The Hemp Connection:
soy

I had the most wonderful Sunday afternoon with a newly pregnant client and her husband. She's been told that her progesterone is low, and she was interested in knowing if there is anything she can do, naturally, to help improve the outcome of her pregnancy. We discussed five different categories of actions. Since this is an issue many women face, I'm adding them to the lineup of planned posts, today being the first of five installments.

Progesterone can be low if estrogen is high. In many cases, it's not the natural estrogen your own body is making, but environmental chemicals resembling estrogen that confuse the body.

To reduce your exposure to unnecessary estrogen…

1. Stay away from plastic. Store your leftovers in glass containers. Be absolutely sure your food does not come in contact with plastic or Saran during heating. Avoid plastic water bottles; metal varieties are pretty easy to find in your Whole Foods or REI store.

2. Use natural cosmetics and hair dyes. inCYST Provider Carmina McGee, who is a licensed aesthetician as well as a registered dietitian, has shared that the primary offending chemical, phthalate, is gradually disappearing out of cosmetics. But just to be sure, read your cosmetic and nail polish labels. Make your cosmetic shopping easy by using an all-natural brand such as Body Shop or Arbonne.

3. Get to know your local eco-friendly decorating and remodeling stores. I recently painted my condo with paint that was free of volatile organic compounds (also known as non-VOC). I used the Benjamin Moore brand which was available at a local Ace Hardware, because I liked the color selection…but there were several eco-friendly brands, and remodeling stores I found while shopping around. One store also had quite a few"green" cleaning supplies as well as carpet glue.

4. If you are not sure of the contents of inks, glues, cleaning solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, fire retardant fabrics, etc., minimize your contact with it. Here's a great list from the National Institutes of Health for your reference.

5. Minimize your intake of dietary estrogens. This one can be a little tricky, since one of the tricks we've been recommending for getting pregnant has been supplementing with flaxseed oil, a natural source of estrogen. Once you know you're pregnant, best to back off on the flaxseed. (Special note: This release I'm linking is so new the actual study is not yet listed in the National Library of Medicine database. As soon as it is, I'll be sure to evaluate and report in more detail here.)

The other food to be aware of is soy--whole soy foods such as edamame and tofu are ok, but stay away from isolates that are often used as fillers.

6. Keep your sleeping environment as dark as possible at night. Close the drapes. Use eye shades. Eliminate televisions and computers from the bedroom.

What I really like about this first list is that it is, really, about living cleaner and greener. So choices you make for your pregnancy are doing double duty and helping out the planet!

Next time I'll take a look at insulin resistance.

We just received an interesting question about beef jerky and whether or not it is safe to eat during pregnancy. And if not…what could be substituted?

Under any other conditions, I love beef jerky, as it is a convenient protein snack that is often overlooked as an option. However, pregnancy is a time when more than one life is exposed to our food choices and it's important to consider the effects of those choices on the person who's passively getting the exposure.

Most pregnancy experts advise against eating beef jerky during pregnancy because it increases the risk of developing a food-borne illness called listeria. Pregnant women seem to be more susceptible to listeria than other people. When exposed, this bacteria can attack the fetus and provoke a miscarriage, stillbirth, or blood infection during infancy. Our clients work waaaay too hard to become pregnant so we want to, to the best of our ability, steer them toward food choices that insure that these fates are not even options.

The website http://www.foodborneillness.com/ provides the following guidelines for reducing your exposure to listeria:

Thoroughly cook raw food from animal sources;
Keep uncooked meats separate from vegetables and from cooked and ready-to-eat foods
Avoid milk that is not pasteurized and sold raw or foods – such as cheese – made from milk that is not pasteurized;
Wash hands, knives, and cutting boards after handling uncooked foods
Wash raw vegetables thoroughly before eating
Consume perishable and ready-to-eat foods as soon as possible.
Do not eat hot dogs, luncheon, or deli meats, unless they are reheated until steaming hot.
Wash hands after handling those products.
Do not eat soft cheeses (such as feta, Brie, Camembert, blue-veined, or Mexican-style cheese), unless theyhave labels that clearly state they are made from pasteurized milk.
Do not eat meat spreads or smoked seafood from the refrigerated or deli section of the store (canned or shelf-stable products may be eaten).

I normally do not have a problem with raw diets or raw milk. During pregnancy however, it is especially important to thoroughly wash produce and consider holding off on raw milk until after your baby is born.
OK, now what to do if you have to give up beef jerky!

I found vegetarian jerkies made from two different sources, soy and seitan. Here are some links to some of the options available in the amazon.com store.

In moderation these should be ok. Remember, however, that soy contains estrogenic compounds and too much holds potential to affect your hormone balance.

The second option, made with seitan, looks good as well. If you are following a gluten-free diet, know that seitan is unadulterated gluten. This product is not for you.

Here is a recipe for seitan jerky if you are a kitchen adventurer.
http://veganepicurean.blogspot.com/2009/06/black-pepper-seitan-jerky.html

And there you have it, a somewhat long-winded answer, that hopefully answers questions you might have about listeria and pregnancy.

If so, it's worth your time to tune in to Chef Nancy Banner's interview on the basics of shopping for and cooking seafood, which is now in our archives at Blog Talk Radio. Thanks so much, Nancy, for getting our listeners ready to shed their phish phobia and get cookin!

I'm including some of the links and information here that we discussed while we chattted.

As Nancy mentioned, there were many videos to link to regarding how to remove skin from fish, with a simple Google search. Here is one that I found.

