Atkins Diabetes Revolution (31 page)

How does your intake of vegetables and fruits compare with that of the average American? If you’re following the Atkins Blood Sugar Control Program properly, you rank far above average. Your intake of high-quality vegetables is not only significantly higher,it’s significantly more varied.And that means you’re getting above-average amounts of a variety of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytonutrients that are known to help your body fight off virtually all the most common life-threatening diseases.

VARY YOUR VEGGIES

Okay, it is understandable that broccoli and spinach may not be your favorite foods. And even favorite foods can get a little dull if you eat them all the time. To keep your taste buds happy, go for variety. Today there’s a whole world of interesting vegetables in the produce section of just about every supermarket. Bored with Brussels sprouts? Try chayote (a sort of squash from Central America), snow pea pods, or turnip greens. Or try a mix of different vegetables, in a stir-fry, for example.You’ll be happy to know that fiber isn’t really affected much by cooking. In fact, many high-fiber vegetables are more digestible when they’re cooked, so try adding them to soups, stews, and casseroles— there are some great vegetable recipes in Chapter 27, as well as at www.atkins.com.

We prefer that you not drink most veggies or fruit—you lose a lot of the valuable fiber that way. Fruits are much higher in carbs, mostly in the form of fructose, and dumping all that sugar into your bloodstream can really make your blood sugar jump. Be wary of fruit juice “drinks,”which often contain a tiny amount of real fruit juice and lots of water and sugar, in the form of high-fructose corn syrup.
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ANTIOXIDANTS AND FREE RADICALS

Every second of every day, the trillions of cells in your body are hard at work.One of their jobs is to create energy by burning glucose or fat for fuel.A perfectly normal by-product of this process is the free radical— an unstable atom missing an electron. When an atom is missing an electron, it blunders around, looking for another electron it can grab—and often it steals that electron from another molecule and damages it in the process. To quench free radicals before they can seize electrons from places where they might do damage, your body employs antioxidants. These chemicals capture the free radicals and, in a complex series of steps, quickly neutralize them. To ensure that this defense team can do its job properly, your body needs plenty of vita- mins—particularly beta-carotene (the natural precursor to vitaminA), vitamin C, and vitamin E—and trace minerals, especially selenium and zinc.

SALAD DAYS

When you do the ABSCP, you can and will—and should—eat a lot of salad. Salads are a great way to get more of those fiber-rich leafy greens we keep talking about without racking up a lot of carbohydrates.In general, 1 cup of any salad green has less than 1 gram of Net Carbs.You also get to dress those salads with your favorite low-carb dressings. That gives you a good way to get in the good fats,like olive oil.(See Chapter 12 for more on the value of dietary fats.)

Unfortunately, the most commonly eaten salad green is iceberg lettuce—the variety that’s probably the lowest of all in terms of fiber and nutrients.It’s hard to escape this bland lettuce when you eat out,but you can easily make your salads at home a lot more interesting and nutritious by trying the many other lettuce varieties now available in the produce section. You can also add extra fiber, nutrients, and taste to your salads by tossing in some nuts and seeds—slivered almonds and sun- flower seeds, for example—but only if you stay within your daily carb gram allowance.

Everyone produces free radicals all the time; they’re a normal part of your metabolism, and for the most part your body is able to cope with them. The process of metabolizing big doses of carbohydrates, however, generates oxidative stress by producing an abundance of free radicals. Excess body fat also adds to your free-radical production and puts a strain on your body’s antioxidant system. In addition, if you’re overweight and you’ve become insulin resistant (even if you don’t know it yet), you may have excess glucose circulating in your bloodstream, and that causes a
lot
more free radicals and oxidative stress. Many researchers believe, in fact, that oxidative stress from free radicals plays a big part in many of the complications of diabetes and also in heart disease. Oxidative stress may also speed the destruction of the insulin-producing beta cells in your pancreas.
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Free radicals also are involved in the formation of what are known as advanced glycosylation end products, or AGEs. Over time, glucose attaches to proteins in your body and gums them up. The results, the AGEs, are believed to damage tiny blood vessels in your eyes, kidneys, and elsewhere. Many researchers believe that free radicals participate in this process, too.
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Of course, losing weight and getting your insulin and blood sugar under control are the clearest ways to reduce free-radical production. Eating antioxidant-rich fresh vegetables and fruits within your individualized carbohydrate limit can help, too. If you implement the ABSCP, your production of free radicals should drop automatically, because your oxidation of carbohydrates drops.
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(Supplements can help too—we’ll discuss them in more detail in Chapter 20.)

