Food Pyramid Myths - Part 1

Last time I mentioned how the foods we eat these days tend to deplete our bodies of nutrients rather than give them nutrients, and that other things we put in our bodies "plug up our engine" because they aren't the right type of fuel for our bodies.
There is a lot of speculation about what foods are considered healthy and what foods are detrimental to us.
We are taught in school from a young age about the food pyramid.

According to this, the bulk of our diet should be grains, followed by fruits and veggies, then meat and dairy, then oils and sweets sparingly. This is what is recommended on a daily basis. And while it's true that most people don't even eat this well, there are definite flaws in the food pyramid's recommendations.

First problem: Grains as the bulk of the diet.
We are not told any specific type or form of the grains we should be eating. If you are told to eat lots of bread, pasta, cereal, crackers, etc., the average person will choose to eat white bread, white semolina pasta, processed (if not sugary) cereals, and white flour based crackers. These types of grains are EMPTY of nutrients. They have been processed so that all of the fiber and nutrients that were once in the grain are taken out. What is left is empty calories, which are not metabolized by the body until nutrients are taken from the individual's body to balance out the empty food. These foods, along with white sugar, are considered "robber" foods because they are so imbalanced that the body has to pull nutrients from other areas of the body and use them to balance out the empty calories. In this way, you lose nutrients from your body when you eat these foods rather than gain nutrients. It's like when you eat a piece of dried fruit. This piece of fruit use to have water in it, but it was dehydrated. If you were to put it in some water it would soak it up. So when you eat dried fruit, it has to drawn some of your body's water into itself so that it can be in a balanced state before the body can break it down, and in that way dehydrates your body. The same is true with empty foods. They suck your body of nutrients, especially when consumed day after day.

Also, these empty calories act just like sugar in the body, causing blood sugar spikes. Making these type of grains the bulk of your diet is a high carb diet, and a recipe for fat-storing insulin. Constant output of insulin into the bloodstream from simple carbs causes the body to store fat - especially belly fat. This is a huge reason for obesity in the U.S.

The other problem with making refined, processed grain products the bulk of your diet, is that white flour products are like glue in the body. They turn into a pasty substance that wallpapers your intestines, causing constipation and a layer of plaque on the intestinal wall which smothers your intestinal villi, decreasing your body's ability to absorb nutrients.

If you are going to make grain products the bulk of your diet, make sure they are whole grains that still contain their fiber and nutrients. Companies attempt to enrich foods that they have processed and refined by adding some vitamins or minerals back in, but they are only adding a minuscule amount compared to what was originally in the grain, and the minerals are not in a very assimilable form.

Even if you use whole grain products, I don't suggest making them the bulk of the diet. Many people develop allergies to wheat and other gluten-containing grains, which shows that there is still something off about the way grains are used.
When a grain is harvested, it is surrounded by a hard outer shell. This makes it useful for storing for long periods of time. The hard shell protects it from going bad. But, to try and eat the grain in that state would be insane. So man decided to grind up the grain and turn it into flour. While the nutrients are still there, the grain is still in the same sort of state it was while in it's storing phase.
In nature, the grain would get put into the soil and water would saturate the grain, softening the hard outer shell. The water activates the life in the grain, allowing it to sprout and grow into a new plant.
To put it simply, when the grain has it's hard outer shell, it is in an acid state - making it dormant. When you grind up the grain, it is still in an acid state, lifeless. When you eat flour from a ground up grain, the result is an acidic condition in the body. When you eat acid-forming foods, it creates mucus in the body. Mucus is a protectant for your organs and cells - protecting them from the acids created by acid-forming foods. But mucus is congesting and suffocating to the immune system, so the body must expel it.
If you were to soak your grains overnight, it would soften the hard outer shell, and activate the life in the grain, turning it into an alkaline food rather than an acid food. Food that is alive is alkaline in the body, and life-giving. After soaking the grains, you can then blend them up and make bread or other grain products with them. These are considered sprouted grain products - such as Ezekiel Bread, or Manna Bread.

If you want to make grains the bulk of your diet, the absolute best way to eat them is in their soaked or sprouted form. This way your grains are full of fiber, living nutrients, enzymes, and are alkalizng for your body (which will help prevent illness). And most people will not develop allergies or gluten intolerance when eating grains this way.
Evenso, I would put grains up a level on the food pyramid. They should be "the staff of life", or something you lean on, but not your base.

The Body's Natural Healing Abilities

"The body has an inherent ability to move toward wellness."

This statement changed my view of the body. We grow up believing that as we get older the body begins to break down and decay. We believe that when there is a disease, it is because the body is no longer working, it is broken. We are programmed to believe that the body does not regenerate itself, therefore if we lose a body part it will never grow back. Or if something in the body breaks down, it is broken for life.

