The Principles of Food Selection
When making food choices, we need to follow a basic guiding principle: Food imparts nourishment in multiple ways. Understanding and using nutrition to enhance well-being is nothing new – our ancestors practiced this for thousands of years.
Grasping this wisdom enables us to select food that will encourage a healthy metabolic process. Below is an overview to help you select your food.
1. Whole Foods
Favoring whole, intact foods supports optimum health. Thus, food should be consumed whole – all the edible parts of the food should be used. Whole foods have only one ingredient – themselves. For example, favor eating an orange rather than drinking the juice, and choose whole grain breads instead of enriched flour breads. This will ensure that you are consuming all of the nutrients in the right amount or combination.
2. Fresh Natural Foods
Food should be as fresh and natural as possible. Choose foods that are closest to their natural state – not processed, canned or frozen. While food that has been canned or frozen lasts a long time, it can lose from 20 to 80% of its nutrients. Try to eat fresh as often as possible, but if it is not available, choose dried, pickled or fermented food. Avoid commercially deep fried foods.
3. Organic Foods
Choose organic foods whenever you can. Chemically grown food burdens the kidney and liver (which filter chemicals) as well as our environment. If your budget does not allow for all organic, prioritize organic meat, dairy, oils, nuts, seeds and grains.
4. Seasonal and Local Foods
Try to eat seasonal, regional produce as much as possible. This increases the likelihood that your food will be fresh, ripe, preservative-free and nutrient-rich. Eating seasonally means choosing “summer vegetables” during summer months (tomatoes, zucchini, corn) – their thermal properties will keep you cool in the heat. Favor heartier produce in cooler months, like dark green leafy vegetables (kale, Swiss chard, collard greens), root vegetables (sweet potatoes, parsnips, yams), and fruit (apples, pears), which can help you stay warm in colder temperatures. Buying local food makes sense for a number of reasons: it has fewer preservatives, it supports your local farmers and it’s gentler on the environment. From an energetic point of view, it also makes sense: local food will help you stay balanced and in tune with your specific environment.
5. Real Foods
Always eat real foods. There are many “food like” products in the market place that try to imitate the real thing, such as artificial sweeteners, artificial color, and artificial flavors. Try to eliminate them from your diet.
6. Balanced Meals
Each meal should include all your macro-nutrients (carbohydrates, proteins and fats) and micro-nutrients (vitamins and minerals). As a simple rule of thumb, try to eat colorful food. You can get all of your vitamins and minerals by consuming colorful fruits and vegetables, and your macro-nutrients by consuming whole grains and good fats (such as olive oil). Also, try to include a good quality protein, such as beans or fish.
7. Traditional Foods
Our bodies are better suited to digesting and using the foods eaten for centuries by our ancestors. When you eat the beans and grains that were the traditional foods of your ancestors from the “old country,” you keep the tradition alive and nourish yourself more richly. Answer this basic question: what grains and beans did your ancestors eat? Native Americans would answer corn, peas, and pinto beans. Northern Europeans would answer rye, barley, buckwheat and white beans. South Americans would answer quinoa and black beans. Asians would answer soy and rice.
8. Delicious Foods
Following these principles, you are bound to prepare and enjoy delicious food, but do not feed yourself with too many food facts and figures. Yes, you can educate yourself about what your body requires nutritionally, but ultimately the real test is how your body responds to it, so feed yourself with good, delicious food, and be mindful of how the food makes you feel.