Are you still sticking to that New Year's Resolution to eat right? Maybe it is time to refocus. How to eat right is actually a simple concept to understand, and really not that hard to do, but it does require more time and effort.
First, two housekeeping matters. Thanks so much to those of you that took survey last week - I am really grateful. For those that did not, I'm thinking of creating some wellness products and need your help! Before creating any products I need to know what you want. I also want to make sure this newsletter contains articles on topics you're interested in. I'd appreciate it if you would take part in this short survey to let me know what you think. Thanks in advance!
For those of you in the Vancouver area, I will be running my nutrition seminar again on Friday March 6th from 12h30 to 2h30 in the afternoon. For more details, please click here. Hope to see you there!
Recently I put out a top 11 list of the nutrition resources that really helped me understand the topic of how to eat to be healthy, and I have come to the conclusion that eating in a way that nourishing the body is simple in concept, but can be challenging to do, as it requires shopping a few times a week to get the freshest whole food, and spending some time in the kitchen cooking. Convenience and processed foods that can sit on a shelf for months are more likely to be nutrient robbers, as they have next to no nutrition in them, and the body will have to spend energy detoxifying the preservatives and chemicals in it. Remember that except for whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds which nature has packaged to last, nourishing food goes bad within a week or two.
Those of you that have been reading my tips know that I have been convinced that our ailments of today are largely a result of malnutrition (along with a lack of exercise and inadequate dark time). We are eating a lot of food, but we are not getting all the nutrients and phytonutrients we need to remain healthy, often because we are not eating whole foods. Furthermore, even if one is eating whole foods, nutrients degrade quickly, so one might ask how much nutrition is left in that tomato that has been shipped half way across the country to reach your supermarket. This is another reason why buying local increases the nutrient content so much.
We are eating too many non-foods, that provide only calories and very little else except possibly a dose of chemicals, and some of these foods have a very negative impact on our hormonal system when consumed in large quantities. I'm thinking of sugar and flour products here.
Saturated fat has been vilified unnecessarily. The epidemiological evidence is pretty convincing on that one. We have eaten saturated fat since the beginning of time, and although since 1930 we've been steadily decreasing our consumption of saturated fats, heart disease rates have climbed. Food consumption data bears this out.
And we tend to overcook our food, which destroys many nutrients and enzymes in them. More and more foods are being pasteurized, so they are cooked when purchased, and then we are frequently guilty of cooking foods to death in our kitchens. Some foods like pork, chicken and ground beef must be cooked through, but broccoli does not need to be cooked until it is gray, and a grass-fed steak that is cooked rare has far more nutrients and enzymes than one that is well done. Including some raw and fermented food at each meal is a good idea.
And lastly, the idea that different people need different ratios of plant foods and flesh foods to be healthy is very important. The Inuit would have a very difficult time remaining healthy on a vegetarian diet, as their metabolism requires lots of protein and fat to be healthy. Whereas the Hunza Tribe of northern Pakistan would get very sick eating the high fat/protein diet of the Inuit. So figuring out what ratio of whole plant foods vs whole animal foods works for you can go a long way to improving health and vitality.
Thinking that if one eats badly one can remain healthy by taking supplements is misguided in my opinion, unless determined by a physician that levels of a particular nutrient are low. Science generally tends to be reductionist, trying to take out the "active ingredient" and studying that in isolation, so as to remove the confounding factors that might mess up the study. Marketers try to sell that ingredient alone as a supplement necessary to maintain health. Loads of studies have shown that taking this vitamin or that vitamin alone does not provide the health benefits that one would think. As Paul Chek says, if you take a betacarotene supplement, your body thinks you have eaten the whole carrot patch. Food provides nutrition in a "food complex", and the body needs the entire food to be able to better utilize the nutrition in it. Take a supplement comprised of one vitamin, without all the synergistic factors found in the food that it comes in, the body is put into the position of needing to rebuild the complex to make use of the vitamin. And too much of one vitamin/mineral may affect the absorption of others. Furthermore, some people's metabolisms tend to be acidic, so they would need alkaline forms of supplementation, whereas others are alkaline and would need acidic forms of supplementation to come to balance. Different biochemistries require different supplements. For example, both protein types do well on calcium supplements provided they are chosen based on their appropriate pH, but carbohydrate types usually have plenty of calcium but need the synergistic ingredients to help calcify their bones. Taking a calcium supplement would create a bigger imbalance between the calcium and the synergistic ingredients, making their condition worse. So, unless you know your metabolic type, taking supplements can be a crap shoot. (If you want to learn your metabolic type, contact me.) And finally there is the rather significant problem that many supplements are also filled with sugar and colourings, particularly those marketed for children.
So, in summary, to eat for health:Please do keep the comments coming on my blog. If you want to search for other posts by title or by topic, go to www.wellnesstips.ca.
Related tips
Industrial agriculture - what's the real cost of cheap food?
The problem with organic food
Improving nutrition by avoiding the grocery store
Nutrient-dense food
In defense of real meat
Taubes, Gary Good Calories, Bad Calories, Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2007.
Price, Weston A. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration Price-Pottenger Foundation, La Mesa, CA, 2000.
Enig, Mary; Know Your Fats : The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol Bethesda Press, Silver Spring, MD, 2003.
Ravnskov, Uffe, MD, PhD The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease, New Trends Publishing Inc., Washington D.C., 2000.
Pottenger, Francis MD Pottenger's Cats; Second Edition Price-Pottenger Foundation, Lemon Grove, CA, 1995.
Fallon, Sally and Enig, Mary Nourishing Traditions, Revised 2nd Edition NewTrends Publishing Inc., Washington, D.C., 2001.
Wiley, Rudolf A. Biobalance: The Acid/Alkaline Solution to the Food-Mood-Health Puzzle Essential Science Publishing, 1988
Wolcott, William Metabolic Typing: Calcium is not for everyone
Copyright 2008 Vreni Gurd
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