 Okay, thank you Janet for inviting me to come and speak and it's really a pleasure to be here at the library with all of you. So today I'm going to talk about nutrition and how to maximize the nutrition of your fruits and vegetables and you might think it's very straightforward, just eat more fruits and vegetables, but as we'll see it's not that simple and in fact there's a whole science to maximizing the nutrition out of your diet and your fruits and vegetables. So when we talk about nutrition there's two kinds of nutrients, there's macronutrients which are your protein, carbohydrate and fat and then there's your micronutrients which are in two categories, either vitamins and minerals or phytochemicals or plant based compounds and chemicals. So in the United States we have an abundance of calories, an abundance of protein, carbohydrates and fats so most people are not lacking in macronutrients. However studies show that the majority of Americans have a significant deficiency in both vitamins and minerals and phytochemicals and that's very important in terms of your long term health and preventing disease. So statistically there's multiple vitamin and mineral deficiencies and phytochemical deficiencies, very widespread in the population. So my approach to health in a nutshell is what I call the paleo-vedic diet and what that entails is a nutrient dense paleo diet and nutrient dense helps you maximize those vitamins and minerals and phytochemicals that I will be talking about and then it also involves a diet that's customized for your ayurvedic body type. So in Ayurveda which is the traditional medicine from India it's believed that each of us has a unique body type or constitution and there is an optimal diet that pairs the best with that constitution. I also strongly emphasize spices which we'll talk about for many reasons because they're a great source of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds. I recommend regular daily detoxification using foods and periodic more intensive detoxification. I won't be talking much about the other topics in this slide. Today we're going to talk about nutrients and nutrition. I just want to mention one thing about daily detoxification using foods and this is one of my favorite foods for regular detoxification and that is beet greens. So basically everybody here has had beets, the beet root. But actually the greens, the leafy top of the beets are richer in antioxidants than the roots themselves and also a rich source of multiple compounds that support healthy liver function. So if you get beets, try to get them with the leaves and don't throw those away. That would be the most nutritious part and something I recommend consuming regularly to detoxify. So we're going to talk now about vitamins and minerals and there is a significant difference between vitamins in whole foods and in supplements. So when you look at vitamins and minerals within foods, they actually are very complex structures that have many different cofactors and enzymes and elements and they're working together synergistically to really give your body optimal nutrition. So if you have vitamin donuts where donuts are fortified with vitamins, that's very different from vitamins in whole foods. So often when you read labels you'll see that a product is enriched or fortified with vitamins and typically those are synthetic vitamins which are not the same as the vitamins in foods. So let's take an example. So vitamin E, this is an essential vitamin. We all need vitamin E. It's a fat soluble vitamin and an antioxidant. Here's an example of what you might get as a supplement if you went to a health food store or whole foods. So typically vitamin E in this particular supplement it's listed as D-alpha tocopherol which according to the FDA can be labeled vitamin E. So this tocopherol is usually derived from a petroleum source. When you look at the whole food source of vitamin E, it actually has four different tocopherols, alpha, beta, gamma and delta for tocoprionols, alpha, beta, gamma and delta as well as xanthine and other factors. So basically the whole vitamin E complex is very different from what you might get as a vitamin E supplement where you would get only alpha tocopherol, basically less than one-eighth of the entire vitamin E complex. So good food sources of vitamin E are olive oil is an excellent source, nuts and seeds like almonds and sunflower seeds. Greens are a particularly good source like spinach and mustard greens as are avocados. And going into spices, you may not realize but spices are often very good sources of vitamins and minerals in addition to antioxidants. So chili powder and paprika actually has a fair amount of vitamin E as well. So why does this matter? Surely if you're taking extra vitamins or supplements that's not going to cause any harm, it's just going to go out of your body harmlessly but that's actually not the case. So supplements can potentially cause harm. So one study, we talked about vitamin E. So a study showing that doses exceeding 400 international units actually increased the risk of dying by about 10% over a several year period. And you might wonder why that is, but the reason is that these supplements are not the same as food sources of vitamin E. So if you're just taking the alpha tocopherol then your body has to compensate by drawing the other tocopherols and complex parts of vitamin E from your body. And that large dose of one isolated ingredient is not what your body is used to getting and