Food - This is a choice. Every time your stomach grumbles there is a choice to make as to what you will stop the grumbling with. It’s on you. These are just guidelines; it’s ultimately your choice. The goal is to eat locally grown, organic foods as well as seasonal foods. One should LIMIT packaged and food-like-products with inflammatory seed oils and processed ingredients and preservatives. WHOLE FOODS will help you eliminate much of the guess work. Did it come from nature or a processing plant? If it’s packaged- you should limit it. This includes your water! This is so important as your water is the core of who you are! Invest in a high-quality water purifier and structuring device. Drinking bottles of water is not good for your health; microplastics and chemicals that leach from the bottle to the water are things you don’t want to have to worry about while healing.
A “diet” is a fallacy of thought to begin with. It’s both the cause and solution to most of your health-related issues even though many people like to blame genetics. The truth is you carry on the eating and dietary habits of the people that raised you. In the past, your family may have been limited by finances and developed poor habits. And then it often seems like crappy food is cheaper. But the good news is this: real, whole foods are NOT more expensive than boxes and packages of fake foods. You’re conditioned to think this is true because all the “natural” looking packaging IS more expensive. But healthy food isn’t in a package. That’s how you’ll be able to tell the difference. Is what you’re about to eat coming from a box/package? If so, it should be limited. Also, why did you choose this box or package of food-like-product? What is your goal? Is time a problem? Maybe food prepping can be an effective solution so that you eat better and save money and time in the long run. Do you have a craving? One solution to this is to satisfy the craving with exactly what it calls for but utilizing whole foods. For example, when you crave something sweet- have some fresh fruit! After some time, you will reprogram your brain as to what “sweet” really means rather than be hooked on the fake, processed, biologically engineered, addicting sweetness of most easy snacks. Salty? Have some olives or salted nuts. Like all things, moderation and quality matter. But not experiencing those feeling of deprivation when you have a craving, feels good and can go a long way toward eating healthier.
The food pyramid that we remember from childhood is a recipe for disease. Maybe back then, the crops weren’t genetically modified and sprayed with chemicals to the point that our bodies do not recognize the “food” anymore and whereas tries to fight it react to the food in the form of inflammation. The food pyramid recommendation of 5-11 servings of grains and cereals daily was never needed, but today that is just plain toxic unless you make everything from scratch and even then- it’s far too much to be healthy. (1) You’d look just like a lot of Americans today, though, wouldn’t you? Over-weight, over-fed and inflamed from processed white flours and sugars.
Photo Credit: Daniel Fishel/Thrillist
When you factor in the cost of illness, there is no choice other than to eat whole, REAL food. When I say real- I mean, not dehydrated, not partially prepared, not in a pouch, not in a seasoning packet, rarely frozen, rarely microwaved, created from ingredients that only have one word in them: chicken, garlic onion, salt. A tip that my own life coach told me years ago: travel around the outside of the store. You’ll see the staples, veggies, fruits, milk, meats will all be located around the outside. Conventional grocery stores have tried to overcome the need to feed a lot of people by sacrificing the quality of a product. For example: produce that is very underripe. This is not good for anyone, but especially not the person eating it. Time on the vine ensures quality nutrients and sunshine that is needed to make the food vital and life sustaining. Unripe fruit is bitter and lacks the concentration of vitamins and minerals of fully ripened fruits and veggies, which leads me to my next subject: eating seasonally. (2) Because of all the things just stated, I feel it is a good idea to keep your food chain local. What’s happening in other parts of the world where some foods are grown, isn’t happening where you are. Your zone provides most of your nutritional needs. And nature is so intuitive- seasonal foods often contain the nutrients needed most during that season. Like vitamin D in winter. Winter squash has a lot of vitamin D! Eating locally grown produce also exposes you to local pollens and that can be beneficial to your overall health. Supporting local farmers help sustain local economies which helps people be self-reliant. Locally means picked later because it has less distance to travel. This also impacts the carbon footprint by keeping emissions lower. This barely scratches the surface of the ecological benefits. One obvious benefit of small farms is their having more control over quality rather than their needing mass quantities. This gives farmers the chance to rotate crops and allow nature to re-mineralize the land. Soil erosion is a real issue in this country, soil is being lost from land areas 10 to 40 times faster than the rate of soil renewal. (3).
