Are You DOING YOURSELF IN…
One Mouthful at a Time?
you should be getting in the raw
CTM founder Phillip Day, with some Food For Thought
We all know western nations are having a troubled interaction with nourishment.
Obesity and ill-heath are epidemic. Our children eat junk, stay in front
of the television or computer and refuse to exercise. Magazines at supermarket
checkouts still run those must-read articles: "Washboard Abs in
30 Days!" "Eat Your Way to Constant Passion!"
"You Can Have Kylie's Bottom in Just Three Weeks!"
But in the real world - not the noxious, over-hyped and stimulated world of the pony-tailed ad executive - we actually never quite get Kylie's bottom, do we? In fact, who was the last person you know ever to get 'Satisfaction or Your Money Back'? Bianca Jagger? Wise up. The closest Ms Minogue's buns will ever get to most of us will be on the poster hanging in the gents at Kennington tube station. That is, unless we start doing things differently.
Fad diets always fail, and yet those who lose weight and keep it off do so by going back to nature for their food. A quaint idea, but there's lots of sense to it. There's a reason why hormonal concerns clear up after switching onto natural, whole foods. There's a reason why you don't see heifers cooking pizza or orang-utans clicking their nails impatiently at the Kentucky Fried Drive-Thru. Ever wondered why animals rarely get cancer in the wild? Ever wondered why we have eighteen cultures alive today who avoid cancer completely in their isolated state?
Raw fruits and veggies. Raw fruits and veggies.
Sounds restrictive, doesn't it? And yet, there are people recovering all the time from 'terminal' illnesses on regular, small meals of raw fruits, vegetables, pulses, nuts, seeds and legumes, washed down with nature's clean water. But what about the rest of us? Who among us realises the awful truth for a moment, as we lie in hospital, nurses piping those toxic, gaily-coloured chemos into our veins, that it was ignorance of our food which drove us to our sorry Waterloo, one supermarket-trolley-load of plastic cack at a time?
Why is it that cancer patients have the best shot at
long-term survival if they adopt a living, whole-food menu and concentrate
on providing the body with the nutritional sustenance it craves? Heart
disease, arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis, AIDS, ADD, and a bewildering
array of other 'fatal' problems all have an established track record of
responding to the Hunza-like approach to what we put into our mouths.
So why do we ignore this, preferring to die chemically under the withering
eye of Matron?
What is food?
In Food For Thought, the recipe companion to Health Wars and Cancer:
Why We're Still Dying to Know the Truth, I get into some of those
natural laws we break every day which are doing us in. Food is the single-most
important factor in maintaining health or conquering disease, and yet
most of us are not even eating real food. So what is food? It's stuff
the body can use to make more of you, that's what. Yet most of what passes
for food today won't even support bacterial life, let alone a 10-year
old.
As Samantha and I tour, we stay in endless hotels. In the morning, many of these establishments lay on some incredible fruit spreads for breakfast, and later, during lunch hours, the salad bar is crammed full with a huge and delightful variety of goodies (America's best for this, although herbal teas should always be superheated prior to applying to the groin area). I sometimes wish I could have a crowd of you gathered around these spreads, so I could show you how expansive and varied the raw choices can be with Nature's greatest food groups, if you only take a little trouble to prepare them. The problem is, most of us don't have the time. That's why it's Heart Attack on a Plate instead: fried eggs, fried bread, sausages, hash browns, blood pudding, chips, baked beans, coffee and a copy of The Sun.
The population's collective brain has been seduced by the Taste Monster. Most of Britain, America and Australia would eat cardboard and wet nappies if there were some fries and ketchup on the side. Food marketing, that most deceitful and deadly of professions, is all about persuading you to go against your instincts, selling you on taste and texture, leaving your body with the nightmare of having to find the nutrition it needs to build more cells.
Today endless supermarket rows of plastic-wrapped 'food' stare smugly back at us, having been stripped of their enzymes, denuded of fibre and vitamins to ensure longer shelf-life, and then pumped full of the most boggling array of chemicals and fillers to bewitch us with taste, texture and aroma. With our crushing schedules, who's got the time to dicker around in the kitchen? Let's speed the whole process up so we can spend more time in the office. Just rub that fast food on your hips and cut out the middle-man. Let's face it, that's where it's all going to end up.
