HERBAL REMEDIES
September 2001

Healthful eating habits start at home
by Brooke Wagenheim
   
    Most people eat out at restaurants or grab something already prepared rather than delving into the kitchen themselves. The healthiest food can easily be bought and prepared in your own home. It is healthy and economical. Like a medicine cabinet, your spice rack can have all the necessary ingredients to help you create nourishing meals, whether they come from your garden, or you buy them.
    Herbal remedies succeed only when coupled with a healthy diet. Herbal remedies may alleviate discomfort and illness, but the food that enters our bodies can prevent such diseases.

Where to eat
    Not only is it expensive, and not always healthy, eating out is not always safe. How are we to know if that person who just made our salad washed their hands or if they have some form of highly contagious hepatitis and is spreading this rampant disease throughout the city. Yes, it's shocking to hear this, but we need to know the truth if we care about our health. A baby died in Texas because one of the cooks cut her melon, which was served on the salad bar, with a knife after carving diseased raw meat. This is in no way accusing any of the fine restaurants around, but an expression of concern for our informed outlook and our health, as well as our wallets. The choice to cook and prepare raw fruits and vegetables to sustain us is an intelligent one.

Your metabolism
    When formulating personal dietary guidelines, first determine your basic metabolic type: vegetarian, carnivore and balanced. These human metabolic types stem from the prehistoric switch by some segments of the human species from a fruit-and-nut-based diet to a meat diet.
    Vegetarian metabolizers are slow oxidizers who burn sugars and carbohydrates slowly. Because the body must burn sugar to provide sufficient energy to digest meat and fat, slow oxidizers have trouble burning sugar fast enough to efficiently digest large quantities of meat, eggs, fish and other concentrated animal proteins. Consequently, large doses of protein-rich foods tend to make vegetarian types feel sluggish after meals.
    Since carnivorous metabolisms burn sugar and carbohydrates rapidly, excess consumption of sugar or starch tends to make them excessively nervous and agitated due to overstimulation of the nervous system. Fast oxidizers derive energy by digesting large quantities of animal fats and proteins, which the liver converts into glycogen. The liver then dispenses the glycogen into the bloodstream in the form of glucose—the only form of fuel the body can burn—in gradual, measured doses, as needed. That is why fast oxidizers require a steady supply of protein and fat in their diets and should restrict intake of sugars and starches.
    But most people have balanced metabolisms that can handle both varieties of food when properly combined. Although our digestive tracts were originally designed for a diet of fruit and vegetables, our digestive systems have evolved the capacity to produce the gastric juices required to digest meat that became a part of the human diet thousands of years ago. If large quantities of animal protein don't leave you feeling depleted and if large quantities of sugar and starch don't make you nervous, then you are probably a balanced metabolizer who need only worry about selecting foods from both categories and combining them properly.
    Also keep in mind that foods consumed out of harmony with season and climate can cause all sorts of problems including skin eruptions, constipation, gas, fatigue and bad breath.

Alimentary evolution
    Humans and other primates initially lived entirely on diets of coarse, fibrous foods, gathered in nature and consumed raw. Throughout the realm of nature, animals that rely on diets with a high ratio of indigestible, fibrous bulk and a low concentration of protein have evolved relatively long digestive tracts, whereas carnivores such as lions and tigers evolved short tracts. The human alimentary canal is one of the longest digestive tracts relative to body weight, in all of nature.
    Humans' dietary devolution took a serious turn for the worse when they advanced to become a hunter of animals and adopted meat as their dietary staple. This occurred primarily in the Northern Hemisphere where flesh was the only viable food source in winter. Those human populations that switched to meat developed digestive juices and metabolisms capable of extracting nutrients from animal fats and proteins even though their digestive tracts remained forever fixed in the vegetarian mold. This development is the source of the basic metabolic types.
   
Technological advances?
    Agriculture determined the final stage of human dietary degeneration. When grain became the main staple of the human diet, a new element was introduced into the digestive tract, an element not at all intended by nature as food for humans.
    That culprit is starch.
    The fact that grains are the only items in the human diet that cannot be eaten and digested in the raw state is sufficient proof that these items were not meant for human consumption. Grains became the world's first, "processed foods."
    Humans first began gathering grains and later cultivating them not for food, but rather to feed domestic animals and ferment beer. Only after population pressure made wild plants and animals insufficient to feed the species, did humans turn to grains for sustenance. Thanks to the dietary devolution fostered by civilization, the human diet today, especially in the Western world, is primarily a hodge-podge of refined, denatured, overcooked foods—thus, the consequences people suffer by eliminating coarse fibrous foods from their diets and relying instead on concentrated animal protein and concentrated refined starches.

A fresh start, and fast
    It is best to select foods that are fresh rather than stale, living rather than dead and, as far as practically possible, to consume them either raw or lightly cooked. In America, food wholesalers have adopted the heinous practice of extending the shelf life of fresh produce by radiating it with powerful doses of gamma rays, not to even mention pesticides and GMO's. Bugs and bacteria will not attack an apple or head of cabbage that has been radiated because such food is not fit for consumption.
    The distinguishing feature between live and dead foods is the presence of active enzymes in the fresh product. These enzymes are the most vital element for health in food. Western Science knows perfectly well that enzymes are fragile compounds that are easily destroyed by exposure to high heat, excess moisture, oxygen, radiation and synthetic chemicals, all of which occur during cooking, canning, refining, preserving and pasteurizing food.
    All enzymes are effectively killed at temperatures exceeding 130 degrees Fahrenheit., which is far below the boiling point of water (212 F.) and less than pasteurization, (140 F.). If you must cook your food, it is better to steam or poach it, where the temperature of the food never exceeds 212 degrees Fahrenheit Unfortunately, the Western world's favorite cooking methods are roasting and baking, generating temperatures of 300 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
    On the flip side, prolonged refrigeration destroys vibrant plant enzymes, so buy fresh produce regularly. Raw fruits and vegetables that are sliced, juiced or shredded rapidly lose many of their valuable enzymes and other nutrients due to oxidation. Refrain from buying large amounts of dried herbs and spices unless they are stored properly, they too can lose freshness by being exposed to heat and air. Do not use irradiated herbs.

Enzymes clean house
    When not busy digesting enzymeless food in the stomach, the body's enzymes roam through the bloodstream and protect the entire system from all sorts of disease and toxic damage. This is one of the great benefits of fasting: The body's entire enzyme capacity devotes itself to cleaning house, digesting and eliminating dead and damaged tissues and putrefied proteins, and helping construct new cells.
    Obviously, if you live on a daily diet that consists of denatured and enzymeless foods, your entire enzyme capacity is constantly preoccupied with digestive duties, permitting all sorts of putrid wastes and damaged cells to accumulate in other tissues, possibly to the point of severe toxemia. It is a well-known fact that cancerous tumors almost always develop in tissues that are nutrient deficient and severely toxic, such as smokers' lungs, drinkers' livers and gluttons' colons.
    Raw salads are particularly beneficial to growing children, providing abundant supplies of nutrition to growing bones and tissues. Though it might seem illogical, raw vegetables are, in fact, a far better source of organic calcium for growing bones than the denatured pasteurized cows' milk which so many doctors and parents force children to drink for that purpose. Milk does, indeed, contain a lot of calcium, but pasteurization renders it virtually inaccessible to the body. If your children have problems with acne, other skin eruptions and are chronically constipated, try taking them completely off pasteurized milk for a few months and replace it with fresh raw vegetable juices, especially carrot juice, and see the results for yourself.

Namaste
Brooke Wagenheim