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Wellness Program Step
2: Nutrition During the past two decades
we have learned more about the long-term effects of diet on health than from all
of the prior medical history of nutrition. Walter Willett
M.D., Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public
Health and Harvard Medical School is bold enough to write, " A healthy diet
teamed up with regular exercise and no smoking can eliminate 80% of heart disease
and 70% of some cancers." He offers the following seven
simple guidelines to improve your diet: 1) Watch your weight
2) Eat fewer bad fats and more good fats
3) Eat fewer refined-grain carbs
and more whole grain carbs.
4) Choose healthier sources of protein.
5)
Eat plenty of vegetables and fruit, but hold the potatoes.
6) Use alcohol
in moderation.
7) Take multivitamins for insurance. When
we talk about nutrition we are including the macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates
and fat) and the micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). Humanity
has existed as a genus for about 2 million years. Our prehuman hominid ancestors,
the australopithecines, appeared at least 4 million years ago. The
genetic makeup of humans has changed little since the appearance of modern humans,
Homo sapiens sapiens, about 40,000 years ago.
Even the development of agriculture
about 10,00 years ago has had little effect on our genes. Boyd
Eaten M.D. wrote an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985 entitled
Paleolithic Nutrition and showed that "differences between the dietary patterns
of our remote ancestors and the patterns now prevalent in industrial countries
appear to have important implications for health, and the specific pattern of
nutritional disease is a function of the stage of civilization". We
now know that the USDA Food Pyramid was built on very shaky scientific research
back in 1992. The recommendations were that we should eat 2 or more servings from
each of the 4 food groups: Meat and fish, vegetables and fruits, milk and milk
products and breads and cereals.
Adults living before the development of agriculture
and animal husbandry derived all their nutrients from the first two food groups
only. They apparently consumed cereal grains rarely, if at all. They had no dairy
foods whatsoever. Medical research over the last two decades
has defined a preventive diet against a range of chronic diseases from heart disease
to cancer. This research is converging in several ways with information from paleontologists
and anthropologists. Due to these reason the pyramid had recently been completely
revised. (See Omega Rx Zone Food Pyramid). A summary
of this research is best presented in the Omega
Rx Zone by Dr. Barry Sears. In it you realize that you can use food as
a drug and manipulate the hormones of your body to achieve a state of optimal
health, physical performance and mental alertness. If you change what you eat,
you do not have to be overly concerned with how much you eat. The zone diet is
easy to follow for a lifetime of healthy eating.
See
Also: Schedule Your Free
Wellness Program Consultation Today
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