwa mentioned, I am a registered dietitian been doing this for over a decade. And food labels is a subject that a lot of people find to be very complicated. So I am going to really simplify things, you know, as much as I can here. And kind of give you the main points that we should be looking at and focusing on. All right, let me get to my next slide. Here we go. All right, so our agenda for this morning. So why even read food labels like what's the point. So we'll talk about that common pitfalls. So we have to remember everyone that the label is a commercial and food companies want us to not only buy their product but continue to buy their product. So there's a lot of interesting stuff that's included on labels so we're going to kind of sort through that to see what's real what's not. So here's a big question I get all the time organic, yay or nay. So we'll kind of dive into that as well a breakdown of different definitions of, you know, organic, whether we need everything organic, whether it's more nutritious or not. Then we're going to actually get into the nutrition panel itself and the ingredients. So as to serve father I mentioned the beginning of the session here if you have any labels that you're really curious about, grab them. It's really nice to kind of look through things so as I'm you know presenting this information you know you can kind of see what's going on with products that you're purchasing. And again at the end of the session you know I'll open up for questions so if you're like oh I don't know I had this label look good but I'm confused if it really is so you know we'll take a look at that. And last but not least at the end of the session I'm also going to be talking about supplements, vitamins and minerals and protein shakes there's just so much in the marketplace and especially now with with the COVID era, you know so many different ads that we see promoting different products that are going to help us beat the virus and, and so forth so we'll also take a look at that as well. So why even read food labels in the first place. Well first things first this really helps us to improve our diets and we as the consumer really need to be proactive you know in our health. And when we are looking at the food labels you know by law the nutrition panel does have to include certain information. And whatever we see is the truth so I know I get this a lot from patients like oh well how can I believe you know what they're saying is really what they're saying. And you know the nutrition panel itself, there are certain guidelines that the FDA has put in place that manufacturers have to abide by so there is laws behind that. Now as to the front of the label as we'll talk about in just a moment that is a little bit more pliable I guess you can say. So we'll talk about that so basically reading food labels is going to help us to improve our diets we're going to be able to really delve deep into the different nutrition information on the back of the food label. Ingredients are listed. And that's really important in case we need to avoid something so of course as Muslims you know, certain ingredients we need to avoid like gelatin and lard and things like that. You know as a kid I'm sure a lot of us grew up you know reading food labels you know kind of looking at am I allowed to eat this or not and I was telling sister father yesterday that one of my favorite memories actually from childhood is and I remember this very clearly is when Oreo cookies finally took out lard. Because before that Oreos used to have lard in it and we can eat that and we used to just kind of get by with hydroxy. And as a kid I really wanted to eat Oreos like all the other kids. And when they finally took lard out it was you know a cause of celebration with a packet of Oreos. So we as Muslims again we're many of us already are looking at ingredients anyways. And that's good. But also for those that have allergies we are definitely seeing a rise in allergies so that's really key to to see, you know what is in the ingredients or anything I have to avoid for those that have allergies to nuts. Manufacturers even will list on the bottom of the label even if there's no nuts in the product itself the list on the bottom of the label that you know manufactured in a facility that does process nuts, because some people are very highly sensitive to even the dust of nuts. So that's really key. Also, what we're going to dig deep later on is certain nutrients we need to look at, because we do have to cut back and kind of limit certain nutrients as much as possible like saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, especially those that have high blood pressure are cognizant of sodium. But actually all of us should be, you know, looking at sodium, and I'll be explaining further why that's the case, and sugar that's a huge one huge so we'll get into that in detail. And really quickly, I earlier this, wow, we're already, you know, almost at the end of this month, but at the beginning of the new year here actually on January 1 I did do a session on nutrition one oh one that actually talks about these different nutrients what is saturated fat. How much do I need portion sizes so if you didn't get a chance to check that out I actually really recommend that. And because I really kind of laid a foundation on a lot of the things that I am going to be talking about today so the recording is online so feel free to check it out soon. Where I'm again going to explain different nutrients, you know, and, you know, kind of talk further about what their role is and in the body. All right. All right. Okay, so very key for us to be aware of is that the nutrition label, especially the front is an advertisement. Right. Manufacturers companies really do what they can to make that label look very enticing to draw us in. There's a lot of psychology actually behind it's a whole field called industrial psychology that really kind of looks at okay like what catches consumers is their interest, even where products are placed in the grocery store is very strategic if you ever, you know, take note, like for example the cereal aisle. Notice, where do they usually place children's cereal hasn't even ever noticed that. It's usually I level to the child. Right so child's, you know, with parent at the grocery store, they're, you know, walking along, they turn over and right next to them they see, oh my gosh, you know, Tony the tiger or whatever, you know, cartoon, or mascot for some of these products and then, right, it starts I want this I want this I want this right. So yes of course where things are placed is very strategic and even at the checkout stance right those are impulse buys, if you notice right. They'll have candy there gum tabloids, you know nowadays I know it's a lot different obviously because of COVID but you know, even pre COVID people usually are on the phone so a lot of times that's not being looked at. But those things are there and I remember once I was in a in a county further south from here. And in that neighborhood people are a lot more health conscious so I noticed I was at the checkout stand and I looked to the right and usually where candy is. I found like a refrigerator case of like individual servings of salad. And I was like, wow, I wish you took a picture of it. This is a couple years ago, because in that neighborhood, some people were more health conscious and buying those like candy and things like that impulse items. So that's where they put these healthy stuff in that area. So again, just be aware where things are placed are very strategic. And the best thing to do when at the grocery store is to try to shop the perimeter. So for example, you enter the grocery store go all the way to the far right. Usually what does one find, right depends on your grocery store but usually like produce, right. And then you round around the corner, you'll find you know the dairy, the meats, the seafood, you round around that corner and then you get into like the breads and yeah the bakery, you know, so it's not all always great but it's the essentials that are on the perimeter. It's not really ideal. So if you're in a rush, which I know a lot of us are these days because of the current situation. So, you know, just go around the perimeter grab your things and get out. It's the inner aisles that a lot of times have those foods that are a little bit more enticing. And then even like the music that's played in the grocery store they've done research on this and it's like slow music because they want people to kind of peruse the aisles. And there's a lot of you know, psychology, you know behind this and as we get deeper into the food labels I'll be talking about that. So, actually going to turn my camera on really quick and I'm going to actually show you I have like this whole collection of food labels and actually have more at work that I don't have with me. But for example, and I'm not endorsing any products by the way, I'm just showing you, oops. Sorry guys let me go back to my previous slides. Okay. So again I'm not endorsing any products I'm showing you guys. Okay so this is pizza. It's called cauliflower cauliflower crust made with real cauliflower pizza your favorite vegetable. Right. So, again, they're kind of like drawing us in they pull on our heart strings like oh my goodness. Pizza is vegetable now I'm going to buy this. Wow, it's gluten free certified so there's a lot of things which will look at, you know to get us in. Another one here. Organic chickpea puffs vegan white cheddar USD organic. Right. Healthy snack here. And peas peas love and giving back. I had another one. I don't have it with me, but on that label. It was for crackers and it was ancient grain crackers and with probiotics. If you purchase this product, you would help the Peruvian children 1% of proceeds would go there so it's like again they're pulling on our heart strings, they make it look really good. Sometimes when you buy these products and you make them at home you're like how come it doesn't look like how it looks on on the front of the label. Because again, just remember this is you know marketing. They want us to be, you know, really dedicated to their product right. So let's go further here so keep that in mind. Labeling. Now, a lot of times they put what's not there in the first place so for example gluten free. All right, this is a big thing right now huge I mean it's been a big thing for a few years now. Let me just break this down to you. So gluten is a protein. And it's found only in wheat, rye and barley. All right so only wheat, rye and barley products have gluten. Other products for example like oats might get contaminated by gluten if they're manufactured again in the same plant or the process in the same plant. So let's advocate that on there, but truly only wheat, rye and barley will have gluten. Now, what's happened over the years due to genetic modification cross hybridization is that we are seeing higher content of gluten in these grains than we did previous so wheat of today is not the wheat that our grandparents ate. It is different. Now, gluten, we hear a lot about this like oh gluten is bad and this and that and again the jury is kind of in and out about this. Some people legitimately should not be having gluten and those are people that have celiacs disease. People have celiacs disease gluten essentially mounts like an allergic reaction in a way to their body. So they cannot have any gluten and there's also gluten even in like cosmetics and you know lotions and things like that so for people have celiacs they have to be very vigilant about any gluten. Then there are those that are maybe sensitive to gluten. Right. And the best way to know whether you're sensitive to gluten is, you know, try cutting out gluten try cutting out wheat, rye and barley products and see how you feel. You have more energy. Am I not as bloated. How about headaches, things like that. Right, but not everyone has this. And there is research looking at whether you know this gluten is inflammatory for some people and again, you know, the jury is out on that there's still a lot of research that is being done on on that. I know a lot of people that kind of take it easy with with the gluten and that's fine it's your personal choice. But the reason I'm bringing this up is that just because it's gluten free does not mean it's healthy, because a lot of these gluten free products what they use is they use tapioca starch they use, you know, potato flour rice flour. And those are processed and a lot of times, you know, those things that they use are not necessarily healthier and better. So again, just because this is gluten free is not, you know, automatically telling us this is healthier and purchase this. All right. And a lot of times they put gluten free in products that don't even have gluten in the first place. I've seen, you know, gluten free on yogurt. I'm like yogurt is not wheat, rye or barley product. Why is this on here. But it's it's it's not a lie right it is gluten free. They're not lying to us, but it was never there in the first place. So people are on this gluten free like everything is gluten free is good for me and then they're going to say oh well gluten free yogurt let me buy this. It might not necessarily have been as better as just a regular yogurt that was next to it. So just keep that in mind. So cholesterol free. This is another really big thing. So cholesterol is only found in animal products. All right, so only animal products if it has a mom or a dad. It has cholesterol. All right, now our human body does not use animal cholesterol to produce human cholesterol. All right, our liver so our all of our livers are producing cholesterol we need cholesterol in our body. It's a component of the cell membranes it's a component of hormones, it's a component of bile, which breaks down fats. So we need cholesterol. So we never want to have like never want to see our lab values zero cholesterol then I don't know how we're surviving. We have to have some cholesterol in our body. So our liver is making it, and some of us have very efficient livers that are making a lot of cholesterol, and the raw material that our liver uses to make our cholesterol is actually fat is specially saturated fat. So for those who have high cholesterol you need to focus on fat, not necessary cholesterol. When you see cholesterol listed on the label that indicates dietary cholesterol and dietary cholesterol comes from animals. Right so when I'm eating you know chicken and fish you know I'm getting chicken, you know cholesterol fish cholesterol is all coming in. It's adding to my overall bundle of cholesterol but that's not what my liver is using to make human cholesterol it doesn't even make sense to do that. So, again, if as a mom or dad it has cholesterol but we're more concerned about saturated fat and saturated fat comes from animal products, but we also find