Latest / Find Your Edge: Training, Nutrition + Longevity for Endurance Athletes / 4 Superfoods You Need to Try for Gut Health, Blood Sugar, and Longevity Ep 134
Transcript
- 0:37Coach Carlie: Hey y'all, and welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast.
- 0:41Coach Carlie: Because this episode is about food, of course I'm gonna be so excited because this is all about super foods you need to try.
- 0:50Coach Carlie: And I promise there are no gimmicks, just good science and whole foods in this episode.
- 0:56Coach Carlie: So if you want to see some of the things that I've got, then head over to YouTube and you can watch that there.
- 1:02Coach Carlie: So let's waste no time and dive right in.
- 1:06Coach Carlie: Okay, I seriously want to shout this from the rooftops.
- 1:11Coach Carlie: The first superfood that you need to try is oat bran.
- 1:17Coach Carlie: It is seriously the unsung hero of the oat world, if you will.
- 1:22Coach Carlie: In fact, if you're looking at this on YouTube, you can see the picture I took is literally in my kitchen, which is why it's terrible photography.
- 1:29Coach Carlie: I am not a good photographer at all, but I could not find any stock photos with oat bran.
- 1:36Coach Carlie: And you can see, like literally off of the product, oat bran has a creamy, soothing texture and a pleasantly nutty flavor that is remarkably satisfying.
- 1:46Coach Carlie: And let me tell you why.
- 1:48Coach Carlie: It is amazingly rich in soluble fiber.
- 1:51Coach Carlie: So the difference between insoluble versus soluble fiber, insoluble, creates more bulk in your stool.
- 1:58Coach Carlie: Sorry for everyone for talking about food, but that's what I like to do as a dietitian.
- 2:02Coach Carlie: I want happy guts, y'all.
- 2:04Coach Carlie: Happy guts.
- 2:05Coach Carlie: And then soluble fiber absorbs more moisture, so creates softness in your stool.
- 2:11Coach Carlie: So if you are somebody who's constipated, this is your new best friend.
- 2:15Coach Carlie: It's also rich in beta glucans and it's rich in protein.
- 2:19Coach Carlie: Y'all, there's seven grams of protein per third of a cup dry of oat bran, which is the equivalent of one ounce of chicken or one ounce of fish.
- 2:31Coach Carlie: So this is a truly fantastic food that's high in fiber and high in protein.
- 2:37Coach Carlie: And again, it is truly satisfying.
- 2:41Coach Carlie: So if you're somebody who struggles with cholesterol, seriously, this is your best friend because of that soluble fiber.
- 2:48Coach Carlie: It also helps stabilize blood sugar because of those wonderful beta glucans and protein and fiber, which in turn means that it satisfies your appetite.
- 2:58Coach Carlie: So if you're somebody who has a voracious appetite or even looking to do some weight management or even some weight loss, this is your new nutrient-dense, versatile friend.
- 3:11Coach Carlie: So, what is the texture like?
- 3:13Coach Carlie: It's very similar almost to grits, maybe not quite as coarse potentially as grits, although, of course, you can get grits uh cut to any different shape.
- 3:22Coach Carlie: But it has a richer flavor than just plain oatmeal.
- 3:27Coach Carlie: My favorite way to do this, I put water in there, put it in the microwave for about a minute, and I stir in peanut butter, about a teaspoon of molasses, and a little bit of cinnamon.
- 3:36Coach Carlie: And oh, it's delicious.
- 3:38Coach Carlie: This is like one of my favorite morning foods.
- 3:41Coach Carlie: Now, if you like savory, you can do that too.
- 3:44Coach Carlie: So just like oats, just like something like rice, it's like a blank slate.
- 3:48Coach Carlie: And it just wants you to give it some love.
- 3:51Coach Carlie: So savory, I would do this with maybe some diced breakfast sausage or diced breakfast ham, and maybe some sautéed onions, maybe some parsley, maybe some garlic, perhaps some scrambled eggs or some fried eggs on top.
- 4:07Coach Carlie: So just give it a try.
- 4:10Coach Carlie: Seriously.
- 4:11Coach Carlie: Where are you gonna find it, by the way?
- 4:14Coach Carlie: It's hiding because it's not super popular.
- 4:16Coach Carlie: It's not like oats or it doesn't have a large opportunity to, you know, be flashy and sexy, like a lot of the shelf space items that you're gonna see at the regular grocery store.
- 4:28Coach Carlie: This can easily be found online too, but it's typically gonna be on the bottom shelf by the oats, by the big containers of oats, or in the top shelf.
