Welcome to the final instalment of the Feed Your Brain series. Hopefully you are starting to notice a trend in terms of some of the healthiest and most nutrient dense foods available. For this reason, the first part of today’s article will briefly cover the final key nutrient that is important to include for a healthy brain. The second part will be dedicated to those things we should be mindful of avoiding, as they can significantly impair all the good work we have done so far.
Enjoy and for the earlier instalments go to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
5) B vitamins – Overall, B vitamins are essential for energy-production, and since they are water soluble, we need a consistent daily intake. There are a few B vitamins that are extra important for the brain and these are Folate, Vitamin B3 (Niacin) and Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine). Beans, greens, liver and brewer’s yeast are amongst the best sources of Folate; seafood, meat and poultry amongst the richest for Niacin, whilst vegan sources may include brown rice, rice bran, peanuts and sunflower seeds; for Vitamin B6, organ meats, whole grains (especially wheat germ), fish, poultry and beans are brilliant.
6) Finally, what to avoid – Just as important as supplying our brain with the raw materials it needs to function effectively, is the consideration of what is best to avoid. After all, we don’t want to be undoing all of our good work so far.
Keeping in mind the basic make-up of the brain, and the importance of maintaining its structural fluidity, it is highly important to avoid substances that would compromise this vital feature. Amongst the most damaging in this respect are saturated fatty acids, sugar and salt.
Saturated fats are known to affect the synthesis of those highly important unsaturated fatty acids, interfering with their effective incorporation into the brain. Avoid any animal sources of fat (fat on meat, skin on chicken, dairy fat), as well as commercial take-away and processed foods, to drastically reduce your saturated fat intake.
Coconut and palm oils are two vegetable sources of saturated fats to look out for and to be mindful of. Palm oil is used a lot in packaged and processed foods to give them an ideal texture at room temperature. Start to read labels for insight into just what you are ingesting, or better still, avoid, as much as possible, packaged foods.
The avoidance of packaged and processed foods will also go a massive way to drastically reducing your intake of sugar and salt. These ingredients are used extensively in food processing in order to offer us, the consumer, the shelf-life, taste and textures we demand.
Obviously the more salt and sugar in a manufacturer’s product, the more seductive to our modern day “trained tastebuds” they will be, and the more likely we are to choose one brand over another. Start to compare different brands of the same product to gain insight into the, at times, drastically different levels of these two anti-nutrients in “identical” products. You will be amazed.
A simple way to help your brain is to simply not add any sugar or salt to things you may currently add them to. “Train your tastebuds” to respond to increasingly lower amounts of sugar, fat and salt, and get them accustomed to the “natural” levels in “natural” foods.
Cut down the sugar you put in your tea or coffee, or over your cereal, gradually. Remove the salt shaker from the table and instead use pepper and experiment with generating flavour using herbs and spices. I have not had a “salt shaker” in I cannot tell you how long. The pepper grinder gets a good daily workout though, as does my Mexican Chilli Powder. I love experimenting with new fresh herbs in my salads each week, taking home whatever captures my attention at the Farmers Markets.
Avoiding processed foods means you will definitely be choosing more nutrient dense foods. All processed foods, even the seemingly “healthy” varieties, undergo large losses of their original vitamin and mineral content. For example, white flour contains less than a quarter of the zinc, magnesium, vitamin B6 and vitamin E found in wholegrain flour.
Manufactures then usually add back these lost nutrients, so they can claim their nutritional benefits, however these are in “artificial” forms. Playing around with nature is just not cool as its intelligence is much greater than we could ever pretend to grasp. I could go on forever, however, at the end of the day, the goal is to simply do your best.
By being more aware of what is good, and not so good for your brain and mind, hopefully it will naturally allow you to make increasingly more healthy decisions.
I consider my brain one of my greatest assets and I like to know I am doing the best I can within the limitations, or challenges, of everyday life we all face. As I teach my clients, there is no need for perfection. Good, better, best is a great way to consider all options, and at times, good is good enough.
I will leave you to ponder this, “If you want to know where your mind has been, look at your body (and life) today. If you want to know where your body (and life) will be tomorrow, look at your mind today.”
Our brain, bodies and life are inextricably linked. Our thoughts certainly do create our reality, and what we put into the body goes a long way to influencing the type of neuro-chemicals that are, or are not, being produced, and thus the quality of the thoughts we can have each day.
Hopefully the information imparted in this series has enabled an increased awareness to arise within you. As a wise teacher told me over and over, “Awareness creates the platform for change.”
Now all that’s left for you to consider is, “Where’s my head at?” and, what can you do about it?
To your health and vitality,
BridgetJane
Food Body Lifestyle Guru
Writer, Speaker, Consultant
Bridget@newleafnutrition.com.au
0421 332243
For yummy recipes containing some of the featured key brain nutrients see http://www.newleafnutrition.com.au/page/recipes/default.asp
