 |
How To Eat Well
by Melody DuGoode
We can give our happiness and well-being a big boost just by eating food with powerful nutrients. In contrast, ingesting junk food makes us feel less vital, shortens our lives, and makes us more vulnerable to disease. Overly-processed foods such as pastries, sweetened cereals, or soft drinks can severely undermine our health over the long term.My writing style is to give all the best information I have in a single summary post. I'm about to reveal most of what everyone needs to know about nutrition, so it would be really wise to print this article.
Some foods may sabotage our health so slowly that we don't notice it until we're old and we've lost a lot of energy. The foods known to be nutritious and naturally friendly to our digestion are mainly fruits, nuts and vegetables.
Many people dislike the taste of some nutritious foods such as broccoli or spinach, and they just avoid them. To get past this distaste, you can combine them with tastier ingredients into blended smoothies. It still may not taste great : If it tastes bad, you can drink a cup in five seconds, then wash it down with an ounce of water, and then eat or drink something that restores a pleasant aftertaste.
Here's what works best: Once or twice per week, mix some of those foods in a blender. Bottle them (or put them into paper cups) and freeze the cups until needed. Drink a cup with at least two meals per day.
Drinking blended smoothies could loosen and maybe even liquefy your stools, but within 2-4 months your digestive system will likely adjust. In the meantime, one way to preserve fiber is to blend half of the ingredients well, and the other half for only a few seconds.
To make food taste better without the harmful effects of sugar, try sweetening with a healthy fruit pureeof fruits that aren't too strong-tasting, such as apples and blueberries. You can also replace your sugar intake with healthier alternatives: stevia, cold-pressed yacon syrup, molasses (good for minerals), cinnamon and light doses of other spices you like.
Monitor your reactions to sweeteners carefully, because some people don't react well to them. Avoid beet sugar and other questionable sweeteners (if a nutrition label says "sugar" instead of "cane sugar" it's probably a bad kind of sugar.) Some less harmful sugars are coconut sugar, muscovado sugar and honey.
Processed foods have so many artificial ingredients, their combined negative effects over a period of decades can cause a decline in happiness. Anything that has a long list of ingredients, or comes in an unfrozen package, should be avoided or at least minimized. Eat only very small amounts of foods that are not natural for humans such as oils, grains and dairy products. For more info, check out these 50 foods nutritionists avoid.
We also need to drink 6-8 cups of water per day to flush toxins and irritants. It's very important to keep our bodies as pure and toxin-free as possible.
Timing can be really important. Eat no fruit with meat because the fruit will digest far quicker and the combination will ferment. Save most of your high-antioxidant treats like tea, coffee and dark chocolate for consumption a few hours after meals because that's when a lot of oxidants are released through your digestion.
Here are the top ten nutrition recommendations I've been able to research:
Top Ten Foods To Eat
- Best Veggies. I can especially recommend lots of leafy greens, baby spinach being a great mainstay. Some other good vegetables are beets, carrots, broccoli, artichokes, asparagus, cooked squash, cucumbers, peppers, and stir-fry mixes. All these can all be blended and frozen. Onions may also work for you, but they don't blend well.
- Fruit Snacks. A few berries or slices of lemons, oranges, grapefruits, cherries, apples and/or kiwi fruits make great energizing snacks. These fast-digesting foods are best eaten separately from meats or other slow-digesting foods.
- Fewer and Better Grains. Barley, oat and spelt can replace most wheat, which is one of the least nutritious grains. Even if wheat is an okay grain for you, our bodies do better on a variety of food sources.
Seeds are often more nutrition-packed than wheat and other grains. Some of the better seeds are quinoa, flax, hemp, pumpkin and sesame. Quinoa can be very good nutrition for many people with its complete protein profile. If you don't grind the quinoa yourself, relatively fresh quinoa can be ordered direct from Bob's Red Mill.
- Loaded Paleo Bread. Some people find this super-energizing! Buy a paleo mix of coconut flour, almond flour and tapioca/cassava (I prefer the Birch Benders brand of paleo mix.) Combine it in a 3:1 ratio with fresh quinoa. Mix it with decaf coffee or tea instead of water. You can try adding all kinds of spices, fruits, nuts and other healthful ingredients.
- Spice things up. Spices like peppermint, peppers, cinnamon, ginger or pumpkin spice mixes have tropical antioxidants and also combine well with other foods to help push through even more nutrients. Ginger-based teas can also be very good for your digestion.
- Good Fats and Proteins. Venison followed by bison are two of the most helpful meats to eat (particularly when recovering from a muscle injury, when you want to best possible proteins.) Wild-caught fish is probably next best because of its Omega-3 oils, especially Alaskan Salmon. Free-range turkey is the best kind of poultry, it's been highly recommended to me. Grass-fed beef is a relatively inexpensive food that contains good-quality fats and proteins.
- High-Quality Coffees. If you buy coffee off the shelf, get a light-roasted shade-grown variety which has more antioxidants and less caffeine. Starbucks coffees without the sugar are very good too. There are some other good coffee shops out there, but some offer poor coffee. Cold-brew is even more nutritious. The other day I ordered a hot espresso at Starbucks and the barista asked "Would you like some ice in it, so it doesn't die?" Finally, never drink hot coffee that has been sitting for over half an hour, or any other coffee if you don't know exactly what it is. Coffee can turn bad and harm your liver.
- Good Teas. To make sure you don't get harmed by pesticides, it should be organic tea. Estate teas are often the best because they're grown in better soil than regular teas. The teas with added antioxidants are usually best, e.g. ginger green tea. Try combining oolong, green, white and/or other teas in one cup: They each have different benefits. I can't recommend black tea because it's high in caffeine, and some of its antioxidants have fermented into compounds that can be harmful. Some people get a lot of benefit from exotic teas like Basil and Chamomile, especially the higher-quality brands.
It's up to you whether to use decaf teas and coffees. It's a good idea to minimize caffeine, but the antioxidant potency is also reduced by 50% to 75%. Some people go "half-caff" to try and find a happy middle ground.
- Quality Plant-Based Fats and Proteins. Some good nuts are almonds, cashews, pecans and pistachios, which you can get in many different flavors (for pistachios I prefer the Santa Barbara brand.) Peanuts are thought to be a less healthy nut. Avocados are an excellent source of vegetable fat. Plantfusion protein powder is one of the better brands.
- Healthier Desserts. Some fruits can be a very good dessert, especially bananas, blueberries and apples. I like to heat fruits to a warm temperature in a microwave, which amplifies their sweetness without destroying their nutrients.
Dark chocolate is also very healthy, having little sugar yet a higher concentration of antioxidants than any other food. If it's diluted down to milk chocolate, it's not healthy anymore. You only need an ounce or even a half-ounce to benefit. It's easy to find chocolates that are 85% cocoa or more.
Finally, Panda licorice has an unusually good concentration of minerals because it uses high-quality molasses (most other licorice is made from unhealthy sweeteners.) If you find it reinvigorating, you may be deficient in some minerals. In that case it's really smart to start eating mineral-rich foods and taking high-quality mineral supplements.
