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Kombu. Wakame. Hijiki. OH MY! Nori, kelp, spirulina and arame too – What are these things? If you’ve ever eaten sushi, you may be familiar with nori, which is the deep-dark green wrapper used to keep your rice, fish and avocado in place. It may seem inconsequential to you, just a tool to facilitate handling raw fish, but it is so much MORE! Speaking of deep-dark…….sea vegetables come from the deep and dark waters of the ocean. That is part of what makes them so nutrient-rich, actually the most nutrient and mineral-rich foods on the planet. Even though the large bodies of water, where these plants grow, are not as pristine as they were ages ago, they are still so much more vital than the soil in which plants grow on dry land. Plants from the ocean have 10 – 20 times more bio-available minerals than vegetables grown on our farms – even organic farms. That is just the way it is. Environmental pollution has a lesser impact on our oceans than on our soil, air and rain. Land plants have to contend with those toxins and inevitably they are passed on to us when we consume them. Eating organic and local produce is something I always advocate, but you can add even more dynamic items to your plate by taking a more adventurous approach. When minerals are more bio-available, this means your body can actually absorb and use those minerals. Taking minerals in capsule form is beneficial but the effect pales in comparison to adding hijiki to your take out order. Our body understands nutrients that come in complete forms, the way nature intended through eating whole foods. Whole food nutrition = whole person. You are what you eat. Another very important benefit to remember about eating veggies from the deep waters is that they will help to de-tox your system. This is the hottest new thing! Just as trees clean our air, the greens that grow in our oceans clean and oxygenate our waters. Greens grown both on land and under water are very supportive to system cleansing, but wakame and kombu have a leaf-up on their land-lubing relatives. Plants that grow in deep waters are always moving, swaying to the motion of the ocean – in rhythm with the planet, ebbing and flowing with the tides and current. Watching fish and plants floating around in an aquarium is instantly soothing and relaxes you doesn’t it? So why not add some of that energy to your day by trying a big pot of hearty miso soup made with kombu. I assure you won’t be chewing on any rubbery seaweed; you get a huge benefit just from the broth. This energy differs greatly from land plants that tend to be stiff and rooted. If you need to be more flexible, mentally or physically, eating sea vegetables can really support you in that effort. These days, being rigid and holding on to old patterns may not serve you well. Consider it an exercise in adaptability and eat your sea veggies! Like their cousins growing in soil, seaweeds are low in fat and have a high amount of dietary fiber. By now you know the benefits dietary fiber has on your digestive tract – keeps you squeaky clean! There is an especially interesting story about some Scottish sheep that were fed seaweeds. Steve Gagne author of Energetics of Food, one of my all-time favorite nutrition books, shared this information about those sheep. It is generally known that “sheepish” behavior is timid, unfocused and weak. Sheep are “follow-the-leader” types and any leader will do, they just cannot manage to figure things out on their own so they need lots of direction. You may even feel similarly if you consume a lot of lamb because we tend to take on the energy of the animal we eat. Can I just say Frank Perdue! Interestingly, on Shetland Island there is a flock that was fed marine algae harvested nearby. That flock had a unique personality. They are very independent but are also fully capable of acting as a group. This is something I hope to see more of in our democracy – thinking for ourselves and working well in the community to support the greater good. How did this transformation happen you ask? Well as I wrote before and you have heard many times – We Are What We Eat. We take on the energy of the food we consume. For example, if you eat lots of foods shipped to you from far-off lands, you may start to feel a deep urge to travel to foreign countries. The same thing holds true when you intake foods like algae that are single-celled and fully functioning organisms that live and thrive in perfect harmony with other self-sufficient, single-celled neighbors. That extraordinary adaptability and versatility is what you take in every time you add a spoonful of spirulina to your morning smoothie. Not a bad deal, right? You go for the minerals and fiber and in return you also get a big dose of flexibility. An added bonus is algae’s inherently antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral characteristics, which will