Our Top Supermarket Picks
Not many of us have the luxury of spending hours in the grocery store going aisle to aisle. Here we’ve highlighted some of our top grocery finds from each area of the supermarket that can easily be incorporated into tasty weekdays/weeknight meals and get you in and out in a zip. Dairy: 2% Lactose Free Milk Why we Like It: It has the right balance of protein, carbohydrate and fat making it Zone approved. Plus it’s a good source of high-quality protein to promote satiety while being rich in calcium, vitamin D, phosphorus and other essential nutrients. Why Lactose-free? Regular cow’s milk contains lactose, which many can be difficult to digest. In lactose-free milk, the lactose has been totally removed to consist of only glucose and galactose. Want an easy meal no matter the time of day? Add 10oz of Lactose free milk to a scoop of ZoneRx Shake mix to keep you going until your next meal. Seafood: Wild Salmon Why we Like it: It’s a great source of protein, low in saturated fat and rich in omega-3 fatty acids, known for their brain boosting and anti-inflammatory properties. Opting for wild salmon over farm-raised brings the omega-3 content up even further and has been shown to be 8 times lower in PCBs compared to farm-raised. How does it’s omega-3 content compare to OmegaRx 2? A 3oz serving of raw wild salmon contains about 1700mg of total omega3 fatty acids, whereas one serving of OmegaRx 2 (4 capsules or 1 tsp.) contains nearly twice as much with 3000mg of the omega-3s EPA and DHA. Meat: Grass-Fed Beef Why We Like It: Compared to regular beef, grass-fed beef can contain almost 2x the amount of omega-3s compared to regular beef. While we know red meat should be consumed in moderation, when you do choose to consume it, opting for grass-fed is a good way to go. Using it ground makes for great tasting burgers, a taco night hit, or a delicious filling for stuffed peppers. Fruit: Berries (Blueberries, Strawberries, Raspberries, Blackberries)Why We Like It: They have one of the lowest glycemic responses compared to most fruits out there. Why we really like them is that they are rich in polyphenols, the chemicals in plants responsible for the color and wide range of nutritional benefits. Although summer is the peak season for berries, you can find different varieties (e.g blackberries) all year long that are fairly priced too. Berries make for a perfect sweet to end a meal, a great addition to steel cut oats, or nicely coupled with low-fat cheese for a mid-afternoon snack. Veggies: Cruciferous Vegetables (Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Cauliflower and Kale)Why We Like Them: They’re nutritional powerhouses based on their levels of fermentable fiber, polyphenols, vitamins, minerals and are known for their cancer-preventive properties too. Plus they have lowest amounts of carbohydrate making them less likely to stimulate insulin. Roast or sauté in a little olive oil and use as a side dish to any protein choice. They’re also a great base for any salad when you swap in baby Kale, shaved Brussel Sprouts or Broccoli slaw in place of romaine or iceberg.Frozen: Green VegetablesWhy We Like Them: Produce that sits in the refrigerator for days or has traveled long distances to reach us, loses its nutrients with time. Frozen vegetables are a great option in this case as they are typically flash frozen at low temperatures to stop aging and retain their nutritional value. Spinach, broccoli, or asparagus make for great weeknight stir-fry’s. If you haven’t tried frozen riced vegetables yet (available in broccoli and cauliflower (although not green), these can be added to soups in a cinch or a great replacement for rice in any dish. Plus the ones in the microwavable steamer bags can be made in minutes for those nights you really run short on time.Inside Aisles: Almonds Why We Like Them: They are rich in heart healthy monounsaturated fats, along with numerous vitamins, and minerals. Almonds are easy to have on hand or for a snack on the go, plus they add a nice crunch when topped on oatmeal, yogurt, or slivered on vegetables. Since they are about 79% fat, just be careful to limit your intake and be mindful of portions as the calories can really stack up and they are easy to over-consume. Steelcut OatsWhy We Like Them: They contain GLA (gamma linolenic acid), an essential fatty acids known to help boost the production of the good eicosanoids (PGE-1). Consuming 2 to 3 times per week can help build up your GLA levels. Plus they are a great alternative to breakfast cereal since they have a lower glycemic response, and are high in fiber, B-vitamins and calcium. Canned BeansWhy We Like Them: Beans are a great source of fermentable fiber and their versatility lends themselves to most dishes you create. While lectins, a protein within them, might be giving them a bad rap lately, don’t stress, because cooking sprouting or fermenting them degrades lectin. It’s only individuals who have a compromised gut barrier, like “leaky gut” whole need to limit their consumption.SpicesWhy We Like Them: Spices like basil, oregano and rosemary are incredibly rich in polyphenols (good for the gut), plus they are a great way to add flavor to any dish. Elevate any of your dishes by adding them to omelets, meat, salad dresses or vegetables. Extra Virgin Olive OilWhy We Like It: It’s primarily a monounsaturated fat, known for their heart healthy benefits, and rich in the polyphenol known as hydroxytyrosol. A good rule of thumb is to buy a cheaper olive oil for cooking, since polyphenols degrade upon heating, and then use a high quality one like Zone Extra Virgin olive oil for use in salad dressings or on top of cooked dishes to reap all their health promoting properties.{{cta('daffa570-1055-4766-af51-e09d66a17e47')}}
