Much more common than people realize. Perhaps 75% of the population. Think those particular foods, like donuts, that you know are unhealthy, but you eat them regularly anyway. That’s food addiction.
Not only do you eat unhealthy food, but it creates craving and hunger with insulin spikes.
Conversely, when you become fat adapted, hunger is uncommon, and you seldom feel cravings for food.
There are a lot of issues with having much oil in one’s diet.
First and foremost is that oils, even the so called “better” oils, don’t have the nutritional punch to justify the calorie impact. So it is much better to eat actual olives than to use olive oil because the olives have all the nutritional profile of the olive, including significant fiber. Much of that nutritional profile gets stripped away when they create the oil.
It has been discovered that all oils have a deleterious effect on the body’s production of nitric oxide, which is key in protecting the elasticity and health of one’s arteries and blood vessels. So oils may undermine one’s heart health.
Consumption of oil makes the blood flow in one’s body much more viscous. The higher the viscosity of one’s blood, the weaker the flow. Why is that important? It is important because blood flow is the key mechanism for delivering oxygen and nutrients to the cells. Therefore, oils can undermine the health of your cells.
For these and perhaps many other reasons, don’t believe the hype that there are specific good oils that promote your health. They don’t — none of them do. You should minimize and/or eliminate oils in your diet, including cooking with oil.
All proteins originate with plants, not with animals. Animals have protein because they eat the plants that produce the proteins.
All Omega 3 fats originate with algae and some other plants, not with fish. Fish have Omega 3 fats because they eat the algae that produce the Omega 3 fats.
Do you know your edible wild plants?
Sulforaphane. Pharmaceutical companies have studied it for years because of its very positive effects on cancer. You get it when you chew raw broccoli because then two compounds in the broccoli come together and create this new compound. Even better if you chew the raw broccoli with mustard. Broccoli sprouts have 10x the amount of sulforaphane as the mature plant. Grind up a small amount of the sprouts as the first ingredient in your smoothie, but not too much because the taste is terrible.
I’ve recently changed my strategy with nuts. All the health studies show that eating nuts with prudent quantity is very good for your health and may in fact stabilize your weight. Nuts are high in protein, good fats, and many minerals.
My take on nuts has been I wanted to eat a small quantify of walnuts each day, as walnuts are the one nut high with omega 3 fat, and indeed walnuts are a good choice if you eat but one type of nut.
But then I looked at the nutritional profile of walnuts compared to almonds, pecans, and Brazil nuts. What I discovered was that these other nuts can be very high in nutrients that are not so deep with walnuts. For instance, when compared to walnuts, almonds are exceedingly high in B2, B3, Vitamin E (exceptional), phosphorous, fiber, and comparatively low in fat. Pecans are high in B1, manganese (exceptional), and zinc (exceptional). And Brazil nuts are all-stars when it comes to selenium — a single Brazil nut gives you all the daily selenium you need.
So I decided to divide my daily nut quotient among not 1 nut, but these 4 nuts in order to have a more well-rounded nut nutrient profile than I had with the single walnut.
So now my daily quotient of nuts includes: 6 almonds, 5 walnut halves, 3 pecans halves, and 1 Brazil nut. That comes to 171 calories — same as before with only walnuts — but this diversification has much broader and therefore better nutrition.
No-oil and no-salt cooking. Minimize saturated fat and cholesterol. Zero refined sugar. No rationalizations and no excuses.
If you are into your 60s and 70s, it would be a good idea to take a digestive enzyme pill with your primary meal, as these enzymes decrease with old age, so that without a supplement, you are getting much less value from the food that you eat because it doesn’t get thoroughly digested for lack of digestive enzymes.
Yet another problem with old age and digestion is that the hydrochloric acid produced by the stomach to breakdown food decreases with old age, so that food — and proteins in particular, which are more complex compounds — don’t get broken down as efficiently by digestion in the stomach for lack of this acid, which is another reason why the old should increase the amount of protein in their diet somewhat to compensate for this inefficient digestion. A sprinkle of lemon juice on your salad would help here with digestion in the stomach.
The entire container of Trader Joe’s Liquid Range-Free Egg Whites (250 calories) — put it into a blender with a generous amount of nutritional yeast (that appealing eggy taste) and some black salt (that foul eggy smell). Large assortment of leafy greens (Kale, Spinach, etc.) diced to very small sizes. Steam a wide assortment of mixed vegetables. Chives.
Start with one large diced sweet onion in a heated pan until it starts to brown, then add diced garlic, and then some vegetable broth or avocado oil spray to prevent sticking. Once that onion/garlic combination has cooked sufficiently, add the egg whites and stir occasionally as it solidifies. As it comes close to being fully cooked, add the leafy greens and the chives, and mix them in well. Just before you finish cooking, add all the vegetables and mix well.
Eat it with Ezekiel Sesame toasted bread with a generous coating of clover honey.
Steam cook sweet potatoes. Boil canned cannellini beans. In a large bowl, using a potato masher, mash the sweet potatoes, beans, and whole-grain oat flour together, adding ample cinnamon and some nutmeg and allspice.
Next time I do this, I may add crumbled bits of walnuts or almond slivers.
Henry's Views 