CrossFit South Bay | Hermosa Beach, CA

Veggies are important: "Six times a day" (in Danish). I offered the store manager up to 300 kroner for this poster (~$40) over a couple months - he wouldn't budge.

While reading many of your food logs these last couple weeks, I have pondered which of your nutrition gaps to make the biggest deal out of, and it was a really easy choice (alcohol came in a close 2nd): Vitamins & Minerals. And when I say “vitamins and minerals” I do not mean a daily multivitamin tab. No. When I say “vitamins and minerals” I mean vegetables.

“This is a big post for just vegetables,” you’re probably thinking. You have underestimated your green friends. You should look at it this way: this is free information that is saving you probably thousands in future health care costs

From now on, when you see the word “vegetables” I want you to think “vitamins and minerals”. Vegitaminerals if you like. If the Paleo Challengers’ diets could use some ‘vegitamineral’ help, then it’s probably not a big leap to guess that the rest of you could really benefit from this topic.

VARIETY OF VEGETABLES = YOUR MULTIVITAMIN

Next, I want you to add a corollary to this.

VARIETY OF VEGETABLES = BEST SOURCE OF CARBOHYDRATE

You guessed it:

VARIETY OF VEGETABLES = YOUR MULTIVITAMIN = BEST SOURCE OF CARBOHYDRATE

I want you to read on to understand three things:

1. You have a daily checklist of amounts of vitamins and minerals that your body requires to function and deficiencies in them correlate with chronic disease
2. Why other sources of carbohydrate are not only nutrient-inferior but also metabolically inferior, and when/how/much other sources are appropriate (hint: too much high glycemic-load fruits/starchy vegetables = insulin spike)
3. Where you should obtain these vitamins and minerals (hint: large quantities of a variety of/colorful range of vegetables)

1. Your body’s daily checklist of vitamins & minerals is not an optional checklist

Vitamins and minerals are also known in nutrition as ‘micronutrients’. These basic micronutrients are perhaps the most well-understood part of nutrition science, yet most Americans are malnourished from a micronutrient perspective and overnourished from a macronutrient (total calories) perspective as a result of the source of macronutrients in the Standard American Diet (SAD): refined (non-vegetable) carbohydrate, grains, dairy, bad fats.

Scroll down to the list of vitamins/minerals on the Wikipedia link and view their major roles in our bodies to get a glimpse of how crucial they are:

• Summary of vitamin roles: Act as co-enzymes: work in conjunction with enzyme to make reactions occur; Aid metabolism; Facilitate cell reproduction and growth; Facilitate DNA synthesis
• Summary of mineral roles: Maintain skeletal structure (calcium, phosphorus, magnesium); Maintain fluid balance (sodium, potassium, chloride); Act as co-enzyme (iron, zinc, copper, calcium)

The 10 Sacred Words

Deficits in some of these micronutrients are easily rectified with food (vitamin C is an example), while for others it takes time to replenish your body’s stores (the mineral calcium is an example with chronic deficits resulting in osteoporosis).  Chronic nutrient-poor diets like SAD are strongly correlated with the top diet-related killers of Americans: heart disease (#1), cancer (#2), diabetes (#6). Chronic deficiencies in some micronutrients affect plenty of other diseases that aren’t as lethal but affect fertility, injury and mobility, and quality of life.

A large amount of a variety of vegetables (and some fruit) along with the rest of the sacred words (see picture) on a daily basis will pretty much guarantee that you are covering that checklist. Why do I emphasize “a large amount of a variety of vegetables”? Because:

• “Large amount” because it’s probably a lot more than the average American is used to.
• “A variety” because each vegetable has a different micronutrient profile. For some of these nutrients, other nutrients are required to be present for them to be absorbed. For some of these nutrients, the presence of some may inhibit the absorption of others. This is only part of the reason why a multivitamin pill in place of real food will not meet your vitamins/mineral needs, especially as an athlete.
• It just so happens that if you eat a variety of vegetables with a variety of meat (and your other 8 sacred) you are pretty much guaranteed to cover that checklist. The more colors, the more likely the range of vitamins and minerals.

