Nutrition is central to healing, your body’s ability to detox and your well being!
Food is a huge subject that requires lots of study, but here is the quickest easiest ways to eat healthy food.
The American food supply is very unhealthy, and there is a huge difference in the quality of available foods. The cheaper food is mass produced in the cheapest possible way with no regard whatsoever for your health and well being. You can easily see how food affects you by going to Whole Foods, Safeway and Wal-Mart; You can see the difference in the health, weight, skin tone and mood of the people. It’s not the money of the people, it’s the difference in the food eaten that makes a difference. It takes a bit of work to know what to eat and how to eat, but is well worth the effort.
It’s expensive to eat healthy food, but its worth it. I allow more and more of my budget to food. The healthier the food the more delicious it is. I have become a real food lover in the process. It’s my luxury. It’s the cheap industrial ingredients and processes that are hurting our health. If you have little money, organic rice, beans and bananas are still cheap!
My personal food philosophy is eat everything! I have a very excellent, mostly organic diet. I usually cook my own food on stainless steel or glass cookware, I will eat a Whopper if I really want it. I think that following a strict diet just backfires and makes you feel like a failure or can turn into a neurosis. All food has value of some kind. When you are allowed to eat whatever you want you are freed up and generally end up eating the healthy thing! I really think that (unless you are addicted) your body generally knows what is good for it. I was vegetarian for 10 years. I started feeling better after eating meat. I have given up dairy, breads, honey and natural sweets; tried to do the raw diet, low fat, etc.. Diet is personal, but I eat all foods.
The important thing is to eat nontoxic food! When I was sick with MCS, I ate plenty of uncured farm bacon, beef, chicken and homemade soups. This was very healing for me. Not everybody tolerates lots of raw vegetables. I eat a diet very full of superfoods which are dense in nutrition. Eat what you feel you want to eat, just get the most healthy version of it possible. Experiment and see how you feel.
If you eat a typical American diet there is a lot to change. Go at your own pace and find ways to change that work for you…Never feel bad for messing up, just try again next time.
Phase 1: Cut out corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, ‘conventional’ dairy and meat which is full of hormones and antibiotics and other toxic chemicals. Then, add broccoli, spinach, kale and other powerful veggies to your diet. If you need to cook them until well done and slather butter all over them, at this point go for it.
Just doing this is a major boost to your health. Even replacing corn sweetener to white sugar is way better. Soon you will lose your taste for sweets with corn syrup.
Watch these Must See Movies:
Supersize Me, King Corn, Food Inc, The Future of Food. You can see them on Netflix, some on Hulu and on Amazon http://astore.amazon.com/multi0d8-20?_encoding=UTF8&node=14
Phase 2: Cut out processed food with ingredients you don’t recognize. Get rid of the microwave which depletes nutrients out of foods and changes its molecular structure. Stop eating at chain restaurants (even Panera Bread) because they all use cheap and unhealthy ingredients. Get rid of Teflon and aluminum cookware. Cut way down on sugar.
Phase 3 everything else! Add more and more organic vegetables, fruits, quinoa, basmati rice, superfoods and unprocessed foods not packaged in plastic. Some good quality superfoods can be found here: http://astore.amazon.com/multi0d8-20?_encoding=UTF8&node=2
Its a lot of work and expense to find healthy food to eat. It takes a lot of effort and expense but your health, beauty, mood, energy level and sex life are worth it!
Food does not have the same vitamins and minerals as it once did because the soil is depleted or contaminated. Meats and dairy don’t have the Vitamin D, Vitamin K , essential fatty acids and other enzymes they once did, because the animals never see the sun and don’t eat a diet appropriate for them. ‘Certified Organic’ isn’t enough anymore. grass-fed meat and dairy is more desirable than organic corn fed factory farm products.
Even “cage free” or “free roaming” can be birds that see the sun for 5 minutes in their lifetime.
Shop at farmers markets, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and health food co-ops and stores. These are the places that I shop for groceries. You can also order organic foods online. Costco and other large stores have been found selling fraudulent organic, grass fed or free range items (as all other stores, but more). But if that’s your budget, its probably fine. I try to get American Certified Organic. Lots of foods are from China or Mexico and aren’t really enforced.
I think its worth it to investigate the products you like, and re-investigate over time as companies get bought and sold. Check out this article from Business Week Magazine on the subject: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_42/b4005001.htm Call the companies and ask questions about their products. Google the brands that you purchase to discover more information about them, etc..
I don’t eat Genetically Modified Food, so much food is GMO today. It’s work to avoid it. 99% of all corn and soy in the USA which isn’t 100% USDA Certified Organic is GMO. The main reason it is modified is so that they can spray tons of Round Up, a poisonous pesticide, that will kill every living thing except the corn. Also in the genetic modification process bacteria is used to introduce the new gene into the plant (Frankenfood!).
There have never been any long term studies on the effects of GMO food. However, there have already been a whole field of cows in India who died eating GMO grass and many more indications that this food can cause great harm to humans. I don’t want to be the human GMO experiment. Like Japan who has said they will wait 15 years to see what happens to the Americans, I will wait.
Europe, Japan, Mexico and other developed countries have banned GMO’s, Actually, now (2/2012) there is a huge battle going on in Europe. The EU has said that no country can ban genetically modified food. 🙁
In Europe, growth hormones and antibiotics for meat and dairy animal were banned. I eat European cheese and butter because they usually still farm the old fashioned way.
Here is a video I made on getting free from fructose corn sweetener and other foods that make you fat and sick! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcLSGBfVLlg