REPRINTED FROM BEYOND HEALTH® News
Back to Basics
by Raymond Francis
Malnutrition is our leading cause of disease. Yet, when our poor nutrition causes health problems, we almost always blame our illnesses on germs, aging, or faulty genes rather than on poor nutrition. According to the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., Americans are among the 1.2 billion people who are starving to death because they eat too much of the wrong kinds of food. We are overfed and undernourished; study after study has concluded that almost all Americans are chronically short several nutrients. Meanwhile our excess calories are causing an epidemic of obesity. A diet of fresh vegetables, fruits, lean meat and fish will significantly reduce a person’s risk of disease. Recent studies indicate that nine daily servings of vegetables and fruits are recommended. Yet only a handful of Americans eats such a diet. Typical deficiencies include calcium, magnesium, zinc, chromium, essential fatty acids, and vitamins A, B6, C, E, and folic acid. Any level of malnutrition will create susceptibility to disease. In fact, a chronic shortage of even one nutrient will cause disease. Because of malnutrition, more than three out of four Americans suffer from a diagnosable chronic disease.
How did we get ourselves into such a mess, and what can we do to get out of it? Our problems started with the industrial revolution as people moved off farms and into cities to work in factories. The challenge to feed all these people led to the birth of commercial farming and the processed food industry. These in turn have led to a dramatic reduction in the nutritional content of our foods, as well as a significant increase in their toxic content. The problem is so bad that in 1998 the National Academy of Sciences announced that even those who eat lots of fruit and vegetables are not getting the vitamins they need for good health. Supplements have become a necessity!
Current agricultural technology utilized to grow and get food from farms to supermarkets is overwhelmingly destructive. Commercial farming depletes soils of essential minerals. Produce is often harvested before it is ripe, stored for long periods, and subjected to harmful methods to artificially ripen or color it for presentation in the “fresh” produce section of the supermarket. Many produce items have lost nearly all of certain vitamins and minerals by the time they roll down the supermarket checkout lines, with additional losses by the time we get around to eating them. Food manufacturers almost always favor qualities such as shelf life, taste, appearance and marketability, rather than nutrition and health. Physicians, who typically lack nutrition education, usually tell us wrongly that we get all the nutrition we need from a standard diet. With such misinformation, we tend to make irrational and harmful decisions.
Processing is the worst robber of all. Handling and preparation methods, (from extended storage of foods through refrigeration and freezing, to refining, grinding, bleaching, hydrolyzing, hydrogenating, chopping, and mashing), rob foods of many nutrients such as vitamins and minerals that we believe we are consuming.
Too little of our food, virtually none for many people, is eaten raw. Cooking damages the nutritional value of most foods. Some cooking methods, particularly those that use high heat or that char foods, create powerful mutagens and carcinogens. The way we eat our foods, such as inadequate chewing, often prevents us from getting optimal nutrition even from good diets. We eat the wrong combinations of foods (meat and potatoes for example), which interferes with effective digestion and assimilation.
Most Americans are trying to achieve the impossible—trying to maintain health while eating a diet that does not support health. Although our stomachs may be full (and our bellies fat), malnutrition is our leading cause of disease. We are indeed what we eat, and this cliché should guide the choices we make about the foods we consume. The four worst food choices, sugar, white flour, processed oils, and milk products, as well as all the many thousands of products containing these make-believe foods, comprise the bulk of the average American diet and are disastrous to the health of our population.
One logical response to our malnutrition epidemic is to supplement. Unfortunately, more than half the population does not supplement on a regular basis. Most people who do supplement realize few benefits and may be doing harm. The vast majority of the vitamin and mineral supplements sold today are of poor quality. These supplements do not provide us with the nutrients we think we are getting, and even the best-selling brands contain toxins.
The solution to our epidemic of chronic disease is to get back to basics. In 1993, Dr. Walter Willett, at Harvard’s School of Public Health, said that half of all illnesses could be eliminated through changes in diet. Eat primarily a vegetarian diet of organic, fresh whole foods and consume most of it raw. Begin a sound supplement program. At the very least, almost every American should be on the Basic Kit consisting of Beyond Health’s Multi Vitamin, Vitamin-C, and EFA Formulas. (The truly extraordinary purity and bioavailability of Beyond Health’s products puts them in a class of their own.) Anyone with a diagnosable disease should be on Beyond Health’s Life Essentials Comprehensive Kit. In addition to whay is in the Basic Kit, this kit contains Cellular Detox Formula, Bone Support Formula, Cellular Repair Formula, and vitamin E as an essential part of everyone’s daily routine, along with regular exercise. Health is a choice; choose it now!
Raymond Francis is an M.I.T.-trained scientist, a registered nutrition consultant, author of Never Be Sick Again and Never Be Fat Again, host of the Beyond Health Show, Chairman of the The Project to End Disease and an internationally recognized leader in the field of optimal health maintenance.
Reprinted with permission from:
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Copyright 2002, Raymond Francis