saturated fat also in tropical oils. So I refer you to my previous session the nutrition one on one where I talk more about saturated fat. So I've seen this on labels I've seen this on like corn oil, you know other oil labels cholesterol free. And I'm like wait a minute this is not even an animal product. It didn't even have cholesterol in the first place. But again, they're pulling on our heart strings. So keep that in mind. Another thing that I see a lot is all natural natural. So the FDA the federal drug and food administration. considers all natural to mean that the food contains no artificial or synthetic substances, such as coloring agents, but it can still contain potentially harmful substances like antibiotics growth hormones pesticides etc. Arsenic is natural is that not right arsenic it's a poison, but it's natural we find it in nature it's an element. So just because it's natural doesn't mean it's necessarily good for us. Sugar and high fructose syrups are made from beats corn and sugar cane, all of which are plants, all of which are natural. Right. Another thing for those that like red velvet I hate to break this to you but it's not all red velvet. It's a dye that they use in some of these red velvet, you know cakes and things like that. It actually comes from a beetle extract. It will list on their natural flavoring natural coloring. It's not beetle blood don't worry, but it's an extract of beetles. So that's natural so a lot of them you see natural flavorings and natural colorings you know again there's a lot of room for imagination there. It's not from nature but it may not be the nature we might necessarily want per se. So just kind of be aware of that that it just because it's natural doesn't necessarily mean this is, you know, good for me per se. Other sketchy terms. No sugar added this is another big one. Alright, so my friends. Fruit yogurt, I forgot to indicate that on the slide so milk fruit yogurt are carbohydrates, and they do have glucose lactose fructose. These are natural sugars that our body needs, right especially glucose this is our bodies number one source of fuel. So natural sugars that are coming from milk fruit and yogurt. Starches grains. This is fine. Okay, we're not concerned about natural sugars that's already in the products if I look at plain yogurt, I am going to see some sugars there is coming from lactose that is fine. Those that are diabetic have to be concerned about their overall carbohydrate intake. Diabetes as a whole other realm. I'm not going to get into that because not everyone here it has diabetes but for diabetics they do count their carbohydrates. And so on the label they will be looking at at carbs. Right so they will take into consideration okay how much milk they're having fruit, so on and so forth, but for the rest of us that do not have diabetes. You know, don't be worried about those natural sugars. Alright well we're worried about is the sugar that's added and if there's concentrated sugar which for example we find in juice. So think about juice if you had an eight ounce cup of juice, how many oranges would we have to juice to get that eight ounces of fluid. A lot. Right maybe I don't depend on how juicy the oranges five six I don't know, but a lot. Can we eat all those oranges in their whole form. No we can't. So that's why it's always better to have fruit in its natural form like God gave us. So juice I am not a fan of juice for anybody the only people I tell to drink juice is diabetics if their blood sugars are low. And that's only population I tell to drink juice everybody else really should try to avoid it it's very concentrated sugar, just have the fruit itself the fruit has the fiber and other components in there you know filaments and everything. Everything has, you know, those are prebiotics and antioxidants and phytochemicals that we can replicate in the liquid format. And in my even smoothies I know I like oh smoothies smoothies are nice and everything. The only smoothies I'm okay with honestly are like the green drinks where you're like throwing in more vegetables and you're pulverizing it and then maybe one serving of fruit is in there. Then okay fine. But when we make smoothies and we throw all these, you know, fruits in there. And we think we're doing good and you know it's fine whatever. But the thing is, is that when we drink things versus eating things the satiation point is really affected. So we feel more satiate when we're eating we're chewing we're giving you know our receptors in our body time to really, you know, absorb the nutrients and so forth whereas when we're drinking things it's not as satiating and again we end up getting more than we normally would have been able to eat like think about how much fruit you throw in there and I'm not saying fruit is bad. So actually we know having fruit at every meal is a good thing, but sometimes one can go overboard. So that's what we have to kind of be moderate about. So beware of juice that has concentrated sugar sometimes as much as soda so when you see no sugar added, you see that on the label, or you know as we see here made with real fruit. There's already sugar in there all that's indicating as they didn't add in any of their sugars. Sugar free also just be aware of that usually sugar free indicates that a non nutritive sweet sweetener and artificial sweetener was used we'll talk more about those a little bit later on. Fat free. So most of the time when they remove fat, they remove flavor so they then substitute it with sugar. So a lot of times fat free products have actually more sugar and just as much calories if not more sugar free products when they remove sugar they remove flavor so they usually add more fat to buffer it. So usually we see higher amounts of fats, so it's always better sometimes just to have like the real deal, and just have less and enjoy it because this also happens to a psychologically is when we're having sugar free or fat free or light psychologically we think Wow, this is really good for me so I'm going to eat more. It's not consciously like thinking of it but it's like subconsciously it's happens. We've seen this in the research where like, you know people these hundred calorie packs that came out a while ago those are good and everything. But sometimes people like oh it's just a hundred calories I'll have another packet. So we can kind of let down our guard because we're thinking it's good for me because it's sugar free or fat free or light, when that's not necessarily the case. And we see that on a lot of products. So that can sometimes refer to flavor, not necessarily the ingredients so for example light brown sugar it's just lighter in color doesn't mean it's better for us. Like can also mean reduce fat or reduce calories, but it can still be high because they compare it to the original product. So for example low and sodium. Low sodium soy sauce because soy sauce is actually very high in sodium. And then when you see low and sodium soy sauce. Don't think that it's the right amount of sodium. It's just less sodium than the full version so we still have to be cognizant of how much we're using. All right, another huge area is organic. I had a friend once who was like yeah. So I bought organic potato chips and then that places organic coffee so it's good for me right and I was like look, just because it's organic doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be healthier for us. So just keep this in mind. Right. So, organic when you see this term organic, we see it on processed foods we see this on on produce. So basically what this indicates is that when this item was grown, or processed. They did not use any synthetic fertilizers or pesticides so there's there's actually very strict measures here in the US and as I'm a you're here internationally welcome. But here in the US, we have really strict measures and actually to be honest other countries, especially in Europe have even more stringent measures so you guys in in in Europe are doing actually really well sometimes compared to us here. But in any case, so yes farmers cannot use any synthetic fertilizers or pesticides they're not genetically modified foods. Now the research. So far the research has shown that GMO products genetically modified organisms are okay. But now there's still, you know, a lot that still needs to be looked into further but as of right now GMO, you know allegedly is fine. I'm just saying what, you know, is out there but I feel like there's a little so so a lot of room to look into so I personally am not a fan of GMO and I try to avoid that as as much as possible. There are actually apps that you can download that will tell you what products are genetically modified in this country that's usually GMO products that are produced here are usually like soybean, corn, rice sometimes and even tomatoes can be GMO and GMO just basically means that they'll kind of like, you know, kind of cross link genes I guess you can see say so that you know products kind of for example like last longer. Right so for example if you look at tomatoes like I grew tomatoes this past summer it was fun versus tomatoes that you find in the grocery store right you can drop those tomatoes you can maybe like roll the tomato across the floor and it won't bruise right, whereas like the organic like you know natural non GMO ones are not like that so that's a whole separate, you know, area to talk about also organic foods are not irradiated. That's another really big thing. Usually they irradiate products, you know, to decrease like, or prevent even growth of microbes, bacteria so on and so forth. They just spoil as fast that's another big thing. And also, these organic products. There's no sewage sludge fertilizer used as well. Now, organic products have their own fertilizers and pesticides that are used that, you know, are allegedly better but you know again, this is a constantly changing product that needs to be looked further into. So when we say organic on our US labels here so the US Department of Agriculture. There's a stamp of organic because the USDA and the FDA they kind of manage different areas so USDA manages like all you know agriculture livestock or as FDA manages other products. So when we see 100% organic on the label. That means all of the ingredients must meet the organic criteria so what I was mentioning before so there's no synthetic fertilizers pesticides etc etc. We see USDA organic or certified organic so what this means is 95% or more of the products are certified organic. The remaining 5% of the ingredients may only be foods or process with additives on an approved list. So they may not be organic made with organic. This indicates that the ingredients must contain 70% or more organic ingredients but the remaining 30% of the ingredients might not necessarily be organic right they may be on again another special list. And the USDA symbol just can't be used anywhere on the package right so there are stringent measures for this to be used. Now organic meat and poultry. So what this means is that there's no growth hormones or antibiotics that are used but they might use other things but that are certified but overall no growth hormones or antibiotics. They're fed organic feed with no animal byproducts because it's really interesting and sad what a lot of our livestock especially here in the US are being fed. They're fed grain to fatten them up faster and this is also what we're seeing is that when they're fed grain. We are seeing more of a higher composition of omega sixes in in their meat. And again I will refer you to my previous session on omega sixes but the problem with omega sixes is too much omega sixes can actually instigate inflammation. So we don't want to have too much omega sixes in our body we want to have more of the omega threes. So grass fed. Actually, which is what they should be eating right grass. We do see more of the omega threes. Does that mean it's grass fed it's healthy for me. No, we still have to be cognizant of how much meat we're having, especially red meat. You know the saturated fat amounts the cholesterol amounts, you know and again it is a big source of inflammation for a lot of people so we want to be moderate in that but if you are going to be purchasing you know red meat which is be fin and go and lamb. You want to try to get you know the grass fed variety. Also when you see organic meat and poultry. This indicates that the animals have some access to outdoors. Not necessarily they're living out there. They might just be out for a little bit of time and then brought in. So in this picture right there out right cows are out but they're not freely you know roaming around and and so forth. Also this indicates that at least 30% of the cows diet is from organic pasture during the grazing season. So again, stringent measures here. Now organic dairy and I actually do suggest that you know especially for children and for those that are you know, elderly mature to try to get organic and even us as well you know to be honest everyone should be getting organic dairy so this indicates that there are no growth hormones or antibiotics for cows what happened some years back is due to a particular hormone that they had actually injected into these cows because think about it these cows grow in very close quarters so they can get each other sick. So that's why they're giving them antibiotics. They are trying to get them to constantly be lactating. So we're getting their milk and you know then they try to you know pump them up so you know for the meat and this has to be done in a short span of time right to meet demand. So this is why this is happening to to all these animals and you know again this is a whole separate you know subject of the ethics behind this. But what happened several years ago is they actually started they found that a lot of young girls were hitting puberty at a young age and they were able to trace it back actually to some of these hormones that were that were used, which you know they banned they don't use them but you know a lot of this stuff does trickle down to us. So you know just food for thought organic dairy indicates also that the cows are fed organic feed with no animal byproducts cows again have some access to the outdoors. Same thing as the previous at least 30% of the cows diet is from organic pasture, and then the cows themselves have to be or gate raised organic for at least a year before their products can be labeled as organic. No organic eggs eggs are very confusing right like free range and you know cage free and this and that is it's very, very interesting here so I'll break that down for you guys. Um, so organic eggs this indicates that no growth hormones or antibiotics were fed to the to the heads or injected to the hands, the hands were fed organic feed with no animal byproducts and the hands have some access to the outdoors. All right, so some access so on the right hand side