Food – What’s Changed?

Human evolution is far slower than microprocessor evolution. We’re still the same species we were 100 years ago, even 10,000 years ago. The way the skin, bones, organs, glands and systems in your body work and the nutrients needed to fuel optimal health hasn’t changed.

Not since Red Bull. Not since McDonalds. Not since Swansons. Not since the collapse of the Roman Empire. (hmm, didn’t they fall prey to excess, gorging and gluttony?)

In fact, since the introduction of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, a mere 0.005% of human genetic material has changed. That's five - one thousandths percent. In dollars and cents terms - half a penny.

Processed food and fast food have only been part of our AD (the past 2,009 years) eating history for 2.49% of the time. In other words, Big Macs and TV dinners were non-existent for 97.51% of modern human eating and for 99.93% of our existence as a species.

(Astonishing at first glance since many of us were born after Swanson's took over the freezer section and after the Golden Arches were erected. It's all we've ever known.)

We’ve seen a parabolic increase in numerous diseases over the past 20 years.

Our response has been to focus on science, “Western” medicine, pharmaceutical and surgical options. Reacting to symptoms rather than the underlying cause.

Marketing one pill to “cure” one symptom and another pill for a different symptom. All these miraculous “cures”… and yet, so few are cured.

But just 100 years ago, nutritious food and a balanced diet were a given in our society. People ate real food grown in soil by people wearing overalls – rather than – “food products” invented in a lab by people wearing white coats. Then packaged in a container with a label that begs for a degree in chemistry to decipher or even pronounce.

Everything you put in your body – whether it’s prescribed by a doctor or purchased off a grocery store shelf – affects your health. In fact, often in unforeseen ways.

“In the last 50 years, the extent of processing has increased so much that prepared breakfast cereals-even without added sugar-act exactly like sugar itself. As far as our hormones and metabolism are concerned, there’s no difference between a bowl of unsweetened corn flakes and a bowl of table sugar. Starch is 100 percent glucose (table sugar is half glucose, half fructose) and our bodies can digest it into sugar instantly.”
   –David Ludwig, Pediatrics specialist

Recipe For High Performance

Your body thrives with whole, organic foods, herbs and sometimes supplements to restore your metabolic balance. The kind of foods your Grandmother probably ate as child. Not because she had to think about and design them into her diet, but because that was the custom when food was a farm creation rather than a scientific lab creation. It worked… she didn't think about it.

You see, when you eat well, you feed and nourish your body tissue, bones, glands, organs, skin and hair. And you thrive.

When you eat poorly, you draw down the reserve of nutrients stored in your body. And it shows in your skin, hair and mood. And you feel it with fatigue, aches and pains and lowered energy as well as more serious illnesses such as obesity, asthma, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

You can only extract so much before the reserves are emptied. Just as you can only drive so many miles in your car when the fuel tank gauge points to E.

When It Comes To Your Health
Is Average Good Enough For You?

Life is so fast and jam packed these days. We’re constantly compromising. Constantly chasing the clock. Looking for an edge just to keep up. In the race, we’ve become a society that has traded health for convenience.

I’m not advocating you give up innovations and conveniences and return to a Paleolithic lifestyle (although there is the “Paleo diet” book if you're interested).

If you want to escape the typical cycle of poor health and dramatic increases in disease that are now defining the average American, quite simply – at minimum – you need to stop eating the 2009 version of the average American diet.

Depending on when you were born and how you grew up, maybe this way of eating is all you’ve known. But let’s take a moment and put it in perspective.

Fast food and frozen TV dinners were introduced to the mass market in the 1950’s and didn’t become a dominant factor in our diets until the 1980’s. For instance, in 1970 fast food sales were $6 billion. In 2000 they were $110 billion – a 1,733% increase.

20-25% of Americans EACH DAY eat in some kind of fast food restaurant. And spend 49 cents of every food dollar on food eaten outside the home.

Eat To Heal
Eat To Live… Better

What is holistic nutrition? A simplified way of understanding it is: eating more like your Great–Great–Grandmother did as a child, than today’s 12 year old does.

Her generation ate a diverse, balanced, nutritionally dense diet. Local, fresh, seasonal food.

