Food
Food is made up of 3 categories- Protein, Carbohydrate and Fat. All 3 of them are good for you; necessary for your survival, in fact.
Protein
- Vegetable proteins come from foods like nuts and seeds and beans. Some grains have enough protein to count as well. Vegetable proteins are always a combination of carbohydrate, protein and some fat. Vegetable proteins do not have all of the essential amino acids (essential meaning we need them and cannot make them), so knowledge of food combining is necessary if you are going to eat these exclusively (legumes combined with grains and vegetables is a good shorthand for making sure you have complete proteins).
- Animal proteins come from meat, eggs, bone broths and organs of animals. These are mostly protein and fat with very little to no carbohydrate at all.
- Dairy products come from animal milks and can be made into cheese, yoghurt, and many more foods. Yoghurt has less carbohydrate than milk because the organisms used to culture milk eat the sugars. This is true of other cultures as well (kefir, cultured cheeses etc..). Dairy products are made of carbohydrate, protein and fat.
Carbohydrate
Fiber
These very simply are carbohydrates that our bodies cannot make into sugars. They are primarily used to clean out the body and keep us regular.
Complex carbohydrates
These require some work to make into sugars. This allows the body to access the sugars slowly over a period of time instead of all at once.
Sugars
These are simple- literally. They require almost no effort to make them into useable sugar. The problem with these is that when they are eaten alone our blood sugar rises sharply and can fall quickly when they are used up.
Fats-
- Omega 3’s are anti-inflammatory, they reduce pain, improve mood, concentration, and raise good cholesterol among other things. Nuts and seeds, cold water fish, and grass fed meats are good sources.
- Omega 6’s can be anti-inflammatory or pro-inflammatory. Most of the animal source Omega 6’s are pro-inflammatory. Nuts and seeds have omega 6’s that can be anti-inflammatory or pro-inflammatory. We use some omega 6’s to combat eczema, regulate sex hormones, and the rest of the list is way to long for a web site.
- Cholesterol has a really bad reputation because it is a major component of the arterial plaques that form and can cause heart attack and stroke. There are many important things that our bodies use cholesterol for including: building all of our hormones, lining all of our cells, repairing our intestines, covering our nerves and facilitating connections in our brains.
- Triglycerides are a blood measure of fats that our bodies produce mostly in response to too much sugar. They are also the form that many of the natural dietary fats are found in.