and if you guys see this on the right hand side of my picture here. This is actually considered cage free. They're not in cages right, but I mean this doesn't look like really humane practices you know to be honest so when you see cage free. Sorry guys sorry cage free that may basically indicates that the eggs come from hens that weren't confined in cages, they may or may not have access to the outdoors though. Right, so just you know something to think about and then when we see free range or free roaming for poultry or eggs what that means was again the hens weren't confined in cages, they have access to the outdoors, but the outdoor area might be covered with the netting. If that's considered free range or free roaming that means cows weren't confined in feedlots they have access to the outdoors. So, ideally we would like to see you know free range, you know organic, you know eggs would be ideal. So again organic eggs, I would also recommend as well for everyone to be honest, definitely makes a difference. You can even see it in the color of the yolk. So again this my whole slides are gone guys. So I had more to this slide than this apologies. So in any case so should I eat organic it's there's it depends is the bottom line. And what it depends on is, first and foremost what is organic product that you're having so if you're like I bought organic chips, or I bought organic cookies, they're it's still a chip. Right. Yeah, the the products that they use in there. You know we're grown with those particular set standards, but it's still a chip. It's still a cookie. Right. For produce, just because it's organic does not mean that it's necessarily higher in nutrient value it is not the vitamins and minerals that we find in organic is the same as that we find in non organic. So I'm not going to find more vitamin A and C and so forth in, you know, the fruits and vegetables, the nutrient value is the same. The only difference again is that these fertilizers and pesticides and so forth weren't used. And there's a lot of research looking at what are the long term effects of these fertilizers and pesticides. What are they doing to our body. For example, you know one of the, the pesticides you know roundup that's used on a lot of our produce produce and grains. Right. I remember reading about a couple I think in the Midwest, that she sued months Monsanto. And actually one because they both got cancer and they're blaming it on, you know, one of these fertilizers or pesticides that they were using on on their crop so again. The whole food industry, I mean I should have a whole class on like food politics because food is very politicized the lobbies behind food and food companies is huge, huge and that really affects the our dietary guidelines. So we have to keep that in mind I know several years ago I think Oprah had made some comment about beef and everyone at that time you so listen to Oprah. And the beef industry actually sued Oprah because they're like you affected our sales. So you know the lobbies behind all of this are pretty, pretty huge. So you know just keep that in mind that, you know, these these companies conglomerates really the bottom line for them is is the dollar right or whatever currency you're in. So the reason we would be be eating organic is again to avoid that exposure to those fertilizers and pesticides and so on and so forth. But it is more expensive. Right, so I mean sometimes it's painful you go to grocery store and you're like oh my gosh. Right, I can get this for $299 or, you know, $599 for the organic version right and it's it can hurt sometimes right and especially for those that are, you know, you know watching the you know their finances and so forth for what I would suggest is take a look at how often you're eating that product. Right if you're eating it like all the time, then maybe you want to purchase organic. And here in the US we have the environmental work group is a consumer group that actually will evaluate, you know, various produce, and every year they come out with a list it's called the dirty dozen so have 2020 dirty dozen list here on our slide 2021 list is not out yet. But this is a list that they put out of produce that we should try to buy organic if we can because this is the highest amount of pesticides that we're seeing in produce. So for example strawberries is always on that list I always see strawberries on that list so strawberries is number one highest amount of pesticide value we see so yeah if you're buying strawberries often the recommendation would be you know to try to get organic especially if you have young children or, you know, elderly or those are immunocompromised spinach kale neckdreams things like that if you take a look at these items that are on the list, usually these are thin, thin skinned. Right, you will never see bananas on this list bananas have a pretty thick skin so like you never really need to get organic bananas, right avocados right same thing that hasn't been on the list I think from from what I recall. So, you know, certain fruits and vegetables we don't need to get organic, but certain we do now blueberries is not on the list this year but it still has high pesticide amount but these have more. And again this list is for the US I'm not sure about other countries. Again, other countries like I said especially Europe, a lot more strict in their, in their policies which I actually really appreciate. So anyways, so at the end of the day really depends on you, I would suggest personally getting organic dairy, getting organic meat. And then trying to, you know, follow this the dirty dozen for for the for the year and trying to get those that organic. And what I was doing previously with my adventures and gardening which didn't go that far is I was actually like you know what let me actually try to grow some of the foods that are on the dirty dozen list because at least I know how I'm growing it. Right, so I tried didn't really work but it was an attempt. But as for other products like organic potato chips and cookies and things like that yeah if you want to spend the extra money and get those organic that's fine. Again because the pesticide and fertilizer residue and so forth, but I don't want you to psychologically think it's better for you so that you're eating more. If that makes sense. Oh wow I do have everything okay never mind friends. My slides kind of went all over the place today. Anyway, so here's my slide so yes organic produce is not higher in nutrient value but again less exposure to pesticides. All right, now, if you haven't already go grab your label and let's take a look at the ingredients. So the ingredients usually are in very microscopic print sometimes. And they can sometimes be hard to find on on the label but it's on the side there somewhere. So you will see that on there. The camera on here. Alright, so they should have it again it's small it's either like on the back of the label itself and might be on the side of the label. Sometimes you might need a magnifying glass to take a look at what it is, you know, but it's very key to look at the ingredients and, especially when you're running into the store. You know, and you don't want to spend too much time in the store obviously one of the best ways to triage a product is first look at the ingredients. What is going on in this product, because by law the manufacturers have to list. What is in there, and the label by the way is slowly changing I'm going to be talking about that coming up but our US labels are changing slowly the formatting and so forth. I love the European labels. So reason being is in the European labels what I love about their ingredients is we have to remember that the ingredients are listed in order of weight. So whatever is the first ingredient is what is the most of so for example if you pick up a cookie, usually the first ingredient is sugar because that's what's mostly in that product. So they listen again order of weight. The reason I like the European labels is because in their ingredients, they will list the percentage. So for example, you know, you know, 47% to whole grain. 46% enriched flower. And when you see things like that. If you look in our US labels will just say whole grain flower or whole wheat flower and then it might say enriched flower and they might be back to back next to each other. And it might seem like there's more of the whole grain item, for instance right, but we don't know how much more of. So that's why the European labels with their percentages and that's hopefully going to happen here at some point. That will tell a bit more to the story but we'll do what we got right now here. So when you look at the ingredients. Ask yourself, do I want this in my body and this is why I always tell kids and teens I'm going to read the label, read the label of your flaming hot Cheetos right read the label of some of your favorite foods do you even know what it is. Can you pronounce it. Do you want that in your body because we, you know, we are what we eat. Literally, we are what we eat foods can affect our genes, right. So as a whole field of nutrigenetics and epigenetics, you know how our lifestyle can activate genes on and off right can express this. We can do this again a lot of research this is again a whole separate session. But we have to keep that in mind. And I know we think oh it's okay once in a while and that's fine but how many once in a while do we have. Right, and I'm all about moderation everyone you know that's our Sina is to be moderate and I'm all about that. We also have to be, you know, smart about what we're consuming as well. The less ingredients the better. Honestly, if you've picked something up and it's like a paragraph, and you need that magnifying glass. That's a lot of stuff going on there. And that's a lot of processing the less processed, the better that should be our mantra. And that's what we keep seeing in the in the literature in the research, the less process the better. Keep it real. Right. So always ask yourself how many steps from farm to table. Right earlier I held up these, this hippies organic chickpea puffs. And you know the ingredients for this. Actually let me read this again. I don't I'm not knocking any products, apologies to the manufacturer here, but the ingredients here are chickpea flour, rice flour, sunflower oil, tapioca starch, P whole fiber, brown rice flour, salt, cane sugar, onion, citric acid, garlic, rice concentrate, lactic acid, canola oil, natural flavor which of course again has a very vague terminology there rosemary extract and they even have a little little bit of an asterisk and it says organic ingredients right to get us again. Pull up to our heartstrings here. So, when you read that, because when I look at the front of the label it's just basically it's indicating that it's you know it's it's it's coming from chickpeas. But when I look at the back of the label that's a lot of other stuff going on. Right, so it is pretty process so we have to just keep that in mind. Right. I have you know patients that tell me oh yeah I bought chips, they're made from quinoa and black beans and I'm like all right, so why not just have the quinoa and black bean, you know, just by itself. And they're like but it's not a chip. Okay that's fine you know that would be better than like the, you know white potato chips and things like that so we have to kind of look at, you know where we are in this journey of wellness and my whole career is like baby steps just small things just you know keep moving, but the ideal would be honestly less processed, you know more wholesome foods and their whole form would be the ideal. So, when you are picking up a product, if a product has more than six ingredients everyone take a look at your products does it have more than six ingredients. If it does, then what I want you to do is especially pay attention to the first three ingredients. Now, the reason I'm saying that if it has 60 ingredients or more than this rule comes into play is sometimes we pick up products and they have like one ingredient so for example if you pick up oil. The only ingredient you're going to find hopefully is just oil. Right that's fat. So that's fine. Right we know we're getting into. We're getting into six ingredients or more you know take a look at the first three ingredients and try to avoid any form of sugar fat salt or enriched flowers within the first three ingredients. So this is why I'm saying if it only has less than six ingredients and as this doesn't work as well. So again if I pick up that oil, I'm going to see oil and if I was following this rule I wouldn't buy it because that first ingredient would be fat. That's why it doesn't apply for less ingredient items. But this is a really good rule of thumb this can really help us triage when we're in the grocery store. Right, you can immediately be like oh whoa sugar first ingredient okay I'm not buying this bread. Right, so really important there are yes my friends there are breads out there that abide by this. Right, because think about everyone for those that make bread at home it's pretty basic. I'm pretty covered once my mom had texted me she's like I'm at the grocery store and I found this bread what do you think she sent me a picture of the ingredients I'm like mom, what is all this random stuff in there. Like bread should be pretty basic right like how do you usually break bread. It's only got a few ingredients. So what's all this other stuff. So in any case, just kind of keep that in mind. Right, the less ingredient the better. And again if you see any form of sugar fat salt or enriched flowers try to avoid that. And I'm going to delve in deep about different terminology that they use for some of these things. So when they read the ingredients this is an example. Right, so I'll say ingredients and then the list them and sometimes you see that parentheses pop up. So when you see the parentheses pop up. Ignore that like don't count that as part of your three first three ingredients because the parentheses indicates what's in that ingredient itself so for example enriched flower here. This indicates that it has wheat flour niacin reduced iron folic acid. So when we're counting the first three I look at enriched flower skip the parentheses next one sugar. So in semi seat chocolate chips. Okay well the second ingredient is sugar first ingredient is flour. So ideally this isn't a product that I want to have all the time. It's like a once in a while like you know kids want to have a little you know movie night they want to have this cookie. Okay fine. But this shouldn't be something in our regular rotation. So this has partially hydrogenated I'm going to come talk about that a little bit later but this indicates trans fat, which we definitely want to try to avoid. All right, here we go. Now, our US labels are changing. So on the left hand side is the old label. In 2016, we were supposed