that can cause harm. Same thing with vitamin A. So we'll take the example of vitamin A, which you commonly hear of the term beta-carotene from carrots and other things. And often when you look at supplements you'll see vitamin A supplement could be just beta-carotene. But in fact that's not the case. Vitamin A in foods has about five different complexes including retinol, retinoic acid, carotenoids, and beta-carotene. So there's many components to the vitamin A complex. It's actually a very complicated group of compounds, not just one item. And so studies have shown that beta-carotene supplements actually cause more lung cancer among smokers. So you might think that the important thing then is not to worry about antioxidants and that antioxidant status doesn't matter. But that's not the case either because we know from research that the more antioxidants you have in your body, the lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes, all the diseases that kill us in modern society. But those antioxidants have to come from foods because supplements are not really effective at raising that level in your body and protecting you. So my conclusion on supplements is that you do want to get most of your micronutrients from food. And then I'm not against supplements. I think testing to diagnose nutritional deficiencies is very important. You can work with your healthcare practitioner to do that. And then select supplements to treat certain measured deficiencies can be really helpful and very important. And be especially careful with a few supplements. So iron, there's a pretty common problem with anemia where you could be deficient in iron. But there is also the problem of iron overload or too much iron, which like with most nutrients, there's a kind of a narrow sweet spot where you need just enough but you don't want too much. And with iron as well, there's some interesting research coming out about the role of iron in diabetes and problems with blood sugar. And there's even some studies where they took patients who had diabetes and had them donate blood or give blood and reduce their iron and found that their blood sugar went down because iron levels were going down in their blood. So be very careful with iron. Calcium as well, there's probably a lot of, you know, if you might have heard about the controversy about calcium supplements. So for many years doctors recommended that people, especially women, take extra calcium to prevent osteoporosis. But that's more and more, you know, changing because research shows that calcium supplements have risk of heart disease and raising the risk of heart disease and cardiovascular disease. And so that doesn't apply to calcium from foods. So it's really best to try to get most of your calcium from foods. And if you're trying to prevent osteoporosis, you know, make sure you're getting enough vitamin D and vitamin K2. So these are all nutrients that I talk a lot about in my book, but basically calcium supplements are not the way to prevent osteoporosis. You want to really rely on foods for calcium. We talked about vitamins A and E and the studies where there's potential harm. So be very careful with taking those supplements. And lastly, vitamin D. Just a quick show of hands. How many people here have had their vitamin D level measured in the last one year? Okay, so a few people. So vitamin D is one of the popular vitamins right now, and it's very important. But like anything, it doesn't mean that more is always better because you want to have your level checked. A simple blood test that you can ask your doctor for will help with measuring that. And then treating to maintain appropriate level is very beneficial, but you don't want to be taking it indefinitely or taking really high doses just like all the other supplements. Okay, so now we're going to move on to part two of my talk. So we talked briefly about vitamins and minerals, and now we're going to talk about the phytochemicals. So phytochemicals are basically all of the compounds in plants that protect us against disease. And right now there's almost 40,000 that are being studied. They all have very long and complex names. And the wild ancestors of our modern fruits and vegetables were much higher in phytochemicals. So what you see in the supermarket or farmer's market today is very different from what our ancestors were eating some thousands of years ago. And basically the trend has been to make fruits and vegetables larger, more productive, sweeter, and less bitter, less fibrous, more attractive. And through that whole process of plant breeding, a lot of these phytochemicals have been lost. And so that's where the advice about just eating fruits and vegetables doesn't necessarily apply, because you have to know what to eat, and that's what we're going to talk about in some detail today. So Americans, we have the uncanny ability to choose the least nutritious options, and I'm not talking about fast food or McDonald's, I'm talking about fruits and vegetables. So every year we eat 57 pounds per person of iceberg lettuce. We also eat 142 pounds per person of potatoes, mostly in the form of french fries. And bananas and pears as well, so within each category, these are the most nutrient poor options. So let's get into some of the details. So we'll start with iceberg lettuce. Oh, before we do that, I want to ask you guys a question. So to illustrate the difference between wild and modern foods, let's take the example of apples. So this is a picture of some wild apples, and there was a study that looked at the nutrient difference between wild apples and your normal supermarket apples. So let's say you have one ounce of wild apples in your right hand and one ounce of your supermarket golden delicious apple in your left hand. What would be the percent difference in nutrients, specifically the phytochemicals? Anyone want to throw out a number, the percent difference? 