Is your diet fueling you or killing you?

DIET

"Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live."

- Jim Rohn 

Other than your attitude about your health, what you eat may be the single biggest factor that determines how healthy you will be. Unfortunately in today's society, technology has actually made eating a healthy diet harder, not easier!

Only 2 generations ago everything we ate had once been living, either as a plant or an animal. You didn't have to worry about pesticides and all the other loads of chemicals that end up on our foods. The soils we grew our food in still provided a solid core of nutrient value to the foods, and were not over-farmed yet.

Cheap alternatives like high fructose corn syrup and genetically modified foods (GMO's) were not being constructed in labs and made more accessible and cheaper than real food.

Nowadays? If you aren't armed with the knowledge of how to read labels, then you can be very easily conned by some swift marketing, thinking that you are eating healthy because the product you bought claimed to be healthy, only for you to have no idea about some of the dangers lurking in the ingredients. Plus let's face it - eating organic is expensive!

It also doesn't help that if you followed the American food pyramid daily, you can guarantee that you will die of cancer or cardiovascular disease well before your time! I could write an entire book on this subject alone, but I want to at least shift your thinking on food fundamentals.

50 years ago we were told all fats and cholesterol were bad and that they cause stroke and heart disease. This was one of the most dangerous pieces of advice ever given to humanity. Look what has happened since? Cardiovascular disease is the number 1 killer in the western world.

What is behind the dramatic rise in cardiovascular disease? Sugar and inflammation, both of which we get from a diet high in carbohydrates and processed foods.

Here is the order, from most to least, of foods that you should be consuming daily.
1. Organic vegetables (non organic unfortunately means cancer causing pesticides that cannot be washed off your foods).
2. Grass fed meats, wild caught seafood, and eggs from grass or pasture raised chickens.
3. Healthy fats (avocado, coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, olives, most nuts except peanuts)
4. Some fruits when in season (not too many as fruit breaks down into sugar).

What's missing? You will notice that nowhere in that do I mention breads or dairy. You DO NOT get the required calcium from dairy so do not fall for that myth. You will get all the nutrients you need from the list above!

Also, if you really want to take control of your diet, read "The Paleo Cardiologist" by Dr. Jack Wolfson. If not for you, read this for your family's health!

What else can you do? Follow these rules: if you don't understand what an ingredient on a label means, or it is something that breaks down into sugar, limit or eliminate that from your diet immediately; try to eat foods that were once living and are as close as possible to their natural state; and avoid what are known as "The artificials" - Sweeteners (such as aspartame), margarine, soy, MSG, and the food dyes and colorings that are banned almost everywhere except here in the USA.