naturally enhance your immune system. The high chlorophyll and mineral content of marine algae make it particularly effective in reducing cholesterol. By eating seaweeds you will also be helping to slow the growth of cancer cells. Also, with seaweeds you are consuming a food that can rid your body of radioactive elements. This is not something our ancestors needed to worry about but now in the 21st century it is a hazard from which we need to protect ourselves. Now that you know how beneficial this food can be, I am sure you are eager to start your love affair with wakame but are slightly intimidated. Fear NOT! I am here to simplify and educate. Attend my class Hearty Miso Soup and Sea Veggies and you will be in the know. I will show you snacks that are perfect for when you are on the go. You will also learn about condiments and simple recipes that are easy to integrate into meals that you are already eating. Click here to reserve your spot in one of the classes. In a previous article I listed the benefits you can enjoy from adding sea veggies to you nutritional landscape, but I will list them for you again to inspire you to come to class:
Green-Up Your Day
MSG – The Tasty Killer of Brain Cells Have I got your attention now? Well if your brain health means anything to you I must. Maybe you feel like you have copious amounts of brain cells and can afford to burn a few? That’s ok, but if you want to avoid getting Alzheimer’s disease or if you plan to raise healthy children you must read on. Many of us associate MSG with Chinese take-out. Well don’t be fooled into thinking that you are safe from exposure to excitotoxins by avoiding restaurants. First of all if you don’t already know, MSG stands for monosodium glutamate. It is a derivative of a type of seaweed used for thousands of years in Japan. This seaweed added such rich flavor to foods that some industrious chemists in pre-World War II Japan found a way to isolate this “taste enhancing” ingredient, glutamate, from its plant source so that it could be added to bland food, making them more palatable. MSG is a modified form of glutamic acid in which sodium is added to the molecule. The toxic portion is the glutamic acid, not the sodium. Food manufacturers mix MSG with other substances, such as aspartate, in order to disguise it. Sometimes when you see “natural flavoring” on a label it could mean that packaged food item contains anywhere from 20 – 60 percent MSG. This mixture, “hydrolyzed vegetable protein” is also referred to as “vegetable protein” or “plant protein.” This is a substance made from vegetables which could appear to be safe and natural, but the process undergone by these “junk” veggies is far from healthy. Certain vegetables which are unfit for sale are selected because of their naturally high concentration of glutamate. They are boiled in a vat of acid then neutralized with caustic soda. A brown sludge collects on the top of this concoction which is then scraped off and allowed to dry. The resulting brown powder is high in three known excitotoxins: glutamate, aspartate and cystoic acid. This is what is added by the food industry to everything from canned tuna to baby food. These chemicals are priceless to the manufacturers because they stimulate taste cells on the tongue of the consumer which ensures that these products become our favorites. That in turn increases sales and their profits go through the roof! They are used extensively in sauces, soups, condiments and especially frozen / low fat diet foods. This substance is more dangerous than MSG alone. The chemists that discovered this wonder-ingredient hit the jackpot and turned MSG into a worldwide, multi-million dollar industry. After World War II, American food companies followed suit and started adding it to processed foods in our country. It was thought to be harmless; after all it was an amino acid – brain fuel – a natural substance. Companies such as Pillsbury, Oscar Mayer, Libby’s, Campbell Soup, Borden’s, Continental, and General Foods were adding millions of pounds of MSG each year to the foods they sold in our American super markets. A fact that I found particularly frightening is that since the 1940’s the amount of MSG being added to foods has doubled every single decade. By 1972, 262,000 metric tons of MSG were produced, in spite of the research beginning to appear demonstrating the dangers of MSG and hydrolyzed vegetable protein. Other aliases for these Frankenstein foods are: caseinate, beef or chicken broth, “spices” or “natural flavorings.” These are to be avoided at all costs. Hydrolyzed vegetable protein also contains several known carcinogens – not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But what I find most upsetting – there is evidence that these excitotoxins are still being added to baby foods. Ok, so what do these excitotoxins do that is so harmful anyway? Both glutamate and aspartate (an artificial