Today in the western industrialised nations, we have unlimited food and drink, and a huge selection of it. When has First World mankind ever had it so good in the food department? We've got those endless Pollyanna government departments nannying us to make sure we don't get poisoned, conned, lied to, or choke on our own tongue. Yet, what happens to us? We're poisoned, conned, lied to, and get to choke on our own tongue too as a bonus. Perhaps the obscene irony of where we've arrived as a culture today is that, while millions starve in poorer countries for want of basic sustenance, clean water and shelter, the leading killers flooring us in the First World are actually starvation-related diseases, like heart disease, cancer and stroke.
Out of sight, out of mind
Few members of the public actually consider what their food is doing to
them. It's been said that a man will be obstinate and not believe the
extent to which the western diet is contributing to his early demise but
his next of kin certainly will if they are allowed to view his autopsy.
When we finally have the stomach to face it, so much a part of reversing
the cancer and heart disease trends of the 21st century will have to do
with changing that human behaviour which controls what we shove down our
own throats and the gaping maws of our fledglings. We've seen the future
of cancer and heart disease, and the future is REAL, LIVING, WHOLE, ORGANIC
FOOD, most of it eaten raw. Now what are you going to do?
Full of nature's goodness, raw fruits, vegetables, pulses, nuts and legumes provide a comprehensive spectrum of nutrients, including enzymes, carbohydrates, proteins and fats in their proper forms , which the body needs for continued sustenance. Deny the body this kit, and you're headed for Baghdad. Also, the ratios of foods we eat today are doing us in. Too many grains and cereals are killing us; we're chomping down 400% more meat than 80 years ago and we're guzzling so much cow's milk, butter and other dairy products, the resultant Niagara Nose is gluey enough to cement up the Channel Tunnel. Australian physician Dr Dorothea Snook explains how imbalances of diet will eventually catch up with you, whether you believe they will or not:
"Trouble in the gall bladder may indicate an overdose of fats; in the liver, an overdose of grains; in the heart, an overdose of animal fats; in the kidneys, an overdose of high-protein foods and inorganic minerals; in the bladder, an overdose of acid-forming foods; in the stomach, an overdose of inorganic minerals; arthritis, an overdose of cow's milk and acid-forming foods; cancer, an accumulation of waste matter and undigested foods, producing foul air in the bowels and the lungs…."
Most believe the tommyrot they read in the newspapers and got scared into thinking that if they didn't eat the hind legs of three wildebeest and half the Serengeti before noon, they'd be struck down with a protein deficiency. Never mind that you couldn't get a protein deficiency in the western world with a gun held to your head. The main problems facing western medicine today are the consequences of protein poisoning. It has since been found that the human body requires no more than 30-40 g of protein a day. That's about half a McDonald's cheeseburger, in today's vernacular.
Enzymes
The major differences between real and plastic food lie in the available
enzyme, vitamin, mineral and antioxidant content. Real food, grown in
mineral-rich soil, is busting out all over with them. Enzymes are vital
for the continuance of life. I call them 'the life in the food'. The absence
of a single enzyme in the body can produce a metabolic disorder. Enzymes
are long-chain proteins that cut apart other proteins, acting as catalysts,
turbo-charging biochemical reactions in the body. Enzymes are the do-it
molecules in food, working synergistically with vitamins, minerals, fats,
amino acids, co-enzyme factors, etc. to get the job of life working right
inside you. Enzymes turn off healing processes in the body. If they don't,
those healing processes can become cancer. Enzymes cause food to ripen,
to spoil and rot - hence the reason why they become the first target of
food processing. Cook anything consistently over 115F (47C) and you kill
the enzymes within. Since the boiling point of water is 212F (100C), you
become guilty of enzyme murder simply by heating food for any length of
time.
The medical establishment, with its concerned expression of faint apology, tells us to eat our fruits and vegetables to protect ourselves against cancer, and yet refuses to train its doctors in nutrition, or even feed cancer patients with real, living, whole foods in hospitals. This must mean that our medical supremos apparently believe that food is good enough to keep us alive but not good enough to fix us when we're sick, thus they fuel the cancer juggernaut further by condemning their patient, who was once a person, to the fate of medicines that kill and don't work, and doctors who can't heal.
There are faxes and letters and e-mails I receive every day testifying to the miracle of common sense when it comes to looking after ourselves and those we love by feeding the family proper nosh. If you are still being wicked with what you put in your mouth, do something different and begin feeling absolutely great! Pick up a copy of Food For Thought today and start GETTING IN THE RAW. You won't get arrested, I promise. Instead, your body, and those watching you through next door's twitching curtains, will love you for it.
Who knows, you might even end up with Kylie's bottom.
Food for Thought by Phillip Day
Available through www.credence.org