What a sad view. To see the body as something so fragile, and so incapable of healing. Yet, our DNA was amazingly able to form every organ, every limb, every blood cell when we were developing in the womb. As we grew, old cells died to make room for new ones so that we could get bigger. Our bodies were constantly regenerating themselves. And even now, if we cut ourselves, our body knits itself back together. When we get sick, most of us eventually get well again. And science is even experimenting with stem cells, to grow body parts from DNA by "turning on" the gene that causes the body to grow and develop into a limb or an organ.
As you sit back and look at all of these facts, is it really such a stretch of the mind to believe that the body naturally moves toward healing and regeneration? That the body has the intelligence to recreate what was created in the first place? Or that if disease takes hold in the body, it has the capacity to fully heal?

What is the problem then?? We've all witnessed people getting old and breaking down. We've all seen people get a disease and have it for life. We've all known someone who has lost a finger or a limb and never regrew it. The doctors tell people that they have a terminal illness and they really do die. Some of us have even felt our own bodies not working as well as they use to, and expect them to keep going downhill.

What is it about the body that makes it grow and regenerate, or break down and not repair itself? There must be an explanation. And there is.

When a baby is first born, it has all of the necessary nutrients and elements in its body that it needs in order to grow and regenerate new cells. This is why babies heal so quickly if they get hurt. This process would continue unimpeded IF the necessary nutrients were properly replaced. If you grow a crop of vegetables in the same spot year after year, the nutrients will begin to be depleted and your vegetables will be a lot less nutritious and healthy looking. But if you keep putting nutrients back into the soil with good compost, you will be able to continue growing a healthy crop of vegetables year after year. The same is true with our cells. They need nutrient-rich "soil" in order to keep regenerating healthy cells.
If you look at the average diet of a baby, a child, a teenager, and adult... you will see the reason for our degeneration. White flour, sugar, pasta, crackers... most kids begin their life eating foods that actually deplete their bodies of nutrients rather than give them nutrients. And this process continues into teenage life and sometimes even into adulthood. By this time we have done our part to actually leech minerals from our body on a continual basis for so many years that we don't have enough nutrients left to regenerate healthy cells. The building blocks are no longer there, yet the body still 'moves towards wellness' and does what it can to keep us healthy, attempting to recreate the dying cells, but only able to do half the job it use to. It's actually amazing that our bodies go on as long as they do without problems at this rate.
So the number one reason our bodies don't appear to be moving toward wellness is that we do our part to leech important minerals from our bodies and don't replenish them with highly nutritious foods, therefore our bodies don't have the tools to rebuild healthy cells. Partially regenerated cells work less effectively in their specific roles in our bodies, and if we allow this process to continue, we will see visible evidence that our bodies are breaking down.

The second reason our bodies don't appear to be moving toward wellness is that we get in the way. A car will work just fine until you pour water into the fuel tank, or milk into the engine oil. Even if our bodies had the nutrients they needed to keep regenerating healthy cells, if we put substances into our bodies that are not meant to be there, it will block things up, create congestion, and our bodies will have to put most of its energy into getting rid of the incorrect fuel. It does this by getting you sick with a cold so that it can expel these toxins through your respiratory system. If you take medicine to stop that process, then your body is left with these blockages in its system... and some sort of malfunction is bound to happen. The car just won't run with milk in the engine oil. If it can't get rid of it, you will have engine troubles until you clean out the milk.
Congestion and blockages in the body's systems is the other main source of problems that keep the body from regenerating. Yet it can't be denied that the body is still trying to move toward wellness. The simple fact that you get a cold tells us the body is working. It is doing what it can to clean you out. Pain in an area of your body is a fire alarm going off, telling you to pay attention, that something you are doing is causing a problem. Something is congested or blocked.

The body wants to heal but we have to listen to its messages. Our bodies can move toward wellness no matter what state they are in now IF we will 1) clean out the junk that is getting in its way, and 2) nourish our bodies with nutrient-dense foods that work with the body because they are the correct fuel the body was made to run on. With a clean system and a storehouse of nutrients, the body can and will move towards healing and regenerating itself.
This is the foundation I learned at The School of Natural Healing - Cleanse & Nourish, and you know the basis for healing all problems in the body.

My Story

To start out, I want to give a little more background into why I got into the natural health field...

