How many times have you heard people say, 'Surely if i eat a healthy balanced diet, i will not need to take vitamins and minerals. 'Expensive pee' Other say!.
The truth is that as little as 5% of the Western population ears a truly healthy balanced diet. The majority talk about healthy eating, but in reality continue to eat far too much prepackaged, refined junk foods that are often packed with salt, sugar, additives and saturated fats. A few people still do not comprehend that the human body is literally made of food molecules, so your body is largely made up from what you have eaten during the last year. To survive, the human body needs 50 factors, these are 13 vitamins, 21 minerals, nine amino acids, two essential fatty acids, plus carbohydrate, fibre, air, water and light. As our bodies cannot manufacture these substances, we must take them in from external sources - through our diet and by taking the right supplements. If the body becomes deficient in nutrients, negative symptoms will eventually result.
We can all have treats and really enjoy them - but we must stop living on them. Many times i have watched people fill their supermarket trolleys with white bread, prepackaged meals, cakes, chocolate bars and fizzy drinks. Almost all this refined, prepackaged and food advertisements claiming that products are 'packed with added vitamins'. Have your ever asked yourself why the manufacturers need to add vitamins, if the food is supposed to be nutrious in the first place?.
Dr Richard Passwater, who has worked as a research scientist in Maryand, USA, for 40 years, states that refined sugars have had 99,9% of all their natural nutrients removed and the only reason that there is 0.1% nutrional value left is because these companies cannot figure out how to remove the last 0.1%. White flour and mass-produced oils are the same. Tinned foods are sterilised at high temperatures to kill any bacteria. How many nutrients do you think are left alter these processes?
While many people can be negligent, preferring to spend their hard-earned wages on cigarettes rather than wholesome fruit, conversely i also have friends who are paranoid about their diet and worry constantly if thei food contains pesticide and antibiotic residues. They are so fanatical about their diets, i have seen them become ill from worry, which is ridiculous. Balance - we keep forgeting about balance.
I definitely advocate organic farming and the more farmers who switch to organic methods, the fewer pesticides and herbicides will be in our food, water and air. Fewer chemicals mean less acid rain, less pollution and less sickness. GM foods, to my mind, are another BSE/CJD scenario waiting to happen - i would never knowingly eat GM foods.
Intensie farming methods using pesticides, herbicides, additives, preservatives and overuse of antibiotics are definitely causing us health problems. Natural mineral levels in soil in many countries are dropping, and if vital nutrients such as selenium, known to reduce the incidence of cancer and heart disease, are not in our soil they are never going to make it into our fruit and vegetables. This is why, in countries such as Finland, selenium has been added to all fertilisers since 1984. As a result sperm counts have risen and the incidence of heart disease is falling. Unfortunately some people compare vitamins, minerals and essential fats, and so on, to prescription drugs once they are in capsule from - but remember that essential nutrients are essential to life.
As all these nutrients work synergistically, or together, inside the body, in a perfect world it is always preferable to ingest all the nutrients we need from a varied diet.
Unfortunately, our eating habits have changed drastically during recent years. As little as 50 years ago, it was routine for the family to sit and eat home-cooked meals with freshly picked vegetables and fruit from a local farm or the home garden. Today, this tradition seems to have all but disappeared. Many fruit and vegetables that were once grown locally are often transported thousands of miles to reach our tables.
The longer fresh food is stored and cooked, the more nutrients are lost. If you leave an orange in a fridge for more than three days, up to 50% of the vitamin C content disappears. And, because the modern diet is less than perfect, we need to come to a compromise, which is why Gareth and i both take nutritional supplements and recommend specific nutrients in this book.
Many governments suggest minimum amounts of nutrients, called recommended daily allowances (RDAs); in America they are now called RDIs - recommended daily intake. In Europe there are RDAs for 13 nutrients and yet there are 45 essentil nutrients required for health. Confusion is rife as RDAs and RDIs vary from country to country, so who do we believe? initially, the idea of RDAs was to prevent obvious signs of deficiency such as scurvy (vitamin C deficiency). However, they do not represent the quantities of nutrients we require for optimum health. Nor do they represent the levels of vitamins and minerals we need to protect our bodies from the pollutants and toxins in our modern environment. What is more, RDAs take no account of individual requirements such as age, gender of health status of the person. For example, the current RDA for vitamin C is 60mg - but to ingest this amount from your diet you would need to eat ten apples, three kiwi fruit or two large oranges. In the US, the RDI for the mineral chromium, which has been proven to halve the incidence of late-onset diabetes, is 120mcg - yet in the UK no RDA exists. Confused? Well, join the club.
But there is hope. A couple of years ago, i met a man aged 73 who had been refused heart surgery as his arteries were so blocked. He was deerned a lost case. He was so breathless, he could not even walk across the room. A nutriounal physician friend took him on. Firstly, she completely changed his diet, then gave him supplements proven to thin blood naturally, lower cholesterol levels and to help clear some of the plaque that had built up in this arteries. Under medical supervision, he was taught yoga and after several months he slowly but surely regained his health. Today he climbs alpine slopes as a hobby. It's never too late to change. And as Western doctors are now seeing plaque in the arteries of children as young as ten, change is imperative.
We all need to start eating food that is as unprocessed and unrefined as possible. Natural organic food, without pesticides and additives, is the way forward. But we also need extra help. There are now more than half a million clinical research papers showing that, taken in the right amounts, nutritional supplements can and do work.
