The Goods #34

The time has come.

The GOODS

6 min readSep 23, 2017

To open your mind.

Hey!

Be like this window and do what others aren’t doing. Keeping your mind open.

This week, we’re sharing info on everyday topics like food and water. You all consume that kinda stuff right?

Of course you do. Grab a glass of (good) water and lezz go!

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Look familiar?

For those veggie eaters out there, probably not. But for many, many people, this might look like the average day or week of food consumed.

So question for you dear reader: what’s the one thing all these food items have in common other than being from our animal friends?

If you don’t know. S’all good. That’s why we’re here.

Our resident dietitian and health professional (slash editor) is here to inform you that the foods pictured all contain protein.

More muscles please

Living in a society obsessed with looking good, it’s easy to understand why everyone seems to think that we all need more protein. After all, more protein will make you more muscles, right?

Mmmmm. Kind of.

We’re not sure if it’s Arnold’s fault, but we feel as though we’ve all been duped to think that we need to eat animal products to get our protein.

You see, the biggest issue is that, as a society, we all eat waaaaay too much protein — regardless of whether it’s from animals or plants.

Unless your full-time job is to win Olympic Gold medals you’re probably consuming too much protein.

K, so how much?

It’s easy. Luckily, you’ve got the answer in the palm of your hand.

For the average adult (woman or man), your portion of animal protein (steak, chicken, fish, etc.) per meal should not exceed the surface area and thickness of your actual palm.

It’s science, really.

Our bodies were designed to consume and process a limited amount of protein per meal. So eating more than you really need means any excess protein gets converted to, you guessed it, fat!

Now what?

Deciding to reduce the amount of animal foods and increase the veg? Cool.

As you decrease or work to eliminate your animal protein, you’ll hear a lot of people asking you the same, “Oh, you’re vegetarian. Where do you get your protein from?”

Reality is, protein can easily be found in plant foods too.

Here’s a list of delicious sources of complete plant protein which is of the highest quality:

> hemp seeds

> edamame beans (the stuff they make tofu and tempeh with)

> buckwheat

> quinoa

These four sources will keep you full, keep you light and keep you lean. Oh ya, and keep you regular. (What? It’s true!)

Take more action!

Alas, at the next end of the summer BBQ, opt out of that double burger offer. That second piece of meat will be converted and stored into fat anyway.

We’d suggest chomping down on that lentil-corn-quinoa veggie burger instead.

It’s easier on your gastro-intestinal tract and will ensure you have no time for the next chapter of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.

(Really. Who reads that anyways?)

Water

Everybody is doing it.

To stay alive, we don’t really have a choice.

So, friendly health reminder — we should all be drinking at least 2L (67 oz) every day 🌠

Even if you’re going to sit on your butt all day and not break a sweat, that’s the Goldilocks amount of water we should all be consuming to be sure that our internal machine of a body is functioning at its best.

You’d tap that

Whether it’s after a solid HIIT workout, or after a looooong night out with friends singing karaoke, we all get to that point when we need water, and we need it bad.

In most cases, we reach for the kitchen tap and pour away. Sometimes, we’ll even grab a chilled bottled water from the fridge.

We do this because we’re confident that the water we have at our disposal is safe and because we’ve never really had to think about where our water comes from.

And in most developed countries, the source of the tap water is actually quite good. New York City, for instance, gets their water from the pristine Catskills mountains range upstate. While the residents of Vienna (Austria) get their water from glaciers in the Alps. (So euro.)

Now you know

Due to some complex and old urban infrastructure, the water that most of us are drinking isn’t necessarily up to par in terms of bestestness.

We didn’t get the chance to drop into the sewer system TMNT style to check things out ourselves, but we did get chance to talk water with our buddy, Vincent Purino, from Aquaovo — a Montreal-based company changing the way people drink water.

(Yes, his name is Purino and he sells water filters. No such thing as coincidence, lol).

After hearing Vince explain a little bit more about how most of the water we’re all drinking often has trace amounts of heavy metals (which our bodies can never get rid of, ugh, sucks), and the untold amount of nasty pharma drugs that get dumped back into our water systems, we had some second thoughts about our tap water.

Also, didn’t you ever notice that tap water often smells funky? Ya, that’s chlorine. And what that does to your insides is kill the healthy bacteria living in your gut that strengthen your immune system — boo :(

In a nutshell, water should not taste, nor smell like anything. Nada. It should taste just as the cosmos intended, pure.

One step at a time

Reducing the use of plastic bottles (that leach chemicals like hormone-disrupting BPA into our drinking water) while favouring glass bottles is a great way to change the world, and your water.

(Non-fun fact: most plastic takes 1,000 years to decompose.)

Filtering your water with the classic Brita filter, or getting a reverse osmosis machine is also a great way to get started with taking back control of your water.

Otherwise, a shiny new water filter from Aquaovo is a real nice way to treat yourselves and spoil your loved ones. (Xmas is only 96 days away…just saying.)

Their natural water filters are only made with what nature has provided us with — like glass and bling, bling gold yo.

Das right, gold. Filtering your water. (Oh you fancy now.)

Like Vince said, “at scale, every little change makes a huge difference.”

We’ve all got the power to change what goes inside of us.

We’ll raise our glass to that ;)