Nutrition tips - Changing Our Perceptions

Getting started

·         Where possible choose organically grown and non genetically modified, produce, nuts and grains over commercially grown foods.

·         Start reducing animal products in your diet and incorporating vegetarian substitutes.  Where possible choose unpasteurized dairy products and organic meats.

·         Start to include more fresh fruit and vegetables into your diet while reducing any prepackaged foods.

·         Always choose cold pressed “extra virgin” oils and broaden your choice of oil variety such as olive, flax, sesame, sunflower, assorted nut oils and hemp oil.

·         Start to reduce the amount of fat in you diet, especially cooked fats.  These contain many destructive free radicals and are harmful to you health.

·         Drink less coffee and more herbal teas.

·         Eat by colors.  Include fruit and vegetables of many colors to provide a broad range of plant nutrients and antioxidants.

·         Choose wine over beer and liquor.  Choose organic, sulfite-free wine if doing so.

·         When choosing produce, choose ripe over unripe.  E.g. red, orange and yellow peppers over unripe green.

·         Ensure you are drinking enough water.  Different people need different amounts depending on lifestyle.  Drink enough to produce 8-10 copious urinations per day.

Maintaining

·         Begin to shift your perception of food as simply being fuel and acknowledge it for its healing properties and as preventative medicine.

·         Take steps in incorporating more raw foods into the diet. Begin by having one raw meal a day. The following week have one raw day, the next week try two and so on.  Raw foods are a rich source of health promoting enzymes which are destroyed in the cooking process.

·         Choose whole grains over processed, white grains.  Grains are never white in nature but are bleached during processing. 

·         Choose dark and wild greens, which are packed with vitamins and essential trace minerals rather than the nutrition poor iceberg lettuce.

·         Choose raw nut butters over peanut butter or other toasted rancid nut butters.

·         Choose sun dried, sea or Himalayan salts over iodized or other processed table salts. 

·         Choose freshly squeezed fruit and vegetable juices, or quality water over canned, pasteurized, bottled, or carbonated beverages.

·         Choose lemon, oil and herbs or a home made dairy free dressing to top your salad opposed to cooked, processed dressings.

·         Avoid cooking with fats. Prepare stir fries and other cooked dishes with a drop of water instead of oil. Oil becomes highly rancid and harmful to our body when heated to a high temperature.  It can be added for flavour afterwards.

·         Choose artesian, alkalized, filtered or bottled water over tap.

Optimum Health

·         Gradually begin to transition from steamed grains to sprouted uncooked grains and breads. These can be grown yourself or purchased at good health food stores.

·         Eat more sea vegetables.  They are one of the richest sources of organic minerals.  Granulated sea vegetables, miso and organic tamari are also great for a salty addition.

·         Emphasize vegetables over fruit.  Vegetables contain less sugar and provide more organic minerals which are vital to the optimal functioning of our body.   

·         Choose agave, dates, raisins or maple syrup over sugar.

·         Choose seed bearing fruits over seedless, hybridized fruits.  Hybridized fruits tend to carry an extremely high concentration of sugars which disrupt our blood sugar and energy levels.

·         Grow your own sprouts and wheatgrass.

·         Eat more green vegetables.  Chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants is nature’s method of harnessing the suns energy into oxygen.  Eating a diet rich in green vegetables will boost your health and energy levels. 

·         Choose whole food nutritional supplements rather than isolated vitamins and mineral ones.

·         Remember “we are what we eat (absorb).”  Every thought and emotion is a physical molecule.  There is a direct link between our diet and our mental health.

·         Endeavour to eat 75% of your diet raw by weight.