50 percent, no. Keep going, it's higher. We're going to keep going until we get 70, no. No, it's higher than 90. Keep going. 100, no. No, it's above 100 percent. 200, no, keep going. Keep going, come on, I want to get the number. What was that? No, it's 300, no, it's more than that. More than 1,000. 5,000, more than a 5,000. No, it's not infinite. So do I hear 10,000? No, okay. So 47,500. Yeah. So what that means exactly is that if the, there's a 475 times difference between the wild apples and modern apples. So wild apples have 475 times the number of antioxidants as our modern apples. So that's been scientifically proven. And so it's really a huge difference. It's not like we're talking about 10 percent more, 20 percent more. But if you can learn how to eat closer to the way that our wild ancestors ate, you can really get a lot more phytochemicals in your diet and really get those health benefits from all those additional nutrients. So here are some general rules about how to maximize that nutrient density. So the more deeply and intensely colored a fruit or vegetable, the more phytonutrients it has. So often these darker colors like red or purple or blue reflect high levels of antioxidants. Like red is typically anthocyanins. Orange is typically carotenoids. So the more deeply colored a plant, that's a sign that this plant has more nutrients as well. Most of the plants antioxidants are actually typically in the skin or just below the skin because antioxidants are the way that the plant defends itself. So this is part of the defense system of plants. So that's another clue meaning that you always want to eat the skin whenever possible. So if you can get more organic produce and in general eat the skins, this is true of potatoes, sweet potatoes, a lot of fruits like apples, pears, wherever you're eating the skin. In general, the skin and just below the surface is where most of the antioxidants are. Same for avocados. You know when you cut the avocado right underneath the skin, there's like a dark green kind of layer. That's where most of the antioxidants are. So really scrape those skins clean when you're eating those avocados. Okay, we're going to talk about lettuce because that's one of the most common greens that people consume. So typical iceberg lettuce, which is the most popular green in the country, it's very crisp, refreshing, kind of plain, but it's really not much more than a fiber source. So it doesn't really have a lot of those phytochemicals or phytonutrients. So does someone know what this kind of lettuce is? Romain. Yeah, so romain lettuce is a much better option. There's actually significantly more antioxidants in romain lettuce. One tip that works with all kinds of lettuce is something called lettuce wounding. So this was a term developed by researchers. Basically, with lettuce, let's say you buy a head of lettuce and you take it home. If you tear the lettuce up into pieces and put it in a bag, put it in the fridge, basically the next day the lettuce will actually double in antioxidant value. And the way that works is because remember plants are alive and antioxidants are how they defend themselves. So when you tear up the lettuce, it reflects that it's a response to attack, that the lettuce produces a burst of phytochemicals and you can benefit from those the next day. All you have to do is tear up the lettuce into pieces and store it for 24 hours before eating. So that's a simple way to increase the phytonutrient content with whatever kind of lettuce you are consuming. And then if you want to get more into the really nutritious kinds of lettuce, so radicchio actually has about four times the antioxidants of the romain lettuce, which was still a good option, but radicchio is very nutritious. There's green loose leaf lettuce. So with the loose leaf lettuce, the red loose leaf lettuce is actually better than the green loose leaf lettuce because remember the rule, the brighter the color, the reds, it has more antioxidants. But green loose leaf lettuce is still a good option in terms of antioxidants. And arugula, which has kind of a peppery taste, that's a reflection of the phytochemicals and protective compounds in arugula. So these are some ways to get more out of your leafy greens and really get more antioxidants than through iceberg lettuce. Okay, so now we're going to move on and talk about cabbage, which actually is the world's number one vegetable. So worldwide, I think there's something along the order of 50 million tons of cabbage consumed every year. And so red cabbage actually is about four times as nutritious as green cabbage. So many more times the antioxidants. And if you can choose red cabbage, it's far superior to the green cabbage. And you can even find sauerkraut made from red cabbage, which is a good fermented food. Okay, now cauliflower. So I took this picture at my local farmer's market. So there are some exceptions to the rule that the colors always has to be brightly colored. So even white cauliflower is very nutritious. So just because cauliflower is white, it doesn't mean that it's lacking in