Many people think we can eat whatever we want during their childhood. Although many children get sick and. Mountains of sweets, beans on toast, burgers and fries, milkshakes, sweet drinks and potatos in every form will be consumed and very likely the glucose will be burned off. However, our lifestyles are getting more sedantry, with gaming, computers and social media replacing the need to get out and spend time playing and exploring with friends.
The existence of pain-killers might, in my view, kill messages from our bodies reaching us if we reach for the bottle to shut them up. If we reach for painkillers the moment a new ache emerges, it could prevent us from working out the cause of the pain.
I remember back to my parents and other people mentioning pains. My mother had both hips replaced before she was 50 and was immobilised afterwards. My father had a hip replaced in his 60s, which stopped his regular sporting activities of tennis and cricket and made short walks painful. This led to inactivity and then yoyo dieting ending with the monotonous Duchan Diet when he died.
During the late 1980s, my parents stumbled across Fit For LIfe, which was a holistic lifestyle idea by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond. Much maligned by funded medical people, something dating back to witch trials and the persecution of people mixing herbal remedies and other potions in medieval times, Fit For Life recommended an ancestral style of eating accompanied by a product designed to deliver all the vitamins and minerals we needed called Life Source Complete. The Diamonds’ ideas were more about longevity than weight loss.
In 1863, William Banting, a 66 year old funeral director, released the first of four pamphlets called Letters on Corpulence Addressed to the Public. This dietary regime was the result of his success with recommendations from Dr William Harvey of Soho Square, who Banting consulted for hearing loss. The diet prescribed by Dr Harvey had learned this eating regime for diabetes management from attending the Paris lectures of physiologist Claude Bernard, who was the first man of science to be bestowed a pubic funeral in France. (Souce: Wikipedia). As a result of the crowing from medical men, who ridiculed claims to be cured by food, in 1872 Dr Harvey published a paper called On Corpulence In Relation To Disease: With Some Remarks On Diet which is available in print and can be downloaded here.
The essences of Banting’s colourful testimonial with Harvey’s dietary regime are to avoid dissacharides, which are high glycemic carbohydrates requiring the enzymes lactase, sucrase and maltase to break down. The main foods in this category are dairy milk, table sugar and starchy foods such as potato, rice, root vegetables and bread. Since the Victorian Age, many more complex carbohydrates have been created such as polysaccharides, which require even more breaking down or fermentation in the gut to process.
Another way to avoid ailments or reactions is to eliminate food intolerances. Sadly, food intolerance has become the tiresome dinner party companion of food allergies, who at least get a seat at the table. Meanwhile, the nerdy foody intolerance are banished to the kitchen to avoid embarrassing guests or not invited at all. They are snorted at and disrespected but their ignored existence is akin to Mother Nature provoked to whirl up a thunderstorm.
As healthcare does not provide means to test for food intolerance as a means for preventing pains, sickness or discomfort, people use the Elimination Diet to uncover the culprits of their ailments. Like a car crash, which turns out to be a deliberate “Crash for Cash”, the way to discover food intolerances is to experience them by feasting for 7 days on 42 foods deemed safe for a northern, caucasian audience. These include nuts, meat, fish, salad, fruit and vegetables.
The absence of some foods seems to be because of industrialised farming, which results in the use of pesticides and anti-biotics for animals as well as unnatural conditions the animals are kept in and what they are fed on. These practices have reaped many micronutrients from our food system, rending many calories devoid of nutrition, therefore leaving the eater less satisfied.
We eat to get the nutrients we need. Everything else we consume is pure entertainment.
My main aim here is to provide a few facts to provide more choice about a healthy lifestyle. To quote a 2022 paper about Spanish social media messaging about health:
Nevertheless, consumers find themselves feeling overwhelmed, as a result of the saturation of health consciousness information shared by institutions, health professionals, companies, and the general public [5,6].
Promoting Sustainable Lifestyle Habits: “Real Food” and Social Media in Spain – María Segovia-Villarreal1 and Isabel María Rosa-Díaz2 Published online 2022 Jan 14. doi: 10.3390/foods11020224 Foods.
- Keeping muscle cells strong to slow age-related muscle loss “From the age of around 30, “The amount of lean muscle we have begins to decline by 3 to 8 percent per decade after age 30” – More info is in this link.
- Preventing cycles of yo-yo dieting. Calorie restricted diets will slow the metabolism and when usual eating patterns are resumed after a period of self-deprivation, more weight will be gained than lost.
- By ensuring we get all the nutrients we need we could reduce or prevent infection and disease and recover more easily from illness and injury. Micronutrient deficiency can come from the climate, where we live, where our ancestors lived and what food, sunlight and other sources of nutrients are affordable and available.
- As we age, our bodies, muslces, cells, bones, joints and organs will respond more to tobacco, alcohol, sugar, saturated fats, partially hydrogenated oils and other hidden ingredients in ultra-processed foods and anti-nutrients. Anti-nutrients are plants, which release a poison to try to prevent insects eating them, such as soy beans, rice and cabbage, which are often fermented or soaked to remove the anti-nutrient, which hoovers good nutrients and bacteria from the gut. After illness or infection, reactions such as inflammation can be more severe and extra self-care needed for recovery. Women also face the menopause, which is only starting to be recognised by employers as a cause of people being absent or leaving their jobs. Our organs work hard to fight disease, depleting our stores of nutrients, so we need to give them extra care by avoiding foods, which agitate while and after we are ill.
- When the thermoreceptors under our skin cool down as a result of swimming in the sea, they release serotonin, boost our immune system and we can also absorb minerals, as St Michael’s resort explain: “It contains minerals such as magnesium, sodium, calcium, chloride and sulphate that work as natural cosmetics for the skin. Magnesium-rich seawater promotes the retention of moisture in the skin whilst absorbing toxins and reducing inflammation, leaving the skin fresh and vibrant” – Benefits of Sea Swimming
Various natural products can provide enjoyable alternatives to alcohol, such as Impossibrew, which produces nootropic beer. These natural lift alternatives to booze have 0.5% alcohol, the same as a banana, as we ferment plants in our gut to process them. There’s also Yerba Mate tea, which provides matteine instead of caffeine.
OK. All this information is taken from sources and I remember things because they help complete a picture. I may have a puzzle with pieces missing for years and then have an experience, a swollen knee, or remember something I read or heard and search for information. However, today Google is a glorified shopping channel and those nuggets of wisdom become I M P O S S I B L E to recover or they are tucked away, hidden, changed or removed. Therefore apologies for gaps in the sources of information and if you know or find any, please send them to me.
Nutritious Meal Ideas 