Healing with Food Newsletter

Prevent Obesity & Diabetes

Here's a secret to help you avoid excess carbohydrates...and therefore maintain your ideal weight and help prevent diabetes. Get ample protein. See also Foods that Help Prevent Diabetes.

When you don't get enough protein with a meal, you're not satisfied. Then odds are that later, with spoon-in-hand, you'll be tucking into a bowl of ice cream or breakfast cereal. These extra carbohydrates are stored as fat and directly correlated to diabetes and other degenerative disease. Contemporary diets are excessively high in carbohydrates.

As prevention, make sure you're getting good protein in every meal. Add some fresh vegetables and quality fats and then you won't overeat carbohydrates. It's that easy to eat balanced meals. My ebook, Detox and Cleanse ($9.95) contains enables you to acheive this.

High-protein foods are eggs, cheese, dried beans, fish, poultry and meat. For millennia, they've been humanities protein staples and a meal's defining feature. For example, a taco is more about its protein filling than is the garnish or the shell. You order a bean or beef taco, not a lettuce taco.There's good reason that protein is the defining ingredient in a meal.

So when making chicken fried rice, be generous with the chicken, add ample onions, celery and bok choy (or veggies of choice) and then moderately add rice. Lastly, note your increased level of satisfaction.

Additionally,  protein-rich foods help counter stress (as, according to Traditional Oriental Medicine, they strengthen our adrenal glands and kidneys).

A Protein Tease

While the foods below contain protein, don't count on them to meet your daily protein needs.They're more of a tease. Your experience substantiates this.  Recall a meal with ample, quality and freshly prepared protein and the feeling of comfort and satiaty it provides. Now compare that experience to the last time you "made do" with a few almonds or one of the following:

Protein drinks and energy bars -- While these highly refined, stale and fake foods do give a feeling of fullness, they provide little else. This includes meal replacements, energy drinks and protein beverages. For additional information please see my article on Energy Bars.

Nuts and nut butters  -- If, for protein, you nibble on almonds or smear a rice cracker with peanut butter, the odds are you're overeating carbohydrates. Nuts are typically richer in fats than protein and, as they're hard to digest, they're historically enjoyed as a condiment rather than as a protein staple.

Edame or other green legumes  -- When green and fresh, they're fiber-rich veggies, but they're short on protein. (Dried beans, peas and legumes are, however, excellent protein foods.)

Yogurt, milk and ice cream  -- Predominately carbohydrate, these foods are not protein substitutes. (A serving of hard or cottage cheese, does, however,  provide ample protein.)

May you be well nourished!

Rebecca Wood