• The Fast Food Salad Bait & Switch
• Diet for Prostate Health
• Taurine for Better Health
• Acidic and Alkaline Foods

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Dear Health Conscious Individual,

Welcome to House Calls with Dr. Cutler!

If you are hoping to improve your overall health, one of the best things you can do is to improve your diet. The need for medications and the frustration of ongoing health problems can be alleviated simply by eating the right whole foods.

In today’s issue, I’ll give you some simple tips for eating out and provide useful information about diets for prostate health. I’ll also explain why taurine is a mineral you won’t want to do without.

Yours for healthy living,

Michael Cutler, M.D.
Medical Advisor, True Health™

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Fast Food Salad Bait & Switch

Everyone likes a salad because it’s healthy, right? If you want to eat fast, but healthy food, remember to order the lowfat, low calorie salads without any fried chicken or taco shells. Below are the calories and fat for a few popular salads:

McDonald’s

Crispy Chicken Bacon Ranch Salad with Newman’s Own^® Ranch Dressing
520 cal 31 fat

Crispy Chicken Caesar Salad with Newman’s Own^® Caesar Dressing
490 cal 31 fat

Better option: I recommend ordering these with the grilled chicken and the vinaigrette dressing—these two things alone will cut the calorie and fat numbers by HALF. If you are still hungry after this, please add a natural food (non-processed) rather than fill up on fries or a soft drink.

Wendy’s

Chicken BLT with Blue Cheese Dressing
570 cal 43 fat

Better option: Use the low fat or fat free dressing and don’t eat the cheese.

Taco Bell

Fiesta Taco Salad with Citrus Salsa
870 cal 45 fat

Better option: You get a lot of protein with this salad, but it’s not worth the high calories and fat (unless, of course, this is your only meal for the entire day; I certainly hope not). If you still choose to eat here, opt for the Fresco Express Taco Salad without chips.

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Diet for Prostate Health: Improve Yours Today!

I regularly see patients who are concerned about prostate cancer. Fortunately, prostate cancer is one of those health problems that is highly preventable.

My best recommendation is that you improve your diet to a “prostate-healthy” diet. Much of how your organs, glands and systems perform is influenced by the type of nutrients you provide them. Eating correctly cannot be emphasized enough, and yet Americans continue to ignore this crucial and simple recommendation.

Researchers have found a link between prostate cancer and a high-fat diet that is low in fruits and vegetables. Heavy fat intake, especially animal fats and heated fats that are chemically changed or hydrogenated for better preservation, reduce the efficiency of the cardiovascular system. Use of these oils also increases the likelihood that cancer cells will develop over a long period of time.

Without the fiber content of fruits and vegetables to help keep your digestive system moving freely, impurities, toxins and metals are not expelled as regularly as the body requires. In addition to aiding digestion, fruits and vegetables also provide key vitamins and antioxidants naturally into the system.

I recommend that all males eat as much whole foods as possible—wheat, oats, bran, whole grains, raw nuts and seeds (keeping in mind calorie density). You should eat plenty of cruciferous vegetables rich in color—carrots, squash, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and salads with romaine lettuce, not iceberg lettuce. You should also, taking into account stomach sensitivity, consume berries, grapes, lentils, chickpeas, plums and red beans. All of these rich foods are good for helping heal and prevent cancer.

Finally, be sure to include high zinc foods in your diet. Zinc is vital for immune functions, but not a lot is needed, and can be easily gleaned from regular helpings of mushrooms, seafood, spinach and sunflower seeds. Zinc nourishes the prostate gland and is one of the key influencers on its health.

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Taurine: Essential for Healthy Muscle Tissue and
Proper Electrical Balance

Taurine is an amino acid that comes from mother’s milk when we are young. Scientists originally thought it was only there to aid in the digestion of the fatty acids found in the milk, and later to aid in the digestion of other fat soluble vitamins and a key component of bile.

After more research scientists learned that taurine is really there to help in the development of tissues required for vision and the function of several important glands. That’s why it’s essential to health to continue to consume Taurine throughout our lives.

Three-fourths of our taurine is in our muscles. Taurine keeps things in electrical balance. It even has a protective effect against seizures!

Heart muscles are especially dependent on correct nerve and muscle fiber interaction, and taurine is essential for this.

Also, taurine’s role in tissue function is so important that its protective ability to neutralize dangerous toxins is usually overlooked.

To get the right amount of taurine in your diet, you need 200 to 400 milligrams daily. Your body can make its own taurine if there is enough lean protein in the diet. Vegans (those who avoid all animal products) run a risk of not getting enough good quality protein. Foods with taurine include:

• Beans
• Nuts
• Fish and shellfish
• Pasta
• Meat and poultry
• Soy protein
• Milk and dairy products
• Soybean flour
• Mushrooms
• Tofu

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Q & A

Each week in the Q & Asection of House Calls with Dr. Cutler, I will share with you some of the many questions I get every week from subscribers to my monthly advisory newsletter, Easy Health Options”. For more information on Easy Health Options”, visit www.easyhealthoptions.com.

Acidic and Alkaline Foods

Dear Dr. Cutler,

There are some things I do not understand regarding your list of acid and alkaline foods.

• In the acid foods list are black beans, kidney beans, lima beans, pinto beans, red beans and white beans. In the alkaline foods list is beans. What do you mean by beans in the alkaline list?
• In the acid foods list are sugar and artificial sweeteners. In the alkaline list are stevia and sweeteners. What do you mean by sweeteners in the alkaline list?
• Am I to understand that freezing a food will alter its digestive ash? Can the same be said for drying the food (raisins were not on either list)?
• Does this also mean that okra, onion, pumpkin, spinach, turnips, zucchini, etc. will become acid forming if they are cooked?

As a chemical engineer, I am curious on how “digestive ash” is obtained in order to measure its pH. —Larry I.

Dear Larry,

Green beans would be alkaline. Herbal low glycemic sweeteners can be alkaline.

Also, freezing foods will alter some of the natural cellular architecture and therefore the body will not get the same effect from it as if it were fresh.

The same can be said for drying foods, but to a much smaller extent, as water leaves, but freezing EXPANDS and disrupts.

I believe okra, onion, pumpkin, spinach, turnips, zucchini, etc., do become much more starchy (lose fiber structure) when they are cooked. They are still whole foods and can be mixed with raw foods to balance your alkalinity.

I am aware of two methods to measure alkaline ash and acid ash.

1. One is the bioimpedance analysis, a German machine looking at saliva, blood and urine in three areas, not just pH.
2. Simpler methods have always been done by measuring the pH of urine (elimination fluid) and saliva (fluids that result from food consumption).

I have learned that so many acids being produced by human cells, uric acids in urine, lactic acids in tissues, etc., and the fact that the dying person comes to the ER extremely acidic (not alkalkine), tells me there is an alkaline balance that must be maintained.

All the Best!

Respectfully,
Michael Cutler, M.D.