- 4:37Coach Carlie: And if you are somebody who cannot do gluten, they do come gluten-free too.
- 4:43Coach Carlie: All right, so that was food, superfood you need to try number one.
- 4:47Coach Carlie: Superfood you need to try number two is broccoli sprouts.
- 4:52Coach Carlie: What makes these amazing?
- 4:54Coach Carlie: It's this very specific compound.
- 4:56Coach Carlie: One of them is called myrosinase.
- 4:59Coach Carlie: It's in this family of vegetables called the brassica family.
- 5:05Coach Carlie: So in this brassica family is broccoli, cauliflower, kale, bok choy, brussels sprouts, cabbage.
- 5:15Coach Carlie: So anything that if you overcook it, it's probably gonna stink like sulfur, which is because it contains something called sulfuriphane.
- 5:26Coach Carlie: That's all the sulfur sulfur going out.
- 5:28Coach Carlie: So we don't want to overcook uh these foods.
- 5:30Coach Carlie: Collards is another one.
- 5:33Coach Carlie: There is this very specific sort of cascade coming from glucaraffinin using myrosinase as the enzyme to be able to help convert it to sulfurifane.
- 5:45Coach Carlie: Sulfuriphane is seriously a superpower, and we see this all the time in our longevity nutrition coaching group for which genetic testing is included.
- 5:56Coach Carlie: And what makes that so fantastic is learning about yourself and your genetic propensity for detoxification as an example.
- 6:06Coach Carlie: Sulforphane will help you detox or regulate some of your hormones as well.
- 6:12Coach Carlie: So it's great to have this information in conjunction with your genetic testing.
- 6:17Coach Carlie: Regardless, sulforaphane is not only anti-carcinogenic, it's anti-inflammatory, it's immunomodulatory, it's antibacterial, it's heart protective, it's brain protective.
- 6:31Coach Carlie: I mean, come on, y'all.
- 6:33Coach Carlie: This is like amazing.
- 6:35Coach Carlie: Now, specifically with broccoli sprouts, they are richer in that myrosinase enzyme than any other brassica, any other cauliflower, Brussels sprout, kale collared, then you can get your hands on by anywhere between 10 and 100 times more.
- 6:55Coach Carlie: Like these are rock stars.
- 6:57Coach Carlie: Broccoli sprouts are seriously rock stars.
- 7:01Coach Carlie: On that note, if you're like, oh my gosh, I cannot stand sprouts, because if you've never heard of a broccoli sprout, there are a lot of microgreens out there.
- 7:09Coach Carlie: And you're probably most familiar with something like alfalfa sprouts.
- 7:13Coach Carlie: So there are, again, lots of different types of sprouts.
- 7:16Coach Carlie: Broccoli sprouts just happens to be one of them.
- 7:19Coach Carlie: But if you're like, no way I'm eating those sprout things, that is just beyond my pay grade.
- 7:24Coach Carlie: And but you will eat something like broccoli or cabbage or whatever.
- 7:28Coach Carlie: If you are cooking them, make sure to either very lightly cook them and even better, add a little bit of mustard seed, which helps retain that sulfuriphane production dramatically.
- 7:39Coach Carlie: So a little pro tip there.
- 7:42Coach Carlie: Now, these broccoli sprouts, they're very easy to grow on your own.
- 7:46Coach Carlie: You can buy kits of them on the internet.
- 7:50Coach Carlie: You can also purchase them already made at your locals' farmers market, at your local grocery store, although they are a little harder to find.
- 7:58Coach Carlie: But if you're in the Raleigh area, they are in the Raleigh Farmer's Market.
- 8:02Coach Carlie: And if you just Google microgreens producers, you will pop up with wherever you are in the country or wherever you are, wherever you live, you will be surprised, hopefully, that there are some really great microgreen producers out there.
- 8:16Coach Carlie: And they are the folks who you want on your side.
- 8:19Coach Carlie: So when I've gone to the Raleigh's farmer's market and met the gentleman at the farm stand there, he literally has pallets that he has in his backyard in his shipping containers of microgreens, and he literally chops them right there in front of you, puts them in the container, and off you go with super fresh broccoli sprouts.
- 8:39Coach Carlie: This is very important that you try to have fresher because fresher is better in most cases, but certainly in this case.
- 8:49Coach Carlie: You can put them on a salad, you can throw them in a wrap, you can put them in a smoothie, but be sure that you consume it pretty quickly.
