nutrition
Quality, Whole Foods are the Currency of Life. The following has been modified with permission from Colleen Huber, NMD. The original can be found here.
Whether you believe in creation, or evolution or are undecided, most of us would agree that our bodies (that is our anatomy and physiology and biochemistry - which is really just how we process food and what we do with it) is substantially the same as that of our recent ancestors. So if we have the same body types and we process our food the same way as our great grandparents and great-great grandparents, can we expect dramatic consequences from eating the processed, irradiated, genetically engineered, refined and synthetic "foods" that our ancestors never had access to and never ate?
Indeed we can expect those consequences! Let's consider what happens if you substitute soda or Kool-Aid in your washing machine instead of water. How much longer would it work? What happens if you feed mayonnaise to a goldfish, french fries to a cow, donuts to a horse, assorted chemicals to a human? What happens when we substitute synthetic products for the water and many different nutrients that our cells and our children's cells and internal organs need simply to function well? In fact, the very sad consequences of the latest generations' food choices is becoming more apparent everyday as we are now seeing chronic diseases become epidemic in our society. Canada’s health status (life expectancy, morbidity, obesity and infant mortality) continues to decline. Why are we getting sicker and sicker while drugging ourselves more and more?
Forget what you ate until today. What you eat from now on is vitally important to your continued well-being.
Until just a few generations ago, our ancestors were wonderfully fit and healthy compared with present-day generations. The majority lived good, active, healthy lives and ultimately died peacefully in their sleep. Today that is a rarity. Whereas chronic disease, chronic pain, and prolonged end-of-life care were rare for our ancestors, it is becoming much more the expected outcome for us. What single difference between these two centuries impacts our bodies the strongest? The overwhelmingly different factor in our lives is the refined, processed, chemical products that we eat, that our ancestors simply did not eat.
Do we really want to live this way? Let's apply some good, plain common sense to food choices.
We have come to understand that, just as you cannot pour soft drinks into your car and expect good performance, you cannot put synthetic and poor quality solids and liquids into your body and expect continued good health. Also, if our species, for better or worse, whether created, evolved or in-between, performs best on whole foods (vegetables, fruits, nuts, eggs, meats, etc.), then we can understand that putting synthetic liquid or solid wastes in your body will simply trash your most valuable possession: your health.
What's so great about good health?
Neighbors, co-workers, teachers, mentors and even friends can come and go. Money comes and goes. Material possessions can only be enjoyed by people who are comfortable in their own bodies. On the other hand, your good healthy body, as you preserve and care for it now, is your most valuable financial asset and your very best assurance of a strong youth full of opportunities, as well as a secure, successful middle age and retirement years. There is a lot about holistic medicine that is just good plain common sense. As Henry Lindlahr, one of the founding fathers of naturopathic medicine, said in Philosophy of Natural Therapeutics - "Medicines are in conformity with the constructive principle in nature insofar as they, in themselves, are not injurious or destructive to the human organism and insofar as they act as tissue foods and promote the neutralization and elimination of morbid matters and poisons."
In fact, this is exactly the goal of holistic medicine: to point out the foods that the patient needs, to promote the elimination of toxins, and above all to follow Hippocrates' instruction to First Do No Harm. In fact, First Do No Harm is the first of the medical principles.
Lindlahr instructed doctors to give patients what they need, take away the toxins that destroy health, and to know when to refrain from doing too much. What could be more important or helpful for a doctor to do for his or her patients than that?
Food choices are a fork in the road that is always in front of you, where one way leads to discomfort and disease, and the other leads to enjoyable life.
It is never too late to improve your health. Food choices are always right there in front of you, with every supermarket item you either stop at or walk past, every restaurant that you either stop at or drive past, allowing you a better choice than what you may have made before.
