Food Profiles

Contrary to what the drugs industry will tell you, food (not drugs) is the best medicine .

However, it has to be the right food; if we consume the wrong foods, our health will suffer as a direct consequence. For good health we need to be particular in selecting and consuming the right foods because the agricultural and industrial cartels have monopolized public food supplies to produce profits. Such foods are dead; they are processed to prolong shelf life, not to promote health or prolong human life. Don’t this crap if you want to live a vibrantly healthy life.

These food profiles and dietary guidelines are by Daniel Reid from his excellent book Guarding the three Treasures

 

Sugar

Sugar is without question one of the most dangerous substances on the food market today. What we are talking about here is sucrose, the white crystalline sugar refined from cane or beet juice by stripping away all its vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber, water, and other synergists. White sugar is an industrially processed chemical not found in nature, and it is not fit for human consumption. Other sugars such as fructose (in fruit and honey), lactose (in milk), and maltose (in grains) are natural substances with nutritional value. Raw sugar is a coarse, brown, sticky variety made by simply boiling down whole cane juice and it too is a wholesome food, but it is very difficult to find in the Western world. The so called ‘brown sugar’ sold in supermarkets is nothing more than refined white sugar with some molasses spun back into it for color and flavor. It is not a ‘health food’.

Sugar suppresses the immune system by causing the pancreas to secrete abnormally large quantities of insulin, which is required to break it down. Insulin remains in circulation in the bloodstream long after sugar has been metabolized, and one of its main side effects is to suppress the release of growth hormone in the pituitary gland. Growth hormone is a primary regulator of the immune system, so anyone who eats a lot of sugar every day is going to experience critical growth hormone deficiency and consequent immune deficiency caused by the constant presence of insulin in the bloodstream. Furthermore, refined white sugar is treated as a toxic foreign agent by the immune system, owing to its unnatural chemical structure as well as the industrial contaminants it retains from the refining process. Sugar thus triggers an unnecessary immune response while simultaneously suppressing immune function, thereby debilitating the immune system with a double edged sword.

Sugar is the chief culprit in many diseases and degenerative conditions. It can easily cause diabetes and is a major factor in candidacies, both of which are epidemic in the industrialized Western world. Since sugar is ‘nutritionally naked’, the body must ‘borrow’ the missing vitamins, minerals and other synergistic nutrients required to metabolize sugar from its own tissues. Heavy sugar consumption therefore causes a constant siphoning of nutrients from the body. Recent evidence suggests that sugar causes dental problems not so much by contact with the teeth but rather by leaching the teeth of calcium from within. Sugar also depletes the body of potassium and magnesium, which are required for proper cardiac function, and is therefore a major factor in heart disease. The nutritional leaching caused by sugar can give rise to intense food cravings and eating binges, as the body seeks to replenish the nutrients ‘stolen’ from it by sugar.

Most people consume far more sugar than their bodies can possibly use for energy. When this happens, the liver converts the extra sugar into molecules called triglycerides and stores it as fat, or else produces cholesterol from the by-products of sugar and deposits it in veins and arteries. Sugar is thus a major factor in obesity and arteriosclerosis as well.

Sugar is an addictive substance. In Sugar Blues, William Dufty writes; ‘The difference between sugar addiction and narcotic addiction is largely one of degree.

Abruptly giving up sugar invariably brings on the sort of withdrawal symptoms associated with narcotic drugs- fatigue, lassitude, depression, moodiness, headaches, aching limbs. Its addictive nature is also reflected in current per capita consumption in the USA- an average of 130 pounds of sugar per person per year, or about 1/3 pound daily. That qualifies as ‘substance abuse’. Most people don’t even realize how much sugar they’re taking every day because much of it is hidden in other foods. A 12-ounce can of a typical soft drink, for example, contains about nine teaspoons of refined white sugar.

Sugar consumption in the USA is so high that it has also caused a social problem through its deleterious effects on behavior, especially in children, who are displaying increasingly severe behavioral disorders and learning disabilities.In a recent study conducted by Dr. C. Keith Connors of the Children’s Hospital in Washington, DC, a ‘deadly’ link was established between the consumption of sugar with carbohydrates (such as breakfast cereal, cake, and biscuits) and violent behavior, hypertension, and learning impediments. In other studies, chronic violence in prisons was remarkably reduced simply by eliminating refined sugar and starch from prison diets. Singapore in 1991 banned sugary soft drink sales from all schools and youth centers, citing the danger that sugar poses to the mental and physical health of children.

