One of the basic concepts of
natural therapy can be expressed in that old saying, “You are what you eat”.
To a large extent, our diet
has determined the diseases we suffer from.
Over the past 100 to 150
years our basic diet has changed drastically. We have gone from fresh,
wholesome, unrefined, unsprayed food to the opposite.
Our foods now are frozen,
canned, refined, genetically modified, and treated with toxic pesticides, preservatives,
colorings and other chemicals.
Mass food production
techniques have given us more food but less nutrition as the soil has become
depleted of essential nutrients and its living balance upset by the
petro-chemical fertilizers that wiped out all the sulfur in the soil that kept
the people well, chemtrails that drop all sorts of health destroying chemicals,
and sprays. Oh yeah, Bill Gates has the patents on chemtrails.
The refining of cereal grains
strips them of their fiber and germ coatings, which contain the bulk of their
protein, vitamins, and minerals, and leaves an unbalanced food composed
primarily of refined carbohydrates.
And where does the fiber and
germ coatings go to? To the animals to be fed back to us in the form of
rotting, decayed flesh.
The consumption of refined
sugar is also one of the most detrimental influences in the modern diet.
Sugar consumption has
increased phenomenally within the past 200 years. In 1815 the average intake
was about 15 pounds per year. By 1955 it had reached 120 pounds per year. Now
it’s at 150 – 175 pounds per year. Yet we wonder why diabetes and obesity rates
are so high.
Consider the diet of a
typical teenager: refined and sweetened cereal, two fried eggs from chickens
fed growth hormones and confined to a cage their whole lives, white toast with
butter for breakfast, a hamburger, French fries and a Coke for lunch, boiled
frozen vegetables, meat and white rice for dinner, with two other soda
beverages containing 18 teaspoons of sugar and multiple other sweets each day.
You can see how it’s possible
for people to eat more of less and literally starve themselves nutritionally.
Not only is the quality of our diet
extremely poor, but also its quantity is often as much of the problem.
There’s and old Chinese saying
that says nine-tenths of the food you eat is for your health while the last one- tenth is for your doctor’s financial health.
Whenever you eat more than
the body can effectively deal with, disease is invited. This is true of the
best, most nourishing foods as well as when the foods eaten are, of themselves,
a health risk.
A major cause of disease, as
previously discussed, is accumulation of waste or toxins that cannot be
silently dealt with. And overeating is one cause of this accumulation.
Another important factor in our foods’ nutritional value is the
manner in which it is prepared.
Many foods have maximum value
in their natural state, or as close to it as possible. Certainly, for most
fruits or vegetables, heating destroys many of their enzymes and vitamins.
In the case of water-soluble
vitamins, these are lost if the food is boiled and the cooking water discarded.
Long- term storage or canning also results in the loss of many of the less
stable vitamins.
Some foods, however, require
heat to be made digestible, such as whole grains, some tuberous vegetables, a
few fruits, and dried beans.
Some nutritionists feel that
a completely raw food diet is the only natural human diet and that cooked food
is a major cause of suffering and disease. With raw foods being our most
natural and nutritious foods, a person following such a diet, with full
knowledge of necessary nutritional requirements for health, will experience
profound physical vigor and resistance to disease.
While such a diet may be too
extreme for the general population, the body is sufficiently adaptable to be
able to handle a certain amount of cooked foods quite effectively.
My suggestion is a diet
containing a large amount of raw vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts, with a
smaller amount of lightly cooked vegetables, beans, seeds like quinoa and
buckwheat and whole grains.
For those that desire dairy products, good luck! What nutrients are left after being cooked up to 500 degrees?
The only benefits from dairy
products come from raw, unpasteurized cow or goat milk. And where do you find
these? Wherever the FDA or USDA disposed of them after raiding the farms that
provided them.
And why would they dispose of
them? Because they are merely “hookers” for Big Pharma and will do anything
they can to preserve profits and do anything they can to take away that which
will keep you healthy.
If you must eat dairy
products, only those that are fermented, such as yoghurt and kefir, are best.
If by some quirk of fate, you can find raw milk goat cheese, go for it.
The amount of red meat now
consumed by the general public is a definite health risk, even so-called
free-range. All the feed is loaded with GMOs, and other dead animals as well as
road kill. The poultry, as discussed, are so loaded with growth hormones that
they cannot stand up or walk. And the fish are full of mercury, oil spills,
radiation, and toxins.
A guy in Cleveland once did an
experiment. He took a roll of undeveloped film and put it in the Ohio River. It
partially developed. And guess where all those toxins end up? In the ocean to
be ingested by the fish.
For a diet to be of any use,
all food must be chewed slowly and thoroughly. Too many people rush their
meals, putting an excess burden on their stomachs. In addition to this, the
food must be eaten only when one is relaxed and under no tension. Why? Because
stress completely stops the actions of the entire digestive system.
It is obvious that many
diseases can be directly related to improper dietary habits. The real proof is
seen when a disease process is reversed and cured by a simple change of diet.
Saturated fat elimination, for example, reverses cancer, arthritis, heart disease
and type-2 diabetes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Yeah, yeah, it all sounds
really good doesn’t it? The major problem, as I see it, is CONDITIONING.
We go through life being
taught things by everyone, especially our parents. And this is how we learn to
eat. But what if our parents suffered the same fate that we are faced with and
died of cancer or heart disease or some degenerative disease? How would we know
not to succumb to the same fate if our senses dictate what we eat?
Most all of us drive some
sort of vehicle. Yet from day one we are taught not to put kerosene in the gas
tank. If we do, the engine starts getting weird real soon and we know we have
problems.
Unfortunately, when we put
kerosene in the vehicle called the “body”, the ramifications do not manifest
for years and years. What starts out as a bit of joint pain turns into
arthritis. The shortness of breath we experience turns into heart disease and
the subtle pain in our body turns into cancer.
So, down the road after 40 or
50 years we are screwed and we have no idea why. And our diet is the last thing
we consider. But it is the first thing we should consider.
If you research the make-up
of the human body you will find that we have all the markings of being a plant
based consuming species. Yet, out senses become accustomed to flesh and blood
and we fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.
So the question you must
answer is this: do I want to suffer degenerative disease and relegate myself to
the endless consumption of pharmaceuticals, doctor visits, and all sorts of
invasive treatments, or would I rather live my life in good health without
having to throw good money away just to maintain an acceptable condition of
health?
Change is good. Never be
afraid of change.
Aloha!
Sources:
www.everydayhealth.com
www.asanediet.com
When I was a kid, if I were told that I'd be writing a book about diet and nutrition when I was older, let alone having been doing a health related radio show for over 36 years, I would've thought that whoever told me that was out of their mind. Living in Newark, New Jersey, my parents and I consumed anything and everything that had a face or a mother except for dead, rotting, pig bodies, although we did eat bacon (as if all the other decomposing flesh bodies were somehow miraculously clean). Going through high school and college it was no different. In fact, my dietary change did not come until I was in my 30's.
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!