to start changing by 2018. We were supposed to have this new label on the right hand side in play, but it's a very slow motion transition happening, you know because of the previous administration things got a little slow there. And so hopefully, by this summer. Hopefully, I've been seeing this for a while. The right hand side here this new label should be what we should mostly be seeing out there, but this old label on the left hand side still lurks out there. Okay, it's not too bad, but there's been some improvements, and you know, myself and my fellow dieticians at work were like such nerds when we first saw the new label come out a few years ago we were so excited we were so nerd it out, because we were so excited about the new label because it has something that we were waiting for for a while, and it added added sugars. So if you take a look at the previous label, it just says sugars. It just lumps them all together natural added everything just thrown in there we don't know what's really going on, but the new label, it has added sugars which really is going to give us a lot of important information. So what you see a change up is the formatting so what pops out when you look at the new label bam calories in your face right bold serving size. So they kind of flipped it, bolded it. They added in, you know the added sugars also what they're doing is they're making their serving size more realistic they standardize this across the board. Previously the ice cream serving was like I don't know some small amount, and then they kind of made it a little bit more realistic now serving size doesn't mean this is how much you should be eating. It just kind of gives you the guidelines of what the numbers are that follow so we'll get into that in a moment here. And also what happened is they took out vitamin A and C, because we as a population are good with our vitamin in vitamin A and C amounts, and they added in vitamin D and potassium because these are definitely nutrients of concern now, many of us do not get enough vitamin D, many of us are very deficient in vitamin D. I just got my vitamin D done the other day, and I take a supplement I'm still on the lower end and I was like oh my goodness. You know we really got to work on the vitamin D again this is a whole separate subject because vitamin D is a very key nutrient, a lot of research looking at its relationship between COVID and vitamin D, and the severity of symptoms. So a lot of interesting things coming out about vitamin D and potassium also very important. We just don't get enough and potassium really kind of bypasses I guess some of the effects of sodium so for those that have high blood pressure, you know it is important how much potassium that you're having. Those that have kidney issues you need to be very worried about how much potassium you're having so follow your doctor's orders of course. So certain populations as you can see, right have to be cognizant of certain nutrients. So everyone let's take a look at your label and let's everyone let's take a look at your serving size to the serving size is indicated on the top. Right and here in my example actually is of the previous label, but it'll say serving size on the on the top. And that tells you that all of the numbers that are underneath the calories the fat sodium potassium protein all that stuff is in that amount. So in this case it's one slice. So what do I do if I'm eating two slice slices, I'm going to have to double all those numbers. What if I decide I'm eating the whole container. I'm eating all this I don't know why you would be having 23 serving so you would multiply this 23 one servings one slice I'm having 23 slices I got to multiply all of this times 23. Now, usually that's not the case we usually we don't go that overboard but be aware because some products do have small serving sizes and they do it on purpose to make these numbers look good to us like oh wow it's it's only five alright I'll have this. I'm not realizing we eat five times that amount. For instance, so soup cans. I see this a lot and soup cans. The serving size is like half a cup. But when people open crack open that soup can usually they eat the whole can. Right, so then they would be having to serving so then they got to multiply accordingly. So in my cauliflower pizza here, the serving size is half a pie. The servings per container is two. So if I decide I mean the whole thing I'm really hungry today I'm eating it all that I got to make sure I'm multiplying all of this accordingly. I got here some snap peas. The original green pea crisps. Look how nice it is sickle farm there. And the serving size is like 22 pieces. Right so if I decide I'm watching a movie and I end up eating a lot more again you've got accordingly. You just always keep that in mind and the serving size is not a suggestion that this is how much you should eat. It's just again it's arbitrarily decided with the different manufacturing companies just as a set standard. Alright, so here are some guidelines and we're going to dig deep on these different guidelines. So, I'll go further from there so some of the things that we should be looking at is total fat. Right, especially those that have high cholesterol, right you need to be looking at the fat. Sodium is very key, especially those that have high blood pressure but to be honest, we all should be looking at sodium 90% of our population will have high blood pressure at some point in their lives 90%. Hopefully later on in life or never. But this is a huge public health issue. So fiber, we got to bump up the fiber fiber think of fiber as like a broom for our body it just cleanses us out. It provides good fodder for our gut microbiome I have a whole session on the gut microbiome. So it's fiber that's like a prebiotic. So we want to bump up the fiber. Sugar is we got to be careful about how much sugar we're having there is no nutrient value to sugar. Sodium has a nutrient value right sodium is an electrolyte it's a mineral that we need some micronutrients is very crucial. But sugar is not there's no benefit to sugar it's just there it tastes good and that's about it. So we got to be cognizant of that a saturated fat also very important. Again, especially for those that have high cholesterol carbohydrates total carbohydrates this is what those that have diabetes and pre diabetes should be looking at total carbs because we do carb count we do recommend carb counting for those that have diabetes. Usually for for women we recommend about 30 to 45 grams of carbs per meal. For men about 45 to 60 grams per meal it's really nuanced because we have to also count in, you know, fruits and grains and things like that. So carbohydrate total carbs is not for the general population. It is more so for, you know, the diabetics and pre diabetics. Alright so calories. I'm not a big fan of calorie counting and obsessing over calories and oh my gosh I had this many calories. I am more concerned about what is the quality of that calorie. Right where is it coming from. This is what's crucial. So if you had like I don't know a 250 calorie protein bar and look if you have protein bar in front of you please look at those ingredients. It's interesting sometimes all the stuff they add in there. So I protein isolate P protein isolate usually are their forms of protein that they're adding that's very processed. Right and then coconut oil and this oil and you know, you know, these type of sugars artificial sweeteners I mean, a lot of this stuff is very chemically, you know, just to be, you know, honest. Look at that some of the yes there are better versions of some of these you know nutrition bars and granola bars you know, but a lot of them are like candy bars with chemicals to be honest. So if you had like a you know protein bar such as that, or you had like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, right. Whole grain bread, natural peanut butter and natural peanut butter what that means is when you read the ingredients the only thing you should see is peanuts. You know, if you're getting the salt if you're getting the salted variety but that's about it nothing else nothing else keep it simple. And then maybe add some like fresh preserves. Right. And let's suppose that peanut butter jelly sandwiches a little bit higher in calorie value, which would be better for you chemical protein bar or PB and J. Because at least our bodies understand that. So that's the thing you guys is look at what am I eating the quality of what I'm eating. That is more important than just straight calories looking at the label. All right. Now, calories are important though I'm not negating their importance they are definitely important, you know, but use them as reference points. So for examples meals, we should try to keep roughly to 500 600 calories per meal. Give or take, you can go plus or minus just don't double it so don't have like 1000 calorie meals. Right, it's not needed. Even for those are very active you do not need that boost of calories like that. So 500 600 give or take is a good reasonable amount of snacks keeping to about 100 to 200 calories. And again in my previous session I talked about you know just like the quality, you know, if you're going to have a snack, a fun food like really be a snob about what you're picking. But this is very helpful, especially when we order things or when we buy things. Right, if you're picking up a snack like oh this isn't going to be my snack. Oh wow the snack is 500 calories. Well that's a meal. So then don't have it as a snack maybe have half of it. Right, so keep this in mind. That's one of the interesting things. Now percent daily values also included on the labels. I am not too much of a I mean, I'm like I don't get obsessed with looking at that like I'm glad it's there. That's nice but I'm more. I am more encouraged people to look at the actual grams and milligrams that we see in the actual nutrients themselves. The percentages are nice to look at, but just keep in mind the percent daily value is based on a 2000 calorie diet, which not everyone is on nor should everyone be on. These are not 100% accurate per se. But again, these are good to see if a food is high or low in a nutrient. So for example, if you pick up something and you're like whoa, this is 100% total fat. That's a lot of fat for that product right so like fat cholesterol sodium carbs. We should actually be more seeing on the lower side. I never want to pick something up and see 100% of those nutrients of those items because that's actually, you know, too much. The ones that we do want to see high amounts of ideally would be the vitamins and minerals. Yeah, it would be nice if I saw, you know, more than 0% vitamin D, you know, more than, you know, 5% iron and so on and so forth. These are just there just again, just to kind of help guide us, but it's more important to actually look at the nutrients themselves. All right, so let's get to it fats. So, overall everyone, we should roughly give or take aim for about 50 to 60 grams of all fats per day. This is all fast good bad and ugly. And for more petite women you would probably aim for like 40 grams more on the lower end of the spectrum for men 60 grand maybe a little bit more but not way more. But that is a big issue we're getting a lot of fat in our food so we're just going to do our best and do your best as much as you can to keep to 50 to 60 grams of fat. And again, in my previous presentation which I keep referring to, I talked more about like serving sizes, you know, like oil like one teaspoon of oil is five grams and, you know, nuts, like six almonds or five grams so that I go more in depth in there but we are just inundated with my fats all over and I don't want to get into the keto diet and this and that you know talk about that previously as well. We are concerned about the quality of fats. Alright, so if any of you are doing keto which I'm going to be honest I'm not really 100% a big fan of for long term at all. Just make sure you're picking good quality fats, you know just be aware of all the saturated fats because again too much saturated fat does cause the overproduction of LDL bad cholesterol so we got to be be aware of that. So anyways on the label you'll see total fat and it will be in bold print and underneath indented you'll see saturated fat and you'll see trans fat now by law, manufacturers have to put saturated fat and trans fat those have to be on the label. There are also other fats that may not be included there so for example you see here one gram of total fat but you're like wait the zero saturated zero trans like where's the rest of the fat. There's also other fats mono unsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats that they don't have to list on the label that might be where the fats also coming from and these are better fats actually. So when you see total fat we ideally want to aim for three grams or less per 100 calories. So you look at the calories. So in this case it's 109 calories so ideally, I would want to see three grams or less and I look over oh yeah total fat yeah one gram I'm good. So for every 100 calories I can have three grams. So in my cauliflower pizza here, I have 330 calories. So that would be roughly so again every 100 calories three grams so roughly about you know nine ish grams of total fat is what I would like to see. But on my label I see 15 grams so yeah a little bit higher than I would want to see. I mean I can never buy this and I can never eat this. No, I'm not saying that but if you're buying a product that's going to be again part of your regular rotation, a bread, a cereal, whatnot, then you would want to try to stick to this as much as possible. Now saturated fat saturated fat we want to aim for one gram or less per 100 calories. But for me here I got zero awesome. Now I don't have this label with me but I had this I had a patient once in one of my classes, and she was actually snacking on banana chips. And then we were going through labels and then when I got to this point she's like oh my gosh, she raised her hand she's like I have 13 grams of saturated fat, you know, on the label and for saturated fat just to kind of give you guys an idea I would like to try to aim for about 15 grams one five of saturated fat for the day. All right, so of the 50 to 60 total fat grams about 15 or less can come from saturated fat we do need some saturated fat in our body again for cholesterol production, we need some, not too much more but some. So, um, so yeah she had her banana chips, and I was like whoa banana chips you got saturated fat in there. And she gave me the label I actually kept it, but again I don't have it with on me at the moment, but the ingredients for those banana chips were organic bananas, organic coconut oil, and I think is organic cane sugar. So her banana chips were actually deep fried in coconut oil and coconut oil is a saturated fat. So therefore half a