A summary of healthy foods.

A summary of healthy foods:  non-processed, organic, home cooked. The moment a food is fiddled about with, usually to improve shelf life, it loses nutrition.  Admittedly this can be taken to the extreme of only eating raw food.  Apart from the evidence of our own eyes when we see the proponents of this way of eating, in fact raw food is harder to break down and eating raw meat regularly is dicing with health.  But without resorting to such extremes, even if the only change we make to our diet is to cook everything ourselves, then our health will improve.

To make the meal satisfying add a reasonable amount of protein and good fat.  Protein is best from animal or fish and reared as naturally as possible. The best is always wild – so game is good.  Since rabbit is a pest, it is a shame that we don’t eat more of it. No species of animal or bird can withstand predation by humans. Wild fish is better than farmed fish – but the big oily fish are to be avoided (tuna, shark and swordfish) since these are heavily polluted with heavy metals.

Where farmed meat is concerned, this means looking for either organic meat or grass fed local meat.  Small farmers may not have organic status – but they frequently really care for their animals and do not stuff them with growth promoters, grains, ground up dead animals or unnecessary anti-biotics.  It is certainly worth visiting local farmer’s markets to see if they can be tracked down.  Their meat will be cheaper and healthier than bargain basement stuff found in many of the big supermarkets.

What is frustrating these days is the difficulty of obtaining organic offal and cheap cuts of meat.  Protein is essential for good health and it needn’t be as expensive as it is since these days it is all steaks and chops, a bit of stewing meat and the ubiquitous mince.  So if there is a limited budget, then it is worth seeking out good sources of cheap cuts eg neck of lamb, pork hock, skirt of beef etc.  Local farmers, here we come.  It is also worth buying animal bones and making a stock out of them and using this as a basis for soups.  This will increase the nutritional value of the soup as well as its tastiness.

Adding good quality fat to a meal will make it much more satisfying. The good fats are the oils olive, coconut, avocado, macadamia.  The other good fat is organic butter.  If dairy intolerant, then clarify the butter by heating it up until it melts then scooping off the milk solids or straining the butter through muslin.

The only thing I would question about the above video is the wisdom of drinking water immediately before a meal since this will dilute the stomach acid necessary to break food down.  But it is important to drink water throughout the day.  Water is best drunk either filtered or from glass bottles.  Unfiltered tap water contains pharmaceuticals such as the pill and cancer drugs and is kept clean with Chlorine.  None of these things do us any good.

So the simplest healthy eating guidelines:

• Prepare and cook food from scratch.
• Vary each and every meal every day.
• Don’t be afraid to eat a good amount of animal or fish protein.
• Avoid protein grown with profits in mind and not our health.  Buy cheaply produced meat now and pay the price later in health.
• Add a good amount of healthy fat to each meal.
• Buy organic as much as possible.
• Drink enough water.