Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! (13 page)

Phytonutrients, are like
Secret Service agents that protect and fight off diseases in plants. Therefore, when you eat phytonutrient-packed plants, those little kickboxers help you fight free radicals and disease, too. Phytonutrients give plants their characteristic colors and flavors. Because they have at least one extra electron, phytonutrients are the ultimate givers. There are literally thousands of phytonutrients. But like enzymes, they are also heat-sensitive and are best eaten raw. Some researchers have found that cooking may help release certain antioxidants like beta-carotene and lycopene from plants’ cells. But when you factor in the importance of retaining raw foods’ powerful enzymes (and consider that they still contain buttkicking levels of beta-carotene and lycopene in their raw form), it’s still ideal to consume a mostly raw diet. Keep it real, keep it raw! Folks who get lots of phytonutrients in their diet tend to live longer, healthier lives.

Here’s just a few of my fave phytos:

•
BETA-CAROTENE.
Found in orange-colored foods such carrots, sweet potatoes, and winter squash, beta-carotene is converted in your body into vitamin A. It’s also found in dark green leafy vegetables, but the orange hue is hidden by our good friend chlorophyll.

•
LYCOPENE.
Found in tomatoes, watermelon, pink grapefruit, and some other foods, lycopene may help prevent prostate cancer.

•
LUTEIN AND ZEAXANTHIN.
Found in orange, red, and yellow foods such as corn, these phytonutrients help protect your eyes against age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in older adults.

•
RESVERATROL.
Found in white, blue, and purple foods such as garlic, blueberries, grapes, and red wine, resveratrol is being studied for its life-extension possibilities. (Don’t get too excited and run to the liquor store, sassy. Wine is still acidic, though it’s a better choice than Red Bull and vodka!)

•
QUERCETIN.
Found in apples and onions, this may help prevent heart disease.

The problem isn’t that
we’re eating acidic foods; the problem is that we are eating more acidic foods than alkaline foods. In the Standard American Diet, the typical ratio of acidic to alkaline foods is about 80/20—that is, 80 percent of the diet is acidic foods, while only 20 percent comes from alkaline foods like fresh raw vegetables. And we wonder why we have such a huge health crisis in our country?

We need to flip the ratio. Ideally, you want to have between 60 to 80 percent of your foods coming from the alkaline side—and only 20 to 40 percent coming from the acidic. But keep in mind that not all acidic foods are created equal. In fact, we need some acidic foods in order to get proper nutrition. For example, some nuts, grains, and beans are slightly acidic, but they’re also protein powerhouses. Regularly including these gems in your diet is really important.

In his book
The Acid–Alkaline Diet for Optimum Health
, naturopath Christopher Vasey explains that the acids in plant foods are often referred to as weak acids. These acids include oxalic, pyruvic, citric, and acetylsalicylic. Animal proteins are called strong acids. These acids include, uric, sulfuric, and phosphoric. Neutralizing strong acids takes tons of energy and stresses your liver and kidneys. Since your kidneys can only eliminate a fixed amount of strong acids per day, the rest of the stuff is stored in your tissues. On the other hand, weak acids are easy-breezy to eliminate.

As Vasey suggests, there are no limits on the amount of weak acids that can be removed from your body by your cute kidneys. So as you can see, there is a huge difference between (slightly acidic) brown rice and (highly acidic) steak!

Even if you occasionally include a small amount of animal products in your diet, you’ll be in much better shape than if you continue to stuff your face with them two or three times every day. No matter what pill, potion, surgery, or treatment our doctors come up with, if we don’t participate in keeping our pH in balance, science and technology will forever remain a Band-Aid.

Remember, this is a direction, not a rigid absolute. Even though I have an exceptionally healthy diet, I still dip my vegan cupcake in a glass of champagne from time to time. The question is, how often? Regular bad habits deplete our core energy. Occasional compromises and tiny indulgences remind us that we’re human. As long as the majority of the time you are giving your body what it needs (remember the bank account analogy), then the minor detours—when appropriate—actually help keep us on track. For a list of additional reading and wisdom feast your eyes on the crazy sexy resources in the back of the book.

How do we know
if a food is alkaline or acid, and by how much? The most common method is to incinerate a sample of the food and analyze the mineral content of the ash. Not something you can do with a chemistry set from Toys “R” Us. At any rate, if the ash is high in alkaline minerals, the food will probably have an alkalizing effect. That’s the theory, anyway. Because lab results and experts often disagree, the many books and Web sites that give alkaline and acidic food charts also disagree. Usually the disagreement is minor. In some cases, though, it’s much bigger.

What I’ve done for this book is review all the reputable food pH sources I could find. I then applied my nutritional training to help me decide which sources were on the right track. Based on all that, I’ve come up with a mini sample alkaline/acid food list (see p. 35) to give you a basic idea of what foods to enjoy, moderate, or avoid altogether.

Whether a food is mildly alkalizing or mildly acidifying doesn’t really matter very much. There are definitely shades of gray. What’s far more important is for you to have a basic grasp of how all this works in order to make better choices.

So now that you know
just enough about acid/alkaline foods and pH to make you dangerous, let’s examine some of our favorite acid baths. Look at your plate, peek in your glass. What direction are you moving in? I don’t know about you, but I used to make crappy meal choices three times a day, every day! Check out what my daily menu used to be (see sidebar):

An acidic menu like this makes you snooze, sneeze, swell up, gain weight, and get sick. These scraps are loaded with saturated fat and processed sugar, and they’re desperately missing our pal fiber. In fact, every single food on this typical diet, with the exception of the broccoli (albeit dead), makes our bodies work triple time to counteract the cascade of chemical reactions coursing through us.