Where Do Mushrooms Fit Into a Paleo Autoimmune Diet?

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Mushrooms fit into a Paleo autoimmune diet? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. FKA Peterson from Instagram asks, where do mushrooms fit into a Paleo autoimmune diet? Hey, it's JJ and I've got Dr. Sarah Ballantine, the Paleo mom herself, with me to answer this question. She just happens to be the world's leading expert on the autoimmune Protocol diet and manages her own three autoimmune diseases with this diet and lifestyle. She also has this amazing gift for translating the most complex scientific research into understandable, actionable strategies. And on the side, she's a professional improv comedy performer. She'll be right back.

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Mushrooms are such an important and healthful food that I really think we need to start separating them from vegetables and fruit in that lumped together in that food group and start thinking of them as their own food group. And actually when you start thinking about it, it actually makes sense to do that. Mushrooms are fungi, not plants. So all of the vegetables and fruits that we might choose to eat, even nuts and seeds, those are all from the plant kingdom of life. Mushrooms are fungi, which means they're really distinct and we see that nutritionally. So first of all, mushrooms are phenomenally nutrient dense. If you think about white mushrooms, right, the kind that we can find in any grocery store, those are probably the least impressive mushroom of, of any mushroom. And 100 gram serving of white mushrooms are only 20 to contain only 22 calories. And for that 22 calories we're getting 24% of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin B2, 18% of B3, 15% of B5, 16% of copper, 13% of selenium, 9% each of phosphorus and potassium and smaller amounts, right? The 5ish percent range of B1, B6, folate, vitamin C. Mushrooms even contain vitamin D in the vitamin D2 form. They're also a source of iron and magnesium and manganese and zinc. It's really hard to find another food that provides that kind of nutritional value per calorie. But that's actually just the tip of the iceberg of why mushrooms are amazing. So mushrooms as a fungus have some really unique phenolic compounds and triterpenes. Now these are phytochemicals that have anti inflammatory properties, antioxidant properties. Some of them have shown to inhibit the growth of cancer cells. Some of them have been shown to be hepatoprotective. That means liver protective. They have a variety of health promoting properties that actually have been isolated in the lab and studied for medicine development. So they contain this wealth of really important phytochemicals that we can't necessarily get at all or in the same concentrations from vegetables and fruit. And then the other reason that mushrooms are amazing, and this is the part to me in my brain that really elevates mushrooms to their own food group, is that they can take contain some unique types of fiber that we cannot get anywhere else. So they contain alpha and beta glucans, they contain chitin and chitosen fiber types. And these are fiber types that you might get some sort of related fiber types. For example, you might get related fiber types in the exoskeletons of insects. And I am acutely aware that it is an easier cell to eat mushrooms than to eat crickets. But these fiber types are uniquely beneficial for the gut microbiome. So we know that the fiber in mushrooms, being a really different structure than the fiber in vegetables or fruit or grains or nuts or seeds, is actually a really important fiber type for feeding some of the most beneficial bacterial species in the gut microbial community. And because of this combination of unique phytochemicals, unique fiber types, and then crazy nutrient density, I actually think that the research really supports our efforts to consume a serving of mushrooms most days. And I try to consume at least one serving every day while also embracing diversity. Just like it's important to eat the rainbow when we're choosing fruits and vegetables, when we're eating our new mushroom food group, choosing as many different mushrooms as we can, as many different varieties as we can find in the store, that's really important for variety in nutrition. And every little detail of a difference in fiber structure really actually makes a difference in terms of how that fiber is feeding the gut microbiome. And so the more diversity that we can get actually in our diets in general, the better.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetoj.com.

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