One of our vegan readers wrote and asked if I had a list of options for protein. This is a copy of a list I compiled for a local vegetarian eating class I teach. Hope it is helpful! Numbers in the far right column are in grams. This is not a comprehensive list. I recognize that nuts are not on here, for example. The purpose of this list is for you to become familiar with a collection of foods you may be familiar with but not know the protein content, and to be introduced to a few new players.
Have fun!
Blackeyed peas 1 cup 14 Cannellini 1 cup 17 Cranberry bean 1 cup 17 Fava bean 1 cup 13 Garbanzo beans 1 cup 15 Great Northern 1 cup 15 Green peas 1 cup 9 Kidney beans 1 cup 15 Lentils 1 cup 18 Lima beans 1 cup 15 Mung beans 1 cup 14 Navy beans 1 cup 16 Pink beans 1 cup 15 Pinto beans 1 cup 14 Soybeans 1 cup 29 Split peas 1 cup 16
Amaranth 1 cup 7 Barley flakes 1 cup 4 Barley pearls 1 cup 4 Buckwheat groats 1 cup 5 Cornmeal 1 cup 3 Millet 1 cup 3 Oat groats 1 cup 8 Oat bran 1 cup 6 Quinoa 1 cup 7 Brown rice 1 cup 5 White rice 1 cup 4 Wild rice 1 cup 4 Rye berries 1 cup 7 Rye flakes 1 cup 7 Spelt berries 1 cup 6 Teff 1 cup 5 Triticale 1 cup 6 Wheat berries 1 cup 25
Cous cous 1 cup 6 Bulgur wheat 1 cup 5 Boca burger 1 13 White wave seitan 3 oz 31 Corn grits 1/2 cup 6 7 grain cereal 1/2 cup 8 Bob's 8 grain 1/2 cup 8 Bob's 10 grain 1/2 cup 12 Bob's Kamut 1/2 cup 10 Bob's Triticale 1/2 cup 8 Cream of Rye 1/2 cup 10 Kashi 1/2 cup 12 Mother's Multigrain 1/2 cup 10 Quaker Oats 1/2 cup 10 Quinoa Flakes 1/2 cup 6 Roman Meal 1/2 cup 10 Wheatena 1/2 cup 10
One of my biggest frustrations with dietary advice I see for PCOS, is that the first word out of anyone's mouth regarding the issue, is"lose weight". I don't disagree, for some women there are hormone issues related to weight that are important to consider. Extra weight, while it does not CAUSE PCOS, does tend to worsen existing symptoms. Additionally, for the lean woman with PCOS, and there are many, it's simply useless to recommend weight loss as a fertility strategy. It certainly doesn't help your credibility to only have this advice to offer.
Now research suggests that how you eat, especially if you're unnecessarily restricting, in your perinatal years, has far reaching effects. It could hurt the baby you're trying to have, to restrict excessively during the time you are trying to conceive.
Researchers in this study used genealogical records in Finnish churches and plotted births against information about agricultural trends, mainly crop yields for rye and barley). The time period they researched was the 18th century. The analysis consistently showed that individuals who were born in a year in which crop yields were low (in other words, when they were in the wombs of women who were not eating adequately), had a strong predilection to not bear children as adults. Babies born in years in which there was a bumper harvest would have at least one child later in life.
Bottom line: How you eat affects how your child reproduces. Rigid dieting may not interfere with YOUR fertility, but it's a short sighted strategy. It may prevent you from becoming a grandparent.
A side note: the two crops studied in this research, barley and rye, that promoted fertility, are both gluten-containing. So for those of you who are restricting gluten who have not officially confirmed that you have trouble with gluten, you may be barking up the wrong nutritional tree. Best not to restrict a food unless you are absolutely sure you do not tolerate it.
If you eat well, learn to deal with stress in ways other than binge eating and dieting, and if you are carrying extra weight when you include these changes in your eating style, chances are you WILL lose weight. But you will be better nourished and better able to create a healthy baby.
If you're going to work as hard as you're working to conceive…don't you want the end product to be as healthy as possible?
