Dr. Nancy and Mark Bittman Exchange Healthy Eating Ideas

During a delightful evening reception June 6th preceding WBUR’s On Point Live show with Tom Ashbrook interviewing Mark Bittman, Dr. Nancy Emerson Lombardo enjoyed chatting with both Mark Bittman and Tom Ashbrook.  Both Mark and Tom were very intrigued to hear about Nancy’s evidence-based Memory Preservation Nutrition and asked Nancy to contact them later with more information, and to stay in touch.  

Mark Bittman, food critic for the New York Times,  is a favorite and popular guest on Tom Ashbrook’s show, has just released a new book entitled VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . for Good  (see it on Amazon.com).   The On Point show featuring Mark Bittman and his new book airs at Friday, June 7th. 11 am.

Mark Bittman and Dr. Nancy share the conclusion that Americans eat too many animal foods and not enough plant foods, and way too much sugar. Nancy thinks Mark’s suggestion about one practical way to help people start making the changes needed to shift toward more plant foods is a reasonable idea and may work for many people.  We also both suggest it would be great to eat vegetables as part of breakfast which so many other cultures do around the world.

Mark asked Nancy, “what are the 5 most important brain foods” and Dr. Nancy’s response was…”there aren’t just 5 most important brain foods, or even 10 or 20.  There are 100’s,  a whole variety are needed for brain health”  He was also interested to hear her take on the importance of herbs and spices, as well as why anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatory foods are so critical to brain health. (He asked which foods were anti-inflammatory and Dr. Nancy mentioned

a few examples such as fish, fish oil, berries, and certain key spices)  Evidence points to these foods help slow down the build up of excess beta amyloid (aka A-beta, one of two problem proteins implicated in Alzheimer’s disease) as well as its clumping together as toxic oligomers, fibrils and eventually deposited as “plaques” .

We asked a 10 year old boy named Matt eager to meet Mr. Bittman to take our photograph on Nancy’s Iphone.  The quality isn’t the best, but it records the moment!     And Tom Ashbrook not only has a terrific voice, but is personable and imposing in person.   He had fun interviewing for the reception crowd the two celebrity chefs who had prepared the food for the evening.  And Tom Ashbrook is really eager to learn more about Dr. Nancy’s brain healthy nutrition program.  He grew up on a farm and is especially interested in hearing how the quality of our farm raised animal meat has deteriorated.  Another good point the Mark Bittman made on the live show was that if we eat less animal meat, we can afford to have higher quality of what we do eat, and at the same time if all Americans would do this, it would decrease greenhouse gases and the use of carbon intensive products like fertilizer.  We all agree on need to change federal and state public policies that encourage production of unhealthy food substances and the need to shift towards encouragement of production and consumption of healthier plant based foods.

There was also some lovely mostly healthy foods (and all plant based) available for the reception guests, as well as red wine!  Even Chef Chang’s desserts were vegan to illustrate the possibilities.

And last but not least, Nancy was thrilled to meet a third NPR hero, Jack Beatty, and lay eyes on Radio Boston’s Meghna Chakrabarti who hosted the pre-show performance by a fabulous all girl Boston based Blue Grass band named Della Mae.