Month: June 2012

Seems most of the world could do a lot worse than emulate the eating habits of our northern neighbours!

The Situation – Most people today do not maintain optimal health and die 20-80 years earlier than they need to.

The Cause – We are not educated on the 12 Pillars of Optimal Health so do not work on maintaining them.

The Remedy – Enlighten people on what it takes to operate a body in optimum condition and make it easier for them to do so by providing solutions to their challenges.

The 4 Pillars of Optimal Diet Summarised
If I were to distill the last four years of nutritional research into four words, those would be Diversity, Density, Purity and Restriction.

I believe you should target improvement in your diet by focusing on them in that order.
The reason I say that is that by far the majority today are malnourished – they are not taking in the variety, quality or quantity of nutrients their body needs to maintain optimal health. And they are taking in too many toxins and too many empty calories. As a result they lack energy, get sick and die earlier than necessary.

Part of the reason for this is because society focuses on calories and not nutrients.
Calories measure energy, not nutrition. One calorie is the amount of energy that it takes to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. Water does not need nutrition to be heated! A body needs calories for energy and nutrients to maintain optimal health. You can get calories without nutrients but you can’t get nutrients without calories. So on which whould you focus? That’s right! Nutrients!
There are hundreds and hundreds of different nutrients. They don’t just number the dozen odd vitamins and 70 odd minerals. If most of us have difficulty tracking calories then there are way too many different nutrients for you and I to track daily. That’s why people promote counting calories. It is nutritional folly, but it is easy to communicate. As a society we are off-track by focusing on calories over nutrition.

Nutritional Diversity
Your body is not simple. It is extremely complex. As an example, your pancreas produces enzymes for digestion as well as 5,000 other chemical reactions in the body! To properly nourish it and keep it well, your nutrition needs to be as diverse as your body is complex!

Feed your body too narrow a range of foods and you will miss out on essentiual nutrients.

Comparative example: The ancient Aztecs cultivated 229 different crops. Today, 66% of Americans get two thirds of their calories from 4 – wheat, rice, corn and soy and their derivatives!

I believe this lack of nutritional diversity is part of the reason for the modern epidemic in degenerative disease.

Researchers recently tested 150 exhumed Egyptian mummies for cancer. Only 1 tested positive. Today, more than a third of people will die from cancer.

My research points to a wider range of nutrients as being essential to optimal health.
Practice Nutritional Diversity – eat a wider variety of foods!

Nutritional Density
One of my theories is that a big part of the weight gain most people experience is due to their body receiving too little nutrition from the calories they consume.

Nutrient densiity comes from foods with nutrient\calorie parity – where the calories are nutrient dense. Most processed food is empty calories – the calories are majorly devoid of nutrients. On a normal diet you get some energy from the calories but too few nutrients. If you eat only enough to maintain your weight, you are malnourished because the calories do not contain all the nutrients the body requires.

So, feeling the lack of nutrients, the body says, “I didn’t get what I need, feed me some more!” and you are dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t! If you don’t eat more you do not nourish the body adequately. If you eat more, you stack on the weight. Well, even if you eat more of the same you still don’t get the nourishement the body needs.

Cooking food destroys enzymes and some vitamins so raw food is more nutrient dense. Some food needs to be cooked but most people eat way too big a percentage of their diet cooked. Eat more raw food.

In order to attain and maintain optiomal health and weight, a body needs most calories from nutrient dense foods.

Practice Nutrient Parity – eat nutrient dense foods!

Purity From Toxins

There is a strong link between environmental toxins and cancer. Good health does not live in a toxic waste dump.

Major food companies employ food chemists to design and add chemicals to your food to increase your desire to eat more. There is a reason these chemicals are called excitotoxins! They are toxins that excite your appetite!

The liver is responsible for processing toxins out of your blood and processing fats. If you are suffering from toxic overload, do you think your liver will focus on vital toxin removal or fat processing?

Practice Food Purity – get rid of artificial flavours, colours, preservatives and other additives from your foods!

Calorie Restriction

Calorie restriction is a proven strategy to extend healthy and maximum life span. Some animal studies have shown up to a 40% increase in maximum life span by restricting calorie intake.

Calorie restriction also provides a greatly lowered risk for most degenerative conditions of aging, and improved measures of general health.

Practice Calorie Restriction to live healthier and longer!