Ian J. Rickard, Jari Holopainen, Samuli Helama, Samuli Helle, Andrew F. Russell, Virpi Lummaa. Food availability at birth limited reproductive success in historical humans. Ecology 91:3515–3525
We received a great hormone question about managing a hormone issue for a different stage of life--menopause. The question came because we so often advise against using soy, for two reasons. First of all, it can be detrimental to thyroid function. Secondly, whether it's in your diet or in your bioidentical hormones (bioidentical does NOT mean organic or GMO-free), the vast majority of soy is genetically modified. Unless you have confirmation from the manufacturer for food or pharmaceutical, you are best to stay away from it. But since phytoestrogens, the compound in soy that gives it such a reputation for menopause management, ARE helpful in easing the hormone transition, I looked up other sources. Here are your best bets. Ground flaxseed and flaxseed oil Rye. oats, barley, and wheat Think multigrain bread when you do have carbs! Hummous Garlic Mung beans and alfalfa sprouts Dried apricots, dates, and prunes Organic tempeh, miso, natto, and soy sauce. These are fermented sources of soy which are believe to be less problematic than tofu, edamame, and manufactured foods containing soy, such as soy milk.
The Mediterranean Diet is healthy, it’s true, but it’s not the only healthy way to eat. It just happens to be one that is heavily researched… and therefore marketed by the commodity boards representing foods that grow well in the Mediterranean. It so happens that California, the world’s eighth largest economy, and Chile, a country with a large agricultural tradition, have climates similar to the Mediterranean. Both economies depend on our love of the Mediterranean diet to thrive, and they therefore are a big part of the reason why so much research money has been invested into this way of eating. I love the Mediterranean diet myself, but I sure don’t want anyone out there from other cultures abandoning their way of eating because it’s Northern European… or African… or Tasmanian. Mother Nature doesn’t play favorites—she makes sure she takes care of her Eskimos just as she nurtures her Italians. I thought it would be fun to survey varieties of cuisines around the world so that no matter what your origin, there’s something out there that is good for you.
I’ll start with German food, which is part of my personal heritage and what I was enjoying for lunch today. I made a salad with vegetables that likely would show up on a German summer salad, including two different types of radishes.
We got rutabagas and potatoes in our box this week, and I made the rutabaga-potato salad recipe our chef created. I had some lowfat chicken-apple bratwurst in the freezer, so thawed and cooked them up to have ready for the rest of the week’s lunches.
And… for dessert, I had some plain yogurt that I ground some Trader Joe’s coffee/chocolate/sugar mix on top of. Let’s break that down for closer inspection. Salad My salad had two different kinds of radishes, carrots, onions, celery, and a variety of lettuces. I sprinkled some German dill salad mix on top, then added apple cider vinegar and canola oil before tossing. Radishes: Great for cancer prevention. See my colleague Dr. Chris Wharton’s article on why radishes are so nutritious for more information. That beautiful red color? Comes from antioxidants similar to the ones blueberries get all the credit for. Onions: Very important to German cooking. And they are part of the __________family of vegetables, famous for __________________________-- Lettuce: I mixed several varieties to get more red color, again, to get more antioxidants. Bratwurst The traditional version is a little bit fatty, but these days there are so many varieties chicken, turkey, and low-fat sausage, it’s easy to make a high-protein, low fat choice. This lunch, I had the green apple/cinnamon chicken variety from Fresh and Easy. Each link only had 110 calories. Potatoes Potatoes? Yes, potatoes! How many of you stay away from them because you’ve been told they are high glycemic? Well, they are, if you don’t eat them wisely, such as eating them, super-sized, as French fries dripping in pro-inflammatory omega-6 oil. The poor potato in this situation is not the culprit here, it’s the messenger. If you eat a small baked potato in a balanced meal, you’re doing ok. The potato salad I made has two benefits. Baked and then cooled potatoes contain resistant starch, a form of carbohydrate that is not immediately absorbed into your bloodstream. It passes into your large intestine where it ferments and becomes food for healthy bacteria (food that feeds those bacteria is also called prebiotic). Secondly, the dressing for this salad was vinegar. And as you’ve heard here many times before, vinegar helps to keep your blood sugar stable after meals, potentially as well as metformin. So a little bit of potato salad, without the mayo, holds potential to be PCOS-friendly. Vinegar One of the strong points of the German diet is the vinegar. In addition to the salad, it’s used in pickled vegetables, sauerkraut, and sauerbraten. If it's sour, it's likely ok to eat! Cheese Though I didn’t have any with this meal, cheese is something Germans love! A common breakfast is a piece of thinly sliced cheese on a slice of whole kernel rye bread, topped with a tomato. Cheese, remember, in moderation, has been found to be associated with increased fertility. The reason it works in the German diet is because, unlike Americans, Germans don’t shred, smother, and melt it on anything and everything they eat. It’s eaten in small portions and used to accent the rest of the food on the plate. Berries Germany is pretty far north, meaning in the summer it is a fruit basket of flavor. Currants, strawberries, cherries, apples, peaches, grapes… you name it, someone is growing it. Mit sahne (with cream) is a popular way to serve fruit, and if it’s real cream and it’s minimally sweetened, it’s wonderful treat! I have to tell you, the German meal I described above left me feeling so full and satisfied I wasn’t hungry until long after sundown. It really reinforced for me the power of eating balanced. Talk to people of German heritage, and they’ll often tell you about a grandparent or great-grandparent who lived, relatively disease-free, into their 90’s. They certainly didn’t get there on 800 calorie diets… perhaps we should be taking this diet a little more seriously instead of discounting it because of its potatoes.
