I have gotten a whole slew of interesting questions from listeners, many of them in response to recent episodes. So I’m dedicating today’s show to clearing out my inbox!
Do digestive enzymes impair nutrient absorption? Do potatoes count as vegetables? Should you be scrubbing your lemons? Nutrition Diva answers listener questions.
Nutrition Diva is hosted by Monica Reinagel. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hello, I’m Monica Reinagel and this is the Nutrition Diva podcast, a show where I take a closer look at nutrition trends and headlines, explain what the latest research means for you, and answer your nutrition questions, Welcome.
I have gotten a whole slew of interesting questions from listeners, many of them in response to recent episodes. So I’m dedicating today’s show to clearing out my inbox!
In my show with Registered Dietitian Beth Rosen, talking about strategies for IBS, Beth mentioned that digestive enzymes can sometimes help make problematic foods (those that trigger uncomfortable digestive symptoms) more tolerable.
And that caused Margaret to wonder: Do products like Bean-o or Lactaid impair your body's ability to derive nutrition from foods?
On the contrary. Enzymes that help break down food components that your body finds difficult to digest, such as the lactose in milk or the oligo-saccharides in legumes, make it easier for your body to digest and absorb the nutrients in those foods. For example, if you have trouble digesting lactose, consuming dairy products may give you diarrhea—and when foods move very quickly through the digestive tract, the body has less opportunity to absorb the nutrients in that and other foods you’ve eaten.
Laura sent a question in response to my episode on washing fruits and vegetables. “What is the waxy coating they use on the outside of citrus?” she wants to know. “If I’m putting a slice of lemon in my water, do I need to scrub this off first?”
Produce, such as cucumbers and citrus fruit, is often coated with a food-safe wax in order to preserve its freshness while it travels from the field to your grocery store and then sits in your crisper drawer until you get to it. It also makes the produce shiny and improves its curb appeal. It’s used on both organic and conventionally grown produce.
The wax doesn’t prevent gasses from moving into or out of the fruit. So, for example, it won’t block the natural ethylene gas that promotes ripening. But it does reduce the loss of moisture through the skin. This keeps cucumbers from getting flaccid and your lemons from getting dry and hard.
The wax applied to fruits and vegetables is safe to eat. However, you may prefer to remove it. You may notice, for example, that putting a wedge of lemon in your hot tea causes little wax droplets to form on the surface.
And this also offers a clue to how to get rid of it. Warm water will melt or dissolve the wax better than cold or room-temperature water. So wash your produce with hot tap water and add a little friction (in the form of a soft brush or even your clean hand) and dry with a clean dishtowel or paper towel to polish away any remaining wax. But don’t clean them until you want to use them, as removing the wax will shorten their shelf-life.
Bryan also had a question about fruit and vegetables:
“Nutritionists always recommend eating more fruits and vegetables. Your suggestion to aim for five servings a day is a helpful rule of thumb. But does this only include colorful fruits and vegetables, or does it also include nuts, beans, and potatoes? If not, how many servings per day of those is recommended?”
Nuts, beans, and potatoes are (obviously) all plants. But, the categories that we use in nutrition science and dietary guidelines don’t line up with botanical designations. Rather, foods are sorted by their nutritional function. So, for example, while a zucchini may technically be a fruit, we still consider it a vegetable. (The sorting of produce into fruits and vegetables is mostly around sugar content.)
Nutritionally speaking, potatoes are much more similar to things like pasta, bread, or rice than they are to tomatoes or lettuce. So, I tend to include those in the category of starches and grains.
Nuts and beans each occupy different places/functions in the healthy diet. Beans are much higher in protein than other vegetables (and, accordingly, play a very important role in the diet of vegetarians) so they are generally categorized as a protein food. While nuts are usually included in lists of protein foods for vegetarians, they are actually much higher in fat than protein. And so you’ll often see nuts grouped with other sources of healthy fats, and recommended in smaller portions.
Another example of how nutritional and botanical categories often differ is that peanuts are technically legumes. But we generally lump them in with nuts because of their nut-like fat content.
Unlike fruits and vegetables, which are recommended on a daily basis, the dietary guidelines suggest including 3 servings of beans and 5 servings of nuts a week as part of your portfolio of protein foods. Vegetarians would likely consume much more than that to make up for the meat and seafood they don’t eat.
And meat-eaters could certainly consume more than that, too. People who include beans and nuts in their diets on a more regular basis tend to have healthier diets (and lower disease risks) overall.
Those of you who use my free Nutrition GPA app will know that vegetables, nuts, and beans are all foods that contribute to a higher nutritional grade point average. If you’re not familiar with the app and you’re looking for a fun and flexible way to improve your eating habits, I suggest you check it out. You’ll find it in the Google and Apple app stores.
