Do We Have To Eat a Full Serving of a Food to Get the Benefits From its Nutrients?
Producer Potts 0:11
Okay, I’ve been using your new tool Nutrivore Weekly Serving matrix. And it’s been really life changing. But I’m wondering, like, I don’t always eat a full serving of something at a meal. So my, my kind of like, nutrient absorption type question is like, I know that these serving targets are set in order that we eat so much food that we get the health benefits. But do we have to eat a full serving of each meal? Or can it be little bits of this and little bits of that, like, so far is like how our body absorbs those nutrients? Can we really, I know that you say dietary diversity is really important. So I know that’s important. But like, do I have to always eat a serving at a meal for that to count towards my health wise versus like the little checkbox? Does that make sense? It makes sense. And the answer is no. Oh, that’s great. And, and the whole video right there. Okay, fine. I
Dr. Sarah 1:20
I will elaborate on that answer. So no, we can utilize the nutrients in a food no matter like what the quantity is that we consume at one time. So you could have a like, the best example of this is studies looking at the health benefits of leafy greens, like the the benefits to, for example, diabetes risk, starting at like a fifth of a serving per day. And then like our benefits, like they start to stack, right. So then you start to get more of the benefits like age related cognitive decline, and the benefits to osteoporosis risk and the benefits to cardiovascular disease risk, right? Like the benefits increase, the more of those we eat, but also, it’s to the whole food family. So it doesn’t need to be that I ate a serving of spinach, it could be that I ate a serving of my spring mix from the tub, right? Those are all leafy greens, there’s probably some chard in there. And some might be some arugula, there’s definitely some spinach, maybe a couple of varieties of lettuce, maybe there’s some baby kale, right? There’s a bunch of different things in there. So. So that’s why, first of all the serving targets in the Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix are for the food family, not for the individual foods, so that you can kind of mix it up like that you can have some mixed vegetables and count that towards your vegetables. But like, if you’re having a specialist, you’re like, well, some of this is broccoli. And some of this is carrots and carrots count as a root vegetable. And a total vegetable and broccoli counts as a cruciferous vegetable and a total vegetable, how do I count that. So you can absolutely when you are checking off the boxes, and then we in the Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix, like you can check off a half, like that’s absolutely fine, and then come back maybe the next day and get get the other half like you can have the the goal for these is to average those servings over the week. But there’s you don’t have to have them daily, you don’t have to have, you could have three servings one day and nothing for the next three days, that would be fine. You could have all like, if you’re talking about cruciferous vegetables, where seven servings per week is like the target, you can have all seven servings in one day. And none for like for the rest of the week. The studies that look at the health benefits of these vegetables, like we want it to be a consistent feature of our diet, but it doesn’t have to be a daily feature of our diet. And I mean, like weekly is absolutely consistent enough for us to benefit from the nutrients these foods contain.
Producer Potts 3:57
Awesome.
Dr. Sarah 3:59
It’s okay, if you don’t hit every target every week. That’s fine. Like, again, kind of want, we want the big picture to kind of, you know, those are great goals to aim for most weeks to be, you know, consistent, but like a lot of these studies will look at our monthly intake, not our weekly or daily intake and show servings per month versus right, not not eating this vegetable and how that’s beneficial. So there’s I think it’s really important when we are using the Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix to remember that that is about leveling up. So there’s so much like That’s why like all of the eating patterns that I described in chapter four in my book are all just like really nutrient dense health promoting eating patterns, that if that’s all you did, if you didn’t worry about foundational foods, the Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix you just focused on those eating patterns that gets you most of the way to a nutrient dense health promoting diet that gets you most of the way to those lifelong eating patterns that are so important. If that’s all you did, that’s going to have a profound impact on your long term health. That’s it’s so that’s, that’s most of it, that’s most of it is those eating patterns. The Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrixis about identifying those foods that have something nutritionally special to offer us, right like the glucosinolates in cruciferous vegetables, that have a really strong body of scientific literature showing benefits to specific health outcomes. So it’s about identifying those foods, and setting targets so that we’re getting most of the benefits that those foods have to offer while leaving lots of room for dietary diversity. So that’s where all of those serving targets in the neutral weekly sorting matrix come from. But all of that science is still open to interpretation. So if I set a serving target at seven per day, like cruciferous vegetables is a great example here. The benefits to reducing cancer risk for cruciferous vegetables, those really start at five servings per week, not seven servings per week, right. So like, if you only got five servings a week, you’re still getting all of the cancer reduction benefits. The cardiovascular disease benefits don’t actually cap out until about two servings per day. So like you could even go more than that and still continue to get benefits. So there’s, I think what I’m trying to say is, the Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix should be used to help us level up our nutrition, once those eating patterns are down, then it might be helpful to help establish those eating patterns for some people. But it doesn’t, I don’t want it to be seen as this rigid set of rules to get to eat this way. Because that is a diet mentality. That is applying that old way of thinking that’s very, like I have to, I have to measure I have like I have to, I have to do all of these things and don’t do all of these things in order to be healthy. All of the all of those serving targets, they all have wiggle room, they’re all averages. And the idea is to help us improve diet quality, but do it in a way where we still get joy from our diet, or a diet, it’s not stressful. And when we overthink and when we start feeling like we have to measure it, that’s why the Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix has approximations for serving sizes. We don’t need to be measuring it, we can eyeball it. And we’re going to be in that range that scientific studies show is better. We just don’t. We don’t want to be adopting that mindset where we’re overthinking each aspect of it. It’s totally okay to overshoot some targets one week and not hit them another week. It’s totally okay to use the Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix to iterate and slowly improve your diet over time. It’s totally okay to approximate that was roughly half a serving that was roughly a whole serving. And it’s okay to be wrong. It’s okay to like, go Oh, that was roughly a serving. And then think about it later. And go actually was that two servings or actions that half a serving? Like it’s it’s I think it’s really important that we’re not applying that like over thinking over analyzing, like diet culture mentality to this tool for increasing nutrient density. And if you find yourself doing that, if you find yourself obsessing about checking every checkbox, if you find yourself wanting to measure, did I eat one serving or one and a half or right? Like if you find yourself in that mentality that maybe that’s not the best tool for you? Maybe it’s a tool that’s more triggering than it is beneficial? Not every tool works for every person. Right? Well, that’s
Producer Potts 8:44
Really good information to know. And I think it’s helpful, too, when filling out the matrix to know that it’s, it’s pretty loosey goosey. And just the fact that we are thinking about food from a nutrient perspective is great. Like, it really doesn’t matter how many boxes we check off. It’s just about the intention. And improvements will be made slowly over time. So that’s great. I love that.
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