The tennis world was all aflutter this week over an article in the Wall Street Journal about professional tennis player Novak Djokovich's rise in the tennis ranks in the year following his switch to a gluten-free diet. While there may be a correlation, relatively little in the article directly addressed the direct connection between gluten-free eating and a phenomenal tennis season.
So here are some facts for all of you tennis players looking for an edge, as well as those of you courtside who may wonder if gluten is affecting your hormone balance.
What is gluten?
Gluten is the protein found in many grains, especially barley, oats, rye, and wheat. Statistically, 1 in every 133 individuals is gluten intolerant or experiencing celiac disease. In this condition, gluten irritates the lining of the intestines to the point where the absorptive surface erodes away and can no longer absorb food. It is painful, it causes malnutrition, and it. This photo, courtesy of http://www.sensibleceliac.com/, shows how the"fingers" of the intestine, where nutrients are absorbed, gradually shrink in size and disappear.
Symptoms of true celiac disease are related to malabsorption: diarrhea, gas, bloating, fatty stools are common. However, they do not occur in everyone. Other symptoms are related to the nutrient deficiencies resulting from malabsorption and can include: weight loss, fluid retention, anemia, easy bruising, nerve pain, muscle weakness, and…yes…infertility.
A full workup to confirm celiac disease includes blood testing, intestinal biopsy, and a challenge with a gluten-free diet to see if the body responds in a healing way. Because the symptoms of celiac disease can also be symptoms of other serious disorders, it is important to not self-diagnose and treat yourself.
It is possible to be gluten sensitive even if you do not have celiac disease. Many women reading this blog may have a gluten sensitivity, and it can be the source of the inflammatory process that is triggering PCOS. Many of our inCYSTer providers have completed LEAP training, which allows them to help you diagnose and treat food sensitivities in a way that is precise and direct. It is a way to shorten the process of figuring out what is truly causing your symptoms, rather than randomly eliminating a food and hoping it will help you to feel better.
Should You Go Gluten-Free? In the last five years, gluten-free eating has become somewhat trendy. Please don't misunderstand my comment. I know many of you truly ARE gluten-intolerant and gluten-sensitive. But many of you are not. Something that can happen if your primary sources of gluten were baked and processed foods, and you cut those out, you tend to decrease your caloric intake and improve your ratio of carbohydrates to protein. You improve your chances of improving insulin resistance, which may have nothing to do with gluten issues even though gluten intake was altered with your dietary choices.
In addition, inCYSTer and LEAP guru Michal Hogan recently shared with me that if you are NOT gluten sensitive, and you restrict gluten, you can create an sensitivity where none previously existed. So it is really important to make this dietary adjustment only if it is necessary and in an informed way, not because you think it might help when nothing else has.
It's also important to understand that a gluten-free diet is NOT automatically healthier! I belong to several gluten-free discussion groups and have seen chats literally obsessing about ways to keep eating sweets and calorically dense/nutritionally inferior foods while getting around the gluten issue. It's important to understand that whole grains, even those containing gluten, contain other important nutrients such as magnesium and B vitamins, that will need to be included in other fashions if you eliminate a major category of foods.
For those of you who ARE in need of gluten-free eating, we encourage you to become familiar with Zing Bars, who you've seen us blog about before, who we've interviewed on our radio show, and whose bars are all gluten-free. Zing has also been generous with the PCOS community and their product is one that is insulin as well as gluten-friendly. It's not just a candy bar that's easy on the intestines, as some products pan out to be.
If your first name is Roger or Rafael, you play tennis, and you're wondering if you might make some dietary adjustments to better keep up with that guy on the other side of the net…Zing Bars certainly will help to keep your energy levels stable for good coordination and focus through the longest of matches. But before you switch out a major staple and completely change your diet, be sure to ascertain that it genuinely has potential to help you.
If you're not sure if gluten is your problem, and you'd like to work with someone who can help you know for sure, for a list of inCYSTers who are also LEAP-certified who would be happy to help you work through the maze of information and to do it productively…visit www.afterthediet.com/pcoshelp.htm and look for"CLT" behind the provider's name.
