Medical school is stressful; likely more so due to the lack of time for the basics: sleep, stress-reduction activities, and food preparation. But is resorting to a degenerate diet the answer? The medical literature is rife with studies that demonstrate the health benefits of a whole foods plant-based diet. Yet many people ask whether this is a viable option, especially medical students whose average debt approaches $200K at varying interest rates as high as 7-8% (or more) and who have severe time constraints. First, you may ask, is a healthy, plant-based diet actually affordable on such a tight budget? Second, you may argue, any time-consuming non-essential area (eating healthy may mistakenly be considered one) must fall to the backburner when the going gets tough. As a result, medical students often subscribe to abysmally nutrient-devoid diets, including the following: Ramen noodles: These have enough salt to give the Dead Sea a run for its money. Fast-food options: Burger King, Chinese food, KFC, or other local almighty burger joints stalk universities like groupies. PB&J: The ultimate comfort food, but when jelly is counted as one of our daily servings of fruit, we know things are bad... Essentially, med student diets consist of life-subtracting rather than life-sustaining options that are calorie-dense yet nutrient-devoid. These fast-food diets unavoidably include the following: a generous serving of saturated--or worse still--trans fats; far more than a dash of salt; a potential pinch of mutagenic heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) found in cured meats or meat products cooked at high temperatures (such as pan-frying or grilling directly over an open flame); and a hundred or so excess milligrams of the dietary trimethylamines, choline and/or L-carnitine, which via our gut's own microbiota, may increase our levels of proatherogenic trimethylamine-N-oxides (TMAOs). Imagine if in place of these roll-the-dice-on-your-health kinds of foods that burden our immunity we were to consume foods associated with adding quality years to our lives? For example, research suggests that cruciferous vegetables (eg, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) may act through the Ah receptor (the aryl hydrocarbon receptor, or AhR) to promote intestinal immunity by combating the effects of environmental pollutants such as dioxins. Unfortunately, many don't realize that eating healthy can easily be done on the cheap. So we can be stingy with our precious time as well as our dollars and still reap the benefits from eating to promote rather than challenge our bodies' healthy functioning. All we need to get started are greens and some other colors and a bit of creativity. Bags of dried black beans, chickpeas, or lentils plus brown rice or quinoa, faro, amaranth or other ancient grains can be purchased in bulk and will provide you with the essential amino acids. A huge parcel of sweet potatoes and a 2-lb bag of carrots will get you plenty of the vitamin A precursor, beta carotene, along with an abundance of antioxidant anthocyanins. Finally, complement this with some frozen broccoli or kale (and maybe some chili sauce for a kick), and this power plate will take you through a large part of the day's drudgery. Just prep these base ingredients at the beginning of the week (and by prep I mean just cut, then boil), add some herbs or spices such as anti-inflammatory curcumin, and you can hop aboard a culinary adventure with a Mediterranean, Mexican, Asian, or Middle Eastern palette having no travel costs! Most importantly, however, is the realization that you don't have to be a purist to achieve the benefits of healthy eating. As Liam Davenport (Medscape) quotes Zhangling Chen, PhD of Erasmus MC Rotterdam, shifting to a healthier diet "does not require a radical change in diet." Fewer animal products and a few more fruits and veggies added to what you're doing right now can only improve your health. Whether to help you power through the next block of exams or to help ward off a cold or two! So regardless of how busy or how broke you may feel, the long-term benefits of a few more plants far outweigh the investment. Source
