For this portion of the book I covered chapters 11 and 12, pages 225-250. The main topics covered was about good nutrition, eating right and how to eat.
In the first chapter, Eating Right: Eight Principles of Food and Health, they name the multiple benefits of a healthy lifestyle such as you can live longer, have more energy, prevent diseases, avoid surgery, and many others that we all know. I'll sum up the eight principles that are discussed.
Principle 1- Nutrition represents the combined activities of countless food substances. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This means that the chemicals we get from foods we eat are engaged in a series of reactions that work in concert to produce good health. Our bodies have learned how to benefit from the chemicals in food as they are packaged together, discarding some and using others.
Principle 2- Vitamin supplements are not a panacea for good health. It makes little or no sense that isolated nutrients taken as supplements can substitute for whole foods. Maintaining the usual western diet while taking nutrient supplements and thinking this is healthy is unrealistic. Taking supplements will not do everything that a whole foods diet can provide.
Principle 3- There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants. Plant foods have dramatically more antioxidants, fiber, and minerals than animal foods. There are four nutrients which animal-based foods have that plant-based foods do not: cholesterol, Vitamins A, D, and B12. Three of these are nonessential nutrients.
Principle 4- Genes do not determine disease on their own. Genes function only by being activated, or expressed, and nutrition plays a critical role in determining which genes, good and bad, are expressed.
Principle 5- Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals. Nutrition primarily determines whether a disease will ever do its damage.
Principle 6- The same nutrition that prevents disease in its early stages (before diagnosis) can also halt or reverse disease in its later stages (after diagnosis). Chronic diseases take several years to develop. The same good nutrition maximizes health at every stage of a disease. Research findings showing that a whole-foods, plant-based diet reverses many diseases.
Principle 7- Nutrition that is truly beneficial for one chronic disease will support health across the board.
Principle 8- Good nutrition creates health in all areas of our existence. All parts are interconnected. Our food choices have an impact on our energy, on our physical activity, and on our emotional and mental well-being and on our environment!
We should all care about each of these principles because they can help to reduce public confusion regarding food and health.
In the other chapter, How to Eat, it is talked about how you can eat all you want as long as it is the "right" foods. Just make sure there is a lot of variety in your diet, of whole and unrefined plant-based food.
I agree with the vitamin supplement principle. People try to replace their diet in various supplement forms, whether it be through vitamin pills or some type of shake. It's also been proven that most chronic diseases are at fault to our poor diet. People don't care about their diet until they are forced to change it. Another thing that is wrong with American's standard diet today is that there is too much red meat in it. It's like you said, we can absorb more nutrients through plants which also contain more nutrients and are better for us anyway. I think that book that you are reading is one that everyone should read to better understand what kind of diet we are supposed to be having instead of the one we are eating now. Most people just need to learn how to eat healthier. If we could get more people to read about proper nutrition I believe it could have a positive impact on our society's health.
ReplyDeletePriciple 2 and 4 caught my eye. Way back in the day there was no such thing as vitamins. You can get all your nutrients from the proper food but today we claim to " not have the time or money" I believe that taking supplements is only an alternative if absolutely neccessary. We should we getting our nutrients from food.
ReplyDeleteThe food we eat has a large effect on our health, not only our genes. Our genes respond to what's in our body and we are in control of what we put in there!
What we eat has to have an impact on our health. If we eat food that isn't full of chemicals and was grown naturally then we will all be a lot better off. I never understand when people would rather go out to eat at some fast food place and eat food that really isn't food than eat at home where you know more about where their food came from and how it was prepared. It may take more time to make your own food but you will save more money and probably have better health.
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