About Omega-3 and Omega-6: It's the #WFPB Paradigm, stupid...

The correct balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6 is hard to get, nutritionally, except if you are following the #WFPB program. This is just another way of realizing that #WFPB, or also the "plant strong" and "plant perfect" diets, as Rip Esselstyn likes to call them are not "diets" per se, but more variations within a new nutritional paradigm.

The point was driven home to me rather forcefully again the other day, when I ended up facilitating an exchange between T. Colin Campbell and a biochemist friend. The said biochemist is a researcher who knows a lot about different nutrients, and often from first hand research. He is also a great critical thinker. Among other things, he made me aware of the ignominious start of the Harvard nutrition program under Frederick Stare, one of the seriously compromised researchers in the health field, who essentially was a paid promoter for the Standard American Diet, which we now know is making people sick. Nevertheless, on this occasion he was limited by the paradigm he spoke from, i.e. the Standard American Diet, and various diets that are variations on it.

The standard advice to vegans is to get some vegan EPA/DHA supplements, but it turns out that if you eat a reasonably balanced Whole Foods Plant-Based diet, you end up with Omega-3 and 6 in the proper balance almost automatically. Understanding this underscores again the fact that #WFPB is a nutritionally complete paradigm, with almost the sole exception being some B12, and maybe some D3 in winter.

Here it is in the words of Colin Campbell (in private correspondence):

quote
When one consumes a truly whole food plant based diet, without added oil (it is the added oil not the high fat plant foods), the ratio will be around a very healthy 1:1, to 3:1 (omega 6 to omega 3). The problem with people speaking about this ratio out of context is that they are grossly omitting the myriad effects of other dietary component and, worse, the underlying biochemistry. 

unquote

In short, don't mess with success. If you're doing #WFPB, things take care of themselves nutritionally, it is within the SAD and its dietary variants where one is constantly at risk of not getting sufficient intake of one nutrient or another.

The Paradigm Shift

I remember growing up, when my parents became vegetarians, my mother was always concerned about:  but how are you going to get your proteins. And her cooking pattern for two decades largely was potatos, vegetables, and something in the place of meat. That last piece would be the protein source. There was zero knowledge or awareness that vegetables and grains have proteins, let alone enough proteins, but the truth is that spinach is 51% protein, and the lowly potato or brown rice each have about 9% protein. Plus, of course, we know now, since the China Study, that we want to beware against over consuming protein. The ideal range is 5-10% and not the more typical 15-25% which we see in SAD. More importantly, we want our proteins from plant sources, not animal sources.

What really is scary about this paradigm shift, is how long it has remained a secret, or, in the words of T. Colin Campbell:
quote
The research in "The China Study" was handsomely funded by NIH (a very competitive process, 70 grant years of funding), was published in the very best nutrition and cancer journals and I have since presented this material to well over 150 medical schools and their conferences (over 700 total invited presentations since the book was published).
unquote
It is now forty years since Campbell began publishing papers, followed by the first edition of the book in 2005. Still, this information is not well known, although that is rapidly changing.





What is hard to fathom for many is that suddenly maximizing protein intake is no longer a virtue and, if you maximize anything, it is fiber. The other thing that is hard to understand is the no-added oil precept. We hear too much about supposedly healthy oils, that may be healthier compared to the worst, but the body still does not need them. As Dr. Ostfeld from Montefiore Hospital likes to put it, added oils are like inviting Mike Tyson to practice on your veins. For six hours after an oily meal, your veins loose their oompf. Along with that, adding oils the balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6 is upset, and you don't want that.

Sources of Omega-3 fatty acid for vegans

You can find ample articles online that document good sources of Omega-3 and/or how to achieve a balanced Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio. Most of it is geared to the wrong paradigm for veganism, and not to the #WFPB diet, or plant strong or plant-perfect. Often times articles point to supplements, but if you follow what Colin Campbell says above, you need not worry. Good sources of Omega-3 for vegans are Chia seeds, Flax seeds, and various vegetables. One that is especially good is Verdolaga, a.k.a. Purslane. 

https://worldcrops.org/crops/verdolaga

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_oleracea

http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/4236/real-food-right-now-and-how-to-cook-it-purslane

Purslane from Wikipedia

I recently discovered that Verdolaga grows between corn, and it was available at our Parkchester Green  Market, along with some of the sweetest corn I've tasted in years.


Simple recipe, based on the one listed on Gracelinks above: 

Potato salad with Purslane

• essentially follow their (Gracelinks') steps, except:
• If you can't get fresh dill, use dried, and reconstitute it with some lime juice and lemon juice. That will do the job very quickly.
• if you do the above, you barely need and dressing for this salad other than the lime/lemon juice. But if you need more dressing, obviously you make it oil-free. 
• That's really all, and itś finger-licking good. 

For the Potato salad, I used the leaves, with the stems I made a sauce, with onions, garlic pimentos, some turmeric, and a cup of vegetable bouillon and a bit of arrowroot to thicken it. Et voilà, that made a great sauce over a plate of long beans over rice.

You can also add the leaves to salad, and the next project will be to cook a split pea soup with the remainder of the purslane. 
 

The Year of the Pulses 2016 - United Nations

The United Nations declared 2016 the International Year of the Pulses. As luck would have it, I live in little Bangladesh, on Starling Avenue in the Bronx, and there are some ten stores on my street alone that sell any number of pulses: endless varieties of lentils (red lentils, whole lentils, Urad Dal, Masoor Matki-crimson lentils), green peas, yellow split peas, chick peas, and on and on and on.