cup that was a serving size half a cup of the banana chips, and I think she ate the whole pack as she was sitting there. So she definitely got more than half a cup. It had almost a day's worth of saturated fat. So just to be aware of that it sneaks in in very random places. So I got 30 grams or less per 100 calories. So here in my cauliflower pizza. Again I got 330 calories. So I should be aiming for three grams of saturated fat I got five grams of saturated fat coming from cheese. So usually saturated fat is from animal products and those tropical oils. Now trans fat this luckily has been banned. I'm saying allegedly, I'm saying allegedly because it's taking a long time for it to get transitioned out hopefully with our new administration, things will move along a lot quicker. With FDA mandating these things and getting food manufacturers to follow through, but trans fat is a really bad fat it's a frank and fat it's a, it's, it was a fat that was created to extend the shelf life of product, because take a look at some of the baked goods that we have. Right. You look at some of these baked goods I was looking at some of the cookies that we have in our cupboard somehow. And expiration dates like 2023. I'm like wow. Right this cookie is going to last a long time. Right so previously, they were able to do this by basically taking polyunsaturated like okay fats like corn oil, vegetable oil and what they did is they hydrogenated it they added hydrogen odd atoms to those liquid oils to solidify them, and to make them more stable. And this was great back in the day when they did this they did this like I don't know I think in the early 1900s, and it really sped up during, you know, after the World Wars. Because they wanted to get products again to have long shelf life right, because bread if you make fresh bread there's that's why we have that saying day old bread it goes bad after like a day or so it gets more stale. And the rest of the breads that we buy in the store right they can last creamers, right creamers, usually you would have to refrigerate but a lot of versions of creamers we didn't have to margarine I remember as a kid, margarine being very very yellow. And this was what everyone was saying to use that was hydrogenated on corn oil. And this was what was recommended but then things really turned very sour in terms of that they found that trans fat actually increased our bad cholesterol production decreased good cholesterol production, increased total cholesterol increased triglycerides like everything bad so basically increased risk of heart disease and stroke. So, it was added to the food label, I think in 2006. And then, you know, different states started to ban it, because this is what they used to fry French fries in right over and over and over because it was again a stable oil. But again, it's not a good oil. So, I've seen it in like ready made frostings I've seen it in like, you know, cake mixes and things like that. So you basically read the ingredients section because whenever you read trans fat on a product it is going to say zero. It's always going to say zero, because this is the thing. And it says that if there's point five grams of saturated fat, or point five grams of trans fat in a serving, they can put zero. So for example, if you have chips, let's suppose the serving size of chips is like, I don't know, five chips, let's just say, and let's suppose those five chips have point five grams of trans fat, they can round down to zero. But let's be honest. You may not be just eating five chips, right, especially if they got their guac, guacamole, or salsa, right five will become 25. And then you got to multiply accordingly times, you know, point five times five you had 2.5 grams of trans fat that you didn't even realize you had in there. And there's no safe amount of trans fat, none. So that's why we would look on the ingredients panel and if you see partially hydrogenated just throw it away, just throw it away. Fully hydrogenated is okay. But anything that's partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated do not consume. So this brings up then the subject of a margarine's and butter and which is better and things like that so let me just break it down. So if you are buying if you're the grocery store and you pick up some of these margarines which by the way they've now changed the name to vegetable oil blends, right, it sounds so neutral and so healthy right having a vegetable oil blend. So it's not margin anymore sometimes in some of these products. So if you take a look at that look at the ingredients. All right, if you see hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated that is worse than butter, put it away. There are some versions of blends out there that are made with olive oil, they might be made with avocado oil, right that would, you know just again look at them if they don't have partially hydrogenated and that would be a little bit better than butter, but even then everyone these different spreads, you still need to be moderate in how much you're using. Either you use almond butter, or peanut butter, or even like smear something off Cotto, instead of like butter and margarine's but if you want to have a little bit then have a little bit, you know, and just you know just be cognizant of what you're you're purchasing. And how much you're having. So here's some common fat names remember when I told you read the ingredients. We want to try to avoid fat within those first three ingredients if that product has more than six ingredients so if you see any type of fat so obviously for us of course as Muslims we're not even having large that's not even on our agenda. Anyways, butter, any type of oil so coconut, avocado, etc. If it's the first ingredient in like a product you want to try to avoid it. Now obviously you guys again in like margarine's or vegetable oil blends and things like that you are going to see these fats in the beginning ingredients, that's a normal, because that is a fat at the end of the day. So at least you want to look at the quality of the fat. Right. So for instance if it's like corn oil versus, you know, avocado oil the avocado oil is going to be better it's a mono and saturated fat. So that's what we need to look at and again, once again I'm plugging my previous talk that talks more about this shortening shortening is essentially partially hydrogenated oils. So for example, you know, vegetable shortening is usually just, you know, hydrogenated partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, margarine, hydrogenated oils partially hydrogenated oils, mono and dry glycerides we see this a lot. Interestified we see this a lot. These are all again common fat names. Okay, moving along. Let's go to sodium. Now sodium, my friends, again, this is a public health issue. We see like fat free products we see low fat products we see sugar free products we see low sugar products we don't see low sodium as much as we should be seeing. So this is really an issue, especially if we're buying packaged foods and processed foods, because sodium is a preservative. Think about the pioneers back in the day or you know early civilization that didn't have refrigerators right what do they do to to preserve their meats. We don't salt them cure them. Right. So we already find sodium in foods it is again it's in mineral. We need sodium in our body it's important for our heart contraction and so forth right so essential electrolyte. So all food is going to have some sodium anyways. Right, we're never going to see zeros we don't never want to be zero sodium. So we want to keep our sodium to roughly about 2400 milligrams per day. This has gone up and down over the years. Right. It went down to 1500 a couple years ago and they're like wow that's really low we can't do that so 1500 is actually the recommendation for like heart patients. You know it's very low in sodium. Then they did 20 they kind of you know played around with 2300 milligrams for for a while so between 2300 milligrams to 2400 milligrams is what we should be aiming for as as a general population. And just to kind of give you guys a heads up of what this looks like. Now remember sodium is in salt salt is not sodium sodium is in salt right salt is sodium chloride right with some iodine in there as well. So you know don't use those words you know synonymously because they're not the same. So sodium is in salt. So just to give you an idea a teaspoon of salt has 2000 milligrams of sodium you're like more than you're like almost there. So again when we're cooking at home that's not the problem. The problem is again we're buying process and packaged foods and restaurant foods it's crazy. The amount of sodium that's lurking out there so just to kind of make life easier. What we should try to do is try to aim for about 600 to 700 milligrams per meal. All right per meal. And then the rest can be you know for your snacks. Now let's suppose you pick up a product and you're like I don't know is this going to be my meal or is this going to be part of my meal. Whoops. So, for example, back to my cauliflower pizza. All right. So my cauliflower pizza has in half of the pizza. It's got 470 milligrams of sodium. So this is my whole meal if I'm like yeah. Half the pizza is my meal. Then I'm good. But if I but if I have the whole pie. And I got to double this. So that's like what 1000 sorry. I can't do math really fast 950 milligrams. So that's quite a bit. Right. But let's suppose this is part of my meal. What if I'm like okay I'm gonna have my cauliflower pizza. And then I'm going to have some garlic bread. I don't know. I'm going to have some salad and some dressing and then oh wow we're going to have appetizers all right then. So all of a sudden things start to add up. Then what's helpful is to try to aim for 140 milligrams or less per serving. So for example so again if you're at the grocery store and you're like I'm purchasing this bread. I don't know how I'm going to eat this bread is I'm going to make a sandwich am I going to make it with eggs. So in that case when you buy individual products, try to aim for 140 milligrams or less per serving. But if that product is going to be your meal, then you can bump up to 600 to 700. So I don't know if that makes sense. I don't usually get feedback with this platform that we use that's okay. I'm going to assume it made sense. But just keep that in mind. If you're buying breads and things like that try to have 140 milligrams or less. If you're buying like a TV dinner or something like that then you would bump up because it would be a meal to about 600 or 700 milligrams. Now cup of noodle. A lot of these romans that are really popular or ramen noodles that are really popular. Check out those labels. It's like easily a thousand milligrams at least. Right that was like freshman year of college that that was always our go to right if we like ever missed lunch or dinner in the cafeteria like okay I guess it's a cup of noodle type of day. So it's a lot of sodium in there but usually that sodium is in the seasoning. So if you're like I'm just using the noodles. Okay fine, you know it's going to be definitely less sodium. But just you know even the noodles themselves just remember that's enriched flour and we're going to talk about that in a moment. So some sources of sodium on the label you'll see it. Salt sodium chloride monosodium glutamate saline sodium benzoate sodium bicarbonate sodium nitrate a lot of these are used as preservatives and additives. And it has like again the first three ingredients of a six ingredient product or more just you might want to rethink that and then double check the the label itself and look at the sodium amount. I'll give you an example I wish I kept this label but I had a few years ago for Thanksgiving I had bought this turkey brine. So it's like all these different seasonings right and usually these brines are mostly sodium. So I remember looking at it and like the serving size was like one eighth of a teaspoon I'm not even kidding one eighth or something one fourth very small amount and then it's like servings per container. It was something crazy like 2500 servings. And the reason they did that was because the sodium was so much in that product. So I like of course you know as a dietitian I'm like let me calculate this out I was like whoa. This whole thing if I use this whole thing is going to be 20,000. I'm not kidding guys 20,000 milligrams of sodium going into that turkey. I was like no way I'm going to use less. I'm going to use other stuff, but it was really interesting because on the label they purposely made the serving size so small so it didn't look as bad. But when you calculate all that stuff out. It can be scary sometimes. All right, moving on to fiber now fiber everyone we just do not get enough. Here in the US typical consumption of fiber per day is about 11 grams. And the recommendation for females is about 25 grams or more per day this is for adult females for males about 38 grams or more per day. So, you know, and there's different types of fiber there's soluble fiber, there's insoluble fiber so soluble fiber this is actually in both of them are good. This works more in helping us to reduce our cholesterol it reduces cholesterol absorption, and it also helps us to reduce blood sugars. So that's how soluble fiber works and soluble fiber we find in like oats and apples and beans and and things like that. Then we have insoluble fiber and insoluble fiber kind of is the fiber that kind of goes straight through. Insoluble fiber gets absorbed with water so it becomes like this gel almost it's kind of like oozing through our body, but insoluble fiber kind of goes straight through, and that helps us decrease risk of diverticulosis decrease risk of certain cancers keeps us regular so decreases risk of constipation so we get that from like whole wheat and beans and grains and things like that foods and vegetables. So both fibers are good and on the label they'll just list dietary fiber. And so we only find fiber from plant based foods. So you're not going to find fiber in meat. We're not going to find fiber in fat like oils are not going to have, you know, fiber. That's the thing with this keto keto diet is that we're not getting as much variety of fibers as we might normally get. So that's why we actually are seeing a difference in the gut microbiome and a lot of you know I'm like a gut nerd, like major, like I'm obsessed with the gut. And fiber really, we want to have a variety of fiber different types of fibers coming from everything fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, all of that, because these different fibers are fodder for, you know, the gut microbiome for these bacteria and viruses and yeast that proliferate in our GI tract especially in our large intestine. So much research I can't even tell you how much research is coming out on the gut microbiome and how it not only affects