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Melina Jampolis, M.D., is a board-certified physician nutrition specialist. She currently maintains a small private practice in Los Angeles, specializing in nutrition for weight loss, disease prevention and treatment.
In addition to being a Forbes Health Advisory Board member, Dr. Jampolis is the author of several nutrition books. Her most recent, Spice Up, Live Long focuses on the health benefits of herbs and spices.
In a conversation with Forbes Health, Dr. Jampolis shares her thoughts on a number of complex nutrition topics, including the myth of boosting your metabolism, the truth behind intermittent fasting and why you shouldnt eat fat alone.
The concept that you have to eat every three hours to boost your metabolism.
Im a snacker. I dont do well eating big meals. So I do have to eat every few hours. Not to stimulate my metabolism, but to keep my blood sugar and energy levels stable. But thats the reason for it. Equating it to metabolismis something I wish would go to the wayside.
Snacking is important to prevent getting too hungry so that you make poor choices at meals. Thinking that it does something to boost metabolism is really an incorrect interpretation of the science.
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That all carbs are bad. That gluten is bad for everybody.
My goal is to make life easier, and just saying everybody should be off gluten and dairy no matter what because it causes leaky gut and inflammation, thats just flat-out wrong. I wish we could be a little more targeted, and not just make blanket statements about cutting nutrients.
Its absolutely legit, but theres a lot of misinformation out there. When we look at fasting, its been done historically in cultures across the world for thousands of years. So, this is nothing new, per se.
Most people are talking about time-restricted eating, which is eating in a six to eight-hour window and then fasting the remainder of the day. This is nuanced, though. Studies have shown that the window is just as important. All of the research has been done from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. And that really is the rub.
Its easy to skip breakfast. But for a lot of people, its really not that livable to stop eating at 6 p.m. Youre sitting there at the end of the day, youre relaxing, youre watching TVand youre just going to drink chamomile tea? But thats where the research is the most robust.
The [research] actually shows that if youre doing the OMAD (one meal a day), and you have that meal late at night, it actually may be associated with a worsening of cardiometabolic variables, like high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and not as robust with weight loss. I think having your last meal earlier in the day is probably the most important aspect of it.
There is some legitimacy with periods of prolonged fastingbut you can really get some of the same benefits from intense exercise and things like that. Its definitely legit if you do it correctly and it works in your lifestyle.
I am obsessed with the 100-calorie packs of Blue Diamond almonds. There is some research that from a psychological standpoint, having these 100-calorie packs, even for people with compulsive eating disorders, [its] built-in portion control, and its so important.
Whenever Im working with patients to get them to eat better long term, it goes back to making peoples lives easier. Could I be super organized and get a measuring cup and make my own every week? Yes, but Im not that person. I run out the door, Ive got to get the kids to school, [so I just] always have a bag in my purse.
My second favorite snack is called Bada Bean Bada Boom. I am obsessed with the health benefits of beans. I dont eat them as often as I would like in cooking because Im not a good cook, but they have these 100-calorie snacks of dried beans and theyre really crunchy and salty.
I need a little bit of protein and healthy fat in order to really feel full, for satiety. Thats why these portion-controlled, healthy fats or carbs really personally help me manage my weight.
Building in portion control any way you can is favorable. But I will say that one of the concepts I think is one of the most important in nutrition and weight management is the concept of calorie density. Dry, salty snacks like that dont have any water component to them, and I dont think theyre as satiating.
I do think on some level were volume eatersso when you think about a Wheat Thin, when you chew it, it dissolves into nothing. So it doesnt take up a lot of volume in your stomach. For my patients, I would much rather see them doing a 100-calorie pack of Skinny Pop, because popcorn is infused with air, it takes up more volume and it takes longer to eat.
Im always evaluating things and trying to bring in the healthlike popcorn is actually a whole grainwith convenience, livability and the impact on weight management with 70% of the population obese or overweight. A diet is not something you should be temporarily on, it really should be something that is integrated into your daily habits.
I know a lot about nutrition, Ive been studying it obsessively for 20 years. And Ive also kept an open mind throughout my study, so very little surprises me. But I found out the polyphenols in herbs are actually diminished with air drying.
I think its because being constantly exposed to oxygen and oxidative stress may have depleted them. And it doesnt happen with freeze-drying or microwave-drying. So if youre just hanging up the rosemary, it does somewhat diminish the health benefits.
Also, herbs do have a shelf life because of their bioactive compounds. So thats part of the surprise aspect of regular air drying not being effective. If youre opening up spices a lot and theyre exposed to oxygen, theyre going to lose their potency a little bit more quickly and their health benefits.
The concept of energy density, which was pioneered by Barbara Rolls. Do everything you can to integrate more vegetables into your diet. So instead of having a bean salad, you add vegetables to your beans. Anything to add volumeI think psychologically and physiologically itll make it easier to control calories, which we are all eating far too much of.
Its not to say you cant eat fat. You need healthy fat to absorb the fat-soluble nutrients in fruits and vegetables. You need it for satiety. So I dont tell people to cut fat. But never eat fat alone. Always combine it with a lower calorie density food. If you think like that and get in the habit of doing that, you will be more mindlessly able to manage your weight and optimize your health.
The National Institute of Health, starting in 2020, did a 10-year initiative for supporting research in precision nutrition. I think that is critically important for our field. So, [for example] the fact that vitamin D is shown to be effective in this patient population but not this one, it may be because of the genetic variant in the vitamin D receptor or something like that. I think that being able to give more precise recommendations could be a game-changer.
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I really believe that doctors need to play a more important role in administering and guiding their patients from a nutrition standpoint. I think it has to start at the top. Unfortunately, our attempts at introducing more nutrition education in the United States in medical school have not been that successful yet.
Ive been talking about food as medicine for 20 years now; I really believe in it. But I need other doctors to really buy into that to have the trickle-down effect to where it really is an accepted part of medicine, not just nutrition and medicine. They really should be together. Nutrition is at the core of every disease, head to toe, there is a nutritional component to everything. I hope that we can push the needle a little bit to train physicians appropriately so they can oversee this growth.
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The Pulse: Intermittent Fasting, Caloric Density And More With Melina Jampolis, M.D. - Forbes
