The Better Baby Book (9 page)

Preparing Safe Eggs

How eggs are cooked determines how healthy they'll be. If the yolks are overcooked, most of the healthy nutrients will be altered in such a way that they no longer optimize health. In fact, the oxidized cholesterol from hard-cooked yolks is actively unhealthy.

Overcooked egg whites—whites cooked to the point of being crisp or browned at the edges—aren't healthy, because they're oxidized. Conversely, if you eat too many egg whites that are raw, especially if you eat them without the yolk, you may develop a deficiency of a B vitamin called biotin, which is important in blood sugar regulation and hair and nail growth.

The perfectly prepared egg has lightly cooked whites and a runny yolk. But keep in mind that perfection is not our goal. Moving
toward
perfection is our much more achievable goal, and you're better off eating almost any egg cooked any way you like, as long as the yolk isn't overcooked. Hard-boiled or overcooked scrambled eggs are not healthy.

When we eat eggs raw, we gently wash the shells with a mixture of a few drops of iodine or grapefruit seed extract (GSE, available at most health food stores) in a bowl of water before opening them. And if we're feeling particularly concerned about the safety of an egg, we may even put a drop of edible GSE on the yolk after opening the egg, just to make sure to kill all the harmful microbes, including
Salmonella
. If we don't have those substances handy, we just use hot water and dishwashing liquid to wash the shell. Washing or sterilizing eggs before opening them reduces the risk of a
Salmonella
infection nearly to zero. During the wash, we submerge the eggs in water. If we see a thin stream of bubbles, that means the shell is cracked, and even if we can't see the crack, we don't eat the egg.

After washing the eggs, we use them in one of several ways. Often we simply add the raw yolks to our smoothies. If we cook the eggs, we put them in a frying pan with lots of butter (from grass-fed cows) on very low heat until the egg white is soft but solid. It should be completely white. If any of the egg white on top is still runny, we use a culinary torch (widely available at cookware stores and by mail order) to cook it, making sure we leave the yolk raw. This makes for great sunny-side up eggs that aren't burned on the bottom and that therefore don't contain harmful free radicals in blackened, oxidized parts. It is interesting to note that this technique is widely used to make perfect eggs at leading gourmet restaurants around the country. As an alternative, you can just flip the egg over very briefly until the white solidifies but the yolk is still soft and runny.

Lana ate lots of eggs—more than two or three per day—during both pregnancies and while nursing. Not only did Lana have healthy pregnancies, her blood fat and cholesterol levels are perfect.

Coconut

When we suggest to mothers that they should eat coconut, the most common response we hear is “But isn't coconut full of cholesterol?” The answer is no. Coconut oil is high in healthy saturated fat but has no cholesterol. The popular belief that coconuts are unhealthy was manufactured in the mid-1980s by the American Soy Association, which created a propaganda campaign against coconut oil in order to enrich U.S. soy farmers.

Throughout history, many different cultures have valued coconut highly as both a food and a medicine. Modern science has discovered many of the reasons. According to the Coconut Research Center in Colorado Springs, coconut can kill bacteria as well as viruses, fungi, and parasites. People who live in the Pacific Islands and parts of Asia where a lot of coconut is consumed have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, cancers, and other degenerative diseases associated with the Western diet.

A 1960s study examined the populations of two Pacific islands—Pukapuka and Tokelau—that totaled about twenty-five hundred people. The Polynesian people, who are the main inhabitants of these islands, have adhered to their traditional ways of living, including their diet, which is high in saturated fat from coconut, high in fiber, and low in sugar. The people were lean and healthy—much more so than their Western counterparts—and had very low rates of disease.

The study noted that when some of the Polynesian people migrated to New Zealand and switched to eating a Western-type diet, they experienced higher cholesterol and an increased rate of cardiovascular disease. The point is that people who eat coconut instead of other fat sources (typically high in unhealthy polyunsaturated and hydrogenated fats) are far healthier than people who don't.

For a long time, people in the United States and Europe believed that coconut is unhealthy because of its saturated fat content. We now know that the opposite is true. The fats in coconut are mostly medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs). It's the MCT content that makes coconut such a powerful antibiotic, viricide, fungicide, and parasiticide. MCTs also promote a healthy cholesterol level and help to prevent heart disease. Maybe that's why people in Panama have been known to drink coconut oil by the glass to fight illness. It's certainly why we use both coconut oil and MCT oil, a coconut oil extract that further boosts the number of energizing MCTs in our diet.

Unlike the MCTs in coconut, almost all other fats in our diet, from animals and plants alike, are long-chain fatty acids. Because the length of a fatty acid makes a big difference in how it will be used inside the body, the fact that coconuts are the only food we eat that has a significant number of MCTs gives it a particularly important role in our health.

Coconut oil is a source of many of the various types of healthy fats your body needs to make a healthy baby, and each fat has unique benefits. Half of coconut oil is lauric acid, one of the components of breast milk that helps to fight bacteria. Coconut also contains two other healthy fats, caprylic acid and capric acid, which are available as energy immediately after you eat them with no extra processing by your body. For a healthier pregnancy and for the best breast milk, you should get plenty of these three kinds of fat in your diet. The best way to do that is to consume coconut oil, using it to cook with or in various dressings and sauces.