antioxidants. White cauliflower is very high in compound called glucosilinate, which is a strong cancer fighting compound. So the cruciferous vegetables in general are very strong cancer fighters. But the purple cauliflower does have about three times as many antioxidants as the white cauliflower. So if you're able to get purple cauliflower, that's a good option. Have people seen the orange cauliflower around? Yeah, so now they have, you know, there's bright green cauliflower and orange cauliflower as well as purple. Those are all better options than the white cauliflower. But white cauliflower is still pretty nutritious in terms of phytochemicals. Okay, now we're going to talk about sweet potatoes next. Okay, so we talked about regular potatoes, which are the number one vegetable in the United States. You know, almost 150 pounds per person per year. Sweet potatoes, Americans only consume about three pounds per person per year. Typically Thanksgiving, you have the candied sweet potatoes, and then maybe you get a sweet potato pie in there a couple of times during the year. I think sweet potatoes actually are underestimated and underused because they're actually lower glycemic than the regular potatoes, meaning that they have, even though they're sweeter and they're called sweet potatoes, they're actually better for your blood sugar. They raise it more slowly than a regular potato. So it's lower glycemic and a sweet potato is much higher in antioxidants than a regular potato. And with sweet potatoes, the most nutritious kind is the purple sweet potato, which is pictured here raw and then cooked. But at your local market, you'll find both orange fleshed and white fleshed sweet potatoes. And in that case, the orange or yellow fleshed sweet potato is more nutritious than the white fleshed sweet potato because following that color rule that we talked about. Okay, now we're going to talk a little bit about garlic. So this is one of the universal healers. So garlic alone has been found to have almost 100 different phytochemicals. So the main one, the most active, is called allicin. And this is an important tip about how to use garlic because garlic has so much antioxidant value and so much disease-fighting power. If you don't use it the right way, you don't get any of that benefit. What I mean by that is the main compound allicin is made in garlic. So normally within each garlic cell, there's two substances that have to be mixed together in order to make this key antioxidant. And that takes about 10 minutes for that process to occur. Basically, the garlic has to be either crushed or mashed and this enzymatic process starts and it takes 10 minutes for the active ingredient to be made. So if you just crush garlic and throw it in the pan and cook with it right away, it's basically just a flavor. So you don't really get these antioxidants or active ingredients. So the way to really get the benefits is to crush, mince or mash the garlic and then wait for 10 minutes. So during that 10 minutes, after crushing, those two components in the garlic come together and create that allicin and then after 10 minutes it becomes heat-stable, meaning that you can then cook with it or use it in your recipes without damaging the properties of it, still get the benefits. So the key thing is you don't want to cook it immediately after crushing. You just want to wait 10 minutes and then you can either have it raw or cooked and you'll get the most health benefits out of the garlic. So that's a tip for getting the most nutrition out of the garlic. Okay, so now we're going to move on and talk about onions. So here's a picture of a few different kinds of onions. So does anybody have a guess about what is the most nutrient-dense onion that's on this slide? Red onion, yeah. Leeks, I heard leeks, okay. Scallion? Who said scallion? You're right. So this is kind of a trick question because you might think that the red onion is the richest in antioxidants and it's far better than the white onions, which are not pictured. The white onions or so-called sweet onions, like the sweet onions that you see a lot in the summer and that you put on sandwiches, sweet onions are very low in antioxidants. It's really the more pungent, spicy or sharp-tasting onions that have the antioxidants. So red onions are a good option and leeks are actually also pretty high in antioxidants. But scallions are the clear winner, the green onions. And the reason why is that scallions are thought to be similar to how wild onions used to be hundreds of thousands of years ago. So they were very small and the bulb was very small and they were mostly the leaf. And over the years, onions have been bred for the largest bulb, so the bulbs have become really huge. But this is basically unchanged from how wild onions used to be many years ago. So the difference is, again, really significant. So it's 14,000% is the difference in antioxidant value between scallions and your regular white onions. So it's a really good way to get more antioxidants into your diet, just incorporating more of the green onions or scallions, in addition to leeks as well are a good option. Just try to steer clear of the sweet onions and the white onions. Okay, next we're going to be talking about tomatoes. So there's a lot of different kinds of tomatoes on this slide. Do people want to point out any particular variety they recognize on this slide? Roma, yeah, cherry tomatoes, yeah. Tomatillo, yeah, there's a whole bunch over there. What was that? Yeah, these