The following is drawn from an address I gave at the 2007 Natural Agriculture Conference at Shumei America’s National Center in Pasadena.
When we mention “organic diet,” it can sound daunting. There are many obstacles to eating natural, nourishing food. It’s easier to eat fast, processed, packaged, or frozen food, which are just calories, not real food. Organic food is grown without any chemical fertilizers or pesticides, so there are no toxins put on the land or food that you eat. Our bodies are not created to eat chemicals, preservatives, waxes, and artificial colorings that are put on or in food. Unfortunately, even organic does not necessarily mean healthy. Organic sugar is still sugar. We need to read labels, even at the health food store. Manufacturers add ingredients just to make food taste good to our palate. Human tastes have changed over the years, and manufacturing of foods has evolved, so more sugar and salt is going into food, even healthy food.
In an organic diet, we eat seasonal food in as natural a state as possible. It is nearly springtime here in California, which means it is time to eat asparagus, leafy greens, turnips, rutabagas, and beets. People who only eat food out of cans miss the variety in nature. Eating seasonally allows us to put a variety of foods into our diets. The only way I know of to keep the seasons straight here is to buy food from farmers who are growing their food locally. You can buy anything at health food stores at any time of year because it is flown in from all over the world. That does not mean it is nourishing for your body right here and now. Your body is thriving or surviving in the climate you are living in, so it is used to the temperature that is outside. It is most nourished by food that is growing in your climate. Another benefit of eating locally grown food is that there is less fossil fuel spent in transporting the food long distances.
Our bodies have not changed much in the last five thousand years as we have eaten vegetables, grains, meat, and some fish. We were not eating vitamin pills or the chemicals that came into production around World War I. Most of the chemicals used on our food are byproducts of the chemical weapons industry, later turned into chemical pesticides and fertilizers when chemical weapons were banned worldwide. Our bodies know how to eat real food, not chemicals.
Organic food is grown in soil that has more minerals in it, and those minerals come up into the food you eat. Organic produce has more minerals in it than regular produce. There was a study published in the Journal of Applied Nutrition that found organic produce has 60 percent more calcium, 73 percent more iron, 188 percent more magnesium, and 29 percent less mercury than non-organic produce. You probably never thought of your produce containing mercury, but it is in our soil because of nearly a hundred years of chemical runoff.
Minerals are important for our bones to prevent osteoporosis, and are also important for our nervous systems. Many people are stressed out, hyperactive, and do not sleep well. This is a common sign of mineral deficiency, because minerals help us sleep at night. If you are not sleeping and you are drinking coffee every morning to wake up, and then taking sleeping pills at night in order to sleep, you are probably lacking in minerals. Mineral supplements will not solve your problem, because your body will not absorb them as well as it will the minerals in your food. Put the supplements aside and eat real organic food.
One of the keys to good digestion is chewing. The enzymes in your saliva break down carbohydrates. We can digest meat with just the acid in our stomach, but carbohydrates and vegetables must be broken down by saliva enzymes. Chew food to the consistency of baby food before you swallow it.
Science is now discovering that there are many bioflavonoids and carotenoids in fruits and vegetables that are good for anti-aging and our immune system. We cannot just take one kind of bioflavonoid or one kind of antioxidant. We need to have a variety of them. The best way to get a wide variety is to eat many different foods. Thomas Jefferson grew two hundred varieties of peas on his farm at Monticello. How many varieties can you now find in a store? We are lucky to find one shelling pea, and we get only a few varieties of frozen peas in a bag.
You would think all oranges are the same, right? This morning I bought some fabulous tangerines that I juiced for breakfast. Next week my farmer will have tangelos. I know I will get different nutrients from the tangelos than I get from the tangerines because the color is different, they grow on a different tree and have a different bio-chemical make-up. The more colors you have on your plate when you eat, the healthier you will be. Orange vegetables, like sweet potatoes and yams, have phytochemicals that are called phytosterols, which are similar to cholesterol in their chemical make-up. Your body needs good cholesterol for a variety of functions. It uses the phytosterols instead of making cholesterol, so eating sweet potatoes and yams can actually lower bad cholesterol.
Inside the supermarket, around the perimeter of the walls is where you will find all the real food: the fresh vegetables, meats, breads, and dairy foods. On the inside aisles are the canned, boxed, and frozen foods, and soda pop you should not buy. If it is not possible to get to a farmers’ market, always shop around the perimeter walls of the supermarket. Processed foods, on the inner aisles, have had all time-sensitive goodness removed, and have food preservatives. I want my food to rot and break down into compost if I do not eat it. I do not want food to sit in my refrigerator for a year until I decide to eat it. If you find something in a store, and the label says it will be good for a year or more, think twice before buying it.
Commercial farms breed tomatoes specifically to make them easier to transport long distances. They pick them under-ripe and put them in huge trucks, which are pumped full of ethylene gas to ripen the tomatoes as they drive across the country. They do not have any taste because they are not ripening on the vine. I prefer to pay my grocery money to the person who grew my food at the farmers’ market. I know my money goes to the farmer who is protecting our planet by growing organically and saving agricultural land from development.
In California, our markets are certified farmers’ markets which means you are buying from the farmer or his employees. It does not, however, mean they are organic. Organic certification is different. I had a client who was drinking a tea for her lungs made from grapefruits, including the rind, but they were not organic grapefruits. They were being sprayed with something and her lungs kept getting worse. I told her, “You have to get organic grapefruits; otherwise they will have wax or chemicals on them.” Please find a farmers’ market near you and give it a try. You will find one or more organic farmers at every one. These are people who have their hands in the soil, working hard to grow your food. And it is a lot of work.
Now I want to talk about sugar. Sugar is a highly processed food. Sugar is to sugar cane what cocaine is to the coca leaf. In Central America, people will chew on a coca leaf and it gives them energy to do their farming. If you take that coca and you process it, you get cocaine, which we know is a highly addictive. Sugar is similar. If you go to a sugar plantation and suck on some sugarcane, which is fibrous and contains minerals, it will give you an energy boost. Compare that to the poisonous, addictive, processed white sugar, which gives you energy initially and then later gives you a sugar crash.
The two tastes humans really enjoy are fat and sugar. If the food industry removes one item, they add more of the other. If you read the label on “no fat” yogurt, chances are it has more sugar than regular yogurt and it will raise your cholesterol levels. A little bit of sugar is not going to hurt you unless you are diabetic, but sugar is in all the food we eat and is contributing to high cholesterol and diabetes across America. Honey, which is loaded with vitamins and minerals, and organic molasses, high in iron, are both better sweeteners.
Artificial sweeteners are even worse than sugar. There are more reports on the side effects from aspartame in NutraSweet than any other product in the history of the Food and Drug Administration. Aspartame is a toxic byproduct of the weapons industry. High fructose corn syrup is second worse and in almost every food you buy in the central part of the supermarket. We have a really effective political corn lobby from big, commercial agriculture in this country. They discovered that high fructose corn syrup is really useful in soft drinks and many fruit juices. Things that you think are natural and healthy may have high fructose corn syrup. It throws your blood sugar off, is highly addictive, has no nutritional value, and is highly processed so all the minerals from the corn are completely gone. Eliminate high fructose corn syrup from your diet and you will notice a difference.
In America we have so much genetically modified corn that we are now selling it across the border in Mexico. It is cheaper for them to buy our genetically modified, pesticide-filled corn than it is for the farmer in Mexico to grow corn as he has all his life. It is amazing when we think about farming and eating locally, how we realize that every mouthful of food we eat has an effect on the geo-politics, economy, and environment of the world. We can take steps individually and collectively towards eating with wisdom in knowing what is on our plate and appreciating why it is there.
Now let us talk about a couple of good foods. Eating two apples a day will lower your bad cholesterol. Eating healthy fish, like tuna, salmon, and sardines, which are good for your cardiovascular system, will also lower your cholesterol. Eat all of the cruciferous vegetables you can, such as turnips, rutabagas, bok choy, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard greens, and kale. These create enzyme reactions in our bodies that kill cancer cells. Cruciferous vegetables are also good for women going through menopause or women having irregular periods where their estrogen levels are going up and down.
Whole soy as in soybeans, tofu, and the healthy kind of soymilk, is also good for menopausal women, and has cancer-fighting properties, in that soy causes cancer cells to self-destruct. Soy isoflavones, which are a small part of the soybean, have not been proven to have the same healthy effects. Start eating whole edamame soy beans.
Eating organically and healthily does not have to be difficult. It can be simple, but takes a little practice to get good at it. Buy fruit and vegetables at the farmers’ market, preferably organic, from the people who grow it. Find a health food store near you for your whole grains, breads, and free-range, hormone-free meats. The final key is to remember to read labels. If it has high fructose corn syrup, even organic, then leave it on the shelf. If you cannot pronounce it, do not eat it. When you are shopping for the week, buy a variety of colorful produce.
If you take something home, but you do not really know what to do with it, here is my two-step secret. If it is a root, meaning it grows in the ground, scrub it, chop it up, toss it in olive oil, and put it in a 450-degree oven and you will get delicious roasted root vegetables. If you take home a leafy vegetable, you can wash it, chop it up, put it in a pot on the stove with a little water still clinging to its leaves, and gently steam it on low heat down into cooked greens. You can add some balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, or chili oil. Sometimes I will fry a little bit of onion first and then cook the greens on top of that. You will like some, and others you will not like and you will have wasted about $1.50 on a bunch of greens. Treat it as an adventure. You will find so many things that you would never have thought of eating before.
Make sure to include healthy fats in your diet, such as: organic butter, olive oil for cooking, and flax seed oil on salads. Once you have your beautiful greens and your root vegetables cooking and put a little olive oil on them for your fat—take a moment to smell how good that smells. Take a moment to think, “Wow, look at the people who brought me this food.” Think of the farmers. Think of the earthworms. Think of the piece of the planet that your food was grown on, and take a moment to appreciate it and yourself for making this commitment to healthy eating.
Eat Organic!
The following is drawn from an address I gave at the 2007 Natural Agriculture Conference at Shumei America’s National Center in Pasadena.
When we mention “organic diet,” it can sound daunting. There are many obstacles to eating natural, nourishing food. It’s easier to eat fast, processed, packaged, or frozen food, which are just calories, not real food. Organic food is grown without any chemical fertilizers or pesticides, so there are no toxins put on the land or food that you eat. Our bodies are not created to eat chemicals, preservatives, waxes, and artificial colorings that are put on or in food. Unfortunately, even organic does not necessarily mean healthy. Organic sugar is still sugar. We need to read labels, even at the health food store. Manufacturers add ingredients just to make food taste good to our palate. Human tastes have changed over the years, and manufacturing of foods has evolved, so more sugar and salt is going into food, even healthy food.
In an organic diet, we eat seasonal food in as natural a state as possible. It is nearly springtime here in California, which means it is time to eat asparagus, leafy greens, turnips, rutabagas, and beets. People who only eat food out of cans miss the variety in nature. Eating seasonally allows us to put a variety of foods into our diets. The only way I know of to keep the seasons straight here is to buy food from farmers who are growing their food locally. You can buy anything at health food stores at any time of year because it is flown in from all over the world. That does not mean it is nourishing for your body right here and now. Your body is thriving or surviving in the climate you are living in, so it is used to the temperature that is outside. It is most nourished by food that is growing in your climate. Another benefit of eating locally grown food is that there is less fossil fuel spent in transporting the food long distances.
Our bodies have not changed much in the last five thousand years as we have eaten vegetables, grains, meat, and some fish. We were not eating vitamin pills or the chemicals that came into production around World War I. Most of the chemicals used on our food are byproducts of the chemical weapons industry, later turned into chemical pesticides and fertilizers when chemical weapons were banned worldwide. Our bodies know how to eat real food, not chemicals.
Organic food is grown in soil that has more minerals in it, and those minerals come up into the food you eat. Organic produce has more minerals in it than regular produce. There was a study published in the Journal of Applied Nutrition that found organic produce has 60 percent more calcium, 73 percent more iron, 188 percent more magnesium, and 29 percent less mercury than non-organic produce. You probably never thought of your produce containing mercury, but it is in our soil because of nearly a hundred years of chemical runoff.
Minerals are important for our bones to prevent osteoporosis, and are also important for our nervous systems. Many people are stressed out, hyperactive, and do not sleep well. This is a common sign of mineral deficiency, because minerals help us sleep at night. If you are not sleeping and you are drinking coffee every morning to wake up, and then taking sleeping pills at night in order to sleep, you are probably lacking in minerals. Mineral supplements will not solve your problem, because your body will not absorb them as well as it will the minerals in your food. Put the supplements aside and eat real organic food.
One of the keys to good digestion is chewing. The enzymes in your saliva break down carbohydrates. We can digest meat with just the acid in our stomach, but carbohydrates and vegetables must be broken down by saliva enzymes. Chew food to the consistency of baby food before you swallow it.
Science is now discovering that there are many bioflavonoids and carotenoids in fruits and vegetables that are good for anti-aging and our immune system. We cannot just take one kind of bioflavonoid or one kind of antioxidant. We need to have a variety of them. The best way to get a wide variety is to eat many different foods. Thomas Jefferson grew two hundred varieties of peas on his farm at Monticello. How many varieties can you now find in a store? We are lucky to find one shelling pea, and we get only a few varieties of frozen peas in a bag.
You would think all oranges are the same, right? This morning I bought some fabulous tangerines that I juiced for breakfast. Next week my farmer will have tangelos. I know I will get different nutrients from the tangelos than I get from the tangerines because the color is different, they grow on a different tree and have a different bio-chemical make-up. The more colors you have on your plate when you eat, the healthier you will be. Orange vegetables, like sweet potatoes and yams, have phytochemicals that are called phytosterols, which are similar to cholesterol in their chemical make-up. Your body needs good cholesterol for a variety of functions. It uses the phytosterols instead of making cholesterol, so eating sweet potatoes and yams can actually lower bad cholesterol.
Inside the supermarket, around the perimeter of the walls is where you will find all the real food: the fresh vegetables, meats, breads, and dairy foods. On the inside aisles are the canned, boxed, and frozen foods, and soda pop you should not buy. If it is not possible to get to a farmers’ market, always shop around the perimeter walls of the supermarket. Processed foods, on the inner aisles, have had all time-sensitive goodness removed, and have food preservatives. I want my food to rot and break down into compost if I do not eat it. I do not want food to sit in my refrigerator for a year until I decide to eat it. If you find something in a store, and the label says it will be good for a year or more, think twice before buying it.
Commercial farms breed tomatoes specifically to make them easier to transport long distances. They pick them under-ripe and put them in huge trucks, which are pumped full of ethylene gas to ripen the tomatoes as they drive across the country. They do not have any taste because they are not ripening on the vine. I prefer to pay my grocery money to the person who grew my food at the farmers’ market. I know my money goes to the farmer who is protecting our planet by growing organically and saving agricultural land from development.
In California, our markets are certified farmers’ markets which means you are buying from the farmer or his employees. It does not, however, mean they are organic. Organic certification is different. I had a client who was drinking a tea for her lungs made from grapefruits, including the rind, but they were not organic grapefruits. They were being sprayed with something and her lungs kept getting worse. I told her, “You have to get organic grapefruits; otherwise they will have wax or chemicals on them.” Please find a farmers’ market near you and give it a try. You will find one or more organic farmers at every one. These are people who have their hands in the soil, working hard to grow your food. And it is a lot of work.
Now I want to talk about sugar. Sugar is a highly processed food. Sugar is to sugar cane what cocaine is to the coca leaf. In Central America, people will chew on a coca leaf and it gives them energy to do their farming. If you take that coca and you process it, you get cocaine, which we know is a highly addictive. Sugar is similar. If you go to a sugar plantation and suck on some sugarcane, which is fibrous and contains minerals, it will give you an energy boost. Compare that to the poisonous, addictive, processed white sugar, which gives you energy initially and then later gives you a sugar crash.
The two tastes humans really enjoy are fat and sugar. If the food industry removes one item, they add more of the other. If you read the label on “no fat” yogurt, chances are it has more sugar than regular yogurt and it will raise your cholesterol levels. A little bit of sugar is not going to hurt you unless you are diabetic, but sugar is in all the food we eat and is contributing to high cholesterol and diabetes across America. Honey, which is loaded with vitamins and minerals, and organic molasses, high in iron, are both better sweeteners.
Artificial sweeteners are even worse than sugar. There are more reports on the side effects from aspartame in NutraSweet than any other product in the history of the Food and Drug Administration. Aspartame is a toxic byproduct of the weapons industry. High fructose corn syrup is second worse and in almost every food you buy in the central part of the supermarket. We have a really effective political corn lobby from big, commercial agriculture in this country. They discovered that high fructose corn syrup is really useful in soft drinks and many fruit juices. Things that you think are natural and healthy may have high fructose corn syrup. It throws your blood sugar off, is highly addictive, has no nutritional value, and is highly processed so all the minerals from the corn are completely gone. Eliminate high fructose corn syrup from your diet and you will notice a difference.
In America we have so much genetically modified corn that we are now selling it across the border in Mexico. It is cheaper for them to buy our genetically modified, pesticide-filled corn than it is for the farmer in Mexico to grow corn as he has all his life. It is amazing when we think about farming and eating locally, how we realize that every mouthful of food we eat has an effect on the geo-politics, economy, and environment of the world. We can take steps individually and collectively towards eating with wisdom in knowing what is on our plate and appreciating why it is there.
Now let us talk about a couple of good foods. Eating two apples a day will lower your bad cholesterol. Eating healthy fish, like tuna, salmon, and sardines, which are good for your cardiovascular system, will also lower your cholesterol. Eat all of the cruciferous vegetables you can, such as turnips, rutabagas, bok choy, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard greens, and kale. These create enzyme reactions in our bodies that kill cancer cells. Cruciferous vegetables are also good for women going through menopause or women having irregular periods where their estrogen levels are going up and down.
Whole soy as in soybeans, tofu, and the healthy kind of soymilk, is also good for menopausal women, and has cancer-fighting properties, in that soy causes cancer cells to self-destruct. Soy isoflavones, which are a small part of the soybean, have not been proven to have the same healthy effects. Start eating whole edamame soy beans.
Eating organically and healthily does not have to be difficult. It can be simple, but takes a little practice to get good at it. Buy fruit and vegetables at the farmers’ market, preferably organic, from the people who grow it. Find a health food store near you for your whole grains, breads, and free-range, hormone-free meats. The final key is to remember to read labels. If it has high fructose corn syrup, even organic, then leave it on the shelf. If you cannot pronounce it, do not eat it. When you are shopping for the week, buy a variety of colorful produce.
If you take something home, but you do not really know what to do with it, here is my two-step secret. If it is a root, meaning it grows in the ground, scrub it, chop it up, toss it in olive oil, and put it in a 450-degree oven and you will get delicious roasted root vegetables. If you take home a leafy vegetable, you can wash it, chop it up, put it in a pot on the stove with a little water still clinging to its leaves, and gently steam it on low heat down into cooked greens. You can add some balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, or chili oil. Sometimes I will fry a little bit of onion first and then cook the greens on top of that. You will like some, and others you will not like and you will have wasted about $1.50 on a bunch of greens. Treat it as an adventure. You will find so many things that you would never have thought of eating before.
Make sure to include healthy fats in your diet, such as: organic butter, olive oil for cooking, and flax seed oil on salads. Once you have your beautiful greens and your root vegetables cooking and put a little olive oil on them for your fat—take a moment to smell how good that smells. Take a moment to think, “Wow, look at the people who brought me this food.” Think of the farmers. Think of the earthworms. Think of the piece of the planet that your food was grown on, and take a moment to appreciate it and yourself for making this commitment to healthy eating.
HealAdmin
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