Peak Performance: An Athletes Guide to Meal Timing
Fueling for performance requires knowing what foods to choose and when to have them. Dr. Sears has worked with elite athletes his entire professional career and his recommendations are based on years of seeing what has led to the greatest improvements in becoming faster, stronger, and leaner. You don’t have to be an elite athlete to use this guide. No matter your fitness level, use these recommendations to reap the most from your workout and enhance how quickly you can get to your next one. Hormonal Timing and Performance: A More In-Depth Look Performance can be considered to fall within 4 phases:Hormonal Warm-up –ensuring your body has the right fuels to performThe Demand Phase - when you are working out and putting stress on the bodyThe Recovery Phase - Immediately following your work outThe Repair Phase - The remainder of the time when you are not working out and repairing damaged muscle tissue Hormonal Warm-up:When: 30-45 Minutes Before and During Exercise.What To Do: Eat a Zone snack 30-45 minutes prior to exercise. Half of a ZoneRx bar is an ideal choice. Why: Consuming protein helps to minimize muscle damage and stimulate glucagon synthesis to elevate blood glucose levels that will fall during exercise. Carbohydrate consumption helps spare muscle glycogen that will be depleted and maintain blood glucose levels that will be lowered during exercise. Demand Phase-When: The workout or activity that is putting stress on the bodyWhat is Happening Hormonally Pro-inflammatory eicosanoids increase Pro-inflammatory cytokines increase Insulin decreases Cortisol increases What is Happening Metabolically ATP is depleted Protein degradation increases Muscle glycogen is partially depleted Muscle damage increases Fluid loss increases Recovery Phase When: Peaks 30 Minutes After Exercise and lasts a maximum of 120 minutes (Recovery Phase Is Short)What To Do: Eat a Zone snack immediately following exercise. Half a ZoneRx bar would be an ideal choice.Why: The combination of protein and carbohydrate helps to replenish muscle glycogen and initiate muscle repair. Growth hormone is released once exercise stops to initiate repair and this can be inhibited by high levels of insulin. Where carbohydrates alone could impede the release of growth hormone, the combination of both protein and carbohydrate helps to ensure this release happens quicker. Repair Phase When: The 20-24 hours following workout completionWhat To Do: Consume a Zone meal or snack every 4 to 5 hours. Ensure each meal contains at least 25-30 grams of high quality protein. Aim for lean protein choices that contain leucine, an amino acid found in foods such as chicken, lean beef, pork, fish, seafood, and cheese. Consuming about 2.5 grams of leucine helps activate mTor, a gene transcription factor required for new protein synthesis. Balance your protein with non-starchy vegetables at each meal. This will help to control insulin levels between meals and when balanced with the right amount of protein will help stabilize blood sugar levels. Supplement with omega-3 fatty acids and polyphenols.Why: The combination of the Zone Diet, omega-3 fatty acids and polyphenols helps maximize the anti-inflammatory response that results in tissue repair post-work. Calculating Your Protein Needs Depending on your sport you might be trying to gain weight, primarily through lean body mass, or to lose body fat while maintaining lean body mass. Either way it’s important to know how much protein you should be consuming each day. To find your personalized requirements based on your gender, size and weight, try our Protein Requirement/Body Fat calculator. This will also tell you how many Zone Food Blocks of carbohydrate and fat you should consume each day to go along your protein requirements. The following menus are based on Dr. Sears' work with Olympic athletes. No matter your fitness level, used this as a guide and simply adjust the amounts based on what you've determined your protein requirements to be. Get started here with our meal planners for both males and females. {{cta('a9e96fff-3523-4d72-b761-29f9ef2a1279')}}
Evolution of the Zone: Making Diet Work for a Lifetime
The word diet often has negative connotations. It is often thought of as a period of constant hunger and fatigue to get into a swimsuit. People often also regain all the lost weight and more after stopping the diet. A recent article reinforces this idea in Obesity that demonstrates the contestants in the Biggest Loser television series had virtually regained all their lost weight in a six-year period. This was followed by an article in the New York Times entitled, “Why You Can’t Lose Weight on a Diet.” What Does the Word Diet Really Mean? The word diet comes from the Greek root, which means “way of life.” This means that a diet should be followed for your lifetime, depending on your goal. The American Heart Association diet, the American Cancer Association diet, and the American Diabetes Association diet were all designed to prevent or treat a particular condition and should be followed for life. The Mediterranean diet is to be followed for a healthy life. And of course, the Zone Diet is to be followed for a lifetime to maintain inflammation in a manageable range consistent with optimal wellness. The Secret to Making Your Diet Work The secret to maintaining any diet, whatever the goal, is that you can’t be hungry or