Finding the best food for your body

What is the best food?

In our average western culture with our standard western diets, it horrifies me that people can just have eaten something with no nutritional benefit, and with added toxins, yet the say “Oh, that was good!” all the same. Obviously, they mean that “tasted” good to them. It clearly wasn’t “good” for their bodies. And, even worse than this, people only need to look at some food to be pleased with it and say “Mmm… that looks good!!”. We’ve forgotten that our bodies need nutrients and that all of our cell regeneration can only take place using the nutrients we provide it. Literally, we are what we eat!

What is the best food for our bodies?

In general, the best foods we can get for our bodies are organically grown (no use of artificial fertilizers or pesticides), just picked, fruits and vegetables. That’s right, the timing is important. It’s best if we could eat fruits and vegetables that have only just been picked, from our own gardens, for example. I can hear people thinking this is over the top and that getting fresh fruits and vegetables from the supermarket is just as good. Consider this, if you pick something and then leave it in the fridge for a day before eating it, does it have more or less nutritional value? Many would say it has the same nutritional value and it’s fine. Actually, it has less than when it was picked. This is easily proved if we consider the same piece of food after 30 days in the fridge. Then it will be shriveled and gone off and you wouldn’t want to eat it. It has lost it’s nutritional value. From the moment something is picked, it starts losing it’s nutritional value.

How we destroy the best food for our bodies

Food has its highest nutritional value if we can eat it in a state as close as possible to being alive. It was alive just before you picked it and from that moment it starts its dying process.  It’s best for us to consume the foods before they have done too much dying. We use the fridge to try and slow down the dying process, but the food is still dying. Some people talk about consuming “living foods” and this is what they are talking about – foods that are still close to being alive.

So when buying your food, ask yourself the question “how long has it been before this food was alive?”. The longer it has been, the more nutritional value it has lost. Also, if it has been a long time since it was picked, but it looks really fresh, then something is wrong – most likely the food companies have injected food colorings, preservatives, plumping agents or waxed the outsides to fool us into thinking they are still ok.

The next thing that destroys nutritional value is cooking. Maybe we’ve just bought some vegetables that have come from the other side of the world. They were probably picked about 10 days ago and the food company has used an array of chemical enhancements to make you think they looked fresh and worth buying. Now you take them home and cook them. Is cooking adding any nutrition to the food? How can it? The only possible outcome is that it is further reduced in nutritional value. What we end up with on the plate in this case is actually very poor nourishment for our bodies and with some toxic chemicals thrown in. No wonder our bodies struggle and we tend to get sick much more often than we should.

The best food sources

The choice preferences follow this order;

1. Organically grown fruits and vegetables just picked
2. Organic fruits and vegetables for a local farmers market
3. Organic fruits and vegetable from a supermarket
4. Standard fruits and vegetables from a local farmers market (will have pesticides, etc.)
5. Standard fruits and vegetables from the same or nearby country
6. Standard fruits and vegetables from another continent

The three main things to consider are;

• How long has it been since this was picked (or, equivalently, how long has this been dying)?
• Were pesticides and artificial fertilizers used during the growth of this food?
• What chemicals have been used to make this food look attractive to me?

The best foods to buy are those that have been picked as recently as possible and have never come into contact with artificial chemicals.

Other information

Here’s a link to a typical page with information of the value of freshly picked food. In this case, they are discussing the virtues of freshly picked versus frozen produce, and it’s interesting to read the theory that freshly picked food is often picked before it is ripe to increase the chance that it will look good to you when it finally arrives at your destination.

http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/myth-or-fact-fresh-produce-is-more-nutritious-than-frozen-produce.html#b

But, I do find this quote quite pertinent;

The FDA found that, in essence, there is no difference in nutrition between fresh produce and frozen produce. Because of the nutrients that are lost due to most commercial food production of fresh produce, as well as the nutrients lost during the blanching and reheating processes of frozen food, the nutrient profiles of each are relatively the same.

So, everything is ok because everything destroys nutritional value!! Amazing! I think it’s time to get into our gardens.

See also these pages;

• Human-Engineered Foods vs Natural Foods
• Fresh – The Movie
• What are the bad things in life to be avoided?
• What good things can I add to my life?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic and learn more from you. Please leave your comments. Thanks,