The natural diet

MANILA, Philippines - “Replace white foods with brown ones!” “Eliminate fried fast-food grub from your daily diet!” “Eat more organic!” Such chi-chi admonishments to eat better.

One of the main deterring factors as to why I can’t seem to make the switch to eating healthier is budget. As I live on my own with hardly a domestic bone in my body, cooking my own meals is out of the question. Hence, I am left with the following as my options for sources of food and nutrition: fast-food joints, convenience stores, the occasional street food cart, and the workplace cafeteria. Not very healthy sources, yes, but as I used to argue, low-earning beggars can’t be choosers.

That opinion changed when I sat down for an interview with Global Vital Source holistic nutritionist Dale Flores. “Think about this,” Dale said to me when I told him that eating healthier can get quite heavy on the pocketbook. “How much are you willing to spend and have actually spent on beauty products?” A picture of the bottles of creams and potions that cluttered my dresser flashed through my mind. “Um…” was all I could answer.

The global beauty industry is a billion dollar one that capitalizes on the average woman’s desire to look her best. Not a bad aspiration in itself, but most of us, in our quest to get our skin suppler, our hair more lustrous, and our figures slimmer, usually forget a basic fact about our body: it’s more than just the external. Let’s put the hippie-dippie inner beauty argument aside and remember that what’s physiologically inside us counts a whole lot, too. Dale put it in clear terms when he made an analogy of the human body to a car: “No matter how many times you take your Mercedes Benz to the carwash and how many times you’ve had its features upgraded, if you put sub-par gasoline in it, it won’t run well for long.”

So what sub-par fuel do people usually give their bodies? “Fried food,” Dale answered. “Especially fried fast food. Do you like French fries?” I lied and said, “Not much.” “Well, if you leave an order of fries in the open, after a couple of days, its appearance wouldn’t have changed. Imagine how something that doesn’t decompose easily stays inside your body.” Not a pretty picture, definitely.

Another good example of party guests that long wear out their welcome in our bodies would be beef, which takes the body three days to digest and eliminate. Too much consumption of red meat has gotten a bad rep among health experts, because pork and beef stay in our digestive system longer than other foods. They also account for the heavy, sluggish feeling we get after a meat-filled meal, whereas a meal of leafy greens with, say, grilled chicken breast leaves us just full and not lethargic. I remember another nutrition expert who espoused the value of having regular bowel movements — I think he mentioned that it should be more frequent than just once a day — to our health, comparing non-eliminated wastes left inside our body to, say, dog poop that we let sit on the carpet for a long while before cleaning it up.

Other kinds of sub-par fuel for the body are those with high fat, high salt, and high sugar content, as well as processed foods that have hydrogenated oil as an ingredient. Hydrogenated oil is oil that has been chemically modified through exposure to extremely high heat, which is done in order to increase its shelf life. It contains trans fatty acids or trans fat, which accumulates in the body and increases the level of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol — the bad cholesterol. “Manufacturing companies use hydrogenated oil to preserve their products,” Dale warned. “They’re used in chips, cookies, and in most pre-packed processed foods you find in convenience stores. That is why it is important to read the nutrition label on the packages of the food we buy, so we can check how much harm eating that food can bring to our bodies.

“People often complain and wonder about the skin problems that pop up without stopping to think that these problems, such as pimples, are ways of the body letting us know that something is not quite right inside,” Dale further explained. “They buy creams to put on their skin, but that is just a superficial treatment to the real problem inside caused by an unhealthy diet.” The misplaced focus on topical beauty products instead of on nutrition and diet can be blamed on aggressive marketing that diverts people’s attention away from what their body really needs. “Marketing strategies and advertising have us believe that for us to look younger immediately, we need to buy their products,” Dale illustrated. “What we don’t know is that our body heals itself, given time and proper nutrition. Our body knows itself best. Now, when you listen to what it tells you it really needs and then take care of it, you cancel out the need to spend so much on beauty products.”

It’s not that we are completely ignorant about the right kinds of food to ingest; all the stuff about the benefits of a balanced meal and the importance of lessening our salt and sugar intake have been taught to us since we were kids by our elders, who know the kinds of ravages that an indulgently imbalanced diet can do to the body. It is just that living in the fast times has made nutritious home-cooked meals an inconvenience. As a result of the habit of feeding on instant noodles and microwaved TV dinners, we find it harder and harder to revert back to healthy eating. Yet Dale advised that it is possible, if we do it in small, sustainable changes. “Going vegetarian isn’t for everyone,” he stated. “Studies have shown that unless you’re a Buddhist or you have an ancestor about four generations behind who became a vegetarian, it would be very hard for you to switch from eating meat.” Going cold turkey on our fatty comfort foods could also prove to be counterproductive, as the buildup of the sense of depravation could reach a breaking point where all resolve to eat healthy ends up being chucked out of the window. Dale stressed, “Sustainability is key. Just a small change that becomes a habit can bring good results already.” Dale then confessed, “I still eat the occasional donut.” A good kind of small change is incorporating what Global Vital Source describes as “super foods” into our meals. They are:

Tomatoes for vitamin C and lycopene, which are known to defend the body against cancers of the lung, cervix, prostate and stomach.

Blueberries for flavenoid to protect against several kinds of cancer and for its antioxidant properties.

Red cabbage and red beets for their anti-cancer flavenoids.

Spinach for vitamin C, beta-carotene and folic acid.

Garlic for its sulphur compounds, responsible for its strong flavor, to neutralize carcinogens and slow down tumor growth.

Whole wheat to lower a woman’s risk of breast cancer as well as heart disease.

Oranges for their high vitamin C content and compounds called limonoids that appear to be highly active anti-cancer agents.

Strawberries for a 70-percent lower incidence of cancer.

Beans for their protease inhibitors, which are compounds that make it hard for cancer cells to invade adjacent tissues, and isoflavones.

I’m still hopeless about cooking my own food, but since learning new ways to improve my diet and nutrition, I have been more conscientious of what I put inside my body: less meat, more greens, more fruits, and less junk. Though I still occasionally give in to the urge to snack on a bag of chips, I make up for it by snacking on a banana the next time. Plus, the knowledge that I have been giving my body more and more good fuel has become an incentive for me to try harder to avoid the bad stuff. French fries? I’ve sworn them off now, for good.

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For consultations on holistic health and nutrition, visit Global Vital Source at Heaven on Fifth, Rustan’s Makati. Call 818-1088 or 843-2550 for appointments.