But can we just turn 180 degrees from soda and fries on the one hand to whole foods on the other hand? How easy is it to start eating collard greens or squash or walnuts? Many people cringe at the idea of eating unfamiliar vegetables, such as arugula, mustard greens, turnip, etc. This is a result of never having eaten these foods prepared in an appetizing and satisfying way. I also had unthinkingly avoided mustard greens, out of a mistaken assumption of what they might taste like. I finally decided to give them a try with the following recipe: fry bacon in a large pot and chop it in small pieces. Add washed, chopped mustard greens to the left over fat & sauté but only until slightly wilted. Too many people make the mistake of cooking greens to death, and then being displeased by both the color and the texture of the severely disintegrated leaves that result. What you are looking for is a little wilting, but with the color still bright, and still a succulent, pleasant (believe it or not) flavor. Sally Fallon has written a wonderful cookbook with similar recipes titled Nourishing Traditions.
So in general, what should we eat, ideally? In addition to the above cookbook, there are two other books that may be considered as good general nutritional guides, one a lifestyle makeover guide, and the other a general food education book. The first is called, The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson. Sisson was an excellent marathon runner and tri-athlete who realized that his high carbohydrate diet and chronic cardio workouts weren’t aiding in his health. With lots of research and perseverance, he realized that we need to go back to the way we were designed to live & enhance the genes we were given. He also has two recipe books chalk full of delicious food.
Another great book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan, a food journalist, does a great job of explaining why we eat what we do today and the detrimental affects it is now having on our bodies & society as a whole. His mantra, “Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants” is a wonderful way to think about the way we should be eating. He is also very influential, contributing to numerous movies (Food, Inc, Botany of Desire, Food Matters, King Corn) and has written several other books.
Some online blogs that provide excellent information include Chris Kresser, Mark’s Daily Apple, Dr. Mercola and Robb Wolf.
Here are the best foods in a nutshell, including the nut: your body already truly and deeply loves vegetables, even if your taste buds don't love them yet.
Maximize whole vegetables. In fact, fill up on vegetables all you like. That way you'll have less room for junk. If this sounds too simple to be true, remember that this ridiculously simple rule is the food maxim of healthy, slim adults. Try it, even if you only do it late in the day or every other day. Check out a local farmer’s market or try a food subscription called Community Supported Agriculture. This is a fast growing movement of small local farms throughout Canada that sell fresh seasonal food, usually organic, by subscription. You either pick it up at the farm or at an intermediate location, or they deliver to you. Once you try organic food right from the field, that has not been trucked hundreds or thousands of miles, you'll love the freshness of the produce so much, it would be hard to go back to supermarket food that has either been sitting around two weeks before you buy it, or worse, that came off an assembly line overlooking the industrial landscape surrounding the New Jersey turnpike. (That is where your processed food additives and flavorings and coloring come from, you know.) You think junk food can be addicting? Try healthy food! Freshness and taste and the deepest satisfaction of your body's basic metabolic needs are food addictions too! Once you are hooked, let them be your vices.
A rainbow of vegetables and fruits.
Make your meal a rainbow. Green vegetables are such a staple of a healthy diet that they should be eaten every day. However, wonderful as green vegetables are, they do not provide the full spectrum of nutrients. Remember also the orange vegetables, such as sweet potato, squash, pumpkin and orange bell pepper, which provide the very important flavonoids. Red vegetables, such as tomatoes, are also important for lycopene. The liver alone has several hundred functions. These many jobs require the fuel of each of the different beneficial molecules found in a rich variety of healthy foods. In contrast, such nutrients are not available in junk food, even if they may have been added back in the factory.
Fruits are excellent, but avoid them in any concentrated form. Jams, jellies, juice and other fruit-based processed foods are so concentrated that they produce high insulin responses. Insulin rushes are the very most important thing you need to avoid in order to maintain good health and appropriate weight. Have a rainbow of whole fruits for the same reason as having a rainbow of vegetables. You need the nutrients that are represented in the various colors.
Meats, dairy, nuts and seeds.
Choose quality meat. You are not only what you eat, but you are also what you eat, eats. Cows thrive on grass, not corn and soy! The more people ask for these in supermarkets, the more supermarkets will begin to carry them. In addition to the usual meats - buffalo, elk and venison are all nutritious and quite good. Roasting is better than frying. Organ meats such as liver are more nutritious than muscle meats, but both are good. Eggs, raw cheese and full fat yogurt will be beneficial to some and allergenic to others. It is best to pay attention to your body and watch for symptoms after eating dairy and eggs. The most highly allergenic foods are dairy, wheat, eggs, soy, citrus, peanuts and corn. That doesn't mean that you should avoid all of them, but these 7 foods are less digestible than others, so watch for feelings of fatigue or discomfort after eating them, even 12-24 hours later.