That diversity, balance and nutritional density has been declining precipitously for the past 40 years. And today we’re realizing – through disease, through obesity, through decreased vitality – the exponential health consequences of an abused food supply and poor diet choices. The foods we choose to eat are increasingly being tagged as the cause or contributing factor to scores of maladies from arthritis to wrinkles.

I’m a certified Nutrition Consultant. I’ve had over 700 hours of formal nutrition education from Bauman College. I also have a Bachelor’s degree in Food Science from the University of California, Davis. And I have 20+ years of experience as a professional chef.

But do understand – I’m NOT a medical doctor and I do not practice medicine. Nor do I believe the world should be ridded of medical doctors or all of “Western” medicine.

I practice Holistic nutrition and health education. I’m not dogmatic. I don’t believe that all you need is an organic apple a day and your life will be bliss. I simply believe that nutrition is a part – all be it, a quintessential and crucial part – of the well lived life.

Where’s The Secret Decoder Ring?

For your Great–Great–Grandmother, it was easy. She just ate what was there. For you, the grocery store is a furrowed brow experience.
The popular press screams of one fad after another, giving you just one layer of the onion… fat is bad, cholesterol is bad, carbs are bad. In fact, all of those are vital nutrients… but there are good fats and bad fats, good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, good carbs and bad carbs.

The front of the label says “real fruit”. Flip it over and the number one ingredient is genetically modified sugar (high fructose corn syrup) – loads of it. That real fruit… there may be a whiff of it in there.
Front side: “Lowers cholesterol”… back side: trans fats (hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils such as vegetable, cottonseed, soy).

It’s estimated that 90% of the foods we consume are processed. When you learn just a little bit of food label–speak translation, you’ll quickly see that promise of nirvana on the front of the label becomes the emperor with no clothes on the back of the label.

Are You Ready To Let Go Of The Worry Beads

So maybe you're thinking… unless I give it all up, move to a commune and become my own farmer, baker and chef, I’m doomed.
NOT at all so.
You can – in 2009, in the place where you live – make some not terribly difficult changes, and reap some very desirable health rewards, now and for years to come.
Or you can continue in the path of the “average American” and be an average American statistic.

My role is to evaluate where you are now, where you want to be, how motivated you are.
Work with you to design an ideal nutrition and lifestyle program for you. A program that provides the amounts and variety of nutrients that will support you in your fast–paced, stress–filled life.
And then help you implement it.

Most folks come to me because less–than–good nutrition has caused or contributed to undesirable symptoms or maladies. And the dissatisfaction of their present state is their motivation.

The Choice Of Your Health Can Be Yours…
Or A Mega Food Conglomerates

Health is not a binary state… it’s a continuum. You can choose right now to improve yours. You can take drastic measures or you can take small steps. What’s most important is that you take at least one step. That instead of continuing down the path of the average American, you take a turn for the path above.

What is comes down to is: every BODY is individual and each person has different goals and different levels of motivation. If you've had years – or even decades – of poor nutrition, a week of “eating right”, isn’t going to magically transform you.

You don’t need to become a food saint or a paranoid freak. The ultimate – and doable – goal is to be eating well 80% of the time. Of course I welcome those over–achievers who strive for 100%.

All of your decisions and indecisions, your actions and inactions, have added up to create the life and health you know now. If you want things to be different in the future, you’ll have to start making them different in the present. When they say the future is now – it is. What you eat NOW effects how you’ll feel to–morrow… and next month… and next year.

Sure we all get up in the morning and go about our day with the possibility we’ll get hit by that metaphorical bus. Nonetheless, what we hope is that not only will we live a long life, but that we’ll also be “blessed” with good health.

You don’t have control over the bus, but RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, you can take the first step to ensure your health is not a roll of the dice, a card from the deck, a random set of numbers on a lottery ticket… or a contribution to the profitability of the pharmaceutical, fast food and overly processed food industries.

How do you want to feel when you blow out the candles on your next birthday cake?

CALL NOW… get a little education, make some simple changes, form some new habits.

510.816.6931

You can also visit my nutrition website:
Better Way To Wellness



 

NOTICE: According to State Law I am not authorized to practice medicine or to undertake the diagnosis, prevention, treatment, or cure of any disease, pain, deformity, injury or mental or physical condition.