Eating the natural foods humans are well adapted at utilizing, enhances ones ability to cope with the reality of every day life. Good health can lead to a better and more fullfilling life.
It improves the probability of living a longer, healthier and happier life. Quality food consumption becomes especially important in the present world of high stress and pollution - making a healthy diet an essential aspect of modern self health care.
I believe good health is the most important thing in life - because it gives you freedom. Freedom to pursue your dreams and do all the things that poor health won't permit. Any significant health problem, chronic or acute, will bring your life balance out of order. Not just your own bodily balance but everything and anybody you normally interact with will be affected. Many of your relationships and activities will suffer in some way. You may not be able to fully support yourself and may have to rely on others. Illness strains relationships by making life of those around you more difficult. Basically a myriad of different problems will arise from poor health. Ultimately poor health limits what you can do in life - it imprisons you.
I think anybody who seriously tried living healthier through a better diet, proper physical activity, adequate rest, and by addressing mental and spiritual factors have experienced a vast range of natural health benefits. Common benefits are overall better health and a sense of well being, better sleep, improved physical endurance and strength, sharper mental abilities and lower sleep requirements. Further more no or little time, and money, and energy is spend on doctors, hospitals and health insurance bills.
What is a healthy diet?
Hunter-gatheres living on their traditional diets are virtually free of heart, cancer and other degenerative diseases common in the western world.
Since this article deals with healthy eating habits, a question remains to be answered: what constitutes a healthy diet? Unfortunately, there are more opinions about this than there are health experts. To further complicate the matter, dietary concepts change over time, leaving most people confused and uncertain about what or whom to trust. One solution to this problem is to become sufficiently knowledgeable about the relevant subjects and rely on reason to draw basic conclusions. Along with personal experimentation, such approach will enable you to establish healthy eating habits that work especially well for your body. This takes time and requires discipline, but considering the long lasting benefits a healthy diet can provide, the effort is more then well worth it.
In order to determine the minimal basic requirements of a healthy diet, I concluded that it is safe to start with the following two objectives:
examine human diet over time - the foods humans consumed since the arrival of our species.
examine diets of ethnical groups known for their good health.
The traditinal living Okinawans and people from the other Ryukyu Islands have the highest longevity in the world. This is partly attributed to diet, but also to other factors such as lifestyle, genetics, and mental well being.
Looking at the type of diets humans lived on through out pre-history, provides good insights into the kind of foods human body is well adapted at utilizing and dealing with. Further, the diets of certain ethnical groups that are well known for good health - the people of Okinawa (Japan); traditional cultures in the Mediterranean region; and many hunter-gatherer societies - suggest certain health promoting dietary habits.
Upon closer examination of the above mentioned objectives, two main denominators emerged:
A) diets are based on natural, whole or minimally processed foods in accordance to heritage.
B) diets are lower in calories compared to a typical western diet.
In the context of present time, one can therefore make two general assumptions in regard to the question of what constitutes a healthy diet: 1) generally, the less a food is processed the better. 2) eat less - eat what is adequate, do not over eat.
Generally, the less a food is processed the better
The reason for this is simple. For 99.9% of human existence, our species lived on foods that were either raw or minimally processed. The technology needed to increase food processing did not exist until very recently. It is therefore reasonable to assume that our bodies are best adapted at utilizing and dealing with the raw or minimally processed foods which sustained us, and our predecessors, for millions of years: fruits, vegetables, meats, nuts and seeds.
Dried peaches are good for anemia, fatigue and constipation.
Often, the more recent the food is, the more likely it is to be less beneficial or even directly harmful - possibly due to lack of full adaptation to such foods. For example, it is estimated that food cooking started about 500 000 - 250 000 years ago (depending on the source, the range may vary). During this time frame, it is likely that human species have at least adapted in some way to very simply cooked animal and vegetable foods. On the other hand, the beginnings of grain consumption are much more recent. Evidence of earliest known, systematical collecting of grains for food goes back to about 23 000 years ago - giving less time for adaptation to grain based foods.
Now, let's fast forward to recent times and consider all the new, human invented, highly processed foods so common today: fast foods, pizza, sweets, chips, convenience foods, canned foods, etc. along with the dramatic rise in heart attacks, high blood pressure, stroke, cancers, diabetes, liver and kidney problems (and all the complications that arose from these conditions) during the past 100 years or so.
Considering the declining health of most western nations as opposed to good health of the ethnical groups described above, it seems reasonable that the most recent food inventions are directly harmful to human health. Further, it has been repeatedly observed that as ethnical groups around the world adopt the modern western diet, their health dramatically declines and they develop the same diseases that are so common to westerners. Not to mention the fact that the above listed diseases were far less common among westerners themselves barely 100 years ago.
Raw vegetables are generally higher in nutrients than cooked ones.
The more food is processed - through excessive cooking, pasteurization, homogenization, high heat, mechanical processing, etc, - the less natural and nutritious it becomes to a point of becoming a harmful burden to the body, rather than a useful and health promoting food. Some industrial processing practices deprive food of their nutrients to such high degree that the food has to be "enriched" by artificially adding some nutrients back into the food. This is especially true of flours where some vitamins are added back after the processing is done.
A good diet is based on natural, whole or minimally processed foods. A large portion of it should consist of foods that can be eaten raw, such as fruits and vegetables. Fermented or cultured, unpasteurized foods such as kefir, yogurt, cheeses, miso, sauerkraut and pickles are considered highly beneficial in many cultures. Cooking should be minimal and only applied to foods that must be cooked in order to be edible. Ancestral heritage also plays an important role as certain foods may need to be excluded or emphasized.
Eat less - eat what is adequate, do not over eat - Tony Robbins used to say - "If you want to live a long time, eat a little."
