Hard cheeses Cooked foods WARMING Meat Black pepper WARMING Cooked tomato sauce Bean soups Baked foods ACID-FORMING Pasta, bread Fish, fowl, meat
Yogurt, skim milk Raw vegetables COOLING Fruits, juices Cayenne, paprika COOLING Raw tomato Raw vegetables Steamed foods ALKALIZING Fruits, juices Cooked and raw vegetables
NUTRIENT PROPORTIONS The Recommended American Diet would derive 30 percent of its calories from fats, 12 percent from proteins, and 58 percent from carbohydrates. Of the latter, 43 percent would be complex carbohydrates( starches) and only 15 percent simple carbohydrates( fruits and refined sugar).( See the chart on this page.) BALANCE These recommendations are widely translated into meals that emphasize raw and steamed, cooling foods, very low fat and salt content, and with a respectable amount of protein most often supplied by fish or fowl. When the meal contains pasta, bulgur, brown rice, or other grain, it will probably feel fairly balanced and give rise to few cravings. If it has little or no starches, then it will create a strong desire for sweets, promoting what in the restaurant trade is called“ cross-ordering”: a healthy, low-fat entree followed by a rich, sugary dessert. COMMENTS The recommendations based on quality are generalized as The Four Food Groups, or the Basic Four, namely,
• The Meat Group: beef, pork, veal, lamb, fish, fowl, eggs, as well as dried beans, peas, and nuts
• The Milk Group: milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream
• The Fruit and Vegetable Group: dark green and deep yellow vegetables, citrus or other fruits, and other vegetables, including potatoes
• The Bread and Cereal Group: breads and cereals, either whole grain, enriched, or restored Lately, another category has been added, comprised of often-used but nonnutritive foodstuffs:
• The Sugar, Fats, and Alcohol Group In this classification, foods are not actually grouped according to quality, but by their similar nutrient content. Thus, meat and beans are together because they are both protein foods; they are hardly of similar quality. Perhaps the meat group should be called the Protein Group. And, following the same reasoning, the others would best be named the Calcium Group, the Vitamin Group, and the Carbohydrate Group. It is interesting that milk and milk products, which in fact are a single product category, get a whole group to themselves.( I have found even more peculiar the classification of ice cream— a high-fat, high-sugar concoction— as a regular food, to the point of its being recommended as a“ good calcium source.”) People who are allergic to milk products or who for one reason or another choose to forgo them, then appear to reject a whole food group, and thereby a whole class of nutrients. This is not the case; the nutrients found in milk products can be found in many other foodstuffs, both vegetable and animal. We trip over semantics here. Vegetarians who eschew meat do not appear to reject a whole food group, because there are alternatives in that group, such as beans and nuts. The same opportunity for choice exists in the Fruit and Vegetable Group and the Breads and Cereals— these are broad definitions that give us choices. What, then, are the alternatives for milk products? Curiously enough, they are the leafy greens and grains that, in some form or another, comprise the diet of milk-producing farm animals. In addition, such foods as nuts, seeds( especially sesame), and sea vegetables contain appreciable amounts of calcium, usually the only major nutrient for which milk products are recommended.( For further comments on calcium, see chapter six.)