The truth is that as little as 5% of the Western population ears a truly healthy balanced diet. The majority talk about healthy eating, but in reality continue to eat far too much prepackaged, refined junk foods that are often packed with salt, sugar, additives and saturated fats. A few people still do not comprehend that the human body is literally made of food molecules, so your body is largely made up from what you have eaten during the last year. To survive, the human body needs 50 factors, these are 13 vitamins, 21 minerals, nine amino acids, two essential fatty acids, plus carbohydrate, fibre, air, water and light. As our bodies cannot manufacture these substances, we must take them in from external sources - through our diet and by taking the right supplements. If the body becomes deficient in nutrients, negative symptoms will eventually result.
We can all have treats and really enjoy them - but we must stop living on them. Many times i have watched people fill their supermarket trolleys with white bread, prepackaged meals, cakes, chocolate bars and fizzy drinks. Almost all this refined, prepackaged and food advertisements claiming that products are 'packed with added vitamins'. Have your ever asked yourself why the manufacturers need to add vitamins, if the food is supposed to be nutrious in the first place?.
Dr Richard Passwater, who has worked as a research scientist in Maryand, USA, for 40 years, states that refined sugars have had 99,9% of all their natural nutrients removed and the only reason that there is 0.1% nutrional value left is because these companies cannot figure out how to remove the last 0.1%. White flour and mass-produced oils are the same. Tinned foods are sterilised at high temperatures to kill any bacteria. How many nutrients do you think are left alter these processes?
While many people can be negligent, preferring to spend their hard-earned wages on cigarettes rather than wholesome fruit, conversely i also have friends who are paranoid about their diet and worry constantly if thei food contains pesticide and antibiotic residues. They are so fanatical about their diets, i have seen them become ill from worry, which is ridiculous. Balance - we keep forgeting about balance.
I definitely advocate organic farming and the more farmers who switch to organic methods, the fewer pesticides and herbicides will be in our food, water and air. Fewer chemicals mean less acid rain, less pollution and less sickness. GM foods, to my mind, are another BSE/CJD scenario waiting to happen - i would never knowingly eat GM foods.
Intensie farming methods using pesticides, herbicides, additives, preservatives and overuse of antibiotics are definitely causing us health problems. Natural mineral levels in soil in many countries are dropping, and if vital nutrients such as selenium, known to reduce the incidence of cancer and heart disease, are not in our soil they are never going to make it into our fruit and vegetables. This is why, in countries such as Finland, selenium has been added to all fertilisers since 1984. As a result sperm counts have risen and the incidence of heart disease is falling. Unfortunately some people compare vitamins, minerals and essential fats, and so on, to prescription drugs once they are in capsule from - but remember that essential nutrients are essential to life.
As all these nutrients work synergistically, or together, inside the body, in a perfect world it is always preferable to ingest all the nutrients we need from a varied diet.
Unfortunately, our eating habits have changed drastically during recent years. As little as 50 years ago, it was routine for the family to sit and eat home-cooked meals with freshly picked vegetables and fruit from a local farm or the home garden. Today, this tradition seems to have all but disappeared. Many fruit and vegetables that were once grown locally are often transported thousands of miles to reach our tables.
The longer fresh food is stored and cooked, the more nutrients are lost. If you leave an orange in a fridge for more than three days, up to 50% of the vitamin C content disappears. And, because the modern diet is less than perfect, we need to come to a compromise, which is why Gareth and i both take nutritional supplements and recommend specific nutrients in this book.
Many governments suggest minimum amounts of nutrients, called recommended daily allowances (RDAs); in America they are now called RDIs - recommended daily intake. In Europe there are RDAs for 13 nutrients and yet there are 45 essentil nutrients required for health. Confusion is rife as RDAs and RDIs vary from country to country, so who do we believe? initially, the idea of RDAs was to prevent obvious signs of deficiency such as scurvy (vitamin C deficiency). However, they do not represent the quantities of nutrients we require for optimum health. Nor do they represent the levels of vitamins and minerals we need to protect our bodies from the pollutants and toxins in our modern environment. What is more, RDAs take no account of individual requirements such as age, gender of health status of the person. For example, the current RDA for vitamin C is 60mg - but to ingest this amount from your diet you would need to eat ten apples, three kiwi fruit or two large oranges. In the US, the RDI for the mineral chromium, which has been proven to halve the incidence of late-onset diabetes, is 120mcg - yet in the UK no RDA exists. Confused? Well, join the club.
But there is hope. A couple of years ago, i met a man aged 73 who had been refused heart surgery as his arteries were so blocked. He was deerned a lost case. He was so breathless, he could not even walk across the room. A nutriounal physician friend took him on. Firstly, she completely changed his diet, then gave him supplements proven to thin blood naturally, lower cholesterol levels and to help clear some of the plaque that had built up in this arteries. Under medical supervision, he was taught yoga and after several months he slowly but surely regained his health. Today he climbs alpine slopes as a hobby. It's never too late to change. And as Western doctors are now seeing plaque in the arteries of children as young as ten, change is imperative.
We all need to start eating food that is as unprocessed and unrefined as possible. Natural organic food, without pesticides and additives, is the way forward. But we also need extra help. There are now more than half a million clinical research papers showing that, taken in the right amounts, nutritional supplements can and do work.
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