Daythin wrote with concerns about almond milk causing inflammation:
“Does almond milk cause inflammation in the body because of the high amounts of omega 6 fatty acids? There seems to be a lot of conflicting information on this topic and it’s very hard to weed out truth from opinion.”
To prove their point, Daythin sent a screenshot of two side-by-side blog posts. One was from a website run by a chiropractor, saying “Assuming you don’t have an issue with nuts, almond milk does not cause…inflammation.” The other was from a blog run by a pair of integrative health practitioners who claimed that almond milk was essentially “inflammation in a cup,” due to its “obscene” ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats.
Fortunately, Daythin, it’s not that hard to separate fact from fiction.
Omega-6 and omega-3 are the two main families of polyunsaturated fats, or PUFAs. These fatty acids and their metabolites play complementary roles in regulating certain immune functions. Compounds derived from omega-6 fats can up-regulate inflammation, which many people don’t realize is an important and valuable part of our immune response. Inflammation is part of the body’s healing response to injury and infection. Compounds derived from omega-3 fats have an opposing action, acting to calm inflammation and keep things in balance.
Omega-6 are found primarily in vegetable oils like corn and soybean oil, while omega-3 are found in fish, flax, and chia seeds. The modern, industrialized Western diet tends to be quite high in omega-6 (mostly from the vegetable oils used in processed foods) and rather low in omega-3.
Many nutrition experts have suggested that this imbalance contributes to excessive inflammation in the body, which has been linked with a variety of short and long-term health problems. And there is some research to support this view.
Women who had a high ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in their diets were more likely to suffer from post-partum depression for example. A high omega-6 to omega-3 ratio was also associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in premenopausal women and—in a different study—with increased inflammation and fatigue in cancer survivors. Higher intake of omega-6 relative to omega-3 was also linked to an increased risk of macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of blindness in those over 55. The “high ratio” in most of these studies, by the way, is the ratio typical of the standard American diet.
In fact, a detailed analysis of multiple dietary intervention trials by scientists at the National Institutes of Health concluded that advising people to replace saturated fats with PUFAs without regard to the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 “may actually increase the risks of CHD and death.”
All of that would seem to support the claim that almond milk, with its high ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats, might promote inflammation. However, the authors have overlooked two important factors.
First, there is very little omega-6 or omega-3 in almond milk. So while the ratio between the two may be quite high (or even “obscene”), the impact on the ratio of the overall diet would be minimal.
I often see people making the same error when talking about the nutritional benefits of grass-fed beef.
Grass-fed advocates make a big deal out of the fact that grass-fed beef is higher in omega-3 and beta-carotene than grain-fed beef. Although that’s absolutely true, you have to put the facts in perspective. Celery has 40 times as much sodium as cucumber, for example, but celery is still a very low-sodium food. Likewise, grass-fed meat may contain three times as much omega-3 or eight times as much beta-carotene as grain-fed beef, but it’s still not a significant source of these nutrients. If it’s omega-3s you’re after, eat fish. If you want more beta-carotene, eat carrots.
The second flaw in this argument about the inflammatory potential of almond milk (or almonds, for that matter), is that it completely overlooks the contribution of other nutrients to the body’s pro-and anti-inflammatory processes.
Inflammation is not regulated solely by omega-6 and omega-3 fats. There are at least two dozen nutrients that affect inflammation, through a variety of mechanisms and pathways. (This happens to have been the subject of my master’s thesis.) Many of these other nutrients (which include vitamin E, folate, selenium, and zinc) are also present in almonds—some, in notable amounts.
For example, most of the fat in almonds and almond milk is mono-unsaturated fat, which tends to reduce inflammation. When you take all of these factors into account, almonds would, if anything, be considered an anti-inflammatory food. (Although, because almond milk is 97.5% water, the anti-inflammatory impact is likely to be quite small.)
Thanks to all the listeners who sent in questions for this week’s episode. If you have a question you'd like me to answer, you can email me at nutrition@quickanddirtytips.com. You can also leave me a message at 443-961-6206
I’d also like to invite you to check out my other podcast. It’s called the Change Academy, where Brock Armstrong and I explore the art and science of behavior change. You can find it on all the major podcast platforms, so whatever app you’re using right now to listen to me, just head to the search bar and type in “Change Academy.”
Nutrition Diva is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast and is supported by a fantastic team, which includes our Director of podcasts, Adam Cecil, audio engineer Nathan Semmes, Davina Tomlin runs our marketing and publicity, Holly Hutchings is our Digital Operations Specialist and Morgan Christianson is our Podcast Operations and Advertising Specialist. Kamryn Lacy is our intern.
That's all for this episode. Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week.