If you or your children have a sweet tooth, you can easily satisfy it by concocting treats with honey, molasses, and barley malt, which are not only sweet but also nutritious and therapeutically beneficial.

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Fat

Medical myths about fats have steered millions of Western people into self-destructive dietary folly in recent years. Natural unadulterated fats are not only highly nutritious, gram for gram they contain far more energy than any other type of food on earth, which makes them the most efficient fuel for essence-to-energy food alchemy. Natural fats contain nutrients which are absolutely essential for proper functioning of the brain, heart, and immune system, but despite this fact, the Western medical establishment, along with the media and processed-food industry, have condemned natural fats as killers and suggest instead that we all switch over to ‘low fat’ or ‘no-fat’ products in which natural fats have been replaced by hydrogenated vegetable oils.

First, let’s discuss why the body requires fats and how it uses them, then take a look at the artificial substitutes.

Natural fats such as butter, nut oils, and fish oils contain important nutrients called ‘essential fatty acids, which are required for many metabolic processes and vital functions. That’s why they are called ‘essential’- because your body cannot function properly without them. Among other things, fatty acids are required to build and repair cellular membranes, especially in brain, nerve, and white blood cells, and to keep blood vessels clean and well lubricated. Two of them- linoleic and linolenic acid- cannot be synthesized in the body and must therefore be obtained from dietary sources. According to Dr. Cass Ingram, one of America’s leading nutritional scientists, virtually all Americans are deficient in essential fatty acids.

Fats are about twice as efficient in producing energy as any other type of food, including complex carbohydrates and natural sugars. The essence-to-energy conversion of fats takes place in tiny power plants within each cell, called mitochondria, which prefer fat over all other fuels. But the fat must be natural and unadulterated in order to yield viable cellular energy. That means butter, meat, fish, nuts, seeds, and cold-pressed oils.

The traditional Eskimo diet included mounds of raw fat from whales, seals, and fish, but Eskimos never experienced problems with arteriosclerosis and heart disease until they switched from natural fats to processed American foods made with hydrogenated vegetable oils, sugar and starch.

The Japanese also eat a lot of natural raw fish oils in the form of sashimi and sushi, which contain abundant supplies of essential fatty acids. Cold-pressed olive oil has been a mainstay in Mediterranean diets for thousands of years, and these countries are known for their relatively low incidence of cancer and heart disease. In China, people traditionally used cold-pressed sesame and peanut oil for cooking and making condiments, and in India essential fatty acids are obtained by abundant use of clarified butter called ghee.

During World War II, when butter became scare, American chemists fiddled around with vegetable oils to produce butter substituted and came up with margarine and ‘shortening’. They did this by heating various vegetable oils to over 500oF, then pumping hydrogen through it and adding nickel as a catalyst to harden it. The result of this chemical wizardry is a solid fat substitute with a molecule structure very similar to plastic.

When natural fats are eliminated from the diet in favor of hydrogenated-oil substitutes, the body is forced to use these denatured fat molecules in place of the natural fatty acids missing from the diet. White blood cells, which are pillars of the immune system, are particularly dependent on essential fatty acids. Here’s how Dr. Gram describes what happens to white cells when hydrogenated oils replace natural fats in the diet, excepted from his book Eat Right or Die Young:

“These cells incorporate the hydrogenated fats you eat into their membranes. When this happens, the white cells become sluggish in function, and their membranes actually become stiff! Such white cells are poor defenders against infection. This leaves the body wide open to all sorts of derangement’s of the immune system. Cancer, or infections by yeast’s, bacteria and viruses can more easily take a foothold….In fact, one of the quickest ways to paralyze your immune system is to eat, on a daily basis, significant quantities of deep-fried foods, or fats such as margarine…No wonder that a high consumption of margarine, shortening, and other hydrogenated fats is associated with a greater incidence of a variety of cancers.

Besides cancer, regular consumption of hydrogenated-oil products, including non-dairy creamers and toppings and virtually all processed and packaged foods, is closely associated with an increased risk of arteriosclerosis, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, candidasis, and high blood pressure.

The heart is particularly fond of natural fats as fuel, and heart cells specialize in the conversion of fats into energy. In order to do this, however, a nutrient called ‘carnitine’ is required to deliver fats into the cells for combustion. ‘Fats cannot be properly combusted without adequate amounts of carnitine,’ writes Dr. Gram

Carnitine is an amino acid synthesized in the liver from two other amino acids-lysine and methionine- both of which must be obtained from dietary sources. If you have sufficient supplies of carnitine, you can eat all the natural fats you want, because carnitine helps burn fat, especially in the heart, which never rests.