just you know, digestion. And even our mood and brain health again whole separate subject there. I do an update on on on my debt session because a lot more hot informations come out. So we really want to make sure we're getting in sufficient amounts of fiber and we want to have a variety of fiber and it's always the best through its whole form. Like, yeah, you can buy like, you know, you know metamucil and citrus cell and some of these different fiber supplements and stir them into your, your, your water and just drink that but there's something about food itself we have to always remember that everyone was always better to get things through foods. And ideally, for good sources of fiber ideally would be three grams or more per serving, but not everything is like that like you know I have some breads here with me. And, you know, some breads are like one gram of fiber. This one I have here is three grams of fiber. Some grain products, they've been adding supplemental fiber functional fiber into their like, you'll see numbers like six grams seven grams. So they are adding, you know, different functional fibers in their inaline, chicory root, illegal, illegal saccharides, fructal legal saccharides. So they're adding a lot of these things to foods to boost the fiber amount which is good and these are considered prebiotic food for our gut microbiome. But just one side note is that remember our body does not have the digested enzymes to break down fiber so it remains relatively undigested that it hits our lower intestine. All these microbes kick in, and they try to like break it down and then they're fermenting it and as a result you know people get gas and bloating. I've had patients tell me I think I'm allergic to fiber. I'm like no no no no, it's just because your body's not used to all this fiber. If you've been living a relatively low fiber life and all of a sudden you're like oh wow I'm going to have all this fiber stuff then our bodies and be like what is going on here. So, as a result, you know our microbes it takes some time for it to get used to this fiber increase. So when you're increasing your fiber do it slowly. Have lots of water, get in physical activity and just be patient because it takes time. You're not allergic to fiber you'll be okay. But a lot of these functional fibers that they're adding into foods to kind of boost the fiber content, just be aware that you know you might get gas and bloating because of that as well. So just you know be patient in the process. Now whole grains, whole grains are a really good source of fiber and I'm really big on people getting some sort of a grain, like I'm not really big on like grainless existence unless you know your doctor's recommending it for whatever reason. If you want to stay away from wheat that's fine. But at least try to get the ancient grains in like barley you know bulgur things like that you know I always consider these are considered you know there's enough foods for some he ate you know barley and a different grain so just for that reason at least get some into your into your body. So when we're picking grains we ideally want to have whole grains. Alright so whole grain. So on the left hand side this is what a whole grain looks like it has three layers. So the outer layers like this brand layer so it's like a fiber filled layer it's got be vitamins and minerals, then the inner layers like the germ. It's this is where the seed basically can sprout from this is a nutrient packed core it's got be vitamins which are very key for for energy metabolism, a vitamin E a very important antioxidant fat chemicals healthy fats. So that's in the germ. And usually what manufacturers use they actually remove the brand and the germ. So that's why we see oat brand so we see wheat germ sold separately, because they remove them a lot of times because because of the fats and things like that it can cause the grain to spoil a little bit quicker. So a lot of time manufacturers remove those and then we're just left with the end of sperm which is just a starchy carbohydrate middle layer. It's got some proteins and vitamin vitamins but not what we lost in the brand and the germ. And then what they do is they grind this up. And then this becomes wheat flour wheat. So just because this whole sorry just because it's wheat does not mean it's a whole grain so if you're like yeah I'm doing good I've got wheat sub wheat sub sandwich yeah you're doing okay but it would have been better if you got whole wheat or whole grain, or even sprouted a grain instead. So then they take the wheat flour they they process it more becomes white flour they can bleach it or unbleach it and then they enrich it it is the law here they have to enrich the grain. And so manufacturers they enrich it they add some folic acid they'll add some of the B vitamins you know what else iron things like that that they have to but we can never replicate what we lost in nature. So that's why it's always best to try to get you know the whole grain itself. So the same thing with like brown rice and some of these ancient grains they are the whole intact grains that's why brown rice takes so long to cook. It's got three layers to to cook versus just the white rice is just you know it is basically refined is just one layer. So ideally we want to get whole grains whole what you want to see the term whole. So this is the type of whole grains that you will see out in the marketplace and lies are ancient grains as well. So we have amaranth barley buckwheat corn, which includes the whole corn meal and popcorn cannot kettle chocolate, you know, butter popcorn just like plain natural popcorn millet oats including oatmeal but not instant oats instant oats is is processed they pulverize that down to make it a smaller granules so it cooks faster. You know, rice, both brown rice and colored rice is rice sorghum which is also called Milo teff tritical and then wheat and wheat itself has different varieties like spelt, emmer, farrow, einkorn, kamut, Durham, etc. A bulgar cracked wheat, wheat berries so for those that are you know gluten free have celiacs whatnot then you need to keep in note that these are also actually considered wheat and do have gluten and the wild rice also. So if you go to the store this is what you would look for you look for whole grain and the name of the grain, whole wheat, whole whatever the other grains name is stone ground whole brown rice oats oatmeal wheat berry so these contain all parts of the grains you're getting all the nutrients of the whole grain itself. And also sprouted that should be here sprouted grain, apologies, sprouted as well. So they might be whole grains might not really depends. So when in doubt don't trust these words. So like wheat wheat flour some Lena Durham organic flour stone ground hit or miss multi grain this is always very interesting multi grain means these are multiple grains. They may not all be whole grains. So multi grain isn't necessarily mean. It's necessarily better. I was at the store the other day and I saw multi grain, kind of like Cheerios like a store variety of those. And it said multi grain healthy this and that and cholesterol free and all this good stuff and then I look at it as like it was like white flour. There was like whole wheat flour as well and there's like sugar and like corn. And yeah it's multiple grains but they weren't all necessarily good grains. And these are not whole grains so enriched flour is not a whole grain so this is a, this should be ideally a nice years resolution is just maybe you don't want it you want to stop eating as much enriched products enriched flowers. You see this cornmeal, you see this cornmeal and brand and germ. So brand and germ are components of the grain remember they have their nutrients but they're not a whole grain because you're just a component. All right. Moving on to sugar. All right my friends so let's take a look at your labels again. So in the previous label. So just say total sugar or just sugar. And that would mean natural sugars. And it would mean added. So in the previous labels if you have the old label. When you see sugar ideally try to keep to less than 10 grams per serving. 10 grams per meal, and less than five grams per serving so sugar has you know it's five letters that make up the word sugar. So that's what we should try to aim for less than five grams per serving this is for the old label, when they just lumped them all together. The new label differentiates added sugars. So ideally we want to see zero. Zero is what we want to see the American Heart Association recommends for added sugars ladies, less than 25 grams per day, which is about six and a half teaspoons gentlemen less than 37.5 grams per day that's about nine and a half teaspoons. This is added sugar so this is not the sugar that's in my fruit. This is not the sugar in my plain yogurt. This is not the sugar in my plain milk. This is not that this is added so if I'm having chocolate milk, right if I'm having, I don't know, a caramel mocha macchiato, right all that syrup that goes into there. Right this is my dessert. This is my you know, what else, you know my adding my Nutella to my toast, right all those are added sugar so all of those combined together we should try to keep to this quantity. Let me calculate out teaspoon. So this is what you do so when you see grams of sugar. Alright, you see grams of sugar divide that number by four. All right, so let's suppose let's pretend this was 20 grams and it's just to here but pretend it's a 20 grams. You divide that by four, that would tell you how many teaspoons, you're consuming. So let me just I'll come back to this let me show you so here's a this is a real yogurt that I just ate the other day. Anyways, so I was in our fridge and I'm like you know it's almost expiring I better eat it. But anyways, if you take a look right to the serving size was the whole container here it looks bigger than it is six six ounce. Actually I have it here she'll show you guys. So just a little regular yogurt here about yeah five and a half five and a half ounce zero percent milk fat. Anyways, so serving size is the whole container so take a look at this the sugars here are 14 grams. All right, and of this of this 14 grams 11 is added sugars. All right, so meaning three grams are the natural sugar that's just coming from the lactose so even plain yogurt, plain yogurt will even have sugar just itself it will say sugar on there. And then people freak out oh my gosh there's sugar in my milk there's sugar in my yogurt yeah that's lactose that's fine. So I added sugars were concerned about. So take a look so it's got 11 grams so 11 grams, they added in separately so then divide this by four. So that's like what I'm actually like I can't do math all of a sudden I'm like blanking out oh my gosh two and a half almost two and a half teaspoons of sugar here. Think about that so when I read that I was like oh and I read this after I ate it. So I was like oh my gosh there's two and a half teaspoons of sugar they basically spooned in here and put it in here. That's a lot right so it's better honestly for yogurt because our yogurt aisles are crazy here in the US right it's like overwhelming. There's so many varieties. So my recommendation is just get like plain yogurt this actually what I had purchased was with vanilla yogurt. Which is fine I'm okay vanilla I'm okay with you know the flavored ones like that but anything extra like crème brûlée yogurt, you know key lime pie yogurt. So it's better sometimes just get like the regular yogurt, and then you can doctor it up right at your honey at your, your fruit, because then you can control what you're doing, even if you want to add in sugar go ahead it's probably going to be less than two and a half teaspoons that they added in here. So very eye opening when you start to convert the added sugars into teaspoons. I recommend this is a really good activity to do with kids. Right if your kids are like oh I really want to have this cookie or I want to have this you know dessert or juice or whatever. You know, so does hopefully not hopefully kids are not having soda. But when you look at the amount of sugar and you put it into teaspoon form. It's very eye opening right if you have like sugary cereals at home and your kid like insists on having be like let's let's look at how much sugar actually is in this. I don't benefit to sugar my friends like nothing, nothing. Now another thing we see a lot of is artificial sweeteners this is being added a lot and like light foods, sugar free foods you'll see a lot of these artificial sweeteners. And the thing with artificial sweeteners is they're not absorbed by the body. So this kind of goes straight through and there's you know some research that's indicating that these sweeteners sweeteners might actually negatively affect our gut microbiome. We're seeing that some of these sweeteners might actually increase insulin level so it might even work in a different level for those that have diabetes and prediabetes and actually for everyone insulin and blood sugars are an issue because we have rapid rises and dips of blood sugars this can actually be inflammatory for the body. So long term this is not good for anybody. You know that the rapid rises and falls of blood sugars. So that's what we're seeing with some of these artificial sweeteners is again they might actually be affecting the gut microbiome and you know negatively and these artificial sweeteners everyone. They are like 250 to 10,000 times sweeter than sugar I think Neotame here I think Neotame is like 10,000 8,000 I know some crazy amount. sweeter than sugar so imagine how this is affecting our taste buds every day you're putting in your Neotame actually you can't buy like you know as a packet I think it's just using industrial format. But for example, you know stevia, a Splenda are like 250 times sweeter than sugar. So imagine how this affects people's taste but I had a patient once and really added control diabetes. And so talking to her and I'm like oh what do you eat what's going on. She was telling me I had fruit. That was my dessert. You know and I added sugar. And I was like why are you adding sugar. She's like well just didn't taste sweet to me. You had strawberries. It's like peak strawberry season I of course this was in my mind I wasn't saying it to her in person but in my mind I was like whoa you're adding sugar to strawberries. And it turned out she actually was doing a lot of artificial sweetener. And she was she's like oh I thought that's good for me as a diabetic she was adding like lots of it to her coffee and stuff and it really affected her taste buds negatively. So, I do not recommend artificial sweeteners to anybody except diabetics, but even diabetics, I recommend small amounts like be moderate maybe like, you know, max a couple of packets. And then, you know, even like the diet sodas and things like that those diet