Why do I say “pretty much”? Because:

• There’s a good chance you’re not aware of what how much and how varied what you’re really eating is. A good check would be to do a 1-week food log analysis (Many of you have done one by now).
• You cannot get all your vitamins and minerals from vegetables; some your require from the other sacred 9.
• Input your quantities of cooked/raw foods into a free tool like Fit Day that will give you an approximation of the major micronutrients and see what it spits out. It’s also a good way to check whether you’re getting enough protein and fat (see past posts for recs!).

2) Why other sources of carbohydrate are inferior

We are all in the business of optimizing. You do CrossFit to optimize your time getting fitter. You want to eat the best sources of fuel to optimize your calories to get fitter as well.

You should look at your fuel intake each day partly as an opportunity to make the most out of your workout: to be fueled to work as hard as you can, to be fueled to recover and build muscle, to be fueled to be metabolizing fat for energy all of the time.

The hyperinsulinemia iceberg metaphor

Vegetables, particularly a variety of the dark leafy green ones that you should be eating every day in large quantities, when eaten, result in a very low glycemic load (GL). Almost all carbohydrate is broken down into glucose in your digestion. That ‘load’ refers to the load of glucose that enters your blood stream as a direct result of how easily a particular source of carbohydrate is turned into glucose. A more readily broken down carbohydrate source results in higher glucose levels and the release of insulin. Chronically elevated insulin levels — hyperinsulinemia — results in decreased insulin sensitivity (and a variety of inflammation in various systems) which cascades to a whole lot of very bad results (check out the illustration of the iceberg by Dr. Eades; cancer, Alzheimer’s and plenty other chronic inflammation-related diseases may well be atop that iceberg, too).

When you eat lots of vegetables, the glycemic load (GL) and therefore insulin response is much lower. You can think of regularly eating

Get off the crack (refined carbohydrate)

low-GL foods as ‘conditioning’ your body to be re-sensitized to insulin (while also getting the vitamin and mineral benefits, some of which may be multiplicative in fighting/preventing disease). This is the #1 strategy for saving the lives and quality of life of people with type-2 diabetic, pre-diabetes, cardiovascular disease, overweight, hypertriglyceridemia (high triglycerides), and high blood pressure. Insulin control is the main mechanism, and increasing vegetable intake is usually the best means (even without decreasing other crap in the diet!… even better is getting rid of the other crap though).

It’s not just the already or the almost diseased that benefit from this strategy. The effects of hyperinsulinemia are cumulative and its results (the tips of the iceberg in the illustration) are easily associated with a diet high in high GL foods (worsened by combining that with ‘bad’ dietary fats). Before you joined the Paleo Challenge, or for some of you who didn’t, you may be creating a state of chronically high insulin levels through what you eat. Not only that, but Standard American Diet tends to create a net acid load in your body which will leach important minerals from your body through usually excrement. And then add to that all of what you sweat out and use up in CrossFit — yep, you use up/sweat out more important vitamins and minerals in exercise that if you didn’t exercise.

Swapping out the high glycemic-load, nutrient-poor foods (sugars, grains, breads, pastas, dairy, too much starchy vegetables) with plenty of low GL, nutrient-dense foods gets you a bigger nutrient bang for your calorie buck and keeps you disease-free.

3) Where to get your ‘vegitaminerals’

A common European vegetable street vendor -- when are we going to catch on?

You should have one of these (1-2+ cups minimum — go wild) at almost every meal (variety is key!) because of how jam-packed they are with micronutrients:

• Kale, collards, broccoli, asparagus, bok choy, chards, spinach should be in regular rotation. Note: while lettuce is better than no lettuce, the dark leafy greens in this list far, far oustrip lettuce (romaine, butter, Bibb, iceberg, ‘mixed greens’, etc) in terms of nutrient density. Hence, they do not make this list. Also, spinach and chards have oxalates which bind calcium making it un-absorbable, so rotate those in a little less often.

While these are less jam-packed with micronutrients they contain truly amazing (in terms of health properties) contents such as phytochemicals and antioxidants and you can also go wild on these:

• Onions, mushrooms, bell pepper, egg plant, tomatoes, escarole, leeks, lettuces, celery, watercress

Supplementing your dark, leafy greens should be a bright-colored vegetable. These have varying, higher glycemic-loads than the ones above. These should be eaten post-workout whenever possible.

• Sweet potatoes, squashes/gourds (zucchini has a smaller GL than other squashes), beets, carrots, parsnips/other root vegetables, turnips.

