Authors: Rip Esselstyn
W
e’ve all been hearing a lot about fish oil recently. This stuff can do everything! It’s the best thing since sliced bread! It’s better than vitamins and minerals! It keeps you heart healthy! It keeps your mind strong! It wards off Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and depression. And more!
But is fish oil really snake oil in disguise?
The active ingredients in fish oil are omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3s are essential to your body. And sure, fish oil contains a lot of omega-3s, but, like so many animal products, it also has a lot of other terrible stuff that’s bad for you—and bad for the environment.
The first problem with fish oil is that it’s made from juicing the discarded parts of fish. According to a 2009
New York Times
article, a lot of American fish oils come from menhaden, a member of the herring family that not only cleans the oceans through filter feeding, but is also the basis for the entire food chain in the Atlantic Ocean. Too bad for the sea: Menhaden are going the way of the dodo due to their usefulness to humans. (Besides health supplements, manufacturers use them for fertilizer, lipstick, salmon feed, and paint.)
Even if you can stomach the idea of swallowing a pill filled with a paint ingredient, you should still prepare yourself for some nasty side effects. The least harmful is the “fish burp” that is exactly what it sounds like. Raw fish oils tend to irritate the stomach, and can cause indigestion, nausea, diarrhea, and fish farts that will peel the paint off the walls of your home!
Menhaden-flavored gasses might be the least of your gastric worries, but that doesn’t make them any nicer. More expensive brands of
fish oil claim to be odorless and tasteless when you belch them back up, but even their fans admit that the pills give them gastric fish reminders throughout the day. Their friends notice it too: Oil pill poppers often have fishy breath and toots.
Worse, fish oil can thin your blood. It’s not a problem for everyone, but people who are already on blood thinners can get nosebleeds and blood in their urine, and even suffer strokes from bleeding in the brain. People who already have bleeding problems, such as ulcers, and those taking cocktails of medications are particularly at risk.
Toxic chemicals in the ocean bio-accumulate in fish oil the same way that toxicants in the air and ground accumulate in cow fat. Many pill heads don’t realize that even though they aren’t actually eating fish, they’re still ingesting all of the contaminants in the fish’s flesh. A 2010 study found that some fish oil pills contain high levels of toxicants such as PCBs because the fish they are made from absorb the carcinogens from the foods they eat. Of the estimated 200 brands of fish oil pills on the market, the Mateel Environmental Justice Foundation tested ten and found that all contained some levels of toxic chemicals, with three actually exceeding the government’s daily limit for carcinogen exposure.
So far, I’ve covered problems with fresh fish oil, but unless you are making your own pills, even freshness isn’t guaranteed. You won’t smell or taste anything funny, aside from the fish burps, but some fish oil pills also contain oxidative by-products. Translation: They’re rancid. Fish oil starts to go rancid, or to oxidate, as soon as it comes out of the fish. It continues breaking down inside the pill until you swallow it. Although many companies claim that their pills are good for years, the data show something different. Scientists link oxidative by-products to heart disease, so instead of helping your heart, rancid fish oil might actually hurt it in the long run.
As you can see, the risks of this animal product outweigh its benefits. Besides, you don’t need to eat fish or take fish oil in order to get omega-3s; you just have to know which plants offer it. The most accessible of these are nuts and seeds. Ground flaxseeds, chia seeds, and English walnuts all have plenty of the essential fatty acids. Beans and leafy greens are another excellent source. Kale, leeks, broccoli, lima beans, and soybeans all are convenient and easy to fit into meals. Seaweeds, such as the Japanese wakame and nori (the black stuff around the
outside of a sushi roll) as well as our American spirulina, also contain omega-3s but are harder to find—look for them in health food stores or Asian specialty shops.
The omega-3 all-star is flaxseed. Don’t be intimidated because you don’t know how to eat it; these little seeds have been considered a health food by just about every civilized culture since the ancient Egyptians—and they pack more omega-3s than any other plant source. Buy preground seeds or grind them yourself, then sprinkle them over your favorite foods by the teaspoonful. (Note: Grinding is a must; otherwise, the omega-3s aren’t as bio-available—they will just pass through your system.)