fatigued. But hunger and fatigue don’t just mysteriously appear; they are symptoms that indicate that your diet is not working. Hunger and fatigue are the consequence of increased inflammation in your gut, your organs, and your brain. There are many causes of inflammation that you will never see on social media or in academic journals because it is overwhelming. Here are just a few: Excess dietary omega-6 fatty acids increases the production of pro-inflammatory eicosanoids. Excess dietary palmitic acid increases inflammation in the hypothalamus, causing hunger. Increased gut permeability caused by lack of dietary fermentable fiber that leads to increased bacterial fragments entering the blood, causing metabolic endotoxemia (the release of toxins into the blood from gut bacteria). Excess dietary fat that increases the transport of bacterial fragments into the blood cause even more metabolic endotoxemia. Excess consumption of dietary calories causing inflammation in the hypothalamus, increasing hunger. Lack of adequate levels of dietary polyphenols to control the microbial composition of the gut and reduce oxidative stress in the body. Lack of adequate levels of dietary omega-3 fatty acids to reduce inflammation and increase resolution in the gut, blood, and the brain. You can see the word dietary appearing over and over in these various causes of inflammation. This indicates that most of our woes in our health care system are a consequence of the diet. Unless you address each of these diet-induced causes of inflammation, you are going to have hard time maintaining optimal wellness. This is the challenge I took on when developing the Zone Diet. The Zone Diet is Even Easier Now First and foremost, the Zone Diet is based on calorie restriction, but without hunger and fatigue. The first generation of the Zone Diet required a person to constantly pay attention to balancing protein, carbohydrate, and fat at every meal. In addition, I took out the three things (pasta, pizza, and pastries) in the diet people really like to eat. I guess my tough love was a little too much for busy people who needed easy short fixes resulting in long-term solutions. I could just say, “too bad,” or I could try to solve the problem with the evolution of the Zone Diet. I choose the latter approach. This choice led to the development a new series of protein-based foods that could take the place of non-sustainable animal protein. Furthermore, these new foods were in a format that would be more convenient and more desirable than the foods people were already eating. After all, that is the only way to encourage people to make dietary changes. The resulting diet would have to create far greater appetite suppression with even greater energy compared to the first generation of the Zone ̶ a formidable challenge to undertake, but not an impossible one to achieve. What made it possible was the patented technology to create Zone PastaRx®. Zone PastaRx looks and tastes like the foods that in the past always made you put on body fat, but now they make you leaner. Why? Because PastaRx is able to suppress appetite and stabilize blood sugar levels with improved hormonal control. This evolution of the Zone Diet changes the hormones in three areas of the body (gut, blood, and the brain), whereas the original Zone Diet could only change the hormones in the blood. In effect, this evolution of the Zone has three times the hormonal benefits using the foods you like to eat as a novel protein source. What if you ate a diet consisting of Zone PastaRx with some non-starchy vegetables (for the fermentable fiber) for lifetime with the result of never being hungry or fatigued? Furthermore, what if dozens of recipes were already tested and posted online so you don’t have to even think about variety? I am taking a wild guess that most people could follow such a diet for a lifetime. By following this next generation of the Zone Diet, you will reduce diet-induced inflammation that is the underlying cause of the development of chronic disease, as well as the acceleration of the aging process. If you add high-doses of purified omega-3 fatty acids (OmegaRx®) and purified polyphenol extracts, you simply take those inflammation control benefits from the next generation of the Zone Diet to new higher level. Studies Have Shown that PastaRx Reduces Insulin Resistance The motto of Zone Labs is Evidence-based Wellness®. This simply means, “show me the data.” In two clinical experiments using Zone PastaRx, we observed dramatic reductions in the level of insulin resistance in obese subjects using meals consisting of Zone PastaRx when compared to control groups using gluten-free pasta. Inflammation is what causes insulin resistance. In fact, the reduction in insulin resistance in the subjects consuming Zone PastaRx was equal to that of giving insulin injections for newly diagnosed type 2 diabetic patients according to a study. I think you can see why I believe the future for the evolution of the Zone Diet is extremely bright; because Zone Pasta makes diets work.{{cta('cd305230-6e34-42f6-9e2c-c2beda556f50')}} References: Fothergill E et al. “Persistent metabolic adaption 6 years after ‘The Biggest Loser’ competition.” Obesity 24: doi: 10.1002/oby.21538 (2016). Aamodt S. “Why you can’t lose weight on a diet”. New York Times. May 6, 2016. Sears B and Perry M. “The role of fatty acids in insulin resistance.” Lipids Health Dis 14:121 (2015). Wang D et al. “Effects of intensive insulin therapy upon pancreatic β cell function in patients newly diagnosed with type II diabetes”. Int J Clin Exp Med 8:1391–1395 (2015).
