Disease-proof your diet

“I’ve been saying this for years, that we’ve been digging our own graves with a knife and fork,” says leading nutritionist Patrick Holford.

“In March last year, in The Journal of the American Medical Association there was a very big study which concluded that at least half of the cause of heart disease and diabetes, and in cancer specifically, was sub-optimum nutrition.”

Patrick goes on to say that 99.9 per cent of our nutrition problem is down to evolution and the advances in modern life.

“Everything is push button and remote control and the rest of it, and we’ve stopped exercising at the same level [as our ancestors] and consequently we eat less and the foods we choose are not the right foods. So we’re literally digging our own graves with a knife and fork.”

While the above points can be unsettling, the good news is that research has also shown that when it comes to these diseases, there is a lot we can do to help ourselves. Patrick says that, sadly, we tend to overlook the impact that food has on our health and this is largely because the impact of what we eat “is not immediate.”

“You eat something, you enjoy it and keep eating it and then often become addicted in the sense that you develop a habit for sweet foods, alcohol, whatever it happens to be for example. And many years later, because a lot of these diseases are 20 years in the making, you’re diagnosed with diabetes or heart disease or cancer and of course you don’t put the two things together.”

Making any kind of a change to your diet can seem overwhelming but Patrick is keen to stress that it doesn’t have to be complicated – all you have to do is educate yourself a little and choose healthier foods.

“You can lower your blood pressure. You can cut your risk of heart disease. You can massively cut your risk for cancer. You can reverse diabetes Type 2 and also easily lose weight.”

PATRICK’S TOP TIPS FOR HEALTHIER EATING

GO LOW GL

“It’s terribly important to have what I call a low GL or low glycemic load diet which means cutting your blood sugar. And of course we can say, ‘Don’t have sugar,’ but there’s sugars in many foods that are classified as ‘no sugar’. To give you a simple example, if you drank a lot of fruit juice, it’s going to send your blood sugar up and high blood sugar is a major driver of both heart disease and diabetes and weight gain. So that’s one critical factor.”

EAT WHOLE FOODS

“In other words, foods you can pull out of a tree or out of the ground, whether it’s nuts or seeds, or berries or beans or wholegrains because there are many nutrients and minerals [in whole foods]. One example of which is magnesium. Another one is chromium. Magnesium lowers your blood pressure and chromium lowers your blood sugar. When you have white rice or white flour or white pasta, spaghetti, you actually have 99 per cent of the chromium removed in the refining process.”

EAT YOUR OMEGAS

“I’m focussing particularly here on omega-3 which is very rich in seafood and particularly oily fish. Well, really, it’s the cold water fish that eat fish and the reason is that they concentrate omega-3. The higher your omega-3 level, the lower your risk for cancer, heart disease and diabetes.”

ADD ANTIOXIDANTS

“Antioxidants are very important… From a diet point of view, the best way to get more antioxidants is to eat more brightly coloured foods, so I’m talking here about mustard, turmeric – very, very yellow. Broccoli, kale, asparagus – very, very green. Blueberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, beetroot – very, blue-purple. Butternut squash, carrots, sweet potato – very orange. So you get more antioxidants by having very brightly coloured foods. By the way, dark chocolate and red wine are also good.”

Patrick Holford is back in Ireland from April 28 to May 2 with his seminar Disease Proof Your Life. He will be speaking in Belfast, Dublin, Galway and Cork. For more information log on to www.patrickholford.com/events

ADD THIS TO YOUR DIET

What’s the one food Patrick would advise everyone to add to their diet?

“I would say Chia Seeds. They’re high in omega-3. They’re high in magnesium, which we’ve mentioned already and, also, they’re very high in soluble fibres which slow down the release of sugars in your foods. I’d really like to say chia seeds and oats because oats also are very high in soluble fibre. They stablise your blood sugar and that’s absolutely key. I mean, for example, to have oats in the morning, porridge hot or cold with some chia seeds and some berries? You’ve got the antioxidants. You’ve got the slow releasing sugars. You’ve got lots of vitamin C in the berries and you’ve got the omega-3 in the chia seeds so you’ve actually hit all the points that we’ve been talking about.”