Simple Food – Fabulous Health

By Eve Plews

Licensed Nutrition Counselor

(Originally published in Sarasota’s Natural Awakenings magazine November, 2009)

            What could be simpler than eating foods that occur in nature?  A potato occurs in nature, Pringles don’t.  Apples occur in nature, a fried apple pie from McDonald’s doesn’t.  Chicken nuggets exist nowhere in nature, but a chicken does. 

            It’s really an easy list; fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, nuts, seeds, eggs, dairy, meat and seafood.  While it’s true that each of these choices can go from best to worst in quality, at least they exist in nature.  Certainly organic choices beat pesticide-laden produce.  Logically, heirloom tomatoes taste like they are full of life as compared to genetically engineered, hot-house, thick-skinned (for mechanical pickers), picked green, blah-blah anemic tomatoes.  YUK!  But you know that already.

            There’s something so special about finding words like polyglycerol esters of mono- and di-glycerides, red dye #40, partially hydrogenated soybean oil or mechanically extruded meat by-products to make this author’s mouth water.  Just picture Grandma on the family farm out in the back 40 harvesting her crop after having her cup of methylene chloride solvent decaf coffee with an artificially flavored muffin containing imitation blueberries, YUM.  She loves the coated rice popular in Oriental markets that has had glucose and talc added to improve its appearance.  (Remember talc can contain cancer causing asbestos.)  Grandma uses that rice in her chicken soup; “Cooked from scratch” is what she called it.  Yet the bird was raised in a completely dark building, never seeing the sun, eating FDA approved feed containing arsenic to reduce parasites along with a dose of anti-biotics daily.  Double yum!

            The “fabricated food merry-go-round” of foods highly refined then “fortified” only makes sense when you understand that additives mask the use of inferior ingredients. Salt, sugar and fat can even make road kill taste good.  Artificial flavors and colors aren’t needed to make real food appealing but are critical to make techno foods tolerable.  Only when additive laden foods are unacceptable will you have the beginning of a nutritionally superior diet.  If it has more that 5 ingredients or ingredients you can’t pronounce – pass it by.

            When Froot Loops gets a ‘Smart Food’ label, you know we’re all victims of the agribusiness where disease is much more profitable than health and prevention.  Get over the nonsense that our Federal Government is going to protect you – get real.  You are the only one who can be activist enough to protect your only true wealth—your health.  As my Daddy used to say “Don’t spend your health looking for your wealth, or you’ll spend your wealth trying to get back your health.” Thanks Dad.

            Start with fresh, organic fruit.  Buy it in season, its cheaper.  Stop the fruit juice, the fiber is missing; it’s incomplete.  Apples, pears and grapes are in season and citrus is starting to be available now.  Those fruits should be our primary choices as we move from fall to winter. 

            You can’t eat too many veggies.  Add an extra serving of veggies to every plate; sautéed onions and spinach with your morning eggs, a side of slaw with your lunch sandwich, 2 or 3 veggies at your dinner with a smaller portion of meat.

            Almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, cashews and the like containing real nutrition, quality nutrients and minerals your body needs, beat out 100 calorie packs of chips, thins and crunchies with a sprinkling of “whole grains” on top of the otherwise white flour snack.  Just how foolish does the food industry think we are?  Real foolish, actually:  if we don’t read labels. 

            Liking cooking is not rocket science, its life science – your life.  Anyone who says they have no time or desire to cook will have time to reflect on that cavalier approach to taking care of precious life as they sit in the nursing home and realize health really mattered.

            Health is an attitude before it’s a habit.  It’s not just a desire to avoid pain and disability.  Health is a positive expression not just an alternative to disease.  To seek wellness, optimal wellness, is to realize Mother Nature had it right all along.  Eat what occurs in nature.  It’s what your genes evolved on for millenniums.  It’s what your cells want!  There are no genes or cells looking for fried macaroni and cheese, bacon burgers or cheese filled crust with 5 meat pizza.  Sorry.

            No, it doesn’t have to be boring and tasteless.  Nor do you have to live on wheat grass, carrots and hay.  Yesterday, I baked a Bosc pear, sprinkled with cinnamon, then grated Emmanthaler cheese on top as the first Sunday breakfast course, followed by real cooked oatmeal with raw cream.  Nothing bland there.

Lunch was a turkey sandwich on good bread with a bowl of tomato bisque and some raw veggies.  Dinner last night was a rice-lentil loaf brimming with pine nuts and enjoyed with carrot salad and steamed broccoli.  Dessert was a carrot spice cake with a dollop of vanilla yogurt.  Tonight it’ll be baked fish, kale and sweet potato.  Things that occur in nature: consider it.  Simple foods can create and maintain health.  Simply a wonderful idea.