RESEARCH REPORT: ANTIOXIDANTS AND THE METABOLIC SYNDROME

A recent study comparing adults with and without the metabolic syndrome showed that those with the syndrome had low levels of important antioxidants, especially vitamin C and vitamin E. The researchers agreed that in addition to nutrient-dense foods, supplements could be beneficial in raising antioxidant levels in adults with high oxidative stress caused by the metabolic syndrome.
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As you know, controlling carbohydrates goes a long way toward controlling the metabolic syndrome.Carbohydrate-laden diets (filled with foods such as French fries) fuel the fire of oxidative stress, using up antioxidants at a high rate. On top of that, you’re not getting enough antioxidant nutrients to begin with, because all those refined carbohydrates have had most of their nutrients processed out of them. This dangerous combination—higher levels of oxidative stress, lower antioxidant intake—causes further blood vessel injury.

THE ATKINS RATIO

All vegetables and fruits contain good amounts of antioxidants, but some contain more than others. If you’re watching your carbs, you want to choose the vegetables and fruits that are highest in antioxidants and lowest in carbohydrates. Figuring that out on your own would be a complicated exercise in chemistry, so we’ve done it for you by listing the Atkins Ratio for the top ten vegetables and fruits (see page 208). This ranking tells you how much antioxidant bang you get for your carbohydrate buck. (The higher the Atkins Ratio, the greater the antioxidant content relative to the carb count.) Whenever you can, choose at least two of your daily vegetable servings and at least one of your fruit servings from these foods,provided that you do not notice a change in your blood sugar level or associated symptoms. (For drinks that are high in antioxidants, see Chapter 19.)

OTHER GOOD STUFF

Magnesium

Fiber and antioxidants are reason enough for veggies and fruit to be valuable foods on the Atkins Blood Sugar Control Program, but there are even more reasons. Here’s one good one: Overall, vegetables and fruits are good sources of the mineral magnesium. For reasons that aren’t fully understood, many people with diabetes and blood sugar abnormalities are low in magnesium, which is needed for a wide variety of normal body processes (we’ll talk more about the role of magnesium in Chapters 20 and 21).
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Adding magnesium to the diet may help you control your blood sugar better. Good choices include broccoli, okra, spinach, and Swiss chard. Nuts and beans are also good sources of magnesium, as are fruits, but they’re not as rich a source as vegetables—and beans are relatively high in carbs.

Phytonutrients

Every plant food also contains a large number of other natural chemicals that go under the general heading of phytonutrients or, sometimes, flavonoids. These substances are often what give a food its characteristic taste and color—and they also have numerous health bene- fits. The phytonutrient list is long and getting longer all the time as research continues in this exciting area. Here are just a few beneficial phytonutrients:

VEGETABLES

• Lycopene.
  Found abundantly in tomatoes, lycopene may help prevent prostate cancer.
  
• Resveratrol.
  Red wine and red grapes are the best source for this phytonutrient; high levels in your blood are associated with a reduced risk of heart disease.
  
• Quercetin.
  This powerful antioxidant is found in onions and garlic; it can also be helpful for allergy relief and to enhance the immune system.
  
• Lutein and zeaxanthin.
  These phytonutrients, found in dark green leafy vegetables such as kale and collard greens, can help protect your eyes against age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness in older adults.
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All this and more are the bonus you get from eliminating low- quality carbohydrates and replacing them with high-fiber, nutrient- rich plant foods.

Need we say more? We don’t think so—the evidence is pretty convincing. And now that you’ve got a good grasp of why you need to eat those fresh leafy greens, in the next chapter we’ll move on and explain how to choose other good carbs.

WHAT’S YOUR VEGGIE IQ?

1. A standard serving of a cooked vegetable is:

1. 1 pint
   
2. 9 pieces
   
3. 1/2
   cup
   
4. 100 grams
   

2. Vegetables are a good source of:

1. dietary fiber
   
2. vitamin C
   
3. magnesium
   
4. phytonutrientse.
   
5. all of the above