Food is your best medicine. Or, more accurately, the right food choices can be powerful medicine for the mind and body. A lot of people are aware of this to one degree or another, but they don’t always act on the knowledge or use it to their benefit in the fullest extent. Everything we put into our body has an effect of one kind or another. Junk foods, refined food, processed foods, foods high in sugar or laden with pesticides, herbicides, preservatives and additives… these all tend to have an adverse effect on the health and wellness of our body both physically and emotionally. Healthy foods that were given to us by Mother Nature, like whole fruits and vegetables, herbs and nuts and seeds can be much more than excellent sources of vitamins and nutrition. Many of them, can also help us fight or prevent a wide variety of health conditions or syndromes and some may even prevent or cure diseases.
Many people are beginning to realize how important their choices in foods really are as more and more research is being done to explore the impact foods have on our health. It is estimated that at least one third of American adults will now try to address their health concerns by using food. However, instead of just looking at how nutritious the foods are or whether they are low in bad fats, people have started looking at the bigger picture. They’re now buying foods which will help contribute to their overall level of health instead of looking for one miracle food that will heal everything.
For many years, health researchers were focused on trying to identify which primary constituent in a food was responsible for it’s healthy properties. In time, what became apparent is that there is no one miracle constituent. The best health and wellness benefits from food come from a variety of elements within each particular food. Isolating just one factor won’t give you the same results as eating the whole food will, and this is why there are no true miracle drugs or vitamins on the market to buy. If you want all the health benefits that garlic or blueberries have to offer for example, then you need to actually eat the garlic and berries on a regular basis.
Hundreds of studies also reveal that it isn’t just one food all by itself that is the healthiest, the nutrients in food work together to promote health and heal chronic health conditions. So it is now understood that eating a wide variety of healthy foods is much more important than one or two independently. For example, combining the healing benefits of carrots, broccoli and garlic is much more beneficial than just one. Eating a balanced meal that contains meat, complex carbohydrates, vegetables and fruit is healthier than one of them alone.
We know without a doubt, that the types of foods we eat plays a vital a role in maintaining optimal mental and physical health and it is also critical for helping to prevent and heal chronic health problems, diseases, and syndromes.
On the other hand, a food that is your best medicine for one person can also be a poison for another. We are each unique biochemically and metabolically. Different people need different things. It all depends on your particular body chemistry. Additionally, different illnesses, conditions or diseases have a different impact on nutritional needs and may result in limits that a healthier person doesn’t face.
For example, a diet that is healthy and beneficial for someone with diabetes may be completely different from someone living with asthma. Some body types do well with a vegetarian, raw or macrobiotic diet, while other body types need meat protein to function optimally and do best with steamed veggies.
Although certain dietary guidelines like removing sugar, white flour, caffeine, pesticides, herbicides, food additives and preservative will be beneficial to us all, other factors are more individualized. Part of designing a healthy diet is getting to know your body and what it needs. There is not a “one size fits all diet” and not all foods are created equally. Your diet should take into account the following factors:
- your overall level of health
- health conditions you may have
- what are you trying to achieve
- the integrity of your gastrointestinal tract
- food allergies or food sensitivities
One of the problems that many people face, is that they don’t really know there bodies or what it needs. Approximately 80% of the population has undiagnosed food sensitivities that they are not aware of. Hidden food sensitivities are often at the root of many health conditions or syndromes as well as psychological symptoms.
So, for example, garlic or whole grains may be a Superfood for a person without sensitivities, but for another person with undiagnosed sensitivities, it can unknowingly be the root of their arthritis, migraine, sinus congestion, heart burn, headaches, irritable bowel, fatigue, chronic pain, insomnia or even depression, anxiety, hyperactivity or autism and more.
A person without sensitivities may derive benefits for their colon with a diet rich in whole grains, while someone who is sensitive to gluten or grains may find that these foods are at their root of their irritable bowel or gas and bloating.
