We’ve all seen the commercials. Maybe this sounds familiar:
“Lose weight. Eat anything you want. No need to change your diet or your lifestyle whatsoever. Ask your doctor if Gobbleitup® is right for you.” (cue pretty music here)
“Studies have shown that side effects may include uncontrollable breast twitches on Tuesdays, right-eyed blindness, vomiting, rectal bleeding, constipation, left-eared deafness, tendencies toward violence and possibly murder, severe heart palpitations, suicidal thoughts, eye spasms, extreme farting, hair loss, constant nausea, skin rashes, fainting spells, spousal repulsion, liver failure, dizziness and loss of balance, lapses in judgment during jury duty, heartburn with explosive belching, cursing your neighbors, nervousness, cancer, paranoia, night sweats, restless leg syndrome, bulging eyes, bladder leakage and death. If you do experience any of these side effects, contact your physician to see if it is safe for you to have sex while taking Gobbleitup®.”
Or….. you could avoid all those side effects by eating real foods that are nutritious, bursting with flavor, and make you feel good all over. Oh, yeah, you might even go have sex without permission from your doctor. Just don’t tell him.
Why aren’t doctors pushing real medicine in America – food? Live food is the original prescription medication – fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, beans and grains. These are the foods that can heal – every one of them has healing properties unique to the plant.
The Best Medicine
Over 2500 years ago Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, said “First Do No Harm,” which is still today’s Hippocratic Oath taken by those who practice medicine. He also said “Thy food shall be thy 
remedy” when he stated that improper foods cause disease; proper foods cure disease. Nothing has changed in the last 2500 years – food is still your best medicine.
You know we are just a bunch of cells that hang out together – ok, a few trillion or so. Each cell depends on the guy next to it – they’re all related. And every one of our cells needs to be nourished on a daily basis by live foods in order to stay alive. Dead foods gunk things up – clog the cells – starving them of oxygen, their primary life force.
Dead foods include prepackaged processed foods, foods cooked above 212 degrees and dead flesh (meat). Though there are some people whose bodies require dead flesh to function properly. This should be taken on an individual level. We are talking about overall health and not individual health at the moment.
Live foods comprise raw fruits, raw vegetables, raw nuts, raw seeds, beans and grains (which, if not sprouted, require cooking) and water. That’s right, water is a live food. It’s also one best consumed at room temperature for good assimilation. Adding ice to water is not suggested; it can cause blood clots to form. (Silent Clots: Life’s Biggest Killers)
Eat Right or Take a Drug
- Those of us who eat the Standard American Diet (SAD) tend to need some form of digestive aid to get that meal down without the pain that comes with the gassy bloat. Most of us were taught at an early age to consume all the food groups that would carry us throughout the day. If we eat one group at a time throughout the day, we ought to be able to digest our foods fairly easily, depending on what it is we consumed. However, if we eat several things in the same sitting, and these items contain heavy proteins (meat) and carbohydrates (potatoes, rice, bread, etc.) eaten together, we might be in for some discomfort.Everything we eat requires digestion in order to draw the nutrients out of the foods. Digestion requires enzymes – the agents necessary to break down foods for assimilation and use in
the body. Proteins require acid enzymes in order to digest them, and carbohydrates need alkaline enzymes for digestion. Put them together in the same stomach at the same time (a hamburger on a white-bread bun with a side of French fries, for example) and suddenly everything stops – acid meets alkaline and they neutralize each other. With nothing digesting, fermentation now takes over and the painful bloat begins. That miserable, uncomfortable bloat or heartburn that flings purses open and out comes the Tagamet® or the Pepcid AC® or the Zantac® or Prilosec® or…Then, to top it off, once the pain subsides from taking the antacid, we might think some fruit will help us feel better after the heavy meal, so we down some grapes, blueberries or apples, mangoes or watermelon, or if we’ve consumed food at a Chinese restaurant, we’re offered sliced oranges. What could be better? Except… the bloat now continues, since our digestive systems weren’t designed to house buffets or smorgasbords. The worst thing we can do is finish off a meal with fruit, since it has its own set of digestive requirements.
