Читать книгу The Big Healthy Soup Diet: Nourish Your Body and Lose up to 10lbs in a Week - Linda Lazarides - Страница 13

Retinol is the true form of vitamin A, and is found only in dairy products, eggs, liver and oils extracted from the liver of fish such as cod and halibut. Forms of retinol are also artificially added to margarine.

Fruits and vegetables are said to contain vitamin A but really they don’t. They do provide beta-carotene, which ideally should be converted to vitamin A in your upper intestines by the action of bile salts and fat-splitting enzymes. In fact, you have to eat quite a large amount of fruits and vegetables to make even your minimum vitamin A requirements, even assuming that all conditions in your body are ideal for the conversion.

Conditions are often not ideal. People with diabetes or an underfunctioning thyroid (a common condition, often not diagnosed until much too late) cannot make any vitamin A from beta-carotene. Children also make the conversion very poorly and babies not at all, which is one reason why they must not be given low-fat milk. Excessive consumption of alcohol, iron pills, recreational drugs and polyunsaturated fats can interfere with the conversion. Zinc deficiency is common and is also detrimental.

Carotenes are converted to vitamin A by the action of bile salts, but very little bile is released when a meal is too low in fat or oil. On the other hand, butter and cream not only provide ready-made vitamin A but also stimulate the secretion of bile. Polyunsaturated oils also stimulate the secretion of bile salts but they can destroy carotene unless sufficient antioxidant vitamins are present.

and other carbohydrates, you can fill up on liquid and on masses of fruit and vegetables. This will both prevent dehydration and help to control your acidity levels. Soup provides both liquid and vegetables, so you can gain all the benefits of a low-carb diet while minimizing the side-effects.

In this book you will be consuming mostly healthy forms of protein: fish, organic poultry and dairy products, lentils, beans and tofu. Nuts and seeds such as sunflower and sesame seeds are also included—for both their protein and the beneficial oils they provide. Very few of the soup recipes contain red meat. This is because the fat associated with red meat is not healthy. Also, the World Health Organization has found that people who consume red meat more than twice a week have a higher risk of developing cancer.

It is much better to eat white meat and to supplement this with olive oil, nut oils and with retinol—and vitamin D-rich fats from milk, cheese and cream.