Excerpts
Healthy Eating for Life for Women

From Chapter 1
Age-Proofing from the Inside

Luckily, your body is extremely efficient at defending its precious resources—as long as it has the right ammunition. The area in need of the most focused protection is your cell membrane—the scaffolding material that gives each of your cells the strength to stand tall and strong. When even one molecule in a cell membrane is damaged, a chain reaction can take place, killing the entire cell. As one cell after another dies, wrinkles and other signs of aging are inevitable. Cells with the best chance of surviving the ravages of time are the ones sufficiently packed with special protective nutrients. Found plentifully in vegetables, fruits, grains (bread, pasta, cereal, rice, oats, and corn), and legumes (beans, peas, and lentils), these nutrients pack a mighty punch. As we'll see, some of their natural biochemical defenses actually wedge themselves into protective positions inside your cell membranes, while others unfurl to guard the bloodstream. All of them are strengthened by certain foods you can bring into your routine.

From Chapter 2
Making Sense of Nutrition

Foods have always found their way into women's beauty treatments. Cool cucumbers to reduce puffiness around the eyes. Avocado extracts to comfort upset skin. Almond oil to smooth cuticles.

When we think about healing nutrients, we think of foods nourished with the earth's goodness. Chicken and beef don't quite conjure images of refreshment or renewal, do they? Well, scientists aiming to reverse heart disease or prevent cancer have soured on these products too, finding they do more harm than good. Most people have gotten the message that too much red meat can spell real trouble for the heart, waistline, and other organs. Unfortunately, many have turned to chicken and fish in their pursuit of better nutrition. These cuts are lighter—in color—but your body can hardly tell the difference. Virtually all nutritional authorities now recommend basing your diet—not on meat, fish, or poultry—but on grains, vegetables, and fruits, a recommendation strongly echoed by the government's U.S. Dietary Guidelines.

From Chapter 3
Diet and the Menstrual Cycle

The majority of girls in Western nations reach puberty at around 12½ years of age. Half of African-American girls are now showing signs of puberty by age eight. It wasn't always so. World Health Organization records show that, in 1850, the average age of menarche (the first menstrual period) was about 17. Over the last 150 years, it has slowly but steadily fallen. The reason for the decline appears to be gradual changes in our diets. Highly refined and processed foods have edged out vegetables and fruits. Meat and dairy products have taken center stage in many meals—even breakfast. Time and again, when various regions of the globe become Westernized, traditional foods made of whole grains, vegetables, and beans are abandoned in favor of cheeseburgers, chicken "strips," and greasy fries. In the process, dietary fat skyrockets and healthy fiber and vitamins are lost. As we will see, these diet changes increase the amount of sex hormones in a child's bloodstream and, with their hormones unnaturally elevated, girls and boys reach puberty earlier in life. Besides the emotional and societal challenges that early sexual maturity brings, it can have lasting effects on our health—especially for women.

From Chapter 4
Enhancing Fertility

Few women make dietary and lifestyle decisions with their reproductive health in mind. It's not usually until a woman wants to have a child that she starts learning more about the intricate workings of the reproductive system. Even then, nutrition rarely enters the picture. However, the time you start planning for a family is a great time to evaluate your diet. Surprisingly enough, certain foods tend to enhance fertility while others may inhibit it. As you improve your diet to encourage conception, you will also get a measure of protection against other reproductive diseases, including ovarian cancer. And you will likely protect your heart and trim your waistline at the same time. In fact, the foods you choose during pregnancy may even affect your child's health far into the future. Of tremendous benefit as well are the habits you will establish with your partner and for your future family. Nurtured in a household where healthy eating is an enjoyable experience, without anyone dieting or feeling bad about food, children will be more likely to carry good eating habits into their adult lives.

From Chapter 5
A Healthy, Drug-Free Menopause

An interesting study of menopause in traditional Mayan and Greek cultures was conducted by a medical anthropologist at the University of California. Mayan women, living in the southeastern part of Yucatan, Mexico, still work as traditional subsistence farmers and have not been influenced by Western customs or eating habits. They spend their whole lives eating nutritious, primarily vegetarian, foods such as corn, corn tortillas, beans, tomatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, radishes, and other vegetables. They consume very little meat and no dairy products. As we saw in chapter 3, this very-low-fat diet will reduce the amount of estrogen in their bodies. So while their meat- and dairy-eating counterparts in North America have much more fat in their diets, sparking the production of estrogen, Mayan women are adapted to lower estrogen levels throughout life. When menopause arrives—on average at age 42, several years earlier than in the United States—it simply means that menstruation ceases and fertility has ended. Like Japanese women, they have no word for "hot flash." These and other bothersome symptoms associated with menopause are rare, if nonexistent. How's that for affordable, easy health care? Their naturally very-low-fat diet balances hormone levels throughout life.