Here we find a very interesting link with the traditional Taoist notion of the Five Elemental Energies and their associated organs, in which the liver is governed by Wood and the heart by Fire. According to the generative ‘Mother-Son’ relationship of Wood to Fire, the liver feeds the heart with energy, just as wood fuels fire. In terms of modern nutritional science, the liver provides the carnitine and the fat which the heart burns to produce energy.

The richest dietary sources of carnitine are lamb (especially the fatty parts), organ meats (especially liver and heart), fish, avocado, and wheat germ. The best sources of essential fatty acids are deep water ocean fish such as tuna and salmon, as well as wild game, avocados, almonds, pecans, and pumpkin, pine, and sunflower seeds. The best choices in cooking oils are cold-pressed olive, corn, sunflower, sesame, and safflower oils. Clarified butter (ghee) is better than ordinary butter for cooking because it can withstand higher temperatures without damage.

Avoid all products made with hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, including commercial mayonnaise, bottled salad dressings, margarine, shortening, and virtually all processed foods.

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Dairy

Cow’s milk is meant for calves, and babies are meant to drink mother’s milk until weaned from it. Nature has designed both types of milk and digestive systems accordingly. It is a scientifically documented fact that calves fed on pasteurized milk from their own mother cow usually die within six weeks, so it stands to reason that pasteurized cow’s milk is not a wholesome, life-sustaining food for calves, much less for humans. Yet not only do adult humans feed this denatured animal secretion to their own infants, they also consume it themselves.

Cow’s milk has four times the protein and only half the carbohydrate content of human milk. Pasteurization destroys the natural enzyme in cow’s milk required to digest its heavy protein content. This excess milk protein therefore putrefies in the human digestive tract, clogging the intestines with sticky sludge, some of which seeps back into the bloodstream. As this putrid sludge accumulates from daily consumption of dairy products, the body forces some of it out through the skin (acne, blemishes) and lungs (catarrh), while the rest of it festers inside, forms mucus that breeds infections, causes allergic reactions, and stiffens joints with calcium deposits. Many cases of chronic asthma, allergies, ear infections, and acne have been totally cured simply by eliminating all dairy products from the diet.

Cow’s milk products are particularly harmful to women. Milk is supposed to flow out of, not into, women’s bodies.The debilitating effects of pasteurized cow’s milk on women is further aggravated by the synthetic hormones cow’s are injected with to increase milk production. These chemicals play havoc with the delicately balanced female endocrine system. In Food and Healing, the food therapist Anne Marie Colbin describes the dairy disaster for women as follows:

“The consumption of dairy products, including milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream, appears to be strongly linked to various disorders of the female reproductive system, including ovarian tumors and cysts, vaginal discharges, and infections. I see this link confirmed time and again by the countless women I know who report these problems diminishing or disappearing altogether after they’ve stopped consuming dairy food. I hear of fibroid tumors being passed or dissolved, cervical cancer arrested, menstrual irregularities straightened out…Even infertility appears to have been reversed with this approach in several instances.”

Many women, as well as men, consume dairy products because their doctors tell them it’s a good source of calcium. This is fallacious advice. True, cow’s milk contains 118 mg of calcium in every 100 grams, compared to 33 mg/100 grams in human milk. But cow’s milk also contains 97 mg phosphorus/100 grams, compared to only 18 mg in human milk. Phosphorus combines with calcium in the digestive tract and actually blocks its assimilation. Dr. Frank Oski, chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at the State University of New York’s Medical Centre states: ‘Only foods with a calcium-to-phosphorus-ratio of two-to-one or better should be used as a primary source of calcium.’ The ratio in human milk is 2.35 to one, in cow’s milk only 1.27 to one. Cow’s milk also contains 50 mg sodium/100 grams, compared with only 16 mg in human milk, so dairy products are probably one of the most common sources of excess sodium in the modern Western diet.

Besides, cow’s milk is not nearly as good a source of calcium as other far more digestible and wholesome foods. Compare the 118 mg calcium/100 grams cow’s milk with 100 grams of the following foods: almonds (254 mg), broccoli (130 mg), kale (187 mg), sesame seeds (1,160 mg), kelp (1,093 mg), and sardines (400 mg).