Herbs and spices are truly your key to success if you have a discerning palate. The list of these would keep you scrolling for quite a while. Know that you can eat any of them for the most part, and fresh ones are usually higher in nutrients and have all kinds of special uses, phytochemicals and antioxidants which tip the scales of health in your favor.

Where are the beans?

If you’re not closely acquainted with the paleo way of eating, this is still a fair question. If you were to go out into nature and pick them (see post on the easy-to-follow killing/picking rule of thumb), you would have a hell of a time trying to make them edible. The USDA food pyramid tells us it’s a protein source lumped in with meat (see my FAQ take on the USDA recommendations). Beans are not in the vegetable category and they are very much a sub-optimal carbohydrate source for fuel because (and grains share some of these characteristics, by the way):

• Relatively poor source of vitamins & minerals
• Glycemic Load: Even small portions raise blood glucose level dramatically and for a relatively long time.
• Anti-nutrients: contain components (e.g. lectins) that chelate minerals from the body, interfere with hormones, and cause negative autoimmune responses.
• Net acid load effect: Help create a net acid load on the kidneys resulting in calcium excretion (green beans are an exception to this negative effect)

Other tips:

• Lightly steam (greens should still be pretty bright green, not olive or brownish-green by the time you eat them); don’t boil (this preserves vitamins, flavanoids, phytochemicals); if you have to boil, keep the water and add to a soup, or when making soup with a long cook-time, add the leafy greens in toward the end.
• Recent BPA (bis-phenol-a = toxin associated with reproductive abnormalities, a heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, and heart disease) residue findings for many major brands of canned food. Go for fresh, or glass jarred, not canned food whenever possible.

Nutrient content

High to low (though #2 and 3 may be tough to tell):

1. Local, freshly picked (You grow it > Farmers Market > Grocery Store)
2. In-season non-local
3. Frozen – US “Fancy” eaten within a few weeks
4. Off-season non-local
5. Frozen “US No. 1 or 2″ (low grade – low quality, picked underripe/less nutrients/lower quality)

Some vegetables won’t work for everyone. Some of you might find that some things irritate your stomach, so you’ll want to try them cooked or mixed with other vegetables or meats. Check out the other recipes in the other nutrition posts, as well as the CFSB Paleo Challenge page and the Nutrition Resources for recipes, farmers markets, stores, and other tips/ideas. Attend the next CFSB Nutrition 101 on 2/13!

Recipe: Veggie Quiche

Baked veggie quiche (extra yellow from turmeric!)

Recipe for the week is a veggie quiche. Quiches should be a mainstay in your breakfast line-ups. Outside of making this recipe, a really easy way to make this happen is to chop extra vegetables, or make a little extra meat when you’re making your vegitamineral-packed dinner. Then take that extra when it’s cooled, add it to about 15 whisked eggs, pour it into a greased (coconut or olive oil) casserole dish and bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes and you’ve got breakfast for yourself for ~3 days.

In a large pan, sautee onion and mushroom in olive oil on med-low until tender, add collards, cilantro, garlic, and spices with 1/4c water, cover and simmer until leafy greens are tender (~5 min), stirring occasionally. Uncover, let steam evaporate. Cool the mixture to room temperature. If you wanted to add meat to your quiche, cook it thoroughly and then add the veggies, or cook separately and add. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a casserole dish (all sides with olive oil/coconut oil). Whisk 12-18 eggs, add veggie mixture, distribute veggies evenly and pour into casserole dish. Bake for 25 mins or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

2T olive oil
1 onion (or 1 bunch chives/green onions)
1 carton mushrooms
1 bunch collards (or kale or broccoli or bok choy will do)
Any other veggies you like: zucchini, egg plant etc (for every 2 c additional vegetables, increase the spice amounts by ~25%)
4-8 cloves garlic (preference)
1/2 small bunch cilantro leaves (if you don’t like cilantro, use parsley)
1/4 t cayenne (if you like spice)
1T dill
1/2 T cumin
1/2 T oregano

WOD 2/3/2010

Jerk 2-2-2 85%

“Grindy”
10 Clean and Jerks (135/85)
5 Rounds of Cindy
10 Clean and Jerks
5 rounds of Cindy
10 Clean and Jerks

Optional:
Muscle snatch 1-1-1-1-1
Clean Pull 3-3-3 110% of clean
500M Row Max Effort x 2