Snack on nuts and seeds. Walnuts, pecans, almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, as well as their derivative butters are very highly nutritious and should be eaten frequently, unless one is allergic. Walnuts, high in omega-3 fatty acids, are a very important brain food for everyone, especially children. Other foods high in omega-3 fatty acids are flaxseed, grass-fed beef and salmon.
Leave the refined grains and sugar behind at the supermarket.
Minimize, or better yet get rid of, refined grains and sugar of all kinds. These contribute nothing to your health, as all nutrition has been extracted from them. Worse, they actively deplete good health, because they cause excessive insulin release and inhibit your body’s ability to absorb other nutrients. Try to eliminate as much as possible breads, cereals, cookies, bagels, pretzels, donuts, candy and sodas. But how do you do this when daily life is so full of these items? The battle over junk food is won or lost at the supermarket, not at home. In other words, if you come home with a box of cookies, you will eat them, because after all, being only human, it is nearly impossible to let them simply sit there in the cabinet a few feet away from you the same way the rice has been sitting there for six months. Rather, fighting the willpower battle at the supermarket is made much easier by simply walking on past the unhealthy food. Better yet, don’t even walk down those aisles. In fact, I advise you to simply shop the periphery of the supermarket and nothing more. That way, you pick up the whole fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy, and come home with a much healthier, and less expensive, set of grocery items than if you had gone up and down the interior aisles where all the processed foods are located.
The only kind of diet that will do you any good is one that you can be comfortable with long-term and features the above criteria.
Don't count calories. You could drive yourself up a wall trying to figure out how many calories you are eating or should eat. Counting calories is almost certain to end up making you feel deprived of food while wasting your time with meaningless numbers. When you are eating the correct foods, calories won’t matter. Your body will be getting the nutrients it needs and you will no longer be trying to fill up on “empty calories.”
Above all, make a kind of peace with this way of eating. Find a quantity and variety of vegetables, fruits, meat, dairy, nuts and seeds that is so comfortable and so easy for you that you stay with these foods long term. The goal is to have such a well balanced and therefore satisfying diet, that there is nothing wanting and thus no need to cheat. You will find that some of these foods are so tasty that they become comfort foods for you. Rely on these when you feel the need for a comfort food. Give it at least twelve weeks. If you are not feeling considerably better in that time and much thinner (if you are overweight), then you need to modify this diet, so that it is something that you don't feel the need to cheat on. Cheating, as every dieter knows, costs so much that you may as well glue cookies on your thighs and tummy rather than eating them. Enrich your whole foods diet with so many different whole foods of your liking that you feel no need to cheat. Keep enough healthy convenience foods (i.e. fruits, nuts, jerky) on hand that you reach for those when you need to snack, because they are so visually appealing, fragrant, tasty, seasonally fresh and in great variety in your colorful and overflowing fruit bowl. If you feel you need something more filling with your fruit and nut snack, have some high fat cheese or a hard boiled egg with it. These items also pack and keep very nicely in a bag to take to work.
What do you do if eating whole foods seems to be too much of a change?
Start very slow and very easy. Dr. Steven Ehrlich of Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine is sensitive to people trying to change their diet, and the frustration that they may feel. Dr. Ehrlich instructs his students, "Have your patients add something rather than subtract from their diet. To start, have them eat one apple a day." Here is an almost free change that one can make, a good tasting, easy to store, easy to carry, highly nutritious convenience food that is available year round. (Not to mention that it's probably the least messy thing you can eat on the go). Of course, after the patient masters this, Dr. Ehrlich gradually challenges his patients further with more and more good foods, but always gently, at the patient's own pace, considering individual appetites, and with great compassion. Surreptitiously (and insidiously!) the unhealthy items in the diet start falling away as patients fill up more and more on apples and later other whole fruits and vegetables. Let us all live up to such wonderful compassion, as we ever so gently redirect others away from the plethora of processed foods that surround us in the supermarkets and the highway fast food outlets toward something more tasty, more nutritious, more aligned with our genetically acquired needs, and . . . more natural!