It’s been a while since my last Q&A but I got a couple of good questions this weekend from Pooja and Laura. While I normally give recommendations along paleo lines, these two ladies follow a vegetarian diet (Laura also eats seafood) so their advice keeps that in mind.

From Pooja:

my tzaziki recipe is 50% sour cream. i use non-fat sour cream. anyways, my question is, is sour cream bad for you ? pls advise thanks

Just a suggestion, you should try the full-fat Greek style strained yogurt (such as Fage Total) instead of sour cream for your tzatziki as that is the traditional Greek way of making it. That said, sour cream falls under the same category as yogurt as it is another fermented milk product. As I stated in my more comprehensive post about dairy, the lactose (milk sugars) are removed during the fermentation process. However, be careful when shopping for sour cream and make sure to get one with one ingredient — cultured cream — and none of the additives such as thickening agents, etc.

From Laura:

Question, what’s the logic for white rice over brown rice? I have a friend challenging this, and I don’t have an answer.

While I know Laura doesn’t fully buy into eating paleo every day, I still give her advice along those lines. As such, one goal is to avoid lectins and other antinutrients. We previously linked to an article over on Whole 9 that goes into more depth of why lectins are bad news:

Lectins are plant proteins that are very resistant to digestion in the stomach and small intestine.  They arrive (and hang out) in the small intestine largely intact, and do some pretty dirty work there.  Lectins such as phytohaemagglutinin create damage to the wall of the small intestine (which increases gut permeability) and causes an imbalance of gut bacteria. P.S. Increased gut permeability is never a good thing.

If your gut integrity is compromised, that means that the immune tissue located in your gut is exposed to large amounts of potentially inflammatory substances, including those lectins. Regular exposure to lectins can promote inflammation in the digestive tract, but also elsewhere in the body (since those little buggers punched holes in your gut and can get virtually everywhere via your bloodstream). Long story short: the fewer intact foreign proteins (including lectins) circulating in your bloodstream, the better. Foreign proteins in your bloodstream cause systemic inflammation. Boooo.

The reason for my recommendation for white rice over brown rice is due to these antinutrients, which are found in the bran part of the grain. The bran gives brown rice its distinctive color. From a post over on MDR:

Phytate, or phytin in rice, binds to minerals, rendering them largely useless to any animal that consumes it. Well, rats can break through the phytate and get at the minerals fairly well, but they evolved that ability – we did not. Heat does little to phytate, but, since it’s located in the bran, physically removing the bran removes the phytate. That’s why brown rice eaters tend to have poorer mineral balances than white rice eaters.

…even the most ardent zero-carber would have to admit that brown rice sports an impressive nutrient profile. But most of it is bound up with phytic acid and mostly useless to humans. Rats and other rodents produce phytase, which breaks down phytic acid and releases the bound minerals, but until we engineer rat-human hybrids, we’re not enjoying the full potential of brown rice.

That’s likely the cause for your friend’s confusion, since brown rice is typically touted as the “healthier” option due to its nutrient profile. However when you take into account that humans cannot tap into those nutrients, it’s not such a no-brainer choice. I hope that clears things up and please check out the linked posts if you want more information.

Thanks for the questions, ladies!

Note: We are now adding a 5pm class on Thursdays and starting next week, 4pm classes will be expanded to Tuesdays as well!

WOD 10.06.11

Gymnastics WOD