Rather than rely on antacids to help digest and assimilate our foods, we can avoid the painful bloat if we follow a few simple food-combining principles,, such as:
• Never eat fruit after meals. Fruit must always be eaten on an empty stomach. When you do eat fruit on an empty stomach, it cleanses the body and helps detoxify it, and provides it with energizing vitamins.
• Eating any other type of food just prior to eating fruit will cause the food consumed before the fruit to rot, ferment and turn to acid. Even if you have an iron stomach and don’t feel the pain, it’s still rotting and will add to the toxic buildup.
• Raw fruit digests rapidly because it is filled with live enzymes, whereas cooked foods very slowly pass through the intestinal tract. Consume cooked foods after fruit to avoid causing the bloat created by fermentation in the colon. It’s wise to wait at least 20 minutes after eating fruit prior to consuming other types of food.
• Eat melons alone or leave melons alone. They are basically compatible with themselves only.
• Eating one food at a time is your best bet for digestion, but it also works if you consume a high-water-content vegetable along with either your protein (meat, e.g.) or your carbohydrate (potato, rice, etc.).
• Just avoid bringing together in one meal the protein and carbohydrate. The meal will go down much easier, and the nutrients will be able to be used as opposed to neutralized and putrefied.
• Good examples of high-water-content vegetables that can be added either to the protein OR the carbohydrate on your plate would be bamboo shoots, broccoli, brussel sprouts, romaine, cabbage, carrot, celery, chard, cucumber, eggplant, endive, kale, kohlrabi, lettuces, okra, parsnip, peppers, rutabaga, sorrel, sprouts, some squashes, etc.
• Eat some kind of a fermented food such as sauerkraut or kimchee (with friendly bacteria/probiotics) with each meal. The probiotics will assist in the digestive process.
These rules are simple enough, and can help us stay healthy. We’re so conditioned to visit our medical doctors for advice that we forget (1) we’re healthy by design and only sick by error; (2) we don’t ‘catch’ diseases, we earn them when we gunk up our bloodstreams and digestive tracts with processed, dead, prepackaged improperly combined foods or foodstuffs completely devoid of nutrition; and (3) what comes out of the body is more important than what goes in when we’re looking to heal a condition. In other words, not only optimizing nutrients that we consume, but getting rid of toxins and other harmful substances is mandatory for optimal health.
Back to the Best Medicine…
In today’s society, if we’re not taking a drug then we must be taking supplements, right? How else can we be healthy? Actually, nutritional supplements can be beneficial, but they work much better with a good diet. Good organic plant-based food, plain and simple, is our number one ally – the original prescription medication – and no drug or supplement can take its place.
Another important principle in healthful food consumption is making sure to eat as many local foods as possible, and foods that are in season. This way our bodies adapt to the climate that places its own nutritional demands on the body (you might guess that watermelon may not nourish an Eskimo in the dead of winter), and they actually develop a relationship with the earth in the vicinity. Foods consumed in season also tend to be less expensive and easier to find at our farmers’ markets or local co-ops.
Our Thoughts, Our Chemistry
Once it’s time to sit down to eat the foods we’ve chosen, for the best assimilation it’s good to avoid negative thinking while eating. Our thoughts actually help govern our chemistry – if we choose to discuss problems over the dinner table, there’s a good chance no matter how well we combine our foods we’ll experience indigestion. When we discuss joyous events, our foods tend to assimilate much better and we experience less stress. Giving thanks before eating can even enhance the experience more – being aware of the source of each item we consume gives it and us more importance. We might even savor the food more when we’re thankful, and eat it more slowly, chewing each bite well to start the digestive process.
So, what’ve we learned today? Eat the right foods (mainly a whole-food plant-based diet), combine them properly, and you might avoid the painful bloat requiring you to take Gobbleitup®, …oh, and you might be able to have sex without asking your doctor for permission. Hmmm, works for me!