Olive Oil: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Olive oil can be considered the first nutrition supplement since its first use more than 6,000 years ago. We now know the reason: the polyphenols. The Good – Olives Contain Unique Anti-Inflammatory Properties Olives are a fruit, not a seed. As a result, it contains unique types of polyphenols not found in other fruits and vegetables. Tyrosol, hydroxytryrosol, oleocanthal and oleuropein each provide unique anti-inflammatory properties. This is why olive oil was so prized in the ancient world and remains an integral component of the Mediterranean diet. That’s the good. The Bad – The Impact of Pesticides Polyphenols are the reason that olive oil has health benefits for humans, but they have even greater health benefits to the olive fruit itself. It is polyphenols that protect plants from microbial attack. Once you start using pesticides to increase production, the plants generally decrease the product of polyphenols since it requires a lot of energy to produce them. This effect is more profound in fruits than vegetables. However, not all conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have high levels of chemical residues. It really depends on how they are farmed. The following table outlines these varying levels of chemical residues in conventional fruits and vegetables. Most Commonly Contaminated Moderate Commonly Contamination Least Commonly Contaminated Apples Celery Strawberries Peaches Spinach Nectarines Grapes-Foreign Sweet Bell Peppers Potatoes Blueberries Lettuce Kale/Collard Greens Green Beans Summer Squash Peppers Cucumbers Raspberries Grapes - Domestic Plums Oranges Cauliflower Tangerines Bananas Winter Squash Cranberries Onions Sweet Corn Pineapples Avocado Asparagus Sweet Peas Eggplant Cantaloupe Kiwi Cabbage Sweet Potato Grapefruit Mushrooms What about olives? Although many olive growers don’t use herbicides or pesticides, you never really know those who do. Finding certified organic extra-virgin olive oil is always your best bet for maximum polyphenol content. More importantly, the taste of organic olive oil is always significantly better than conventional olive oils. The Really Ugly – Your Olive Oil May Be Faking It Since olive oil is valuable, it is likely to be adulterated by adding other inferior substances. This was a problem in even ancient Roman times where containers were stamped with official seals to make it difficult to adulterate the oil. Today, the problem is far more widespread with nearly 70% of extra-virgin oil olive being sold in the U.S. having been adulterated. Harvesting Perfect Olives What's a consumer to do in a world of pesticides and adulterated olive oil? It has to taste great (which it does) and be rich in polyphenols (that we analyze in every lot, because like Fox Mulder of the X-Files says: “we trust no one”). I searched out the few organic cooperatives in Italy making high quality extra-virgin olive oil. Then, we harvested in late fall, followed by processing over the winter. Then the various processed lots were tested for polyphenol content. Those lots that met our polyphenol requirements were bottled and brought to the U.S. under the Zone brand. We purchased the entire year’s production that met our quality standards. It wasn’t much, but those olives made about 190 cases worth of Dr. Sears’ Zone Extra Virgin Olive Oil. And we have it all. Branding is crucial. With my Zone Extra-Virgin Olive Oil, you can have the ideal anti-inflammatory condiment for every meal – at least while it lasts. As of today, we have less than 100 cases of Dr. Sears’ Zone Extra Virgin Olive Oil remaining in stock. Order yours today.{{cta('daffa570-1055-4766-af51-e09d66a17e47')}} References: Faller ALK and Fialho E. “Polyphenol content and anti-oxidant capacity in organic and conventional plant foods.” J Food Composition and Analysis 23: 561-568 (2010). Muller T. Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil. W.W. Norton. New York, NY (2013). Blechman N. “Extra virgin suicide: The adulteration of Italian Olive Oil.”
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