Angela Quintas: "Detox diets Don't make sense"

Ángela Quintas, an expert in food and nutrition, believes that miracle diets are a health risk."They are useless and can deteriorate your body," he says in an interview with Elplural on the occasion of the publication of his fourth book: 'Why does the gut hurts me?', Edited by Planet. In him he dedicates a chapter to the overweightand obesity, which constitute risk factors in numerous diseases. Combat these issues, he says, goes beyond an aesthetic issue, but they have to be done in a balanced and maintained way in time. “Fast diets to lower weight or thatThey call detox diets make no sense, ”he concludes. In his book, he includes basic advice for" good eating (and thinning) ", in addition to a weekly menu to lose weight.

'Why does my gut hurts?' It also offers the keys to improving the health of our digestive system and fighting diseases such as constipation, helicobacter pylori, candidiasis -which causes unstoppable desire to eat sweet at all hours, especiallywomen-, or the acidity caused by hiatus hernia.In all cases it includes specific food guidelines and menus for the most frequent ailments, with market ingredients available to everyone.

Question.- To what extent do eating habits influence our health? Response.- We nourish ourselves through what we eat.Depending on what we choose, we will be better nourished or not, we will have good analytics, energy and we will feel good.It is super important.

Q.- How is it possible that in Spain, considered the mecca of the Mediterranean diet, there has increased both childhood obesity? R.- We have foods that are wonderful and the option of being able to obtain them in a very easy way.In almost all sites there is a market or the possibility of buying fresh foods.I think we are forgetting a bit of how we ate before.I always say that it is best to return to the market.I always emphasize the importance of reading tags, but if you go to a market, you don't have to read tags, that is, fruit, vegetable, fish, meat ... there you know what there are, they are not ultra -processed foods nor are weBuying things we should not take.

All this is also associated in this life of stress that we carry, that we are running, running to all sides.In the end it is all as a cycle.And in the case of children, it is true that childhood obesity is shooting and that will carry problems.That is, we are going to find very young adults who will begin to have diseases that previously appeared at a very adult age: type two diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hyperlipemia, etc.We are starting to see that in very young people and it is because as children is already having an important overweight.

Q.- What do you think are our worst habits when eating? R.- First do not make a good purchase, that is, for me that is fundamental, not do a good planning for the whole week, that you have raw materialsAt home, do not arrive on Wednesday with empty fridge and ask for a pizza.If you want to do it one day, it is, but not because you do not have quality food at home with which you can cook.It is also advisable to look for simple ingredients, ways to cook simple and, when we have children, set an example.That is very, very important because I cannot pretend that my children eat fruit if they never see me do it.

Q.- Is the biodiethetic products that we see more and more on the shelves of the large surfaces are healthy? R.- It happens a lot that the people who suddenly decide to stop eating certain foods, for example, gluten.When one is celiac, it obviously has to withdraw it, but there are people who do it because.Gluten is a product that gives food consistency and if we eliminate it, the industry adds another product, which are normally fat or sugars.That is, we are buying something that puts glutenless in the labeling and that is healthy, but can have many other things.Beware of this because it is the way they have to sell us products.We must always look at the low -sugar -suggested products label because it may not have sugar, but it can have fats that are not entirely healthy.

Q.- What do you think of the thinning diets? R.- When we consider that we want to lower weight it has to be something that is maintained over time.We cannot use fast diets to lower weight or that call detox diets, which make no sense.What we really need to lower is body fat and if we make a diet in which we lower weight very fast, we run the risk of losing muscle mass and that will deteriorate our basal metabolism and cause a rebound effect.

So what you have to do is learn to eat and feel good.The diet has to adapt to you and you have to adapt to life.It makes no sense to be apples four days because yes, surely you lose weight, but then what?Are you learning to eat?Is it serving you for something?No, it is not serving you absolutely at all.

Q.- The question is to always carry a healthy and balanced diet, but can we commit some excess of sporadic way? R.- The important thing is not what you do one day, but what you do 365 days a year.Because one day you do something you should not do, nothing will happen.The problem is that you feed you badly during the time.

Above all, looking at it from the point of view of health, not so much the aesthetic part, that yes, it can be an engine to lower weight, but the really important thing is our health.If our analytics gives levels of cholesterol or high transaminases, fatty liver, etc.We must be careful with these miraculous diets.

Q.- Are miracle diets dangerous that make you lose a lot of weight in a short time? R.- Miracle diets are useless and can deteriorate your body.Instead of fat, muscle mass is lost that then produces a rebound effect.Among other things, I dedicate myself to gain or lose weight to actors for cinema.When they have to get fat they think 'How good, I will be able to eat everything', and then they get a great disappointment because we have to get that weight, but that their analytics do not alter.We have found cases in which in the end they had better analytics than at the beginning.