I put flaxseeds in my Rip’s Big Bowl cereal and homemade salad dressings, stir it into pasta sauces, bake it into bread, and sometimes just snack on the seeds, like Roman gladiators used to. Another omega-3 all-star that can be used just like ground flaxseed, but doesn’t have to be ground for bio-availability, is chia seeds—yes, those little seeds you can use to grow funny-looking creature pets with green hair, or you can eat to get omega-3 fats!
T
he other day I was talking to Lydia, a lovely woman who had just attended one of my presentations. Lydia is slightly overweight. She also mentioned that her cholesterol level was way too high, her HDL (her healthy cholesterol) was too low, and her LDL (her lethal cholesterol) was off the charts. Plus, she had just been diagnosed as prediabetic. And so she knew that she was the perfect candidate for going on a plant-based diet. She was jazzed and ready to take her health to the next level.
Except for one thing—Lydia was worried about the bathroom. Not the actual bathroom, that is. She was afraid that if she stopped eating meat and eggs, she’d be going to the toilet all the time.
The odd fact is that a lot of people worry that a plant-based diet will make them use the bathroom more. Listen to me! Damn straight it will! And that’s a good thing.
Here’s why: The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) reports that constipation is one of the most common gastrointestinal problems in the United States: More than four million people report frequent cases of it each year.
Although constipation is technically defined as having fewer than three bowel movements a week, everyone is different and there is no absolute number of number twos that people have to miss before they are considered constipated—and certainly not before they
feel
constipated.
If you are having fewer than normal bowel movements—and if, when you do have them, getting that crap out of your system feels like a lot of work—chances are that you are another of the millions of constipated people. Women and the elderly suffer from this problem more often than anyone else—or at least they report it more. Many other
millions are estimated to suffer from it too, but they are either overly embarrassed to talk about their condition with a doctor, or simply are so used to it that they don’t think this kind of pain is out of the ordinary.
So don’t worry—you’re not alone! People of all ages, races, and genders have trouble on the toilet seat. For many it is simply uncomfortable and embarrassing, but constipation can also lead to hemorrhoids, anal fissures (essentially tears in the skin around the anus), anal prolapse (where some of your intestinal lining leaks out of your body), and fecal impactions, in which so much waste builds up in your colon that you are unable to pass it. By that point a bit of embarrassment is not the first thing on your mind. Pain is.
In fact, a woman at one of my speeches told me she had been to the bathroom just
once
in the last month, and her poor mother, who hadn’t been to the bathroom in over a month, had just had surgery to remove impacted feces. That is really, really sad. Especially because it is so completely unnecessary!
The NIDDK estimates that Americans spend $725 million every year on laxatives. That’s like taking the GDP of the West African country Guinea-Bissau and flushing it down the toilet.
The number is even crazier considering that constipation isn’t actually a disease. It’s a symptom of a bad diet. What’s the number one cause of constipation in America? A diet containing too much fat, meat, eggs, dairy, and refined foods, and not enough fiber. There is zero fiber in meat and dairy products. Fiber can only be found in plants—nature’s laxative!
To understand how these foods affect your digestive system, let’s take a fantastic voyage down to the inner reaches of your colon. If you stretched yours out to its full length, it would reach about five feet. This long organ moves food from one end to the other through a process called peristalsis.
If you imagine squeezing the last of the toothpaste from the tube, you’ll have a fair idea of how peristalsis works. Along the way, the colon sucks water out of the food and turns it into waste, aka poop. If the colon is slow, or if it absorbs too much water, the waste gets dry and hard, making it difficult to pass. (Imagine trying to work a bowl of dry corn flakes out of your toothpaste tube.)
Meat is especially hard to digest. It contains zero fiber and the
protein-dense animal muscle in it requires your stomach to secrete more acid and your pancreas to secrete more enzymes just to get it through. Our digestive systems aren’t made for this kind of hard work. You might remember from
chapter 7
that carnivores have short, highly acidic digestive systems that move meat through quickly so it doesn’t putrefy. Your colon takes about eighteen to thirty-six hours to move food from one end to the other. That’s a lot of strain on your digestive system.