Natural diet is essential to good health of any animal. Cows that freely graze on fresh plants out in the open, rather than being fed grains or corn, are healthy and result in healthier foods.
During the past several decades, food in the western and westernized nations became increasingly affordable and more readily available than ever before in human history. This very fact combined with the enjoyment and stress relief that food consumption brings results in all too frequent over eating. Which again leads to the above mentioned health problems.
In the past, as in the traditional way of living among the ethnical groups mentioned earlier, food consumption has always been significantly lower. Food quality, on the other hand, has always been higher. Resulting in a lower food intake, but of nutrient dense foods.
Finally, as an interesting note, it has been repeatedly confirmed through laboratory experiments on animals, including monkeys, that cutting down calories considerably lowers their susceptibility to diseases and prolongs their life up to 50%. Some scientists believe that life long caloric restriction can have similar effects on humans.
Health promoting eating habits
Over time, through learning and experimenting, I worked out many healthy eating habits. I list the most important below. I feel they are essential to creating a solid foundation for good health. If you'd like to experiment with them, try one at a time, say for a few weeks, and observe how you feel. You may find that they will work quite well for you.
Avoid or minimize:
Excess sugar and processed foods. Avoid all junk, sweets, processed, canned and convenience foods - including all foods with excess sugar: most commercial yogurts, kefirs and juices, fruit and soft drinks. All these foods are often very high in calories and harmful artificial substances, low in nutrients and high in simple sugars. Consumption of such foods has been linked with a variety of diseases including obesity, diabetes, immune system disorders, fungi overgrowth, cardiovascular diseases, malnutrition and cancer.
Damaged or oxidized fats and high heat cooking. Avoid all refined or overly heated fats: margarine, any oil that is not cold pressed, leftover fat from cooking, all foods that contain hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats and trans fatty acids. Read the labels. Such fats are considered to be among the most health damaging foods due to their damaged (oxidized) state (or the ease at which oxidation happens in them).
Other foods to avoid include: polyunsaturated oils, any meat or fat that has been exposed to high heat like frying or grilling, powdered eggs and dairy (often found in baked goods), homogenized dairy products (except butter and cream, which are not homogenized), aged meats and cheeses and baked goods that contain dairy.
Do not cook meat or fat at high temperatures while exposed to air. Such practice will avoid fat and cholesterol oxidation - believed to be responsible for build up of arterial plaque and injury to arterial cells. Grilling and frying is especially harmful. Avoid eating the outer layer of meat and fat cooked in hot air, like in the oven. Cooking in water is probably the safest way of cooking meat and eggs.
Polluted foods. Avoid or minimize consumption of foods polluted with unnatural, toxic or other unhealthy substances. Avoid consumption of fish and water animals unless certain they came from unpolluted waters. Especially predators should be avoided as the toxins accumulate in them in far greater quantities. Minimize intake of all plant and plant based foods sprayed with pesticides and other chemicals commonly used to cultivate them. Avoid meats form animals treated with hormones and antibiotics. The best way to avoid all these harmful ingredients is to buy only organic foods. Unfortunately this is not always possible. Later in this article I describe which foods are especially high in pollutants.
Polyunsaturated fatty acids. Keep the intake of foods high in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) low - mainly nuts and seeds and any products made from them (mostly oils) and containing them (especially commercially baked goods like breads and cookies and butter substitutes). Virtually all oils, except olive, palm and coconut oils are high in PUFAs, and some of them are widely used in commercial food production due to their low cost.
PUFAs are unstable, they oxidize readily resulting in health damaging free radicals. High PUFA intake have been repeatedly linked with cancer, heart and inflammatory diseases. If you are suffering from any of these diseases, eliminate or greatly limit intake of all food sources high in PUFAs from your diet - nuts, seeds, oils made from them and foods containing them. (A few small handfuls a week of fresh nuts is healthy, especially if you eliminate all sources of processed foods high in PUFA.)
NOTE: There are two polyunsaturated fatty acids which are essential for health: omega 3 and omega 6. Many people are deficient in omega 3 and consume excessive amounts of omega 6 (which leads to the above described problems). It is essential to keep the intake of these fatty acids within recommended range. Although nobody knows what the ideal range is, most experts seem to agree that the ratio between omega 3 to omega 6 should be between 1:2 to 1:6.
Mary G. Enig, PhD, a well known authority on fatty acids, writes in her "Know your fats" book that the minimum intake of essential fatty acids should be 1-1.5% of energy (kcal) from omega 3 and 2-3% of energy (kcal) from omega 6. So on a 2000 kcal diet one needs at least 2.2-3.3 grams omega 3 and 4.4-6.7 grams omega 6. Rich sources of omega 3 are flax seeds/oil and fish oil. All plant oils except olive, palm, flax and coconut are relatively high in omega 6, sunflower and sesame seeds are an especially rich whole food source.
Fungi and mycotoxins. Minimize or eliminate consumption of foods frequently contaminated with fungi and mycotoxins: alcoholic beverages, wheat, rye, barley, corn, peanuts, dried fruits and (even slightly) damaged fresh fruits. Mycotoxins are poisonous substances produced by certain molds and fungi which can cause a wide range of health problems including cancer, asthma, multiple sclerosis and diabetes. To minimize the health risk of these foods, make sure to buy only organic brands that come from reputable manufacturers and buy them as fresh as possible. The longer a food has been stored the greater its chance of becoming contaminated with molds and fungi. Always wash grains clean and cook them thoroughly by boiling them for at least few minutes before further cooking. This will lower the content of possible fungi in the grain. Mycotoxins are very heat resistant, even frying or roasting does not eliminate them.