sweetener often found in little pink and blue packets) are powerful brain toxins which cause neuron damage. Keep in mind, liquid forms of theses excitotoxins are more toxic than dry forms because they are absorbed into the blood stream faster. “When neurons are exposed to these substances they become very excited and fire their impulses very rapidly until they reach a state of extreme exhaustion. Several hours later these neurons suddenly die as if the cells were excited to death” is the simplest explanation I could find in my new favorite book – Excitotoxins The Taste that Kills by Russell L. Blaylock, M.D. It doesn’t take much MSG to cause damage. It was found that in studies done with infant mice that were fed MSG, the nerve cells in the inner layers of the animal’s retina, which are the visual receptor cells of the eye, were all destroyed. Ten years after that experiment, Dr. John W. Olney, a neuroscientist, repeated this experiment on infant mice and found that not only was damage done to the eyes but also to the brain. He found that after a single dose of MSG, specialized cells in a critical area of the animals’ brain, the hypothalamus, were destroyed. Why you should be especially concerned for your children is because in experiments done with MSG, no mater what the animal species the worst damage occurred in the newborns and infants. The adults showed significant injury but “the child’s brain is four times more sensitive than the adult brain to these toxins”. You may think, well these are lab mice and other species, not humans so maybe there is no correlation. But in fact it has been found that “humans develop higher blood levels of glutamate following ingestion of MSG than does any other animal species known.” Because of his findings, Dr. Olney felt compelled to educate and protect unsuspecting mothers and their infants from danger. The FDA was informed but they refused to take action. Only after he testified before a Congressional committee publicizing his findings did food manufacturers voluntarily agree to remove MSG from baby foods. This happened in 1969. Beware though, because this did not stop companies from using hydrolyzed vegetable protein, which contains MSG. Blaylock specifically sites an experience he and his wife had with their own children. They were amazed by how much the kids loved canned pasta dishes called ABC’s and 1, 2, 3’s by Chef Boyardee. After reading the label he understood why the kids were hooked – it contained both MSG and hydrolyzed vegetable protein! You will find that many foods specifically marketed to children contain these brain-injuring taste enhancers. Ok, now let’s talk briefly about the mysterious causes of Alzheimer’s Disease. There are many complicated reactions that happen in the brain – all clearly explained in Blaylock’s book. Rather than overwhelm you with that biochemistry and neuroscience, I will just recap the findings as succinctly as I can. There are certain neurons in the brain that are excitatory and very vulnerable to the effects of glutamate. “The toxic effect is very specific” and when glutamate has access to these neurons in the cortex of the brain, which is likely when we consume foods containing glutamate and aspartate, these neurons die. Since excitotoxins, like aspartate, stimulate the formation of free radicals – which speed up aging in the body – even higher levels of glutamate within the brain are guaranteed because free radicals trigger the release of the glutamate causing even greater damage. “Glutamate plus aspartate is much more toxic than either one used alone.” Diet colas contain aspartate, mix that with a meal containing MSG and you have the recipe for expedient death of brain cells. “As we age, our brain becomes more vulnerable to excitotoxin damage” compliments of the increased level of free radicals in an aging body. So, how can you protect yourself from further damage and the possibility of suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease? Read the labels of the foods you eat, and the beverages that you drink. If you see these dangerous ingredients – stay away! You can easily mitigate the damage caused by free radicals by adding antioxidants to your diet. These are found in fruits and vegetables with rich bright colors – such as blueberries, pomegranates, and dark, leafy greens. You could supplement with my favorite and potent antioxidant: grapeseed extract. If this all sounds like more of a challenge than you are willing to take on alone, no is the time for you to call me. Let’s get these brain-supporting foods and supplements into your body. I can help you find delicious alternatives to all those toxic, processed foods. Need to do a cupboard cleanse to eliminate MSG and other toxins lingering in your kitchen? No need to feel overwhelmed! Call me, I can help you replace them with the healthy and safe versions!
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