You should add MCT oil to your diet, too. MCT oil is not a replacement for coconut oil, because it lacks lauric acid, but we particularly like it because it provides a noticeable energy boost and because, being flavorless, it's very versatile in its uses.

Coconut oil kills more than twenty-five viruses, bacteria, and other microorganisms that cause a number of ailments, including ulcers, throat and urinary tract infections, gum disease and cavities, pneumonia, and gonorrhea. Coconut oil has a devastating effect on yeasts like
Candida
, which is why Polynesian women almost never experience yeast infections. Coconut oil also kills or weakens a number of parasites and worms, including giardia, tapeworm, and lice. To prevent disease and infection, you just can't go wrong with coconut oil. Despite its powerful antibiotic properties, however, coconut oil doesn't harm the probiotic flora population in your gastrointestinal tract.

Two of the most important times for a woman to consume coconut oil are while she's pregnant and when she's lactating, because coconut oil raises the levels of important fatty acids present in the mother's milk to their highest levels, serving as perfect food for growth and as initial immune protection for her baby.

Eating coconut oil will also give you beautiful skin and shiny hair. It's a great source of energy and will help you to stay awake and alert throughout the day. It boosts fat metabolism and promotes weight control.

Lana ate coconut in some form—oil, MCT oil, or fresh young coconuts—nearly every day while pregnant or nursing. The results were very noticeable, especially in her skin and hair. In fact, her hair stylist was blown away when she saw the positive changes in Lana from the diet. She said that in her experience, the later stage of pregnancy and nursing “wrecks women's hair and skin” and couldn't believe that Lana had been nursing Anna for almost a year. When the stylist asked Lana what brand of skin-care products she was using, she was even more surprised to hear Lana say, “Food. I don't need anything else.”

Both plain coconut oil and MCT oil are great for cooking, because unlike many cooking oils used today, they are fully saturated and therefore don't oxidize at normal cooking temperatures. This makes for a diet that will produce fewer cancer-causing free radicals throughout the body. Both coconut oil and MCT oil are very stable in heat, so they're safe for gentle cooking (not frying).

In terms of dietary requirements, coconut oil is almost a complete fat by itself, but it doesn't contain omega-3. Since the body needs omega-3 to survive, it's important to realize that coconut oil is not enough by itself. No single fat source is likely to contain all of the kinds of fat the body needs. By mixing sources, however, you can cover all of the bases and achieve optimal health. Eating coconut oil along with avocados, beef and lamb from grass-fed animals, butter from grass-fed cows, raw egg yolks, and wild caught sockeye salmon, and perhaps supplementing with fish oil as well, will certainly do the trick.

When introducing coconut oil (or any oil) into your diet, be careful not to add too much over too short a period, or you may experience indigestion, intestinal cramping, or diarrhea. Teach your body how to use fat for fuel by starting slowly, such as by adding just one tablespoon of coconut oil or MCT oil to two of your daily meals for two or three days. Then, over the course of the next two weeks or so, gradually increase to a total of four to six tablespoons per day or more, spread across all of the day's meals, if you can tolerate it.

If you experience any of the symptoms described above, just drop down to a level that you tolerated well, and try to increase again a few days later. Besides cooking with coconut oil and adding it to our salads, smoothies, and recipes, we each eat about four to six tablespoons of coconut oil per day. This is in addition to the other healthy oils we've discussed.

Olives and Olive Oil

Olives and olive oil are a great source of monounsaturated fats, which optimize cholesterol levels and lower the risk of heart disease. The good form of cholesterol, HDL, is necessary to make the hormones in your body and in your baby's body. It's also necessary for the formation of your baby's brain and nervous system (starting in the womb) and for healthy brain function. According to Iowa State biophysics professor Yeon-Kyun Shin, if you deprive the brain of cholesterol, “then you directly affect the machinery that triggers the release of neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are involved in the data-processing and memory functions. In other words—how smart you are and how well you remember things.”

Olive oil is a great source of powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents called
polyphenols
. Polyphenols play a key role in olive oil's ability to improve cardiovascular health and optimize cholesterol levels. Olive oil also reduces the risk of colon cancer and slows cognitive decline. Women in ancient Rome even applied olive oil externally to prevent stretch marks during pregnancy.

Olives themselves are a healthy food. They are great as an appetizer or used in almost any way you can imagine. We like to mix them into our burgers and salads. Green and black are both fine, as long as they are packed in real olive oil or are brine cured. Be aware, however, that most gourmet olives are packed in unhealthy soybean or canola oil, wine vinegar (which may be contaminated by mycotoxins), or other undesirable preservatives.

When choosing olive oil, choose organic extra-virgin olive oil, because it contains more polyphenols than the other two types of olive oil you commonly see, which are plain (not extra-) virgin, and light. Both virgin and light contain fewer polyphenols than extra-virgin olive oil does. That's why extra-virgin olive oil is more effective than lower grades of olive oil at optimizing cholesterol level.

Like any oil that is not saturated, olive oil will oxidize and become rancid when it is exposed to too much light and heat. So when shopping for it, make sure that it is kept in a cool area and packaged in a tinted bottle for protection from light. And as with any food, glass containers are better than cans. Olive oil should always be consumed within a year of purchase, because after that time the phenol level as well as the carotenoid and chlorophyll levels drop, causing the oil to lose much of its health value. This will happen even if it's stored in your refrigerator.