As for osteoporosis, it is caused not so much by calcium deficiency in the diet as it is by dietary factors which leach calcium form bones and teeth, especially sugar. Sugar, meat, refined starch, and alcohol all cause a constant state of acidosis in the bloodstream, and acid blood is known to dissolve calcium form bones. The best way to correct osteoporosis is to consume the non-dairy calcium-rich foods mentioned above, while simultaneously cutting down or eliminating acidifying calcium robbers from the diet. A daily supplement of 3 mg of the mineral boron also seems to help bones assimilate and retain calcium.

From the traditional Chinese medical point of view, milk is a form of ‘sexual essence. For the human species to drink the sexual essence of another species can only lead to trouble, especially for females, because the hormones it contains will upset the sensitive balance of the human endocrine system.

If you insists on consuming dairy product, your best bet is goat’s milk, which approximates the nutritional composition and balance of human milk.The only safe products made from cow’s milk are fresh butter, which is a digestible fat, and fresh live-culture yogurt, which is predigested for you by lactobacteria, but even these should be consumed in moderation and preferably prepared from raw un-pasteurized milk.

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Meat

Westerners consume a far greater percentage of their calories from meat then Orientals do, and it shows in the complexion, body, fat and body odor. Meat is highly acidifying and warming (yang qualities), as well as putrefactive. According to the tenets of traditional Chinese medicine, elderly people require more meat than the young or middle-aged because of its warming yang properties and concentrated nutrients, but only if their digestive systems are in proper order.

The biggest problem with meat in the Standard American Diet (SAD) is the pervasive contamination of US beef with antibiotics and steroid hormones. About 40% of all the antibiotics produced in the USA are fed to cattle and other livestock, and this is passed on the consumer in every hamburger, steak, and other food products made with US beef. This daily dietary intake of antibiotics depresses the human immune system and is an important contributing factor in acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AID’s).

In addition to antibiotics, US cattle are fed synthetic hormones to accelerate growth, increase fat deposits, bring entire herds of cows into heat at the same time for breeding, increase milk production, and induce abortions in pregnant cows scheduled for slaughter. These hormones are suspected as a major cause of the high incidence of breast and ovarian cancer in American women, as well as premature puberty in American children. Since steroid hormone’s cause cattle to grow fat fast, it also stands to reason that they cause obesity in humans who consume the meat and milk of such contaminated animals. This is especially true for growing children, and is confirmed by the fact that whenever big American fast-food chains featuring beef and milk products set up operations in Asian countries, the once healthy children there soon show all the signs of chronic ill health that plague American children: obesity, acne and pimples, respiratory infections, premature puberty, and behavioral abnormalities.

US cattle also absorb all the herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers used to grow the feed crops on which they are forced to gorge, and a high percentage of these hapless creatures arrive at the slaughterhouse riddled with cancerous tumors and tuberculosis. All this poison is passed directly on to the consumer, so if you like to eat beef, be sure it has been organically raised without drugs and hormones, and preferably range-fed than pen-fed.

For different reasons, pork is also a poor choice in meat. Owing to the pig’s omnivorous diet, pork is even more acidifying than other meats. Pork is very hard on the liver, largely because lard is difficult to digest. Researchers in Canada have established a close link between cirrhosis of the liver and pork consumption in sixteen countries studied. In countries where pork is consumed together with alcohol (beer and sausage, wine and schnitzel, etc.) the likelihood of liver cirrhosis rises by a factor of 1,000.

Commercially raised chickens are also kept confined to cages and fed on denatured feed contaminated with antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides. Chinese physicians have always recommended ‘earth chickens’ (tu-jee) as the only safe dietary source of chicken and eggs. Called ‘free-range chickens’ in the West, they run free around the farm, eating wild vegetation, insects, and worms and getting plenty of fresh air and exercise.

The best choice in domestic meat is lamb. Sheep generally graze on open ranges, out in the sun and fresh air, and they are usually not contaminated with drugs. Lamb is the richest source of carnitine, which is required to deliver fat into the cells for metabolism. Lamb has always been the meat of choice in the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Himalayan regions, where arteriosclerosis and heart disease have never been major problems. Even better than lamb is wild game, such as deer, elk, pheasant, and quail, although these products are hard to find these days.

Red meat should always be consumed as rare as possible, and preferably with horseradish or strong mustard, which stimulates the liver and gall bladder to secrete the juices required to break down the proteins and the fats. Fresh ginger root aids the digestion of meat.