One person can thrive and benefit from the vitamins and minerals in fruits high in sugar, while for another it may be the cause of their anxiety attacks and depression.
It is crucial when choosing the foods you will include in your diet, to know which foods are the best choices for you and your body. Food is your best medicine, but only when it meets your unique biochemical and metabolic needs. By designing a diet that is right for your body chemistry, you can make significant improvements in your physical and psychological health.
Everyone eats so everyone has an opinion about food. But if health is the objective, mere opinion doesnâ??t count nor does fad or majority rule.
Most people think the average cooked diet based upon official food pyramids is just fine. Some eat predominantly fast food. Others advocate veganism (eating only plant foods), or lacto-ova vegetarianism (plants plus milk and eggs). There are also proponents of special foods such as fresh juices, soybean products and macrobiotic cooked grains and rice.
Everyone can make arguments on behalf of their beliefs. They can cite examples of people who have escaped disease and lived long. Some argue morality and ethics, such as those who say sentient animal life should not be sacrificed for food. Others set their eating practices by the standards of holy writ that eschew certain forms of foods and sanctify others. Others just eat what tastes good and thatâ??s logic enough for them.
Eating beliefs seem to take on an almost religious character. People feel guarded and pretty zealous about food and donâ??t like others meddling. But since health is intimately linked to what we take into our mouths, thinking, honest reflection and willingness to change are in order.
It is easy to be deceived because wrong food choices may not manifest their full impact until late in life. Nutrition can even pass through genetically to affect later generations. In this regard, food ideas are also like religion in that hundreds of different sects can each claim to have the truth. But none of them needs to fear disproof since adjudication will not occur until everyone is dead and gone to the afterlife.
The body is extremely adaptable and will attempt to survive on whatever it is given. If the food is incorrect there is usually no immediate harm. But the body will eventually be stressed beyond its ability to adapt, resulting in disease, degeneration and loss of vitality. Unfortunately, such consequences are so far removed in time from the eating regimen that caused them that few understand the relationship.
So be careful before subscribing to bold claims about what is or is not good to eat. The true test of any health idea lies too far out into the future. Our best hope then is to be well grounded philosophically before we slide our legs under the dinner table.
How do we develop a healthy eating philosophy and sort through all of the competing eating ideas? I am going to explain here a very simple principle that is so reasonable you need not even look for proofs. Follow along with me and see if you don’t agree.
Consider the following three premises:
1. Just like a tree is genetically adapted to absorb certain nutrients from soil, and a lion is genetically adapted to thrive on prey, and a deer is genetically adapted to browse on vegetation, so too, are humans genetically adapted to certain kinds of food.
2. The majority of foods we are presently exposed to are a product of the Agricultural/Industrial Revolution and occupy a small part of the genetic history of humans. (Refer back to the 276-mile time-line in which only a few inches represent industrial-type eating practices.)
3. The natural, genetically adapted to food for humans must predate them. In other words, how could humans exist before the food they needed to survive existed? We were completely developed biologically prior to agriculture and any method of food processing. That means whatever diet archetypal humans ate was the perfect diet because that was the diet responsible for the existence and development of the incredibly complex human organism. That diet was the milieu, the environmental nutritional womb, if you will, from which we sprung.
If you consider these three premises, the logical conclusion derived from them is that the best food for humans is that food which they would be able to eat as is, as it is found in nature.
Our tissues were designed to be bathed in food nutrients derived from natural living foods, not with dyes, preservatives, synthetics, nutritiously barren starches and refined sugars and oils. Make no mistake; if we are not eating according to this principle, our bodies are in constant deficiency, imbalance and toxin exposure. The result of generations ignoring this principle is an epidemic of obesity, chronic degenerative diseases and the exhaustion of our digestive processes.
