Transcription:
Plant Based Nutrition To Keep You Going

Melanie Cole (Host): A plant-based diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes is a great way to achieve good health, but do you know how to go about eating a plant-based diet? Here to tell us about that is my guest, Jodi Dalyai. She's a registered dietitian, nutritionist, and community education dietitian with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Jodi, let's start with some definitions between vegetarian and vegan. What's the difference?

Jodi Dalyai (Guest): So we've all heard lots of these terms and even things like flexitarian, lots of popular- even raw, people who only eat raw plant foods. But the difference- the main difference between vegetarian and vegan, a vegetarian may still eat products from an animal that don't involve killing animals. So they might drink milk from a cow, or they might get eggs from a chicken, but otherwise they wouldn't eat any animal foods. A vegan is not having any foods that require the involvement of any animal as far as even not maybe having some foods that are processed with the use of animal bones or things like gelatin, which comes from an animal. So they might not have processed sugar, they might only have maple syrup that comes from a plant. They might not even want to have honey, which a bee has to make. And then within vegetarian, some people will call themselves like a lacto-ovo, meaning they have those eggs and milk, or some people will say they're a pescetarianism; they're vegetarian but maybe they eat fish. So there's tons of different definitions out there for all the ways we may or may not like to eat.

Host: Why should someone consider a plant-based diet? Tell us about some of the benefits that it provides and what kind of diseases that it can truly help to stave off.

Jodi: So a plant-based diet is good for everyone, I would say just from a general health perspective, and it's also really popular in the past I would say year or two based on its benefits to the environment. So a lot of people are moving in the direction of more plant foods for that reason. But research over- just even more like the past thirty years has shown the benefits of a plant-based diet for heart disease. There's definitely a lot of research showing that it's better for diabetes, for blood sugar control, and of course anyone who eats a high plant food intake and a lower animal food intake is also decreasing the risk for developing certain types of cancers. So those are the main I would say areas of research that have shown really strong benefit to a mainly plant-based diet.

Host: So now we've learned the benefits. It's not an easy transition. How do you even go about starting a plant-based diet? Give us what a daily meal plan might look like. And while you're telling us that, things like salads are really a pain to make, so everybody doesn't always want to take the time to do some of these things. I'd like you to give us some tips.

Jodi: You don't like using a knife? So I think the first thing is a lot of the terms today when it talks about plant-based diet is things like what they call a flexitarian or plant-based eating but maybe you're still including some other foods. So I think it's best to think of it as in a step down process. Maybe you just want to start by having one meal a week is a vegetarian, or one day a week where you eat vegetarian, or if you're already eating a lot of vegetarian foods, maybe one day a week where you're vegan and you don't even include any dairy foods or eggs. So that's usually a good way to start.

You can also start and look at a regular thing you eat, let's say every week you have Taco Tuesday and you're thinking, "Well how can I just make this a vegetarian or vegan meal," and substitute out maybe just not even make the ground turkey or the ground meat, and instead just have beans and vegetables to make your taco. So that's kind of the easiest way to start. And then if you are thinking of a general meal plan, if you're a vegetarian and you're including eggs and dairy, and again that definitely would be the first step towards moving towards a fully plant-based diet if you are eating meat now. You could start by including things like egg and cheese at breakfast whether you're having a cheese toast, having a quesadilla, or making like a veggie scramble for breakfast, along with of course things that would fit into a vegan diet too like oatmeal, things like chia pudding, which are maybe a little more involved, but also very simple when you use plant-based milk and chia seeds and then of course plenty of fruits and vegetables. Lunch time, like you said, the salad.

You definitely once a day if you are vegetarian or vegan again, but everyone should do this at least once a day, a nice big salad is a great lunch or dinner, and then you're just throwing on some protein which could be your legumes. So whether you're spreading on some garbanzo beans, sprinkle it with nuts, some olive oil, some lemon, and a really nice variety of vegetables to make it really tasty. If time is of the essence, then we all know there's plenty of pre-prepared salad mixes in the stores where you can really just open it, throw it in a bowl, throw in a couple other ingredients, and you're good to go. And you can actually make that for two or three days ahead of time. That's something that will keep.