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Eggs

Eating too many eggs can cause a highly acidifying and putrefactive excess of protein, especially when the diet already includes meat and seafood. The traditional Chinese dietary guideline stipulates that one or two eggs per week is sufficient for human nutritional needs. Women with ovarian cysts and other reproductive organ problems should abstain completely for eggs, because eggs are products of the hen’s own sexual reproductive system and can therefore aggravate such problems in women.

Today, most commercially sold eggs come from chickens cooped up in small cages under bright lights and fed on dry feed laced with synthetic hormones and antibiotics. Such eggs do more damage than good to the human system and should be avoided. Try to buy free-range eggs, and don’t eat them every day. The best way to cook eggs is soft-boiled or lightly poached, with the yolks remaining soft and intact for maximum nutritional value and digestibility.

Raw egg yolks, without the whites, are an excellent source of protein such as lecithin, amino acids, and other nutrients.

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Seafood

Deep-water ocean fish such as tuna and salmon are excellent sources of protein as well as fish oils that are rich in essential fatty acids called eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosaheyaenoic acid (DHA). EPA and DHA rank among nature’s most effective blood thinners; they prevent sludging of blood platelets, dissolve clots, and dredge blood vessels of excess cholesterol and fatty deposits, thereby improving circulation and preventing heart attacks. Countries which consume a lot of deep-water fish, such as Japan and Pacific islands, have significantly lower rates of heart disease than non-fish-eating countries.

Like meat, fish is warming and acidifying yang food. It is most easily digested and yields the most nutrients when eaten raw, such as sashimi in Japan, poisons crux in the South Pacific, or when lightly steamed or poached. Owing to the pollution of lakes, rivers and streams throughout the world, freshwater fish is no longer such a good choice.

Shellfish and reef fish should also be avoided because the shallow sea beds they inhabit are polluted.

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Grains

The cultivation of cereal grains for food marked the transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to a sedentary lifestyle that permitted the rise of permanent cities and civilizations. Whole grains contain sufficient protein for most sedentary human requirements, plus the complex carbohydrates needed to provide the sort of sustained energy associated with mental rather than physical work. Meat-eating hunting societies have never been renowned for their intellectual prowess. Note, for example, the carnivorous Mongols, who conquered half the world on horseback, only to be seduced and absorbed by the elegant civilization of the grain-eating Chinese.

Due to their protein and carbohydrate content, grains are warming, acidifying yang foods, and like meat they should be balanced with cooling, alkalizing vegetables. Whole grains also contain fats, vitamins, minerals, and fiber, which makes them a truly ‘whole’ food. Most of the world’s population depend on either rice or wheat for the bulk of their calories. But as a result of modern milling methods, which scrape away the nutrient-laden bran and germ and leave only the starchy white pith, most commercial grain foods are nutritionally naked. Only whole-grains provide whole-nutrition.

Grains can caused indigestion and flatulence if they are not thoroughly chewed and salivated in the mouth before swallowing. That’s because all carbohydrates must begin their digestive journey in the mouth, where an alkaline enzyme called ptyalin is secreted from salivary glands to initiate the breakdown of starches.

Another way to make grains more digestible is to roast them until golden brown before cooking. This process is call dextrinization, and it converts much of the hard-to-digest starch into easily digested simple sugars. for the same reason, it’s always a good idea to toast bread well before eating it.

A serious problem with many grains on the market today is long-term storage in huge silos, which permits the growth of moulds that produce aflotoxin, one of the most potent carcinogens in the world.

Corn is especially vulnerable to aflotoxin contamination, but so are wheat and other grains. Unless you have access to relatively freshly harvested grains, it’s a good idea to take daily antioxidant supplements as a preventative measure against aflotoxin poisoning.

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Beans

Beans compliment whole grains as plant sources of essential amino acids, which is why they are often served together in meatless meals. Chick peas and millet, lentils and barley, rice and dhal, corn bread and black-eyed peas, rice and kidney beans are common example of the grain-and-bean protein team. Together they provide the full spectrum of essential amino acids required for human nutrition, usually in a proportion of one part beans two parts grain.

Except for Soya beans, beans are warming, acidifying yang foods, like grains. Though much touted as a ‘whole protein’ food, Soya beans and tofu are not very easy to digest, and they can also interfere with the absorption of zinc. Zinc deficiency is a common problem in vegetarian diets, and using tofu as a meat substitute only aggravates this deficiency. Furthermore, since zinc is vital for proper function of sexual glands, Soya-bean products such as tofu can cool sexual energy, which is why tofu is a popular staple in Oriental monasteries, where celibacy is the rule. Unfortunately, when processed into tofu, Soya beans lose most of their vitamin, mineral and fiber content.