are the tomatillos. This is the beef steak tomato with the kind of ribbing that you see. So with tomatoes, basically the more intensely red they are in general, the better, the higher the antioxidants. These up here are the sun gold tomatoes, which are very pretty to look at, but they don't have much in terms of antioxidant value. So one of the rules I talked about earlier was that smaller is better in terms of being closer to wild ancestors. So that holds true with tomatoes. So the cherry tomatoes actually have about three times the amount of lycopene as the larger tomatoes, the Roma or the beef steak. And even within cherry tomatoes, the smaller cherry tomatoes have more nutrients than the larger cherry tomatoes. So the rule applies even within the same category. So for example, this one, if you were at a farmer's market and choosing the cherry tomatoes, I would suggest choosing the smaller ones. This one is probably much more nutritious than the bigger one. And also the flavor. So the smaller ones have the most intense flavor and the higher antioxidant level. So in this slide, what would you guess would be the richest source of lycopene in the slide here? Yeah, that's true. The purple ones are missing. Those are very high in antioxidants. So within the slide, what do you guys think is the most, you know, the richest source of lycopene? The cherry tomatoes? Okay, no, not those. Tomato sauce, yes. Really? Yes, yeah. Okay. Yeah, well, so, yeah, well, so tomato, you know, technically is a fruit, but the reason why the tomato sauce is in there is because it goes back to the question about cooked versus raw. So, you know, is it best to eat vegetable raw? Is it best to cook it? And the answer is it depends. You know, it depends on the vegetable. So for example, with broccoli, it's much better to have it raw because you get a lot more of the cancer-fighting compounds. With tomatoes, when you actually cook tomatoes, you double the lycopene content. And the reason why is that tomatoes do have a fairly rigid cell wall. And by heating them, you're breaking down the cell wall, releasing more of the lycopene to be absorbed. And then cooking, heating up tomatoes actually changes the shape of the molecule, the lycopene molecule, into a form that you can absorb better. So for those two reasons, cooked tomatoes and tomato sauce or tomato paste are actually, by far, the richest concentrated source of lycopene. So a typical serving of tomato sauce has about eight times a comparable amount of uncooked tomatoes. So you definitely want to get the benefits of cooked tomatoes as well. Okay, so we're going to shift gears now and talk a little bit about spices. And that's a big part of my book, The Paleo-Vethic Diet. And the reason why is that in Ayurvedic medicine, spices are considered to be medicinal. They have truly powerful healing properties. They're the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet, second to organ meats. So there was a researcher from Harvard who sought to classify different categories of foods into nutrient density and see what was the most nutrient-dense. So number one was organ meats, but that's often hard or not palatable for people to eat, but spices were actually second. So a much more accessible way to get a lot of the nutrients. They're a great source of antioxidants, as I mentioned. In general, spices are very effective at reducing inflammation. So inflammation or chronic inflammation is one of the root causes for most modern disease, like heart disease, cancer, diabetes. And a lot of spices, like you've probably heard of turmeric and ginger and cinnamon, all of these really help with inflammation. So they can help prevent some of the most common diseases that are prevalent right now in the United States. Spices are also a great way to support digestion and strengthen your digestion. So in Ayurvedic medicine, it's believed that all disease starts in the gut and starts from digestive health. So spices can be a way to keep a healthy digestion. And finally, they're actually very helpful in maintaining a healthy blood sugar and metabolism, and in some cases even with weight loss. And so spices are very beneficial for that reason as well. Plus they make your food taste better. So it's kind of like a win-win. So I'm going to leave a lot of time for questions, but I want to conclude by pointing out that the most important thing is that healthy eating should be fun and cooking and sharing meals with family members is very important. Here's some pictures of a couple of fruits we didn't talk about. But with nectarines, there's a red fleshed nectarine, which is very rich in phytochemicals. And remember with all nectarines, the skin is where the antioxidants are, more than 50%, just like peaches and all the other fruits we talked about. So be sure to eat the skin. Mangoes are actually not consumed very widely in the U.S., but very rich sources of vitamin C, actually five times more than oranges. So mangoes are a very good source of vitamin C and also other phytochemicals. And finally, I want to mention with papaya that they're a very rich source of plant-based compounds and also a great source of fiber. This red-colored flesh is also very high in lycopene. So papayas and mangoes are a good option in terms of nutrition as well. So if you want to learn more about my work, you can connect with me on social media or my website and I'll be happy to take questions as well and meet with you afterwards. So thank you for your attention.