When it comes to digestion, the real benefit of plant foods is their bulk, water, and fiber. The real problem with animal foods is their lack of fiber. Fiber and water create bulky stools that push out on the colon and cause peristalsis, which means the colon then contracts, pushing the stool forward. That’s the pattern: expand, contract, move. Without the fiber and water to create bulk, stools are hard and small and don’t facilitate peristalsis—and so we must sit there pushing and squeezing to get them to move.
Of course, the easiest way to keep your waste soft and your colon happy is to eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains, which, as we’ve discussed, are the source of the magic ingredient fiber. The term “fiber” is just a catchall name for the parts of these plants that your body can’t digest.
There are two types of fiber, soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber gets its name because it dissolves in water. It’s found in plants such as oats, nuts, beans, barley, flax, carrots, apples, and oranges. In your lower intestine, it has a gel-like consistency that slides right through you. Nice! Insoluble fiber doesn’t dissolve and moves through you basically unchanged. It’s in leafy greens, root veggies, and whole-grain products.
The American Dietetic Association recommends that people eat around 20 to 35 grams of fiber a day. Guess how much most Americans eat? A measly 5 to 14 grams. Guess how much a plant-strong eating machine like me enjoys each day? A powerful 50 to 75 grams! In fact, the Rip’s Big Bowl recipe is loaded with 40 grams of protein and close to 40 grams of fiber! It’s a veritable fiber Whopper! And as you can imagine, I’m as regular as a Swiss commuter train. I can’t remember the last time I was logjammed. It’s a real joy to have quick, easy, and gratifying poops. No doubt about it.
Speaking of quick, my brother-in-law, who is also plant-strong, was remarking how his speedy dumps are a nuisance. He’ll take along a book
or magazine to read in the men’s library, but after 45 to 60 seconds—the time it takes him to complete a successful download—he’s wondering why he bothered to bring reading materials at all. The truth is that once you become plant powered, your dumps will take as long as your pees.
So I’ll tell you just what I told Lydia: Fiber will not give you diarrhea. Ever. One of the worst fiber myths is that it’s edible Liquid Plumr. In general, fiber will simply help normalize the whole elimination process. Don’t think of fiber as something that will make you go to the bathroom uncontrollably; think of it as something that will smooth out your digestion and keep food flowing the way it should, neither too fast nor too slow.
Go plant-strong. It will be a moving experience!
Y
ou may have tried some of the trendy, low-carb diets that have been making the rounds in recent years. Unfortunately, Atkins and other supposedly well-researched diets have reinforced the misconception that carbohydrates are somehow bad for you, and succeeded in making the vast majority of America carbophobic.
Stop being a carb scaredy-cat and start enjoying unrefined carbohydrates as part of a healthy and satisfying plant-strong diet! Carbohydrates are our number one energy source, so don’t even think about giving them up.
The problem is that the low-carb/high-protein diets give all carbohydrates—including whole grains, beans, vegetables, and even fruit—a bad name. I am in complete agreement with those in the high-protein camp who say refined carbohydrates are the worst: Soda pop, donuts, candy bars, fruit juice, white pasta, white rice, white bread, and fried chips all are filled with empty calories and have been stripped of their fiber, water, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients; they’re a dangerous black hole of empty calories and nothing but Trouble with a capital T.
But good carbs are a must in creating a healthy you. Let’s see why.
As I mentioned earlier, three macronutrients account for the calories in our diet: carbs, fat, and protein. Carbs are the largest and most important source. They help regulate our heart rate, our digestive system, and our breathing.
Here’s the deal:
Processed
and
refined
carbs, like the junk found in packaged foods and fast-food meals, can make you fat. These bad boys typically lack any fiber, nutrients, or much of anything useful and are very concentrated in calories. But folks like Dr. Atkins have spread the misconception that
all
carbohydrates are alike.