Dinner, same thing. Take things you're comfortable with, take a pasta meal, something like a stir fry, and all you're doing is taking out the meat. You might not even need to replace it or you could just substitute cheese if you are getting rid of the meat. You could also then just substitute something like beans or tofu if it's a stir fry or pasta as well. So those are just the very simple things, but things we probably all eat week to week that could get you started on heading into a more plant-based way of eating

Host: Is there a concern about protein? Peanut butter or nuts, legumes, those kinds of things. Tell us some of the protein sources that you recommend, and if somebody is having trouble getting all the protein that they need. Do you advise a whey powder or a soy protein powder; one of these things to help supplement and get enough protein?

Jodi: So there's absolutely no reason anyone on a good plant-based diet should have an issue getting protein. We're a very protein obsessed culture at this point where we feel like most of us need more than we actually do. But the main thing is if you're eating a very less processed diet, you're going to get a lot of whole grains, and whole grains on their own. So if you're having things like whole grain breads, oatmeal, brown rice, you are getting protein from there to start. So that's a good base for any type of plant-based eating.

And then along with that, you do need to have legumes and soy products usually every day to meet those needs as well. So soy milk has basically the exact same protein content as dairy milk. So right there, about eight grams if you have a cup in the morning, or if you use that in your coffee, or if you put that in your oatmeal. And then again, like you said, yeah you need it. So a cup of beans, fifteen grams of protein. Plenty. And then you're getting them again sprinkled throughout the day. Nuts have some protein, but nuts are definitely more fat, and you certainly don't eat a cup of nuts. That would be really filling and probably you couldn't eat a lot more after that for quite a long time. But just an ounce of nuts, a small handful is about five to six grams of protein. So the main thing is variety and using less processed foods.

Host: So I like almond milk myself, Jodi. So I mean soy milk is good, but I prefer almond milk. Is there a difference in any of those? Because now we see rice milk, and almond milk, and oat milk, and soy milk. Is there a reason to use one over the other?

Jodi: Yeah, well so soy milk is the most like dairy milk. So it has a nice combination of protein, carbohydrates, and fats, whereas almond milk is really mostly water with a little bit of almond. So it really doesn't have much of anything in it. It's not really giving you any significant amount of carbohydrate, fat, or protein. So it's fine but it's closer to drinking water than to having something that has nutrition in it like a milk. So if you're looking for a true milk substitute in a sense of calories, protein soy milk is much closer to that than any other non-dairy milk. Oat milk is a nice option just because of the texture is really good and it works well with a lot of different recipes. Rice milk is very thin, kind of more like almond milk, and of course rice is carbohydrate. And most people are getting plenty of carbohydrates on a plant-based diet because you should be having those whole grains, you should be having plenty of fruits and vegetables. So I think almond milk is fine, it's just not really the equivalent of milk in the sense of nutrition.

Host: Then let's talk about the nutrition aspect, and the Clean 15, the Dirty 12. How do you properly wash plant-based food to know that it's going to be okay, because there is insecticides and pesticides and all kinds of cides going on in our plants?

Jodi: Yeah, so everyone first of all, whether you're on a plant-based diet or not, everyone should be eating plenty of fruits and vegetables every day. That should be the cornerstone of any diet, despite whether you eat meat or not. So food safety is always important and you should definitely wash your produce well. If you can afford it, consistently buying organic produce definitely helps as far as what is being used as we're growing the food. Recent issues we've had with food-borne outbreaks on lettuce, a lot of that has to do with where the lettuce is grown, and that it's grown by animals, and the runoff from animals and contaminates the plant food.

So your safest bet is just to be washing your produce when you bring it home. Even washing the outside of food you will cut that has a skin. So washing the outside of a watermelon before you cut it so that you don't bring any bacteria that may be on the outside of the skin of the watermelon into the inside where you eat it. At the end of the day, fruits and vegetables are still probably a lot safer than the concerns you might have over cooking beef or pork or chicken all the way so that you don't get sick from that food. In general, our food supply is really safe. Just use good judgment. You wash your hands as well when you're handling your food, you clean your counters, you don't cross-contaminate using your cutting boards, and generally people are going to be okay.