Nancy mentioned Coconut Secret, a soy-free"soy sauce", a great condiment for seafood cooking and eating.

Click here for more information on Nancy and her 30 day eating challenge.

We also mentioned three websites with lists of safe and sustainable seafood choices:
Natural Resources Defense Council Environmental Working Group Monterey Bay Aquarium
If you stayed on through the end of the interview, we mentioned Nancy's gluten-free organic doggie treats. They are available at the Noble Beast in Phoenix, Arizona.

Finally, here is Chef Nancy's recipe for Poached Fillet of Fish…how super easy is this?: )

Poached Fillet of Fish (Salmon, Cod, Trout, Ocean Perch)

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

• 1 # Fish fillets, cut into 4 equal pieces
• ½ C Lemon juice (not concentrate)
• 1 T Low sodium soy sauce, Bragg’s liquid aminos or soy-free substitute**

Directions

• Heat the lemon juice and soy sauce in a skillet on medium, until bubbly.
• Gently add the fish fillets. Once the liquid returns to a bubble, cover the pan and reduce heat to medium low.
• Simmer for 5 minutes. Turn the heat off and leave covered another 2-4 minutes.

** Coconut Aminos by Coconut Secret

Last night I settled in to watch the evening news, in time to see an ad for Country Crock's Omega 3 Plus brand margarine. With my reputation as somewhat of an"omega 3 queen," I figured I'd better pay attention. And by the time the ad was over, I knew I had today's post.

This label is a perfect example of why consumers are confused, and why they can have a hard time achieving the benefits of good nutritional choices.

First, the good news.

The margarine has no trans fats, because it contains no hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. For fertility, this is a huge plus--with as little as 2% of your total calories per day coming from trans fats (about 2/3 tsp for the average woman), fertility can drop by as much as 73%.

Secondly, one serving provides 500 mg of omega-3's in the form of ALA.

Now for the confusing and potentially detrimental news.

When the professionals on this blog talk about what we're doing to enhance fertility and reduce inflammation, and we refer to omega-3's, we are primarily referring to EPA and DHA, the omega-3's that, except for omega-3 eggs and foods supplemented with algal DHA, contain either fish or fish oil. (Menhaden oil, which is what is found in Smart Balance Omega 3 Margarine, is a type of fish oil.)

Any other type of omega-3 is likely to be ALA. This type of omega-3 is found in canola oil, and flaxseed oil, among other things. In this margarine, the ALA source is canola oil.

But there is no fish oil or marine algae to provide a similar nutritional feature.

There are some things that flax and canola can do, and there are some that flax and canola simply cannot do.

Many people, nutritionists included, operate on the assumption that since the omega-3 found in canola and flax can be converted into EPA and DHA, that you can get enough of the latter two without having to eat fish. Most respected omega-3 chemists will tell you this is highly unlikely.

On a good day, when your diet is as perfect as it can possibly be (which, even in the case of the person writing this post is never), only about 2-3% of your flax and canola can be converted into the other omega-3's.

Bottom line, it's pretty non-negotiable, you are highly unlikely to get the amount of omega-3's your body needs, especially if you are trying to conceive, if you are assuming you can do it without fish.

Secondly, the primary oil in the margarine appears to be liquid soybean oil. Remember the rule about"S" and"C" oils? Soybean is one of those"S" oils with a tendency to be pro-inflammatory. It was impossible to tell from the label what the ratio of soybean to canola oil was, and I would suspect that it was higher than you're going to want if you're trying to choose fertility-friendly foods.

I immediately became suspicious about this Country Crock product when I went to the website and nowhere, I mean absolutely nowhere, could I find a plainly stated ingredient list. Sure, there's a label to look at, but it's strategically posted in a way that all the nutritional information is there except for the ingredients. Hmmmm…

…so I went to the FAQ section. Couldn't find it there either. I found a lot of long-winded explanations of trans-fat labeling, and that was my second red flag.

Since I had to go to the grocery store anyway, I stopped in and looked at the label. Here, for the benefit of the rest of the people on the Internet, is the list of ingredients from the side of the container of this product:

Vegetable oil blend (liquid soybean oil, canola oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil, water, whey, salt, vegetable mono and diglycerides, soy lecithin (potassium sorbate, calcium disodium EDTA), citric acid, artificial flavor, vitamin A (palmitate), and beta carotene.

For more information on healthy fats, go to http://www.zingbars.com/science-of-zing.html, where my Zing Bar friends describe why they did--and didn't--include certain fats in their new product.

Any fat that is going to be solid at room temperature is going to have to have some saturated fat in its formula. Otherwise, it would melt. So even though the total saturated fat content is low, the type of fat being used to provide the solid quality is not one you want to get much of in your diet.

I'm not really a butter or margarine person so giving those up was not an issue for me. But I did start my career in the Chicago area, and I remember how people used to look at me like I was purple-polka-dotted if I even hinted that dairy intake might need to be adjusted. So I know it's an issue for some of you.

Bottom line--if you choose to use the product, do so only once in awhile and sparingly. I'd rather see people use olive oil-based dipping sauces for breads and cook with either canola or olive oil.

If you're interested in learning more, the authors of the study below also wrote a recently released book in plain English entitled, The Fertility Diet. I'd check it out.

Chavarro JE, Rich-Edwards JW, Rosner BA, Willett WC. Diet and lifestyle in the prevention of ovulatory disorder infertility. Obstet Gynecol. 2007 Nov;110(5):1050-8.