Diet Information

Antioxidants, vitamins, minerals… known to reduce the risk of… cancer, heart disease, diabetes… eat more: greens, grains, fruits, vegetables…

We hear the admonishments and advice in the news, on talk shows, and read it in magazines.

Do we have this much control over our health?

We do. While nothing is fool-proof, the idea should be to stock up on anything that can provide us with maximum health benefits, leaning the balance in our favor. It is truly our choice how we live.

We also hear a lot about vitamins and supplementation. It is implied that a state of perfect health cannot be reached without them. The idea is to shore up your eating habits with all of those nutrients you are missing at mealtime. Why are nutrients missing at mealtime? The culprit is our food choices. If you were to make a meal out of a loaf of white bread, wouldn’t it make sense that you may be missing a few things in the nutrient department? While the example is a little extreme, the thinking is the same. What do your meals actually look like?

Logically, balanced eating habits that are rich in whole foods would be a better prescription than supplementing poor choices. There will be days in which you don’t provide every single vitamin and mineral your body needs, but take a long-term perspective. Look at how you are eating over the course of a week. Plan meals that include ingredients from whole, unrefined sources. It can be dizzying to go into a grocery store and choose from the vast array of fruits, vegetables, and whole grain products that can now be found on shelves. Variety is the key to filling in any possible deficiencies, so mix it up and try some new recipes and ingredients each week.

Supplements aren’t “bad” - they can assist in your overall plan for radiant health. But to rely on them exclusively is taking the seemingly easy way out, when it’s just replacing good nutrition with a man-made ingredient! Vitamins found in whole foods are much more effective than their synthetic counterparts. For instance, 70 mg of vitamin C in one cup of broccoli strengthens your immunity more effectively than 700 mg of synthetic vitamin C. Plus, there are other nutrients found in broccoli that makes it a more productive choice.

Research has found that with minerals, there is a balancing act going on inside of our bodies. You’ll read that in order for a certain mineral to be absorbed by your body, you need to ingest another mineral to help it along. This shows that a balance and variety of whole foods will work hand-in-hand to provide your body with its requirements for optimal functioning.

Choose balanced whole foods eating over the crutch of supplementation. Instead of spending your time trying to remember which bottle of vitamins you have or haven’t taken for the day, use your time more wisely and eat foods that work hard for your body!

Debra Augur has studied holistic nutrition for years, put that knowledge into practice, and has a passion to share that knowledge with others who are seeking their own best health. If we are what we eat, are we denatured, devitalized, deficient and potentially toxic? Visit http://www.eat-well-to-be-well.com to learn more, and begin acquiring your healthiest self.

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I encourage my patients to live in a way that supports life. To that end I advocate a “whole food, clean food” diet. The general principles are quite simple. Our food needs to be minimally processed, and free of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, flavor enhancers and other additives.

Here are some questions to ask to tell if a food is whole or not (with help from Cynthia Lair, author of Feeding the Whole Family):

Does the food look like it once lived on this planet? Lettuce, eggs, yes. Marshmallows, NutraSweet, no.

How many ingredients does it have? Whole foods have one ingredientitself.

What has been done to the food since it was harvested? Read the label. If the label reads more like chemistry, don’t eat it.

Is this product “part” of a food or the “whole” food? Juice is only part of a fruit. Oil is only part of the olive. When you eat partial foods, your body craves the part it didn’t get, because for millennia, the whole food has been the only food it has known.

The cleanest food is organic food, period. We all need to eat organic whenever possible. But start with the three dirtiest foods: water, meat/fish and cow’s milk.

Cleaning up water is easy. Buy reverse osmosis or distilled water, or get a purifier using one of these methods for your home. Spring water is just someone else’s tap water.

Eat pasture fed and finished, antibiotic and hormone free meat and eggs. Add plant protein sources to your diet, such as tempeh or beans to offset the cost. Most of us are eating way too much meat anyway.

Eat only ocean fish. Farm raised fish are the dirtiest. The Environmental Working Group keeps an up-to-date list of fish to avoid.

Cow’s milk products, including yoghurt, cheese, and ice cream must be avoided altogether with the exception of small amounts of organic butter or ghee. However, stopping all at once will cause uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms. Take at least two weeks, working meal by meal.

After these foods have been cleaned up, then start with fruits and vegetables. Soft thin skins absorb pesticides best. Buy these organic next. Always wash fruits and vegetables, even organic ones, in vegetable soap and water. By now, the difference between organic and conventional will be very clear, and you will be seeking out organic food whenever possible. In Kansas City where I live, we are fortunate to have the Kansas City Food Circle. They keep a directory of local organic and natural food producers. Look for a similar organization near you.

Don’t dirty up clean food by cooking it in aluminum or plastic cookware. Aluminum, a known brain toxin, leaches into the food from the cookware. Plastic leaches hormone-like compounds into our food. Use cast iron, stainless steel, glass, ceramic or clay instead.

Bethany Klug, DO specializes in holistic medicine at the Kansas City Holistic Centre.

She teaches whole foods nutrition and holistic living online. Visit University Of Masters for information about her courses. Please enter “DRKLUG” in the referral box when you enroll.

She authors the monthly column “The Doctor Cooks” for the Kansas City Wellness Magazine. The Doctors Cooks Weblog is now online with past articles, menus, recipes, tips and other resources. Please subscribe!

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