Host: Does cooking plants make them lose their nutritional content? I think that's a question so many people have because there's canned spinach, and there's canned corn, or frozen corn, or frozen spinach, or fresh corn and fresh spinach. Tell us about the difference between canned, frozen, fresh, and does cooking these products take away some of their nutrient value?

Jodi: Yeah, so definitely fresh is always the best way to go. But if it's going to be sitting out for a long time in a store or sitting out for a long time in your home, exposure to oxygen and light over time definitely degrades the nutritional value of our plant foods. Also of course, their taste. So anything we're buying fresh, we want to eat within a reasonable amount of time, but fresh is a great way to go. After that, I would say frozen because frozen foods are basically picked then frozen, so their nutritional content is really good, and because we're all really busy and we need options, of course we want to keep some frozen foods that we can just use in a pinch. So having frozen spinach on hand if I am making a smoothie, I love to use frozen spinach because it makes it nice and icy, I don't need to add ice, I'm using frozen spinach, maybe some frozen fruit, and that works really well.

Canned would definitely be, I would say, in last place as far as it's going to have to have some kind of- generally sodium content something to keep it from drying out, keep it food safe, so then you have that concern. Some people may be concerned about any plastics like BPA that are used in the canning process now, so there may be a little bit of concern about that. So I think at the end of the day, it's still nice to have a can of green beans on hand in case you just need to throw something together real quick, that you have an option, but the nutritional value is going to be strongest in a fresh or frozen produce. And then as far as cooking, so what's interesting is that some of our foods are actually enhanced by cooking.

So when we're trying to get certain types of antioxidants from some of our foods like tomatoes, we actually get a stronger amount of what's called lycopene when we cook tomatoes, like when we have them in a tomato sauce. So the main thing is that we just want to get a variety of different foods in a variety of different states; raw, cooked, steamed, roasted. It really just comes down to variety. If you're getting a variety of things, you're really getting exposure to all the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, nutrients that are in the plant foods that we eat.

Host: Before we wrap up, tell the listeners your favorite green smoothie. How do you make a good smoothie?

Jodi: I think what I tell people is you really want to make sure you're always including vegetables with their smoothie, so that's really important. Sometimes we love that delicious fruity flavor, so it's easy to get too much fruit in a smoothie. So I do like to encourage people to add some vegetable, and only use like one to two servings of fruit. But I really do like spinach and kale, or either / or with some apple and ginger. And then I tend to use either some plain Greek yogurt, or some soy milk, and blend that up. And I think that is my favorite smoothie. Maybe a little banana. Banana tastes good in everything.

Host: It really does.

Jodi: Pineapple also is a nice touch, but apple and greens always goes really well, especially with gender.

Host: See, that's great information. Now give us your best advice, starting a plant-based diet, how important it can be to really help stave off some of the diseases and chronic conditions that we're seeing so much of today, and how you think people can really get a start on it, and that it's not that difficult to live like that.

Jodi: Yeah. I think the main thing is just to give it a try. Everyone's probably having some fruits and vegetables each day, and if you're not, just pick one that you enjoy, and try to see if you can have it consistently. We know that nationally people do not meet their fruit and vegetable needs each day, and over the long term of course that can lead to disease, but it's also just not good in the short term for our planning and how we're going to deal with environmental changes going on. So when we can choose one meal a week that we can switch from including meat to not including meat, that's a great start. If you're already doing that, consider if you can do it a whole day. Or if you're making a vegetarian meal, see if you can make it a vegan meal, see if you can take out the dairy or the eggs completely and use something like nuts instead.

But it's very important to just start simple, start with things that are familiar to you, that you cook regularly so that it's not like you're eating a whole new type of food, and just take it step by step. Explore the supermarket, see what stuff is in season. That might tempt you to try a new fruit or veggie. They're always going to taste better that way, so that might encourage you along your road to more fruit and veggie intake.

Host: Thank you so much, Jodi, for being on with us today. Always fun to have you join us and give such great advice about ways to eat and start a plant-based diet. Thanks again. You're listening to It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. For more information please visit www.HenryMayo.com. That's www.HenryMayo.com. This is Melanie Cole, thanks so much for tuning in.