When you begin to experience the miracle of great nutrition, it’s easy to forget that the quality of your sleep is nearly as important. I have seen (and experienced) lulls in health brought on by lack of proper rest. Many experts also suggest that you should sit on chairs that conform to your body’s shape. Try bean bags as an alternative to the usual stiff chairs that can throw off your posture.

If time is of the essence in your kitchen (and no doubt it truly is for some of us), then consider upgrading your knife collection. Many tools can make cooking easier, but in my experience, have a good set of Japanese kitchen knives has made an enormous difference in the amount of time spent in the kitchen.

Another great time saver is a crock pot. Remember those? Perhaps you or your mom got one when you got married? Or maybe you saw one at a yard sale? Some people worry about leaving these running while they are out of the house, but unless you have cats that jump up on your kitchen counter every time you turn your back, the chance of having a catastrophic accident in your absence is probably equal to anything you might experience with your refrigerator breaking down while you’re at work.

My final recommendation would be to acquire a convection oven. These contraptions are far superior to their slightly faster, very distant evil cousin the microwave oven. In my case, my convection oven takes approximately 10-20 minutes to reheat any given meal at its default setting of 350 degrees. That may sound like a lot to someone who is used to eating a minute or two after popping something in the microwave, but you can get a lot done in that time — go to the bathroom, do your hair, feed the cat (that darn cat again), pack your bags to leave, wash a few dishes, check your Facebook page etc. In no time, you’ll be enjoying a meal that was heated by the normal process of heating from the inside out — not the other way around. And if you need to take your food on the road, consider getting a good wide-mouth thermos which should keep your food hot for up to nine hours!

There will be more to come on the subject as the modern kitchen has many pitfalls for the health enthusiast. This should be quite enough to hold you for now.

The Problem with Moderation

Moderation is a term that is often bandied about by people when they no longer understand what to eat. Unfortunately, this approach to eating fails nearly 100% of the time.

My grandfather was the first person I had ever hear use the saying. He was born in the West Indies in the late 1800s. To him moderation meant eating his meals made from whole ingredients such as meat (including seafood and chicken), vegetables, bread, rice, fruit, dairy and tea. Snacks, desserts and alcohol were occasional indulgences mainly reserved for birthday parties, weddings and holidays.

To him, moderation also meant living moderately. He didn’t perform any extreme sports or go to the gym. He took walks when he needed to get somewhere. He didn’t smoke, but was not paranoid to be in the company of someone who was. He took life in stride, was never sick a day in his life and lived to be 103.

The next person to give me the moderation speech was 37 years old. She was 60 lbs overweight, avoided red meat, ate cup of soups and other processed foods for most of her meals, snacked throughout the days on various confections and ate a half dozen Dunkin Donuts and large coffee with extra low fat milk and several packets of sugar every morning for breakfast. She was a runner and contracted every disease and illness that circulated. Unfortunately, this is how the vast majority of people interpret “everything in moderation.”

The reason why some people feel this is living moderately is because they are so confused by the messages we receive from the media. We are continually told that meat and fat are bad. Then the same “nutritional experts” find every excuse possible to let us know that we need to include chocolate, coffee, red wine and processed soy foods into our diets. They claim that the only reason our ancestors thrived on high quality protein such as meat and saturated fats is because they were constantly on the move. Yet there is so much missing from this misguided information!

True, few of our ancestors sat behind a desk, but relatively few of them performed intense physical activity all day long either. Energy was often expended in short spurts followed by long periods of down time spent communing with others. Today, however, the “moderationists” feel that we can somehow exercise all the nutrients that are missing from our diets into our bodies. This is impossible. Only foods that have co-existed with humans since the dawn of our species can do this. There is no factory, no exercise, no substitute to match nature’s elements.

So if you want to live in moderation to protect your health, eat like our ancestors. They had the blueprint for good health. True there were famines and other scourges that often took them in the prime of life, but those who escaped such an end routinely lived to be 90 years and older. They did not succumb to cancer, heart disease or complications of diabetes.

To this satisfying diet, add your exercise, your spirituality, and other components of a healthy lifestyle. It is proven that all of these elements go hand in hand, but it is difficult to have the lifestyle when the diet is not congruent.

There are far more elements to consider to determining exactly how to proceed with a healthy diet. They will be gradually revealed to you as you browse the pages of this site.

Microwaving has been a widely accepted method of cooking and heating meals in a flash, but few of us stop to think how ‘nuking’ affects what has often started out as the nutritious foods that we strive to incorporate into our diets.

Nearly two decades ago, a German study showed that microwaving food is indeed a major cause of the dramatic increases in cancer experienced in the industrialized world. Microwaving heats food from the inside out, whereas traditional cooking methods heat food from the outside in. The researchers found that this change in heating technique creates unique life forms called radiolytic compounds. Radiolytic compounds do not exist in nature. Furthermore, these compounds dramatically and progressively reduce red and white blood cell counts.

The lowered red blood cell count leads to anemia. Fewer white blood cells decrease immune system activity. Both conditions allow disease to invade the body without a fight. So while some people may feel that they are healthy because they never get sick, it is likely that they never get sick because their bodies are not strong enough to mount a defense against invading organisms.

Microwaved food also increases levels of LDL (the so-called “bad” cholesterol carrier) while decreasing the “good” HDL cholesterol carriers.*

This study didn’t even look at the fact that food microwaved in plastic contains 10,000 times more carcinogens than the FDA officially allows! It does, however, support the more current research showing the dangers of feeding babies microwaved formula or breast milk.

So what should you do, if you don’t have a lot of time to prepare nutritious meals all the time?

* Thermoses are a great blast from the past that is coming back into fashion. At about $20 a pop, they pay for themselves in just a few weeks. I often heat up leftovers from dinner in a small pot or the convection oven while I’m having breakfast. Then I pack the thermos and go.

* Convection or toaster ovens are a necessity to any healthy kitchen or office space. One can be purchased for as little as $30 new, less at a garage sale. You may need to invest in a few small Corningware-type dishes to heat up your meals, but they are well worth the $4 investment.

* Picnic! Once again, do as the French. Prepare an easy “charcuterie” plate: little pickles, (nitrate-free) cold cuts, pâtés, raw milk cheeses, hard-boiled eggs, plain full-fat yogurt, fresh fruit, olives and a cold potato salad. These are all excellent, nourishing foods that barely need any prep and easily make a meal in themselves.

Besides the health advantages for you and your family, eating foods that are naturally prepared allows you to truly enjoy the wonderful flavors you may not even have realized were there. You’ll be astonished at how different it is! And like my husband, you just may find yourself the envy of your office!

*This is yet another fact that should make us rethink the cholesterol theory which blames animal foods for rising cholesterol rates. But more about that in another post.

Source:

VALENTINE, TOM, Microwave Tragedy, Acres USA, 1994.

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