Nutrition
What you eat is a big contributor to your overall health and well-being just like moderate exercise (For more, see my blogs on What Should I Eat? and What Should I Drink?). To stay healthy you need proper nutrition and movement each and every day. Below, I have outlined a few more topics for you to better understand proper nutrition.
Food Pyramid
The Food Pyramid has a major portion of it dedicated to grains. However, most of our grains are tainted from the mass use of Round-Up/Glyphosate sprayed on our crops to increase the yield but at a grave cost to safety. Many in our population have sensitivities to the glutens in grains, and additionally, grains metabolize to sugars leading to high insulin growth factor and insulin levels. High insulin levels trigger all the cascades of pro-inflammatory and proliferation when overstimulated.
grains
Occasional, High Quality, Clean Sourced
proteins
Clean Sourced
Fats
Clean Sourced, Mostly Saturated
vegetables
High Quality
I have flipped the triangle upside down making the smallest part the occasional high-quality grains sourced cleanly, and put high-quality vegetables at the full bottom, clean source and mostly saturated fats above it, and clean protein sources above the next level.
Fruits are essential but be careful to stick to the high polyphenol low sugar options such as berries. Avoiding the fructose and water packages such as grapes, pears, peaches, bananas except on special occasions.
Fruit juices are almost always a bad idea and similar to high sugar sodas in their sugar content.
Red Meat
This issue is a controversial topic, but I side with the Bulletproof Diet and Infogram on clean meats, prepared safely, in low volumes, for the issues of health (moral and environmental grounds for not eating meat not discussed here). Most studies suggest that the excess risk of certain cancers from surveys of food intake originate from the last 25 years where processed meats are likely the mainstay of the diet. There are no extensive studies that incorporate natural grass fed raised animals that are steroid/antibiotic free as part of the meat diet. Many of the amino acids and nutrients such as vitamin K2 and vitamin B2 are rich in meat, especially organ meats and are hard to get in a non-meat eating diet. The Bulletproof Diet and others highly emphasize that the meat or fish should be the smallest portion on the plate and overshadowed by copious high-quality vegetables dressed with clean fats/oils to carry them into the system. Additionally, try to follow cooking principles that limit nitrosamine generation and avoid overcooking or blackening. Spices such as rosemary, garlic, and ginger greatly mitigate carcinogen by-products when cooking meat.
Saturated Fats
Make sure you source fats cleanly (Grass-fed meat, no steroids, no antibiotics, wild caught fish). Avoid human-made oils and created vegetable oils as they are highly inflammatory especially when cooked. Olive oil is excellent and authentic, but it does have a low smoke point so don't cook with it except that low heat.