In supermarkets around there are many more varieties from Spanish Cuisine, the entire Goya Foods line, either dried, or in cans, and there are even some interesting organic entries here and there, some you can find at Chang-Li supermarket (they stock Braggs Apple Cider and Liquid Amino's) on Benedict avenue, and Pioneer Supermarket on Castle Hill has a small, but growing section of organic produce and some organic dry goods, including excellent organic black beans from a brand called Wild Harvest.

In short, I am in Pulse heaven, and gradually I am learning more and more recipes, and ever since I decided to go 100% vegan a year and half ago, I am having more fun with food than I ever did in my life before.

One recent favorite recipe came from the Whole Foods website,
for Yellow Split Pea and Sweet Potato Soup:

Yellow Split Pea and Sweet Potato Soup

• 1 large onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
• 2 cups dried yellow split peas
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1/2 cup toasted pumpkin seeds
• vegetable bouillon, tamari, or liquid aminos to taste 

Method: 

Heat a large pot over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook, stirring, about 5 minutes or until translucent, adding little water if necessary to prevent sticking. Stir in ginger and cook 1 minute, stirring. Add 8 1/2 cups water, peas and sweet potato and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover and simmer for 1 hour.

Uncover and continue to simmer 15 minutes. Carefully purée soup with a hand held immersion blender or in batches in a blender until smooth and creamy. Garnish with pumpkin seeds.

My personal variation is that I spray the pumpkin seeds (available at Chang Li), with Bragg's Liquid Aminos after toasting them on an oven tray. That just gives them a little extra flavor. You can just snack on them, or use them as suggested here, to spice up certain dishes.

The recipe is simplicity itself, and my routine has become to cook large pans of soup, and freeze two or three portions, so that I always have soup in stock in case I have limited time for cooking. A quick soup and a salad will tide you over.

Veganism is spreading

Lately it seems that veganism is spreading with amazing speed, both the no-oil vegan cuisine promoted by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, also known as the Plant Perfect Diet, and the low fat Engine2 Diet promote by his son, Rip Esselstyn, aka the Plant Strong Diet, and then there is always the hybrid program,  Forks Over Knives, based on the movie.

The number of stories is growing, and in many cases people are successfully eliminating a whole list of medications from their lives, and instead of spending the rest of their lives worrying about the side effects of their medications, not to mention drug interactions, eating healthy is becoming more wide spread.

Of Cauliflower and Curry Sauce, Black Rice and Roasted Mushrooms

Cauliflower is plentiful just now, and with the many Bangladeshi markets in my area, good curry is not hard to find... not to mention one nearby building is nicknamed (among Bangladeshis) the curry palace, because it has such an overwhelmingly Bangladeshi community. Steamed cauliflower with curry sauce is an old favorite, that I had not made for many years, but with the new vegan regime, I suddenly got interested again.

Black Rice is great stuff, it tastes terrific, and it has high nutritional value. It also makes for an interesting contrast with the white of the cauliflower, and I like this particular combination better than cauliflower with brown rice (white rice of course is a no, no). I cook it in my trusty old Zojirushi rice cooker like brown rice, on the GABA Brown Rice cycle. Black Rice is easy to find in my area. The Chang-Li supermarket usually stocks at least two varieties, a Chinese one, and my favorite from a company named Heartland:

Heartland Products at Chang-Li in the Indian section

From the same company comes also a lovely black quinoa, which I love also. 

According to the Wikipedia article cited above, black rice contains iron, vitamin E, and more antioxidants than Blueberries. What more do you want? But the Wikipedia article continues: Black rice contains essential amino acid like lysine, Tryptophan; vitamins such as vitamin B1, vitamin B2, folic acid; and is a good source of minerals including iron, zinc, calcium and phosphorus. And, like I mentioned above it creates an interesting picture on your plate with the cauliflower.

The Recipe

If you don't have a steamer, Chang-Li has classic bamboo steamers. So, steaming the cauliflower is easy. Rice I usually make ahead for a few days, then comes the critical piece, the curry sauce, based on a recipe from Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-based Cure (page 163). Esselstyn's book is the Bible of the "plant perfect," a.k.a. "no-oil vegan,"  diet. My principal difference with the Esselstyn recipe is that I don't want to be too stingy on the curry, so for his 1-2 teaspoons, I substituted 1-2 tablespoons, and I use heaping tablespoons to boot, but the amount will vary with the type of curry you are using.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup brown rice
• 2 cups water
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1-2 tablespoons white miso
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1-2 heaping tablespoons curry powder
• 1 teaspoon of arrowroot, dissolved in water. (Added last)

Preparation:

1. Blend the rice and water together in a blender, food processor, Nutribullet, Vitamix, etc. to liquify the rice.
2. Add the nutritional yeast, white miso, garlic powder and curry powder, blend together.
3. Bring to a boil over low flame, stirring continuously.
4. Turn off the heat and add the dissolved arrowroot to thicken.

This is the best curry sauce recipe I have ever found, and it makes a nice, thick sauce if you get the arrowroot right.
It could not be easier: pour a liberal helping of this curry sauce on your cauliflower on the plates. Serve with roasted mushrooms (with rosemary), or a Seitan or Kao-Fu stew, or some bean dish to complement the proteins in the rice.

For the record, Arrowroot can always be found at Chang-Li too in the West Indian section, and they also have some excellent organic miso, both white and red.
Around here the nutritional yeast can be found at Good n Natural, at 2173 White Plains Road.

The more I get into this, the more fun I have with all the new recipes.