Jennifer Cataldo
Jennifer Cataldo is a Certified Nutrition and Metabolic Typing Consultant, Personal Trainer, and Pilates Instructor. Jennifer specializes at Tone in Pilates instruction and nutrition consulting, encompassing metabolic typing, purification programming, eating disorders, and weight management. She also helps cancer patients and survivors, and individuals with thyroid disorders to develop sensible nutrition strategies. Jennifer uses humor and genuine warmth to create a non-judgmental, supportive environment while developing realistic and balanced plans for nutritional change.
Her lifelong passion for health and fitness is complemented by a corporate sales and marketing career in luxury and natural products. Jennifer studied dance for ten years; attended Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California; and holds certificates from the American Counsel on Exercise and National Academy of Sports Medicine.
JENNIFER'S LATEST "RANT"
"No Dogma is my Co-Pilot"
I, like many who are concerned about our health and diet and longevity, often feel conflicted and confused with all the latest research and contradictions revolving around food and I am a Nutrition Professional! So I can only imagine what my clients feel or what the mainstream public feels. For every opinion or study or book or documentary there is another with opposing views, data, research and conclusions. So, after wrestling around with it in my head many times over this is the conclusion I came to for myself for NOW. It is constantly evolving, just as we are, just as information is.
I am not a purist when it comes to nutrition. One theme is clear throughout most popular "healthy" eating beliefs no matter whom you ask is plant based is best. I am not a vegan, not to say this isn't a viable choice for some. I do choose to eat some animal products, albeit far fewer than I used to. Do I think it is necessary to eat animal products? No. Do I eat them? Yes. I do not believe it is the healthiest to drink milk from another animal, but do I occasionally have dairy products? Yes. Could I live without dairy and think it would be a wise choice? Absolutely. I do not believe it is necessary to eat animal protein to stabilize blood sugar, I believe this is a myth. Yes, blood sugar can become unstable by eating too many starches and refined carbohydrates, but eating plants high in fiber and low in sugar does not cause blood sugar fluctuations. However, animal protein is a concentrated source of complete protein, which means it contains all nine essential amino acids in correct proportions for supporting biological functions in the human body. For myself, with my activity level and lifestyle I feel good including some lean, humanely raised, sustainable animal protein in my diet. Is it possible that it creates acid and/or oxidation in the body? Perhaps, but so does exercise. One thing is clear there is a huge problem with the Standard American Diet (S.A.D. and yes, it's very sad). Meat is not the only culprit (but yes standard Americans eat too much) the biggest offender is processed foods. And yes, I consider brown rice pasta a processed food. I am simply pointing this out because a seemingly "healthy" food can still be processed. Last time I checked pasta doesn't grow on trees. Do I occasionally eat it? Yes. There are varying degrees of processed foods, just as there are varying degrees of animal products on the "healthy" spectrum. For example, clearly, eating fresh wild salmon is a far better choice than a slab of bacon. What we really need to be focusing on is nutrient density. Plants are far more nutrient dense than any other food. The key is finding the right balance for your body and for your lifestyle. For me, I have noticed the greatest improvement in my overall health, fitness, immune response and well being simply by drinking a green smoothie everyday. Interesting when the biggest changes come from those that focus on adding to, not taking away from. Adding more plant based, nutrient dense foods naturally evolves to reducing or eliminating foods that aren't well serving. This same thinking could be applied to other areas of life such as exercise or spirituality. Adding in healthier habits naturally gives way to letting go of other perhaps less gratifying or beneficial ones.
So in short, my nutrition philosophy is based on eating unprocessed, unrefined, nutrient dense, seasonal, local and organic as much as possible, WHOLE foods, with the addition of a sprinkling of less than "healthy" choices (such as dark chocolate and of course coffee) in moderation!
I have included some nutrition "myths" below.
To good health and clarity on your journey,
Jennifer
Myths
Popular anti-vegetarian myths:
"Humans are supposed to eat meat."
Humans aren't "supposed" to eat anything - there's no divine rule here, unless you're Kosher or something. Since plants are the only things we absolutely need in our diet, meat is an option that we can choose or not choose, as we like. Humans are biologically omnivores, but all that means is that we have the ability to eat meat, not the need to eat it.
"Vegetarians/vegans are unhealthy."