A feature of all natural food is that it is raw â?? alive if you will. This is consistent with the Law of Biogenesis that says life can only come from preexisting life. Life begets life. In spite of scientistsâ?? dreams to the contrary, we have never observed life springing from non-life, nor have we ever even been able to create life from non-life in a laboratory. If we eat living foods, we enhance our own life. If we eat dead, devitalized foods we become devitalized and dead. Granted, this will not happen all at once, but as the adaptive reserves are exhausted we become just like the dead food we eat.
So a fundamental feature of our natural diet was that it was raw. Yes, even the meats, organs, eggs and insects â?? raw. Remember, weâ??re far back in time, even before the use of fire (much less the microwave, stove, oven, grill, deep fryer or extruder). Studies of the diets of past cultures and todayâ??s still-primitive societies reveals that they ate exactly as their genes and the environment dictated.
We were not suddenly dropped from outer space onto Earth with fry pans, matches and rotisseries. We began on the forest floor, not in a line to a fast food counter. We had only our natural bodies in a natural world, exactly like every other creature. Every other organism on Earth eats raw foods exactly like they are found in nature. Do you think nature doesnâ??t notice our decision to change all that?
Would tofu qualify? No, because tofu is found nowhere in nature. Would oatmeal porridge qualify? No, because oatmeal porridge is found nowhere in nature. Would hamburgers, French fries, pop, breakfast cereals, granola, canned foods, candy, sports drinks, muscle building powders, vitamins and minerals, mashed potatoes, carrot cake, croissants, bagels, Jolly Ranchers, Ding Dongs, Cocoa Krispies, Good â??n Plentys or Fig Newtons qualify? No. None of these are found as such in nature.
For those of you who are by now panicking (if not gagging) at the thought of eating raw foods, yes, there is danger of food-borne pathogens. But if you are careful and clean, the danger is far less than the danger of a lifetime eating devitalized processed foods. Raw natural foods must be safe or our ancestors would have not survived and we would not exist!
It is a choice. When faced with a choice, why not opt for the wisdom of nature? Is it not strange we are the only creatures on the planet to cook our foods? Is it a wonder, given this, that we succumb with every imaginable chronic degenerative disease virtually unknown in creatures eating the raw natural diet?
Simply think of yourself placed in nature in the total absence of modern technology. Ask yourself the question, what would I eat… and what could I eat? You could eat and digest fruits, nuts, insects, a few plants, honey, worms, grubs, eggs, milk and animal flesh. These are about the only food substances in nature humans are capable of digesting without technological (including fire) intervention. These are, in fact, the very foods that are the mainstay of nomadic primitive societies. Only when these foods become scarce do unpalatable, inedible foods such as most grains and vegetables become cooked and processed to change their palatability, neutralize toxins and increase digestibility.
So that is where we have been. But does this have anything to do with us here today in the 21st century microwave age? It has everything to do with us because it is this expansive historical context that served as the womb that shaped and defined us. It is this natural wild setting that occupies the vast majority of our history and predominates our genetics. It is the incubator within which life on planet Earth has developed.
What would have been the predominant food in the wild? Likely prey. Envision yourself placed back in time in that setting with a family to feed. You would be looking for the most calorie- and nutrient-dense foods you could find. That would not be a few wheat seeds, some grass or a root. You would let the herbivores do all the grazing and digestion with their specialized stomachs that are capable of converting essentially any plant material into edible protein and fat. Then you would eat them. I donâ??t like that either, but that is the way it is.
Pretty simple isnâ??t it? We should eat what nature provides that we can digest. Yet this is not explained in nutrition textbooks, and PhD nutritionists graduate without even grasping it. It cuts through all the theory, belief, and guesswork. It matches our natural bodies with our natural food.
Our immersion in modern cookery and food processing has misled us. Foods such as granola, tofu, cauliflower and lettuce, which are marketed as the ultimate health foods, are in fact not natural human foods at all. These products either do not exist in nature, are so scarce as to never possibly be a sustaining food, or in their raw precooked form are unpalatable and even toxic.
For example, raw soybeans contain a variety of chemicals that can stunt growth and interfere with the body’s digestive enzymes. Eat enough of them and you’ll