I need to speak on seed oils here in the Food cell. Nearly every packaged, pre-made product will contain certain oils, (just like when you cook at home). The problem is WHAT oils are used. Soy, Rapeseed, Corn, Soybean, “Canola” (this isn’t a real oil, it’s a combination of inflammatory oils-and it’s not healthy), and Sunflower Seed oil are the most used oils in packaged, boxed products. The problem with these oils is that they are firstly, highly processed and not at all just pressed oils. They are heated and changed during processing to become shelf stable. Every one of these oils is highly inflammatory to the human body! An oil like sunflower seed sounds good- but did you know it reaches rancidity at about 100 degrees (f)-? The processing it goes through heats much higher than that, releasing toxic compounds - so every time you consume that oil, your body contends with rancidity and poison. (4) Additionally, nearly every crop used for “oils” in prepared products is heavily sprayed by pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. Consistent use of those agro-chemicals are contributing to our soil being deplete of minerals. They are toxic to the land and the people consuming them. Glyphosate, the most used pesticide on grain products in the US has been conclusively linked to Cancer. (5)
A huge portion of this cell to wellness is water. We’ve lowered our standards so much as a society- what we are willing to accept as normal? If you look on the following website and type in your zip code https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/ you can find what contaminates are in the water that comes out of your sink. And if you think, “well I don’t drink that”- but do you brush your teeth with it? Do your kids? Do you boil pasta or make rice with it? Do you wash anything with it and then use it to eat or drink? The pipes that the water come through alone are the things of nightmares. The additives to make the water potable can be neurotoxic (fluoride), radioactive, (radium), or just plain poisonous, (chromium, cadmium).
Are you aware of how your bottles of water are getting to you or how they’re sourced? If you do not- why? Water is so important, it’s such a foundational element in life. Accepting water that’s been contained in petroleum-based plastics for unknown amounts of time, in unknown conditions is not acceptable standards. (6). Firstly, as a population, if water is coming out of the sink, we shouldn’t worry if it’s poisoning us. BUT if we’re forced to buy it- it shouldn’t be able to poison us as well and then cause a plastic pollution crisis to boot. But it does. Unless you reclaim control of this basic part of healing and gaining wellness, you’ll never be all the way there. Invest in a true water purification and structuring system (which is done in nature in running streams, natural springs and by sunlight, but which can be reproduced by many items on the market today). Structuring your water ensures that it is nothing but h20 and that it’s the smallest version of water possible which makes it easily absorbable. A lot of water bottle companies will claim to have specific types of water. For example, “Alkaline Water”. The truth is the company adds baking soda to adjust the pH of the water. True alkaline water isn’t created that way, and your body knows it. Not only does your body have to filter that added crap out, but you’re also misled into thinking you’re getting something that you’re not. It’s terrible. Most “spring” waters bought in bottles aren’t from a natural spring, they’re from a tap somewhere you can’t see. Start having a standard for what you consume, and you’ll be amazed at how much better you feel. And be responsible for this planet. We all know plastic pollution is a problem. It’s time to stop acting ignorant and start acting smart: use a refillable container.
In closing, start small but mighty. Decide that all the meals you eat for one week are going to be created and cooked by you. Try and pay attention to where it is sourced and if it’s seasonal and organic. Maybe one day you’ll even be able to grow some of your own produce! Find someone/somewhere you can fill a large jug with some fresh spring water or someone that has a quality filtration and structuring system (I have a network of people if you need it!). Do this while you decide what system is right for you. But after that week- see how you feel. See how you sleep; see how you don’t ache as much. Then come talk to me. If you want to heal, if you want to get healthy and grow: at the very minimum know where your food/water comes from, how it is grown and how it got to you.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-plate/
8/12/22 mkb
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