There is no one right way for all people to eat. Fruit is a very healthy foundation food for most people. However, someone who is diabetic should limit their fruit intake, especially regarding high sugar fruits such as grapes or pineapple. People with ulcers will be repelled by orange juice, due to its acidity.
There will be special needs and tastes to take into consideration. Here are healthy guidelines that you can use to guide your family to eating for life.
Basic Guide to Eating Healthy
Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables: The five color a day vegetable and fruit habit is a healthy one. Choose lots of variety in your fruit and vegetable palate to ensure that you receive the largest variety of trace minerals and vitamins from your food. Eat organic whenever you can, and wash well all the food you eat.
If you are healing from diabetes, arthritis or cancer, consider juicing fresh fruits and vegetables to boost your healing power!
Eat whole grains: Brown rice, wild rice, quinoa, barley, millet, oats that are organic or are grown without chemicals or pesticides are healthy and retain the husk; which contains the majority of the nutrition for these foods.
Eat whole grains breads: Avoid whole grain breads while you are healing from candida, cancer of diabetes. They convert to sugar that these dis-eases can feed upon. Otherwise, whole sprouted grain flours are best. Avoid white flours even in organic bread recipes.
Eat lesser amounts of meat: Meat has gotten a bad rap in the last 20 years. Meat that does not contain antibiotics, sugar or hormones, particularly if it is free range is healthy for you. Avoid meats containing chemicals, including nitrates.
With regards to fish, avoid buying farmed fish, as they may have been given antibiotics and chemical feeds. Wild harvested fish may be more expensive, but the difference in nutrition and taste is worth it.
Eating healthy sugar: While healing from cancer of diabetes, limit your amount of sugars. If you have a sweet tooth, eat blueberries, blackberries or raspberries. They are high in antioxidants and low in sugar to feed cancer or diabetes. Otherwise, conscious amounts of honey or agave, muscavado dark sugars that contain the molasses can be part of a healthy diet.
Eat nuts and seeds: Nuts and seeds provide many health benefits. Eat a variety of nuts. Almonds are alkalinizing to the body. Black walnuts help us keep worms and intestinal parasites under control, and provide nutrition. Pumpkin seeds contain B vitamins, along with C, D, E and K. They contain calcium, potassium and phosphorous. They are traditionally used to expel parasites from the intestines. Sunflower seeds contain lineolic and oleic acids, which help reduce bad cholesterol and increase HDLs or good cholesterol in the blood. They contain amino acids like tryptophan which is helpful to healthy growth. They are a rich source of vitamin E, necessary to healthy skin and protection from free radicals. They are also a great source of B complex vitamins, calcium, iron, manganese and zinc.
Seeds offer great flavor to salads; or eaten as a snack.
DRINKS THAT ARE GOOD FOR YOU
Are you searching for healthy drinks? Try these. They are delicious and good for you.
Water – It might sound cliché to say, but water is delicious and such a life giver. We cannot think without it. We are constipated when we don’t drink enough. Our organs, blood and vital tissues cannot function without it. Drink plenty of water each day. Want to spice it up? Add half a lemon or orange to your water and enjoy.
Molasses Milk – Drink unpasteurized milk when you can. It has good bacteria and nutrition that is killed in pasteurized milk. Pour a tall glass of milk and add 1 or 2 T of blackstrap molasses. It is a tasty way to boost B vitamins and iron in your diet.
Lemonade - Squeeze ½ cup fresh lemon juice and add 1 ½ cup local honey or to your taste (local honey boosts your immune system and improves allergy symptoms). Or juice 1 cup of lemon and 1 cup of strawberries and add 1½ cups of honey for a delicious strawberry lemonade treat.
Herbal Tea – Mix 2 tea bags of horsetail, catnip, nettles, dandelion root, chamomile, peppermint, rose hips, red clover, and raspberry. These are all herbal teas and contain no caffeine. You can use other varieties of herbs as well. Place these in a ½ gallon pitcher and fill the container with boiling water. Allow it to steep until cool. Add stevia, honey or agave and sweeten to taste.
