Bananas

Introduction and banana topic 0:00

Hello, so I'm Jen Goddard from Thriving Proof. In case you don't know who I am, I have a board certified doctor of mental health. And today I want to talk to you about bananas. So I asked about the bananas all the time. People are very curious why I don t eat bananas or recommend bananas, or have bananas on my meal plans. I thought I would put together this little video.I did this in a presentation recently that I did for my pageant friends. So I thought I would share it here as well. So, I went on the government website and just pulled up, because the first argument is that, well, it's good in potassium,

Potassium argument and food list overview 0:39

so, you know, that's why it is good to eat and that is why we should be eating it and blah, blah. And it just speaks to some of the common misconceptions around our foods and what we are eating, and because it isn't always what have just been taught or have assumed that it is as far as whether or not something is healthy or good for us. So, I thought I would tackle the potassium argument. Let me share my screen. And... This, as you can see, the website is dietaryguidelines.gov, so food sources of potassium.

And you see on the list, and it uses a cup for everything except for the potatoes is one medium potato and a banana is 1 medium banana. It gives you the amount of calories and the potassium in a food. So think of the calories as a reflection of how much fat and carbohydrates are in product, right?

High-ROI potassium foods 1:35

So it could be fat, it can be carbohydrates, a combination of fat and carbohydrates in the food. It's basically going to tell you how expensive is this for our system to digest, to utilize. Is it going require a lot of insulin? Is going need us to break down a lots of fats? How expensive it is to the system? When we talk about return on investment, we look at Okay, well the potassium is the return on investment, right? And if we, the calories are what it costs our system. So you can see like a good return investment.

Beet greens are amazing. It's only costing, it's, only 39 calories. And yet we're getting 1,309 milligrams in a cup of beet greens. That's like an unbelievable amount of potassium. Huge. Swiss chard, one cup, 35 calories and 961 milligrams of potassium. These are very high ROI foods. A baked potato is number three, so that's a little higher in calories. That's 161 calories, but it has 926 milligrams potassium, So you're getting a lot of Potassium, But it's also a high cost to the system.

Banana compared to better alternatives 2:50

So we're going to revisit that one and go back to that a little bit later. So you have yams, spinach, jackfruit, all kinds of things, even spinach. Look at that, 41 calories, but it has 839 milligrams of potassium. Big ROI there, like the Swiss chard and the greens. It's up there with those. Kohlrabi, broccoli rabe, portobello mushrooms. Only 35 calories and you're getting 529 milligrams And you go down to a banana, so you're getting 112 calories and it's only 451 milligrams of potassium. So when you put it into perspective, okay, you can see the difference.

Even a cantaloupe is a lot better than that. A cantalobe is only 60 calories, and its 473 milligrams potassium, So even that is much, much much better ROI than a Banana is the cup of cantalape. So stewed tomatoes, canned pumpkin, who knew your pumpkin pie had more, you had, more potassium in it than your, don't eat pumpkin pipe. Well, not all the time. Pumpkin pie once in a while is fine, but you know, if it's a good, healthy recipe. So if we take that list and we highlight your return on investment foods, so those are the ones that are highlighted in yellow.

Practical takeaway and closing 4:03

These are your big ROI foods. The ones you really want to focus on if you're trying to increase your potassium. Okay, and then here, what I did was, you can see how a baked, half of a bake potato, a half a medium sized baked potato would actually give you a better return on investment than a banana would, in the sense that you'd get 80 calories and 463 milligrams of potassium, which is a much better ROI than banana. So I use that as an example just to give some perspective. Um, as to what would be, you know, the best options for, um, potassium.

So when you stick with fruits and vegetables, and you can see how you, uh, You know the right fruits of vegetables. You can, see, how, can get a really good ROI and get plenty, plenty of potassium, without costing your system, so much to, to use it or to get to gain that potassium okay. So I just wanted to share that if you have questions, you know, obviously bananas here and there, not the end of the world. It's not, the worst thing that you're ever going to eat. But as some people are eating bananas every single day, multiple times a day because they're thinking that it's a healthy food, that is something that's contributing to their nutrients and they don't realize the burden that its putting.

We could definitely shift that and get a much better return on investment with some other foods. So drop me a line. Let me know what you like to use for potassium, what do you eat? I'd love to hear your comments below.