From Chapter 6
The Keys to Easy Weight-Loss

To lose weight and keep it off, you'll want to focus less on how much you eat, and more on what you eat. For most of us, weight on our hips or thighs does not come simply from excess calories. The cause is much more specific, as researchers at a Veterans Administration home in Los Angeles graphically proved. They inserted a tiny needle into the derrieres of a group of volunteers and carefully removed samples of body fat to send to the laboratory. Chemical analysis showed that their body fat did not come from bread, pasta, or potatoes, for the most part. The fat on their bodies mirrored the fats they had been eating. So men who had had plenty of chicken or beef in their diets ended up with remnants of animal fat, almost unchanged, in their own body fat. Those who were keen on olive oil or fried foods had the remains of vegetable fats stored in their behinds. In other words, your body uses the fat you eat to build your own fat layer.

From Chapter 7
Cancer Prevention

Eliminating animal products from your diet will dramatically cut the fat and remove all the cholesterol, making room for nutrients that restore and repair cells, slow the aging process, and prevent disease. Antioxidants and phytochemicals, which directly inhibit cancer formation, are concentrated in whole grains, vegetables, beans, and fruits. The antioxidant lycopene, found in tomatoes, watermelon, strawberries, and other bright red plant foods, is a potent cancer fighter. So bake your tomatoes and try them over polenta with black olives and fresh garlic instead of putting them on a hamburger, and you'll boost your cancer protection and also avoid dangerous heterocyclic amines, the cancer-causing toxins that form as meats are grilled.

From Chapter 8
Protecting Your Heart

Dr. Dean Ornish invited heart patients in the San Francisco Bay Area to come to a series of evening classes where they would learn how to make powerful lifestyle changes. They wouldn't just cut their cholesterol intake; they would learn how to virtually eliminate cholesterol from the foods they ate. They traded red meat, chicken, and fish for an entirely vegetarian menu. Roast beef was replaced with spaghetti marinara; creamy soups were swapped for minestrone, lentil, black bean, or split pea soup; and hamburgers became veggie burgers. If they smoked, they had to stop. They began a regimen of daily walks and learned how to cut stress.

One year later, everyone had an angiogram, a special X-ray that shows blockages in the arteries that nourish the heart. The positive results made medical history. A comparison group of patients who followed more typical medical advice showed that, as expected, their artery blockages continue to worsen, eventually leading to heart attacks. But, for patients who made the diet and lifestyle changes, artery blockages not only stopped getting worse; they were actually starting to go away—so much so that the research team found a measurable difference in 82 percent of the patients in the first year.

From Chapter 9
Using Foods against Arthritis

In 1981, the British Medical Journal reported the case of a woman who had suffered with rheumatoid arthritis for 25 years before discovering that her symptoms were caused by eating corn. When she carefully avoided corn products, her arthritis simply went away. Several weeks after this remarkable recovery, however, her pain and stiffness returned. It began to look as if her improvement was simply temporary—nothing more than a placebo effect of the diet change. But, as the journal report recounted, researchers then found out that her cook had started using cornstarch as a thickener. When it was removed from the diet, her symptoms again vanished.

From Chapter 10
Keeping Bones Strong

The largest study assessing the benefits of calcium for preventing osteoporosis revealed the futility of relying on dairy products to protect bones. The Harvard Nurses' Health Study followed 77,761 women, aged 34 to 59, over a 12-year period and found that those who drank three or more glasses of milk per day had no reduction at all in the risk of hip or arm fractures, compared to those who drank little or no milk. In fact, milk drinkers' fracture rates were slightly higher. Clearly, there are other factors at work here.

From Chapter 11
Free Yourself from Headaches

When headaches strike, most of us reach for a bottle of pain relievers. But, a powerful new approach lets you get to their cause. The key may not be in your medicine cabinet, but on your plate. For years, many migraine sufferers have suspected that certain foods—especially red wine, cheese, and chocolate—can trigger their headaches. Doctors remained skeptical until researchers at London's Hospital for Sick Children proved the food-headache link. They carefully eliminated suspected trigger foods from the diets of 88 children suffering from frequent migraines. In a matter of days, 78 of the children were cured, 4 were improved, and only 6 got no benefit from the menu change.

From Chapter 12
Urinary Tract Health

It sounds simple, and it is. Drinking more water is an important step in preventing kidney stones. It dilutes the urine and keeps calcium, oxalate, and uric acid from turning into solid crystals. If you are getting about two and one-half quarts (roughly 2.5 liters) of liquids each day, including water, juice, soup, or other varieties, your risk for getting a kidney stone is about one-third less than that of a person drinking half as much. If you are at risk, you will want to start the healthy habit of keeping fresh water with you at all times—at your desk while you work, in the cup holder as you drive, and at home in a filtering dispenser or in bottles—whichever way makes it more likely that you'll drink up. Purchasing a Thermos or other portable water bottle will add convenience. Clearer urine and more frequent urination are signs that you are on the right track.

The foods you choose are important as well. Studies have found that high potassium foods cut the risk of kidney stones in half.

From Chapter 13
Putting It All Together

Congratulations are in order as you turn to the recipe section of this book, putting what you have learned to work.

You'll see that unlike tricky diets that forbid carbohydrates, cost a lot of money, or require a lot of time, the perfect nutrition plan is really quite simple. That's not to say that those of you of who enjoy the culinary arts will not be able to create an elaborate and exquisite dinner party menu. You can indeed! And on busy days you'll also be able to get in and out of the kitchen in 15 minutes, creating wonderful meals packed with antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals.