The Basics of Diet

The Basics of Diet

A clean, healthy diet needs to be the foundation for anyone interested in true health.

Modern diets in the United States leave much to be desired.

Let’s start with the basics.

Hippocrates said, “Let your food be your medicine.” I would tell my patients, if you can find food.

Many items are out there, masquerading as clean, healthy foods that are an illusion.

For starters, try to access organically grown food, whenever possible. There are regulations on soil, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides that must be followed to be certified organic. Organic translates as typically higher mineral content with no or lower pesticide and herbicide applications. Inorganic farming through the years has left the soil depleted of trace minerals, as typically just nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are applied.  Genetically modified seeds are often used in association with toxic herbicides like Roundup. If one wants a clean, toxin free body, clean, organic food is an essential. Purchasing at farmers markets where a relationship has been set up with a grower is always a good idea. Growing your own organic garden large scale, or even just herbs in a pot is a start.

And as far as diets go, overall, the easiest one for most people to assimilate and follow is a Mediterranean-based diet.

Things to avoid in the diet include white flour, wheat, sugar, corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, fast and junk food and poor-quality oils with a high omega six content. Quality oils are olive and coconut oil.

When eating animal proteins look for pasture raised, organically grown with no genetically engineered growth hormones.

Highly nutritious eggs will have a dark yellow to orange yolk. Overall, when it comes to food, you get what you pay for.

Next up is water.

Pesticides, herbicides, drug residues, and industrial waste all eventually ends up in our water supply. If one is going to drink tap water, it is a good idea to minimally carbon filter it. A more advanced method could be reverse osmosis, where one ends up with chemically pure water, but it’s a soft water because minerals have been removed. My favorite is quality spring water. Spring water means filtered by the earth. This is a hard water with beneficial minerals intact like calcium and magnesium among others. Some of my favorites are Mountain Valley, Evian and Fiji. Fiji is not a traditional spring water, but it’s pumped out of an aquifer and has a nice mineral content to it.

One can find a lot of quality, organic foods at low prices at Walmart. Learn to shop intelligently. Our next step is usually Costco, which does carry a fair amount of organic foods for the discriminating shopper. We then fill in the blanks at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods.

Learn to cook at home and save favorite recipes as a go to. Recipes for just about anything are out there on the Internet now.

Health is built up or torn down one meal at a time.

E.Rosencross