Should I Juice or Puree?
Juice or Puree?
Some of the earlier efforts at relieving illness with nutrition involved diets high in vegetables with regular fruit and vegetable juices offered throughout the day. Juicing has its advantages, because one glass of carrot juice is equal to about a pound of carrots, which few of us could eat. Unfortunately, much of the valuable anti-cancer nutrients in the vegetables get tossed out with the pulp that is discarded. Better yet, use a high speed blender, such as my choice, Vitamix (Vitamix.com), which will keep all the valuable nutrients in while allowing you to consume more vegetables in a liquid form.
Does Diet Really Matter in Health?
How rich could a drug company get if they offered a patented medication that could lower all cause mortality by 50%? That is what a healthy lifestyle can do! Researchers followed 2300 men and women in 11 countries in Europe over the course of 12 years. The people were monitored for their diet, smoking, exercise, and alcohol intake. Exercise cut risk of all cause mortality by 37%, not smoking by 35%, moderate alcohol intake by 22% and Mediterranean diet (whole grains, legumes, fresh fruit, vegetables, low in animal food) by 23%. When combined, this healthy lifestyle cut all cause mortality by more than 50%.
Food is a rich tapestry of thousands of substances, including ingredients that we are only beginning to understand. Food provides the macronutrients that direct the extremely influential hormones and prostaglandins in your body. Food contains known essential vitamins, minerals, and “sub-nutrients” along with some very intriguing conditionally essential nutrients (like lycopenes and ellagic acid) that can bring us beyond surviving a life of chronic illness into thriving with optimal health and vitality.
3 Weeks to Acquire New Eating Habits
Our eating habits are all acquired. We base our current diet on what mother cooked when we were younger; what our society, ethnic and religious groups prefer; what is advertised in print and electronic media, and what is available in the local grocery store. People in the Philippines or the Amazon are born with structurally identical taste buds to Americans, yet they eat entirely different foods.
Realize that it takes about 3 weeks to acquire new eating habits. Try it and you will see it will become easier to stay with and you may just find that the nutrient-depleted junk food of yesterday really doesn’t satisfy your taste buds like the following whole foods. Are you suffering from a magnesium deficiency?
Synergistic Forces in Whole Foods
Although 1000 mg daily of vitamin C has been shown to reduce the risk for stomach cancer, a small glass of orange juice containing only 37 mg of vitamin C is twice as likely to lower the chances for stomach cancer. Something in whole oranges is even more chemo-protective than vitamin C. Although most people only absorb 20-50% of their ingested calcium, the remaining calcium binds up potentially damaging fats in the intestines to provide protection against colon cancer.
[tweetthis hidden_hashtags=”#gettinghealthier” url=”http://bit.ly/1KBkoiH” remove_hidden_urls=”true”]Realize that it takes about 3 weeks to acquire new eating habits.[/tweetthis]In 1963, a major “player” in the American drug business, Merck, tried to patent a single antibiotic substance that was originally isolated from yogurt. But this substance did not work alone. Since then, researchers have found no less than 7 natural antibiotics that all contribute to yogurt’s unique ability to protect the body from infections. There are many other ways you can boost your energy levels.
There are Many Anti-Cancer Agents in Plant Food
There are many anti-cancer agents in plant food, including over 800 mixed carotenoids, over 20,000 various bioflavonoids, lutein, lycopenes and canthaxanthin. The point is: we can isolate and concentrate certain factors in foods for use as therapeutic supplements in cancer therapy, but we must always rely heavily on the mysterious and elegant symphony of ingredients found in whole food.
ORAC |
Oxygen Radical Absorbence Capacity |
Sponges for Free Radicals |
---|---|---|
Prunes | 288 | ” .. reduce risk of diseases of aging by adding ORAC foods to diet” |
Raisins | 141 | Floyd Horn, PhD, Tufts Univ. |
Blueberries | 111 | |
Blackberries | 101 | |
Garlic | 96 | Need 3000 to 5000 ORAC units per day (food & supplements) average |
Kale | 88 | average US intake 1200 ORAC |
Cranberries | 87 | |
Strawberries | 76 | |
Spinach Raw | 60 | |
Plum | 47 |
Dietary Recommendations
Since the 1964 World Health Organization published their first pamphlet on cancer causes, many prominent health organizations have publicized their own personal version of a “healthy diet”. Guidelines on good eating principles have come from the Senate Diet Goals, American Cancer Society, American Dietetic Association, Surgeon General of the United States, United States Public Health Association, American Heart Association, and many more. While these programs have minor variations, they have much in common.
Each of these programs embraces a diet that:
- uses only unprocessed foods, nothing in a package with a label
- uses high amounts of fresh vegetables
- employs a low fat diet
- emphasizes the importance of regularity
- uses low fat dairy or no dairy products, with yogurt as the preferred dairy selection
- stabilizes blood sugar levels with no sweets and never eat something sweet by itself
- increases potassium and reduces sodium intake
Talk to any farmer, animal lover, horse breeder, gardener, marine biologists, and such and you find the same common ground: what you feed the plants and animals will have a huge impact on the health of the plants and animals. Then we take Americans, most of whom are living on a diet of cadaverous empty calorie junk food, and use drugs to try to resolve health problems rather than using nutrition as front line therapy.
Go to a big city zoo or even a county fair where there are many animals in close contact with the general public and you will see a sign similar to the above warning: “People food can make us sick.” And you have to wonder what food might kill a 400 pound ape that is acceptable or good for a 40 pound child.
We need to get back to the basics regarding health. What you put in your mouth becomes a powerful biological response modifier, changing the way the body works. This hopefully, has offered some insight on some of the basic tenets of healing: you are what you eat.