sodas it has a cell fame potassium usually added in there. And there's a lot of question marks about a cell a cell fame potassium aspartame and aspartame for me personally if I ever have aspartame gives me a bad headache. So, Sucralose even commonly known as Splenda. There's a lot of question marks about potential disease risk cancer risk later on I mean again a lot of research looking at this. So again, those I would not recommend so right now maybe stevia is a neutral right now, because stevia yes stevia comes from a plant. But just remember everyone, the people I hear this from people, oh stevia is coming from a plant it's healthy. Look, how would you eat stevia in real life for people like populations that had stevia, they would take the plant and put the eat the leaf. They would not be processing the leaf, making it very concentrated and then cutting it with sugar alcohols, which is what some of these stevia sweeteners are doing. So, yeah, it's coming from a natural source but it's very concentrated that we would not have been normally consuming. So, again, so right now stevia is neutral, fine, whatever. And then sugar alcohols. These are components of sugar they're not well absorbed. So they actually have a laxative effect in the body, because they're not well absorbed so they're not really digested broken down they hit our lower intestine and our gut bacteria have a party. And so you might actually have like a laxative effect. So they even put that on the label. And then they digest it. They may have a laxative effect. So some examples of sugar alcohol sorbitol mannitol xylitol, you'll see ol at the end. A very, a very popular sugar alcohol right now that actually pretty neutral is actually pretty decent is a ritual. So that's being added to live things is pretty neutral right now we don't see this, this effect. This is more of a slower absorption it is still sugar component of sugar is but it's more slowly absorbed and we usually find this in like chewing sugar free foods and things like that so just be aware. And actually let me go back I forgot. These are some common terms for sugar and this is the most common question I had people ask me all the time. What's a good sugar. I'm like nothing. There's no good sugar. There's no good sugar sugar sugar sweetener is sweetener my friends. It's going to have basically the same type of effect in our body. Those that are a little bit more higher and fructose value for example like agave fructose is metabolized a little bit different and in our body it hits our liver and a little bit of a different way so you know I wouldn't really recommend agave for that reason. But all sweeteners are sweeteners and there is over this is like a handful. There are 70 different types of sugars that manufacturers use that are added into our products 70 and I'm sure that list is growing day by day so many different types. So anything with OSE at the end sucrose dextrose maltose lactose that is sugar. Honey now I'm always partial to honey because of course this is enough food and honey actually is a prebiotics has actually good fodder for our gut microbiome antioxidants in there. So you know I do recommend honey as as a sweetener but even then use it moderately and try to get local organic honey there's some research looking at whether it could help with allergies because you have exposure to the pollen. So you know very interesting to see you know evaporated cane juice we see this a lot in foods cane juice we see this a lot in foods brown sugar. I love this. I have people text me all the time. So it's brown sugar better than me for me it's brown and fibers brown I'm like no my friend brown sugar is brown because of molasses. So it's not fiber that is making it's making it brown. So again there's no good sugar you know yeah we see some you know some neutral things about monk fruit sugar coconut sugar date sugar. You know but just whatever you're having pick the one that you're able to use less of. All right. So if you're like look I put a little bit of brown sugar in my tea and I feel good but if I use white sugar that I put two teaspoons that okay and use brown sugar use the one you use less of and try to train your palette to use less. We just finished a sugar challenge I did with some of my buddies. And I think it's a lot easier this time around and basically our sugar challenge was 14 days no added sugar and my rule was if it tastes sweet. I don't eat it minus fruit and again it really retrains your palate and when I was on the sugar challenge I accidentally yeah it was an accident accidentally had one of those hot cocoa bombs. And I had a momentary lapse of memory and I had that and oh my gosh I just it really affected me so negatively has to horrible headache is maybe really feel sick to my stomach because I just wasn't having so much sugar. So that's the only thing we can train our palates. Now also we see additives and preservatives added to food and again there's reasoning is there's research looking at a lot of these additives additives and preservatives. You know what are long term effects. So that's that we ideally want to just be moderate in our processed foods but preservatives will keep food from spoiling help maintain freshness and color or flavor foods. They're often added to baked goods meats jellies and beverages and here's some common preservatives that we see so ascorbic acid citric acid, you know, sodium benzoate calcium propionate you know vitamin E, BHA, BHT, we see this a lot. They're usually used in breakfast cereals to prevent change in color odor or flavor so again these are all neutral these are fine right as of now but of course we don't want to go overboard with anything. So, you know, ideally in a less processed foods the better additives according to the FDA this any substance added to food including preservatives food coloring, flavor enhancers thickeners stabilizers nutrients and sweeteners. So, you know, there's a lot of holes, you know, these dies and leavening agents like baking soda calcium carbonate. A lot of research is looking at this, you know, carcinin, xanthan gum, you know, for their long term effects so again, be moderate dies we want to kind of you know really try to decrease them out. And they're looking as a lot of research again looking at dies and children's mental health and so forth. So, I'm gonna actually skip food date terms actually no let me do it real quick. So I might go a little bit over guys sorry. Just have two more slides left so expiration dates. I'm a big one on expiration dates. I find many things in my cabinet I'm like whoa it's expired in 2017 and I forgot about this. Should I eat it or not. So this is the thing you guys and a lot of times people do this like let me taste it let me smell it. It's okay. A lot of times there's microbes you guys that we can't see or taste that can make a sick. So don't taste it or smell it and think it's okay, because it might have proliferation of a microbe in there. That can you know, then cause issues. So I am really also in a big geek on food safety microbiology changed my life to get in college. So that's again a separate session we can talk about. Yeah expiration date you know it just their safety dates they're usually found on fresh foods or even dried goods you know if it's like something perishable and it's beyond the expiration date I would toss it. Especially right now with you know COVID and everything you know going on. And then if you use food past the date you know there is a risk for foodborne illness so again there is a risk. So you can do a couple of days you know here and there. Best if used by this indicates when a food quality of freshness may start to deteriorate. So it might not taste as good as it did earlier but it's not necessarily going to be unsafe and sell by this is usually for manufacturers. You can sell it by a certain date so if you, you know, are at the store and you see something that the sell by date has passed I wouldn't buy it you know it's not recommended to purchase that. But if it's at home and it's past that it should be okay. And just you know sometimes air on the, on the side of caution and just toss things out sometimes. Okay and last but not least now this is a whole separate talk I'm just going to like you know touch the distance on the subject right here. And I can go in depth on it because again it's it's a whole beast in it of itself, and this is a supplement industry. So one thing I have to really emphasize is the supplement industry so this is like vitamins and minerals and like herbal supplements and like, you know things like that which can not only come in pill form but also powder form and liquid form. Because remember everyone is the Wild Wild West out there here in the US with those supplements because they're not as tightly regulated by the FDA as medications. They're not it's actually up to the manufacturer to do these tests to test their safety and then put them out there and then if you know if someone got sick or things like that and then it's up to the manufacturer to pull them off the scale will come in and and of course you know mandate that and so forth but it's really actually up to the manufacturer. And a lot of times we have found products that don't necessarily include what they say, and they can be tainted with other things as well. I know a while ago they actually had found in like a very common protein supplements, they actually found traces of arsenic. Supplements they had to take them off the shelf. So every so often random stuff happens so just keep that in mind so when you're buying supplements, you want to try to see the USP symbol or the NSF symbol. These you know are basically verify their quality has been verified by an outside group consumer group that whatever they say is in the product is in the product. So even what they can write on the products you know they have to be very careful like you know they can't say that this product is going to cure you, you know, from COVID. Right they can't say stuff like that they might say things like you know might help immune system it might support you know the system. So just you know be careful and some of these supplements, you know run it by your doctor before having it because some of these supplements could have contra indications to medications or even conditions. So for example like turmeric, a lot of people like to do turmeric supplements just be careful especially those that have gallbladder disease or kidney issues, it might exacerbate the situation. So you have to really be careful about some of these things omega threes like fish oil for instance are not recommended for those that are on blood thinners, or those that have are taking hypertension medications because they're thinning the blood out. So always run it by your doctor only take supplements if you're deficient in that right because you know if you're like oh yeah I'm not feeling good I think I'm low in iron. Let me get some iron supplements. All these supplements all these vitamins and minerals have upper limits and upper limits can actually be toxic so for example, iron iron has upper limit too much iron can actually be toxic, right can affect the brain. So we've really got to be careful how much we're taking. So when you're reading the vitamin mineral supplements if you see like 10,000% of what you need daily value be care I wouldn't do it. It's always better to get things through the foods they did a study on smokers, you know, some time back where they gave smokers mega doses of some of the antioxidants vitamin A and C, I think he is well, and they actually have to stop the study. It's actually backfired, because there's something about food we can't replicate in the supplements. So that's that with supplements just be careful especially right now with cove you see a lot of things they take the supplement do the supplement. You know it's going to help you it's going to cure you I mean just be careful. You know so talk to a dietician. I'd be more than happy to help you talk to a doctor about contraindicated indications, talk to pharmacists you know definitely before adding any random stuff. You know to to to our diets. Alright guys, we did it. We made it at the end of our session here. And let me take a look at some of the questions in the chat box so let's see. Okay, so yes, we will have the recording online for a limited time so if you're not on our mailing list I highly recommend getting on our mailing list we don't we want to endate you with too many messages. And I think if you just do a search on YouTube I pop up. So let's see. Okay, I eat a lot of home baked beats. How much is too much. So, I'm kind of curious to know how much a lot is, because this is a thing, you know, the best thing is honestly just try to have a balance right of everything because remember there's so many nutrients, antioxidants and phytochemicals and vitamin is in mineral and all these different nutrients that we want to have a variety. So, you know, for our vegetables we should try to keep our vegetables to about half of our plate these are the non starchy vegetables which are all the vegetables except peas corn potatoes. So, for beats you know have a right don't just like just be focusing on beats, right, add in other things as well. So I would just recommend maybe like, I don't know if you want like an amount per day maybe like a couple of cups max. The thing with vegetables is that it's hard to eat a lot like I've never seen anyone overdose on vegetable because there's so much fiber in there and they're so filling it's hard to get a lot a lot. But, you know, just for the sake of balance and moderation and variety, you know, I would recommend you to mixing it up. All right, so how many servings of beats should we eat per day considering high sugar. So this is natural sugar. So remember that has got natural sugar it's got fiber so it works differently in our body. So, you know, for. Again, like I said, you know, couple cups max. I'm saying max max. I would try to you know get the variety in. I'm just trying to, you know, think I don't know if if if the sisters still online I'm kind of curious how much you're exactly having per day. So I kind of respond accordingly I want to know what you're doing and what else you're eating. Because remember I also it depends on what else was going on. Should you let us know about diabetic and you're like I said gout diet. Yeah, I'm not going to go into separate diets in this session. You know, they're really nuanced. So, I'm going to, I can answer that question maybe you can email us email our foundation and I can answer those personally. Once I get more information on on your end, our liquid amino is good. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, you can use it instead of soy sauce. Yeah, for sure. If we buy milk products that are not organic but clearly state no growth hormones. Yeah, that's fine. But just remember that you know they might be injected with you know antibiotics and then what they're feeding the animals. You know, that's also another issue but you know if you're not drinking that much milk you're not having milk products that often, you know, and they're again that that should be okay overall. All right, if the GMO claim is greater yield. Wouldn't that mean that the nutrients absorb from this soil is split between a greater yield Wow that's very fascinating deep question. Oh, huh. I think it's the way that the plant is grown, right and whether it can withstand like pesticides, sorry, we can withstand pests and, you know, nature's other effects. I'm not really familiar with like the farming practices and terms because I know farmers have to rotate their crops right so that the mineral value. You know, basically, we see a variety there. We don't want to deplete the soil. So I'm not really sure too much on on that level so apologies. So in reference to banana and avocado. What about pesticides and soil that might be taken up by plant roots and move to other plant tissues including the fruit. So it's organic but yeah that's again that's a really good question that's a really deep question. So remember, you know, yes they're spring things and yeah it does get into the soil, it can get seeped in but it's going to be a lot less exposure than when they directly spring them and absorbing. So overall if you're able to get everything organic then go for it, you know. So that would be fine. Yes, thank you for bringing that upside the okay. You're wondering if we peel the skin off non organic fruits does that minimize the pesticides in terms of they see stores how do we know where the produce okra etc comes from that's a good question. In terms of, and ask them where are you getting this from, you know, it could be locally grown. It could be from the different parts of the country might even be international. So yes great question and I forgot to actually talk about that. So, for these organic foods if you're like yeah I can't get everything organic it's pricey or I don't know if I even want to or whatnot. So what you can do is you can always soak the fruits and vegetables in a solution of a vinegar and water. So like I think a very little bit of vinegar, you know, and water and let them kind of soak that kind of helps you do a salt solution that could help a little bit. You don't need these vegetable oil, sorry, these vegetable sprays and washes you don't necessarily need them we haven't seen it don't let me benefits or help from that. But just watching them really well yeah if you want to peel some of the skin off you can there are a lot of nutrients in there as well. But yeah, that would be fine. But yeah you can do like a, like a vinegar soak to help remove some of the pesticides. Is it necessary to get organic vegetables if we're fully cooking the vegetable that's a great question too. I get the need for organic food for cooking them directly yes now organic vegetables yeah you're right. You know if you're cooking them yeah you might see you know decrease in some of those pesticides that have seeped in there or maybe they come might come out in the water again a lot of we still need to look into that. But if you're getting the vegetables, and you're eating them in a salad, then yeah you would have more direct exposure but cooking decreases a little bit but again remember they're grown in that they seep in. So just keep that in mind. What oil do you recommend for cooking yeah so I we talked about this in the first session, the nutrition one on one so I recommend like olive oil or avocado oil. Olive oil ideally the extra virgin olive oil but that burns pretty quick, so you know you wouldn't want to cook at a high temperatures for a long period of time. So yeah like cooking olive oil or the avocado oil would be my two preferences can all is okay I kind of hesitate when I say that. I like gut wise don't have too much fondness of it, it's okay we in the research is so far been okay. But you know then we see other things about it being processed but all oil to be honest if you think about its process all oils process we don't naturally find oil in nature, you know cooking oil. So just keep that in mind. How do we know the food label for fruits do we Google that's a great question. So vitamins and minerals and nutrients yeah you can Google that and to see the nutrient amount. And you know the, you know the sodium and things but those are things like I wouldn't worry about sodium and things coming from fruit for sugar. Remember it's natural fructose. And so then you want to just stick to the serving size amount so I had recommended about three servings three or four three to five servings per day. So if you go to my previous session I actually talk about serving sizes for fruit in there actually all the different food groups I talk about serving sizes so serving size for fruit would be like half a cup cut up fruit, like a small banana. Like apple or oranges about size of like tennis ball would be considered one serving and one serving of fruit for those that are diabetic is 15 grams of carbs which is one serving of carb. Why do they put gelatin in the fiber supplements. I don't recommend any brand of fiber, because I prefer we get fiber through fruits vegetables whole grains beans and lentils. So if you're having issues with you know constipation your child and this and that then you can do some of these fiber supplements, look for like soluble fiber, ideally, or a mixture of soluble and insoluble fiber. I'm not sure why they put gelatin in there doesn't really make sense. Maybe he's just look for different brands the brands that I've seen. Usually don't have gelatin in there. What do you think of red or brown raw rice is that a good grain instead of yes that would definitely be a good grain. I don't know if you want to eat it raw, but yes cooking brown rice. Red rice black rice wild rice those are actually considered ancient grains they haven't changed those through the years. How do you know if you're getting enough fiber oh that's a great question. So I would honestly the best way is look at your digestion like are you using the restroom, you know regularly you're having regular bowel movements. That's a really good indicator and then you know you can go online and check this out. But you can even look at you can even evaluate how your stool looks right there's a whole you know science behind that. You know, if you have like, you know, stool very hard like pellets then right you need to bump up the fiber. So yeah, you can actually look online they'll even show you pictures of what your stool should look like and that's that's a good indicator whether you're getting enough fiber. Honestly, if you do half your plate as a vegetables for every meal and you should be doing really good on the fiber front. What is your opinion oh I love this on college and peptides I love it. I love the question. So the jury is out on collagen. So some studies show some benefits. Other studies are neutrals so we haven't really seen it in the literature. Anything to really, you know suggest that everyone should be taking college and so college and again very important for, you know, tissue bones muscles. One thing I want to point out is the precursor to collagen that helps with collagen protection is vitamin C. So we got to make sure we're getting good amounts of vitamin C in in in our body and again ideally through through foods. And so anyways I was really curious about the collagen supplement so I know a few years ago I actually took collagen supplements I noticed absolutely nothing. And then, recently I've, we found this nice, you know, halal legit collagen powder. And so I was taking it as my mom take it so I was actually asking my mom the other day I'm like did you notice anything she's like no. She's like I was hoping my hair wouldn't fall as much. And, and I asked and she's arthritis and I did you know same thing in your joints and she didn't notice anything. I didn't notice anything. So I don't know. I feel like I don't know. We just don't know you can try it and see how you feel. But we haven't seen you know anything outstanding in the literature and honestly if you're having like, you know bone broth if you're having you know chicken broth things like that you'll get collagen there as well and just when you're eating meats and things like that. I heard only water soluble vitamin could be should be consumed great question. So water soluble vitamins are all the B vitamins and vitamin C and Colleen. So these are the water soluble vitamins meaning that our body doesn't like whatever excess we consume our body removes. Okay, and then we have the fat soluble vitamins vitamins a D E and K, and those need a little bit of fat to be absorbed, and they also get stored in fat, meaning we can go overboard. So vitamin a D and a K we want to you know I wouldn't take you know I be careful about the supplements and how much we're taking and so on and so forth. But we should be consuming both water soluble and fat soluble we need both of them, because like I said vitamin a D D I was back and have a whole session just on vitamin D's benefits. And vitamin E and K K is very important for clotting. So we need those vitamins as well so they should be consumed but all of these should be consumed, ideally in their food form. So are there process foods that is not as bad for you what about vitamin expiration dates are great. So no no so process foods. There's different definitions of process foods, because like I said, you know, like oatmeal, you're buying oatmeal it kind of process right like it's not just raw oats coming from the fields straight into our box right they process that a little bit right to clean it up. There's ultra process where there's like, you know, a lot of ingredients this whole huge process they've gone through so just ask yourself how many steps from farm to fork, like how many steps did this have to go through for this to get where it is. So again, not all process food is bad for you because again depends on the level of processing but those ultra process foods like, I don't know like the processed meats like, you know, hot dogs and, you know, you know, the beef sausages and all those things like that's way way way way processed. But not all are bad. And yeah, vitamins do have expiration dates just be aware of those you know usually this is a pretty long expiration date you should be fine with that. So yeah, so you're mentioning how many beats you have one or two beats, oh yeah that's fine one or two beats per day is totally fine yeah you're good. You're good. And then someone asked the question yeah what is your opinion on college and peptides and I just answered that. Any other questions comments. I am now looking at the chat. So I can answer. So hopefully this was helpful everyone. There's a lot again I can go on so many tangents we can have a whole day long section on just nutrition itself. One more question popped up my bones are a little weaker than previous years do you recommend calcium or day okay great question. So yes, usually we depending on the age we recommend about 1000 to 1200 milligrams of calcium for women. So this is the thing is we also don't want to go overboard with calcium either. So your calcium supplements, including the calcium that you're consuming so dairy is a good source of calcium and you don't have to have cows products to have, you know, calcium, because in like almond milk soy milk all these different milks they are adding calcium anyway so you're good to go on that. So, all your calcium combined. You want to try to stick to about 1200 milligrams I wouldn't go beyond that to be honest. And then for calcium supplements themselves you want to space them out. Because our body can only absorb, you know, a certain amount of calcium at a time like maybe about 500 600 milligrams give or take at one time. So you want to space the calcium supplements out. And you do not want to take calcium with iron calcium and iron compete and actually calcium wins, but then iron loses out so you want to kind of space things out. So yeah, you can have calcium supplements that's fine if you have a multivitamin usually I'm actually okay with people having multivitamins, you know, like a few times a week to kind of cover basis like I'm cool with that and there are certain supplements that, you know, I do recommend like I think for women as one gets older, especially in osteoporosis runs in the family or you just never really had a lot of dairy when you were younger, or calcium when you were younger and a little bit of calcium supplements will be okay. And I also really recommend vitamin D vitamin D helps calcium get absorbed. And you know for vitamin D about 1000 international units IU, you know spaced out during the week would would be good would be fine. So yeah, have calcium but just make sure you don't go overboard so 1200 milligrams with with supplements and food. Old fashioned oats is fine. So you want to get the oats that take time to cook they're not at the 32nd let me just microwave it and leave oats so old fashioned slow cooked, you know steel cut oats all of those are okay. All right, so I think we're good. Thank you everyone for attending further if you want to give a little plug for Rahma that'd be awesome but thank you everyone for your time and giving me a portion of your Sunday morning here so hopefully these. Those helpful and you can always you know email us at the foundation and then they'll send those emails to me and I can answer any questions that you may have. But thank you again everyone for your for your time and attention. Thank you for a great presentation and clarifying. So we need our nutritional needs, using food labels and understanding food labels better so we really appreciate that we appreciate everybody who's attended. We will be posting on YouTube. This webinar and you can also find some of your his other webinars that she's done on nutrition and health. And all of that information is going to be available and you can access it. If you follow us on social media. So we're on Facebook or on Instagram or on Twitter. And then you can also go to our website and join our mailing list so that you get weekly newsletters that provide links and information about our events. So please do that. And then you can look out for more webinars with Ruhi inshallah and again all of that will be advertised on social media, as well as in our weekly newsletters. So if you haven't already joined our mailing list please do that on our website go to the website. And then you can join the mailing list, and then you can also look at previous recordings there on the website, and then and for anything new. Check out our social media so thank you guys for attending and thank you for a great presentation. And with that inshallah we bid you Salmanikum. And we'll see you inshallah next time.