Drinking this tea will increase your calcium intake, help balance hormones, calm and support digestion and liver function, helps purify the bloodstream and circulation. It increases Vitamin A and C intake and contains lots of trace minerals. Best of all, it tastes great.
Kefir – Kefir is a mix of bacteria that should be living in our digestive tracts for good health and digestion. Most of us are missing some or all of them from taking antibiotics, eating poorly and living under stress. Kefir is best added to unpasteurized cow or goat milk. The best part is that for people like me who are dairy intolerant, can drink kefir. The bacteria in kefir digest the milk. We make delicious fruit smoothies for lunch each day. You can vary it by changing fruit choices. You can also make delicious chai flavored drinks adding cinnamon, nutmeg and a hint of ginger with a bit of honey.
½ cup fruit of your choice
6 ounces of Kefir milk
1-2 T honey
Learn more about kefir at www.culturesforhealth.com
Carbonated fruit juice – Once in awhile I crave carbonation. That’s when I offer carbonated fruit juice. It satisfies that bubbly feeling and when you add fresh fruit of the season, it makes a deliciously delightful drink for guests.
1 bottle carbonated water
1 can fruit juice (no sugar added or organic) & 1 can of water
mix together and add fresh fruit garnish.
For a beautiful drink, Place 2 bottles of carbonated water, 2 cans of fruit juice into a punchbowl and mix. Add a variety of available washed fresh fruit to the bowl for a delicious and enticing drink.
Foods to Avoid
AVOID PROCESSED FOODS - If you can’t pronounce the words on the ingredient list, don’t eat it. This means there are preservatives or chemicals in the food. Your body doesn’t need them and most often the liver treats them like a toxin, which burdens your system.
AVOID WHITE SUGAR – White sugar comes from a cane like all cane sugar. Then the molasses is separated from it and the fibers are removed; what’s left is bleached. This remaining white sugar is already processed so that your body does not need to digest it, which spikes blood sugar levels shortly after consumption. It also damages the myelin sheath that protects nerves and impulses traveling through the nervous system.
AVOID DAIRY PRODUCTS - If you are healing from Candida, Cancer, Diabetes, liver related disorders such as arthritis and gout. Kefir milk is helpful in some instances.
AVOID WHITE FLOUR – White flour has removed the hull where the majority of B vitamins and minerals are stored. What is left is the starch. Eat the whole grain flours, especially sprouted flours. You can buy breads in health food groceries that contain them. Better yet, invest in a simple bread machine and grain grinder and buy whole grains and grind the grains and make your own bread.
The overuse of antibiotics has caused numerous resistant pathogens for our bodies to deal with. Growth hormones stimulate premature development in our children’s bodies. The unnatural sugars and additives added to meat causes our digestion and liver to deal with unnecessary toxins in our body. There are many local farmers now producing meat without using antibiotics or hormones. Avoid dairy that has been feed GMO corn. Free range meat is wonderful tasting and is also good for you.
AVOID SODA POP – Caffeine, white sugar, highly processed, this is a non-nutritional addition to the diet. If you drink sugar free versions it’s even worse. The body has to deal with the chemicals found in these drinks. Many are already suspected in cancer and liver-related health issues.
AVOID CAFFEINATED DRINKS – Coffee, tea, power drinks, all serve to increase caffeine intake with a sales pitch to get you motivated and moving in your day. Movement is truly a choice. Decide to get up and be happy and motivated in your life. When drugs make these choices for you, they create mind looping, where your attention recycles through the same motions and thoughts over and over. Allow yourself to be a true creator. Use your thoughts to create choices, it is easier to stay conscious and mindful without caffeine. There are times when green tea is helpful for certain health issues, the rest of the time, choose to be free!