Beans may also be sprouted before consumption, in which case they may be eaten raw. Bean sprouts are rich in vitamins, enzymes, and amino acids, and are far easier to digest than whole beans.

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Vegetables

Vegetables are the earth’s most effective alkalizers, especially when consumed raw in salads or as freshly extracted juices.

Cooling and cleansing, they are also high in fiber, which helps sweep post-digestive putrefactive debris from the intestinal tract.

Their chlorophyll content protects the body against cancer, neutralizes toxins, and helps keep vital fluids pure. Easy to digest and non-putrefactive, fresh vegetables go well with meats as well as grains and help counteract the acidifying effects of both.

Crucifers

Cruciferous vegetables include broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, mustard greens, and cabbage.

These vegetables seem to have potent protective properties for mucous membranes, especially in the lungs and digestive tract, and they are therefore effective guardians against cancer, ulcers, and infections in these vital organs.

Rich in antioxidant nutrients such as betacarotene, vitamin C, and selenium, crucifers guard your body against all sorts of toxins absorbed from polluted environments. Crucifers have always played important roles in traditional Asian diets, especially in China.

Roots

Root vegetables are rich in minerals and replete with the stabilizing energy of the earth in which they grow. A few roots, such as carrots and turnips, are commonly consumed as ordinary vegetables, but most of them are used as condiments, seasoning, and side dishes. Many, such as ginger, garlic, and burdock, also have potent medicinal properties.

Horseradish, a traditional condiment served with beef in England and with sashimi in Japan (where it is called wasabi), stimulates the live and gall bladder, which are required to process proteins and fats assimilated from animal sources.

Ginger has always been noted for its digestive properties in Chinese cuisine, and it is said that Confucius refused to eat a meal without it. Onions help clear congestion and cut through excess mucus in the digestive tract.

The most protective of all root foods is garlic, which has been used for millennia throughout the world for its well-known healing powers as well as its pungent flavor.

In recent years, garlic has been shown to possess the following properties: inhibits growth of tumors; increases activity of white blood cells and macrophages; raises antibody production; provides a rich dietary source of the rare trace element selenium, which is a potent antioxidant; destroys fungus and yeast such as candida.

Not only is garlic one of nature’s most powerful immune-system boosters, it is also prized in the Orient as a potent sexual tonic, which is why it is strictly prohibited in monastic kitchens throughout the Far East. Most practicing Taoists include fresh garlic in their daily diets.

Leaves

Leafy greens contain abundant supplies of chlorophyll, one of nature’s best cleansers and detoxifiers. Eating plenty of fresh leafy greens helps eliminate unpleasant body odour by neutralizing acidity and protein putrefaction. Fresh coriander is a particularly effective dietary deodorant.

Thanks to chlorophyll, green leaves have the capacity to convert the pure energy of sunlight into vegetable matter (E= mc2 again), and when we consume and metabolize green vegetable matter, this solar energy is released into our own systems.

Leafy greens thus serve as transformers and storehouses of revitalizing solar energy.

Nightshades

Among the most popular vegetables in Western diets today are certain members of the Solanaceae family, known as ‘nightshades’, which include twenty-two general and over 2,000 species of plants. Among the nightshades are tobacco and many potent medicinal plants, some of them highly poisonous. Common foods from this shady family include potato, tomato, eggplant, and chili peppers.

The distinguishing feature of all nightshades is their rich alkaloid content. Alkaloids are potent plant chemicals, similar in molecular structure to proteins, with powerful physiological effects when consumed and metabolized.

Caffeine, morphine, cocaine, nicotine, and belladonna are all alkaloids with well known psychoactive effects and toxic properties. There is growing evidence that the alkaloids present in nightshade foods may have deleterious effects on human health, at least for some people.

It is interesting to note that, with the sole exception of eggplant, the traditional diet of China did not include nightshades, and that Taoist dietary guidelines have always strongly discourages the consumption of nightshades, including eggplant.

Tomatoes, for example were brought to China from the New World by Spanish traders during the sixteenth century and were named ‘foreign eggplants’ by Chinese. Potatoes, which the Chinese call ‘foreign yams’, were also imported from the Western world, as were chili peppers. Before this, the Chinese used nightshades only for medicine, not food, and even in the West tomatoes and potatoes were once regarded as poisonous.