- 8:58Coach Carlie: So, like within a half an hour to get all the benefits of that myrosinase and sulfurifane.
- 9:04Coach Carlie: Alright, so our third buddy on the block that we're going to try is fava beans.
- 9:11Coach Carlie: So it truly is the new pulse on the block.
- 9:14Coach Carlie: So hopefully you're eating beans because they are such super powerhouses.
- 9:19Coach Carlie: But there's some really promising research, promising research that's coming out as plant-based peptides.
- 9:26Coach Carlie: You've probably heard of things like collagen peptides.
- 9:30Coach Carlie: Well, this one is plant-based peptides derived from the fava bean.
- 9:34Coach Carlie: So there's a very specific compound that's been developed.
- 9:37Coach Carlie: It's called Peptic.
- 9:39Coach Carlie: It's in a currently in a designs for health protein bar that if you are part of my strength training crew on Monday and Wednesday morning, I bought some and had everybody try it.
- 9:50Coach Carlie: So it's interesting that it's being researched right now to fuel strength and recovery.
- 9:56Coach Carlie: So kind of some interesting things that are coming out there.
- 9:59Coach Carlie: If you don't want to try it as PeptaStrong, then just try it as the actual bean.
- 10:03Coach Carlie: And honestly, you can use them in any application.
- 10:06Coach Carlie: You would use something like pinto beans.
- 10:09Coach Carlie: You can throw them on a salad, you can make them into things like refried beans.
- 10:14Coach Carlie: You can put them into three bean salads.
- 10:16Coach Carlie: I mean, the list goes on with beans.
- 10:19Coach Carlie: I hope you are eating beans in some way, shape, or form.
- 10:22Coach Carlie: They're so insanely high in fiber, they're more filling, and they're just a great food all around.
- 10:30Coach Carlie: All right, last one on the list is Jerusalem artichoke, or some of you may know them as sunchokes.
- 10:38Coach Carlie: So you can see this great picture here.
- 10:40Coach Carlie: They kind of look a little bit like a ginger root.
- 10:44Coach Carlie: Uh, obviously, they don't taste like ginger, but the Jerusalem artichoke is one of the primary natural sources of inulin.
- 10:53Coach Carlie: So that's a prebiotic.
- 10:54Coach Carlie: And if you don't remember what a prebiotic was, I will send you back to our gut health podcast, which explains the difference between probiotics and prebiotics.
- 11:04Coach Carlie: So prebiotics support gut health by stimulating the growth of beneficial intestinal bacteria as well as short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, which is one of your main sources of fuel for your intestine.
- 11:20Coach Carlie: And this is coming from the actual food, not the isolated inulin that you might see in things like prebiotic sodas these days.
- 11:28Coach Carlie: So, other potential benefits of this is that it can regulate your cholesterol or your lipids, it can regulate your blood sugar, help with weight management, support anti-inflammatory measures, and even support things like iron absorption, which happens in the level of the gut, helps to regulate constipation, and even regulating mood support.
- 11:50Coach Carlie: Because think about it, if in your gut you're creating most of your neurotransmitters, that is going to be so beneficial for both your brain and your mood.
- 12:01Coach Carlie: So the texture is kind of crunchy.
- 12:04Coach Carlie: It's a little bit, I would compare it to sort of like a water chestnut.
- 12:08Coach Carlie: Really great on raw applications, like you can slice them up and put them on salads, you can put them in wraps, you can put them on sandwiches, and they're great on things like um like cooked, like you would do a water chestnut, but just know that the texture will soften a little bit.
- 12:25Coach Carlie: So it just depends on how you want it.
- 12:29Coach Carlie: All right, so those are your four superfoods that you need to try.
- 12:33Coach Carlie: And I am, of course, dying to know how did it go?
- 12:37Coach Carlie: What did you think?
- 12:38Coach Carlie: Do you need some support?
- 12:39Coach Carlie: And hey, I tried oat bran and it was too thick, or how do I make it thinner?
- 12:45Coach Carlie: We've got the tricks for you, so I want to hear all about it.
- 12:48Coach Carlie: And also, do you want to hear more episodes like this?
- 12:51Coach Carlie: So shoot us a DM over on Instagram or head to our webpage, to the contact us page.
- 12:57Coach Carlie: So at the endurance edge on our Instagram and Facebook page.
- 13:02Coach Carlie: And I hope this helps and let me know what you think.
- 13:07Coach Carlie: Thanks again for listening.
- 13:09Coach Carlie: See you guys next time.