Q.- Are the fake news and bulles over food worrisome? R.- I am very concerned about the issue of adolescents, we are increasingly seeing more cases of anorexia and bulimia.We cannot say that a food has miraculous properties.There is no super-food.How much food would you really have to eat for that to become a super food?For me a super-food are rice lenthexThat makes no sense, or tell you that it is much better to take it after eating or before eating.

In the end we are pure chemistry and what we really have to see is that how these molecules work and that each of the nutrients to your body is giving me.

Q.- Is eating well boring? R.- You don't have to.In the book we have put recipes aimed at people who detect intolerance or have a problem with some foods.The idea of this book arose so that people realized that, despite the need for a certain way of eating, appetizing and healthy foods can be ingested.I would eat all the recipes that we have included, even if I do not have the pathologies for which they are indicated

Q.- What products are never lacking in your fridge? R.- The dairy products are not missing, which I love.Yogurts give us hydrate in the protein, so they are fundamental.Also fruits, vegetables, milk, meat, fish ... For example, I have butter that would attract your attention, but it is true that it sometimes gives us an acid, which is the miristic acid, which we usually have very short.On Saturdays I go to the market and make a purchase of those of a lifetime.I freeze, I make a menu, I prepare, what I am going to eat throughout the week and we look a lot what the dwarves eat in the school.We try that the dinners are in line with what is going to eat and in the end you need to have three or four menus that you change.

Q.- Is it good to give dine pizza to the little ones?Can it be a healthy food? R.- If you use a good flour and put protein, a good tomato sauce ... It is true that the cheese that is used is more fat and we leave a little, but nothing happensBecause we take a pizza one day, the world is not going to end.Of course, if I decide that every day I will eat pizza, then I will have a problem.

Q.- What unconfessable dish or product you pirra? R.- I pirpted chocolate palm trees.I have to say it, even if I don't know how regularly.Nothing happens to occasionally drink a sweet, a homemade sponge cake or something that really deserves.

Q.- In this last book you talk about a series of diseases, some very common, such as constipation, and another not so much.Can good diet end all these gastrointestinal problems?R.- Fin with such, no.If I have a hiatus hernia, what happens is that a piece of my stomach has come out over the diaphragm, so that my stomach has ceased to be watee and, therefore, I do not have that layer of mucosa that protects meAnd I will have an acid reflux that rises to the esophagus.It is something physical and food will not be able to repair that hernia, but it will help avoid foods that produce that acidic reflux.

There are other pathologies in which it helps.When for example, I find a patient who is very constipated, the first thing we have to do is see what his diet is, because if you are not taking any fiber or enough water, it is normal that you are constipated.That is, we cannot go directly to the laxative.If in spite of that you are still constipated, we will have to ask yourself, do you move?You are making your peristaltic movements, those movements that make food travel my intestine, work correctly.If in spite of that you are still constipated, there we can do a repair process.That is, we can use strains, specific and prebiotic probiotics, or even mucilage trainers such as chia or linen to favor intestinal traffic.

Q.- What habits are essential to maintain the health of our digestive system? R.- One of the most important causes of biotic alteration, which is what can produce diarrhea, constipation or gases is stress.Another is the consumption of certain drugs such as antibiotics, corticosteroids or anti -inflammatories, smoking and overweight, which has a specific chapter in the book since it makes any pathology much more serious symptomatology.There are many things that can alter and we are talking about something global.We live in a very stressed society, we all have the levels of stress in the clouds and it is one of the main causes of that alteration in the macrobiotics.

Q.- Do you eat better in rural areas? R.- Well, I think so.I live in a big city where you have access to so many things, so many temptations and all these foods that are not healthy, those bags of potatoes that creak, those snacks that sound, all that we like so much and that has a lot of salt.We cannot deny that these foods are not good or that in the rural world they do not appear, but it is true that they have more access to animals, vegetables, fruits ... Here we are surrounded by temptations.

Q.- Is there any product that is totally prohibited in your home?R.- Ballows we have nothing.It is true that we do home biscuits and use banana or dates as sweetener.For mid -morning at home a sandwich is taken as we did before.We do not have, for example, juices and less of the packaging.The fruit must be eaten as is to take advantage of the fiber, so that it does not make me a peak of insulin.

Q.- We do not look, but eating an orange is much healthier than taking a natural orange juice.very large carbon.In addition, fruit digestion begins in the mouth.We have an enzyme called Amilasa Salival, which is the one that begins to digest that fruit.When I drink the juice that salival amylase practically does nothing.

Q.- We have a total ignorance of many simple things that are part of our day to Díar.- I hope we had a subject of nutrition in schools and learn to eat since we are small because it is something that we are going to do all our lives.