Today nightshades such as tomato and potato have become ubiquitous in Western diets, particularly in fast food in the form of French fries and potato crisps, tomato sauce and ketchup. Potatoes and tomatoes are fast-growing, inexpensive and easy to store.

Recent research has implicated nightshades in the calcification of soft body tissues, a condition known as ‘caliphylactic syndrome’, which has become one of the most prevalent pathological conditions of all modern industrial societies.

This syndrome, which occurs when nightshades remove calcium from teeth and bones and deposit it in tissues, where it does not belong, is associated with arthritis, arteriosclerosis, cerebral sclerosis, kidney stones, gout, migraine, high blood pressure, bronchitis, osteoporosis, lupus, hypertension, and other common maladies.

May people have reported rapid recovery from these ailments when they completely eliminated nightshades from their diets. That includes smoking, because tobacco is also a nightshade, so smoking tobacco only compounds the severity of tissue calcification.

If you suffer from any of the above conditions, try abstaining entirely from all nightshades, including tobacco, for a period of six months.

This cure works only if eliminate all traces of nightshade alkaloids from your system, including those hidden in processed foods and condiments in the form of potato flour, tomato sauce, paprika, cayenne, Tabasco, and so forth.

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Fruit

Fruits are alkalizing and cooling, except for certain tropical fruits such as mango and lichee, which are warming.

Fruits are very easy to digest and metabolize, but only when eaten on an empty stomach.

In fact, most fruits go straight through the stomach into the duodenum for digestion, which means if you put fresh fruit on top of a big meal, it has to sit and wait in the top of the stomach until the other food is digested, during which delay bacteria attack the fruit and ferment it, gobbling up all the nutrients and leaving you with gas and metabolic wastes.

The best rule to follow with fruits is: ‘Eat them alone, or leave them alone. This is particularly true for melons and citrus fruits.

Fresh fruits are even more cleansing to the digestive tract than vegetables. A good way to detoxify and balance the pH of the entire alimentary canal is to eat nothing but fresh fruit for a period of one to seven days. It is best to select just one variety of fruit for cleansing purposes, top choices being grapefruit, lemon (as juice, diluted with water), watermelon, apple, or black grapes.

You may eat the fruit whole or as a juice, the latter being somewhat more effective for cleansing purposes.

 

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Processed food

If you wish to remain healthy and avoid ailments of the digestive organs, particularly cancer, you’d be well advised to eliminate all processed food completely from your diet. In the age of fast food, precooked frozen diners, packaged snacks, and other ‘convenience food’, abstaining from processed food may seem difficult, but in fact it’s not.

It is just as quick to eat an apple as it is a package of potato crisps, just as convenient to have nuts and seeds and dried fruit for breakfast as packaged cereal with cow’s milk, and just as easy to make an avocado sandwich as a hamburger. It’s all a matter of habit.

Today, over 6,000 synthetic chemicals are officially condoned for use in the processed-food industry, including some that are known to have carcinogenic properties. Furthermore, processed foods also contain high levels of the debilitating, denatured ingredients we wish to avoid, such as white sugar, refined starch, pasteurized cow’s milk, land mined salt, and hydrogenated vegetable oils.

The human immune system correctly recognizes chemical food additives as toxic foreign agents and fights hard to rid the body of them, causing severe biochemical reactions and putting great stress on the immune system. After years of daily exposure to such inorganic chemicals, the immune system finally breaks down and burns out, leaving the body vulnerable to attack by microbes, toxins, and cancerous cells. Although the food industry has duped the public as well as government health agencies into believing that their products are safe for human consumption, there is abundant scientific evidence to the contrary, and this information is in the public domain, openly available to anyone who seeks it.

Ignorance is therefore no longer a valid excuse for poisoning yourself with industrially adulterated foods. Only you control what goes into your mouth and down to your stomach.

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Nuts and seeds

Nuts and seeds are rich sources of amino acids and essential fatty acids, but you must eat them raw and as freshly harvested as possible to gain the full spectrum of their nutritional benefits. In the dry state, nuts and seeds can be quite difficult to digest due to their enzyme inhibitors, which enable them to be stored for a long time without going rancid. The best way to eat them is to cover them with water and let them soak overnight in the refrigerator. This inactivates their enzyme inhibitors, softens their fibers for easier digestion, and renders their nutrients easier to assimilate.