When I was young, my dad had a whole lot of health problems. His dad had died young of an enlarged heart, and my dad was a little worried about his own. He also had hypoglycemia, ulcers, H. Pilori bacteria, allergies, gallbladder troubles, and other digestive problems. My mom had watched her own father and sister die of cancer, and another sister die of diabetes. As she looked around at her other family members who were also suffering from various health issues, she was scared for them and for my dad. My dad had gone to doctors regularly for many years and never had any relief from his health issues. His stomach ulcers had become so bad that he had given up meat, even before the rest of my family decided to, because it would hurt his stomach so much. But aside from that he ate a pretty standard American diet.
My mom decided to search out other means of health care in hopes of finding answers. She was led to a company called Sunrider, which is a Chinese herb company, first.
As she began to put my dad on these Chinese herb supplements, he began to improve quite a bit. She was excited, but continued to search for more information. She and my dad went with my dad's company down to St. George where they attended The National Institute of Fitness for a week. It was at this fitness institute where they were introduced to the vegan lifestyle. They were placed on a vegan diet for their whole time there, and got to attend classes on the benefits of not eating animal products - especially meat and dairy. Diet for a New America by John Robbins was presented to them on video and in book form. This book talked about the negative environmental impact of raising animals for food, the health concerns linked to the consumption of animal fats and animal protein, and showed evidence that protein requirements could easily be met without consuming animal products.
This fitness center had people come and stay there for weeks at a time, living on the vegan diet plan, and exercising daily. People were getting rid of their Type 2 diabetes, their blood pressure was going back to normal, and all sorts of health problems were balancing out.
Though my parents were only there a week, it impacted them enough to want to continue this type of diet. They returned home and told our family what they were going to do, showed us the video, and then told us we could choose if we wanted to eat this way or not. Interestingly enough, all of my 5 siblings (and some of their spouses) decided we would follow the diet as well.
This decision made one of the biggest impacts on my dad's health for the better, and on mine as well, as I wasn't a very healthy kid either.

Another important step in this growth/healing process was when my mom came across The School of Natural Healing. Founded by Dr. John R. Christopher, this school taught the foundational principles of health & wellness, combined with herbal medicine. My mom attended the school and graduated as a Master Herbalist, then I followed in her footsteps and graduated as well. Through this school we were taught about the importance of internal cleansing - cleansing the body from the toxins that accumulate from our foods, poor elimination, and other toxins we are exposed to. The school also taught us about the Mucusless Diet - which follows closely to the vegan diet we were already living. This diet encourages living foods (fresh fruits & vegetables, whole sprouted grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes) and steers you away from food that creates an acid environment in the body, which is the foundation for disease. Along with cleansing and nourishing, herbal products are used to support, strengthen, and rebuild various areas of the body. This understanding is a solid foundation for knowing how the body works and for dealing with any and every disease.
Taking my dad through various cleanses, following the diet plan, and using herbs for support has given him a clean bill of health for the past 10 years. Following the diet, doing cleanses, and using herbs has also improved my health in many ways.

I wouldn't trade my schooling for anything. As I've spent the last 12 years working in the natural health field, I've watched all sorts of new information pop up - new products, diets, and other fads. People without this foundational understanding are pulled from one thing to another, and eventually overwhelmed, not knowing who or what to believe in this field. What I have learned has given me a foundation that doesn't waver because they are true principles. When you understand true principles, everything else you learn is based around that and weighed against those principles. I will get into a deeper understanding of the body and these principles in the next entry or two.

Here is a link to the school's website:
http://snh.cc/

Introduction

I have spent over a decade immersed in the alternative health care world, starting from mine and my family's venture into vegetarianism and health care through herbs and nutrition in '96. What we found was not only a better understanding of health and the body, but a whole new understanding of many different things in our lives. As if the mere choice to refrain from meat eating and junk foods really did open up 'treasures of knowledge'. Many of the things I've learned have become more widespread in the past decade, though many things are still hidden from mainstream society and only found by those who go out of their way to seek it.
The title of this blog is Seeing Through a Glass Clearly, a play off of the scripture that talks about 'seeing through a glass darkly'. It seemed fitting because so much of what we grow up learning in our society is just a social programming and not necessarily the full truth or correct understanding of things. Those who go along with the way society runs may have it easier in some ways, they have those around them to support and agree with their understanding of things, but in other ways they are not entirely free. One example of this is their understanding of disease and the body. If disease happens by chance, and their health is entirely in the hands of doctors with limited treatments, the person doesn't have full control over this aspect of their life. They are dependent upon the doctor in many ways, and on the belief that prevention of disease is entirely out of their hands. Where I am going with this, is to show that society's mainstream beliefs and programming can actually put a veil over our eyes, whether intentionally or not. To 'see through a glass clearly' is to look into the other side of things we are taught, and to have truth unveiled in many forms, allowing us to grasp understanding that we never had the chance to grasp before because it wasn't taught to us.
To follow this blog may take a stretch of the mind, or a willingness to let go of some tightly held beliefs, if even just to open up to something that you'd never thought of before, or been willing to think of.
For those grounded in solid religious beliefs, I am still grounded to my own. I see no conflict in the understandings I have gained, in fact they resolidify my beliefs and bring greater understanding of them. Truth is truth and never conflicts - except in the world of quantum physics, where the seeming impossible can happen. But even then, one doesn't negate the other. Two opposing truths can co-exist. I won't get into quantum physics right now though.
I don't claim to know the truth of all things, but that which edifies, enlightens the understanding, and frees the soul to follow it's purpose counts as truth to me, and is what I wish to share.
I feel that it's time to teach and to share what I have spent years learning. I hope to bring understanding or at least some new thoughts to the surface. I am not seeking to be controversial just to be controversial, but in these matters, I don't expect to be received without some resistance.

Thanks for reading!