Vegan and vegetarian diets provide every nutrient necessary (with the exception of vitamin B12, which is only insufficient today because we wash off our vegetables so well). An unbalanced vegetarian or vegan diet can certainly be unhealthy, just like any unbalanced diet is unhealthy, but it's relatively easy to plan a balanced vegetarian or vegan diet. Furthermore, diets low in meat, dairy, and eggs are much healthier than the typical Western diet. Many studies have shown that vegetarians are healthier on average than meat-eaters; some of this is because health-concerned people are more likely to become vegetarian, but much of it is due to the health benefits of a vegetarian diet, which is typically lower in cholesterol and saturated fat and higher in fiber. The American Dietetic Association says that properly planned vegetarian and vegan diets are nutritionally adequate at any age.
"Vegetarians don't get enough protein."
The minimum amount of protein needed to survive is 46 grams for adult women and 58 grams for adult men per day. Vegetarians and vegans effortlessly get more than this from non-animal sources. Unless your hair is falling out and your wounds aren't healing, you don't have a protein deficiency. In fact, the Western diet typically contains too much protein, and high levels of animal protein are known to leach calcium from bones, causing osteoporosis, and they are also linked to heart disease. You might still hear the claim that "animal proteins are superior" or that vegetarians must do protein combining to obtain sufficient protein; this is a myth and was disproved decades ago. When it comes to nutrition, protein is protein and it doesn't matter where it comes from.
"Vegetarian diets actually kill more animals because of all the insects and rodents killed by plant agriculture."
It's true that some animals are killed in the process of growing plants, from pesticides or machinery. But animals raised for food must also eat, and in fact feeding farm animals is really inefficient; it takes many pounds of plant matter to make a pound of meat. The total amount of plants grown to feed a meat eater is much greater than the total amount grown to feed a vegetarian, so a vegetarian diet still leads to fewer animals killed over all (assuming the same number of animals die in human-grade plant fields and animal-grade plant fields, and I doubt there's any difference). Besides, most vegetarians are concerned about the treatment of farm animals, not just how many die.
"The healthiest diet is a Paleolithic diet that includes lots of meat - after all, this is what we evolved to eat."
Ignore the assumption that hunter-gatherers of the past ate lots of meat, and look at the actual data from anthropologists. Hunter-gatherers typically eat a diet that is 80% or more plant matter. Early anthropologists studying hunter-gatherers assumed that meat is more important than it is because they spent most of their time with the men, and the men liked to talk about hunting. But in fact, meat is a small percentage of overall diet in most hunter-gatherer societies (excluding cultures like the Inuit where meat is the only food available) and women provide most of the food through gathering wild plants. A real Paleo diet would consist largely of tubers, nuts, vegetables, fruit, leaves, and seeds, and would include a smaller percentage of mammal meat, bird meat, seafood, insects, and eggs. It would include no dairy at all (except for breastfeeding infants), and would be very high in fiber and nutrients and come from a much wider variety of plants than we eat in our society. And any nutritionist will tell you that this is an extremely healthy diet. But also remember that the human body is very adaptable and this is only a generalization; humans can subsist on many different diets without severe health effects. (My information on meat in the Paleo diet comes from the excellent book Traditional Peoples Today by the American Museum of Natural History.)
Popular pro-vegetarian myths:
"Humans are naturally vegetarian."
Humans have been eating meat for millions of years, and there has never been an entirely vegetarian culture (though there have been cultures that only eat meat). Our closest relatives, chimps and bonobos, eat a small percentage of meat. Our physiology marks us as omnivores in multiple ways: our teeth and our intestines both look more like other omnivores than they look like either carnivores or herbivores. However, none of this means that we need to eat meat. We are omnivores because during the millions of years that we were hunter-gatherers, we found it to our advantage to be able to eat meat when the opportunity arose (having a wider selection of foods to choose from increases survivability). So those with a greater ability to digest meat had a higher chance of survival, and the traits that enable meat digestion (and skill at hunting, etc.) spread through the population. All this means is that we have evolved the ability to eat meat, not the need to eat meat. We can be perfectly healthy eating a vegan diet. But being omnivores did, once upon a time, make it easier for us to survive.
"Meat is bad for you."
Meat and other animal products in excess are very bad for our health and the high-animal protein and high-cholesterol Western diet is responsible for many health problems and deaths - including our leading cause of death, heart disease. However, eating animal products in moderation is not unhealthy. The healthiest amount of meat intake is probably between 0-15% of the diet, and this is around the amount that a typical hunter-gatherer might eat, depending on climate, so that's probably the amount we ate for most of human history. At very low amounts, there is effectively no impact on health from meat. If you eat a serving of lean chicken once a week, it's not going to hurt you. However, it is much healthier to be vegetarian than to eat the amount of meat typical in a Western diet. The healthiest diets in the world are low in animal products.