Vegetarians can easily get all the essential amino and fatty acids which meat eaters get from animal protein, simply by eating a handful or two of raw nuts and seeds everyday.

The best nuts for nutrition are almonds and pecans, and the best seeds are sunflower, pumpkin, and flax seed.

Flax seed is particularly good for the colon (large intestines) and pumpkin for the prostate.

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Fermented foods

Fermentation is at least as old a method of food preparation as cooking with heat. Yeast and other ‘friendly’ bacteria are added to raw ingredients and set aside to ferment, during the process the microbes break down complex carbohydrates and proteins into more easily digestible elements.

Fermentation increases the vitamin and enzyme content of foods, aids digestion, and facilitates assimilation of nutrients.

Fermented foods also colonize the intestinal tract with friendly flora, which control putrefactive bacteria, maintain proper pH balance in the colon, and increase the bulk and frequency of bowel movements.

However, people with chronic yeast infections such as candida and those who are sensitive to salt should abstain from fermented foods.

Almost all culinary traditions include some form of fermented food in the diet. Western cultures make yogurt, humous, and kefir (a yogurt-type drink) from milk, beer from barley and hops, and wine from grapes. In the East, Koreans eat fermented cabbage (Kimchee) three times a day, China has various fermented soya-bean products such as tofu and Soya sauce, the Japanese make soups and sauces with fermented miso paste, Thai cuisine is laced with a pungent ferment fish sauce called nam-pla, and Indians drink a delicious beverage called lassi made with yogurt that is freshly fermented every day.

It is a good idea to include a moderate amount of fermented food in meals that are rich in animal protein and fat, in order to aid digestion. That’s one of the reasons why wine and beer are such popular accompaniments to the meat-heavy meals of classical Western cuisine’s.

Even the Bible advises one to ‘take a little wine for the stomach’s sake’.

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Salt

Salt is absolutely essential to human health and nutritional balance. Salt alkalizes blood and other vital fluids, helps retain water, and is deeply involved in the biochemistry of metabolism. It’s not salt per se that’s so bad for human health, but rather the industrially refined, land-mined, mineral-deficient table salt sold on the market and hidden in packaged and processed foods.

One to three grams of salt per day is a good measure for human nutritional requirements, but most Americans today consume 12-15 grams of salt daily.

In refining commercial table salt, manufacturers remove virtually all the minerals and trace elements, leaving a white crystal that is 98 per cent sodium chloride.

Among the nutrients removed is magnesium, which is essential for proper immune function. Magnesium supports a process call phagocytosis, which enhances the assimilative power of scavenger cells that are responsible for controlling infectious bacteria and other unwanted microbes.

Magnesium is also essential for proper function of nerve and brain cells, is involved in the metabolism of sugars and fats, and has been shown to lower mortality dramatically in heart-attach patients.

A study in Canada showed a 66 per cent drop in the death rate of heart-attack patients who were given intravenous injections of magnesium, and Dr. Cass Gram reports that magnesium injections resulted in a 90 percent reduction in heart-attack mortality in a similar study in the USA.

Owing to modern farming and food-processing methods, magnesium is deficient in almost all foods today, including fresh vegetables and whole grains. Dr. Gram reports that 76 per cent of all Americans are deficient in this vital mineral.

The only viable dietary source of magnesium these days is whole, unrefined sea salt, especially the coarse grey variety harvested by hand along the Brittany coast of France, known as ‘Celtic sea salt’.

The Epsom salts some people take as a magnesium supplement contains magnesium sulfate, which is rapidly excreted through the kidneys and therefore difficult to assimilate. Whole sea salt contains magnesium chloride and magnesium bromide, which are easily assimilated and metabolized in the human body.

The big ballyhoo in Western media and medical circles about avoiding salt to cut down on sodium and thus control high blood pressure is all based on the detrimental effects of industrially refined, land-mined table salt, which is 98 per cent sodium chloride.

The health problems caused by this kind of salt is another typical example of how the processed-food industry has cornered the market on a vital food element, then refined and denatured it for ‘convenience’ (i.e. higher profits), duping the public into daily consumption of a product that undermines rather than supports health.

By contrast, Celtic sea salt contains only 82 per cent sodium chloride. Furthermore, the magnesium salts it contains naturally drain excess sodium from the body, thereby preventing the edema, kidney malfunction, high blood pressure, and other ailments associated with excess sodium intake.