10 Healthy Food Rules: Be healthy and happy with the food you eat

10 Healthy Food Rules

 Be healthy and happy with the food you eat

There is no substitute to freshness. The less processed your food is, the better. Don't overeat, and eat the right food with the proper nutritional value.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature School on Blog

Ukoy na kalabasa, with egg and small shrimp. 

 

It is served in patties, or rolled like lumpia 

Bulanglang or diningding: young pod of batao, malungay pod, soup 

thickened with kamote or sweet potato, topped with sea weed (Gracillaria). 

Fresh seaweeds as salad: Gracillaria and Codium (pokpoklo)

Sweet potato paste (suman) 

Tamales, fish with onion, tomato black pepper, salt and ginger,

 wrapped with banana leaves - steamed. 

Sinkamas or yam with natural vinegar and salt.

Breast feeding and early weaning make a healthy child. 

Buko  - direct from the young coconut - complete food and drink.

Health Food Rules

Rule 1 - There is no substitute to freshness. Perishable food must be prepared and served without delay: newly caught fish (better if alive), animals and fowls direct from the slaughter house (better if butchered or dressed at home), newly picked fruits and vegetables (fully mature when harvested).  

Rule 2 - The less processed your food is, the better.  Reduce if not avoid eating processed food (canned, preserves, dairy, etc), heavily spiced, overcooked, over decorated, culinary loaded - they are unhealthy,  They burden body physiology from digestion to circulation to excretion. Besides they are very expensive and unfriendly to the environment. 

Rule 3 - Food residues are harmful, if not  poisonous. Antibiotics residues in meat and poultry, eggs and dairy; sodium in salted products, instant noodles, sauce; chemical residues in fruits and vegetables from insecticide, herbicide, fungicide, nematocide; and hydrocarbon from fossil fuel and smoke emissions. The miracle insecticide against malaria  mosquito - DDT (Dichloro-diphenyl-tetrachloro-ethane) remains banned because it is not  degraded even as it passes from one organism to another in the food chain. Thus it accumulates in predators -  among them humans.  DDT poisoning builds even after years from ingestion. 

Rule 4 - Metal poisoning causes permanent impairment, or results to death.  Lead is the most common toxic metal around from, china wares to car batteries. It damages the central nervous system and internal organs.  Mercury poisoning is more severe. Cadmium is a recent introduction with cell phones and other electronic devices. Other than direct contamination, these metals are absorbed by plants and animals and find their way on the dining table. Kitchen wares made of aluminum, tin, nickel, antimony are being phased out.  

Rule 5 - Avoid particulates in food, water and air. Car and factory emissions scatter particulates in the environment which we can only observe in the form of smog, sediments and dusts. Tar from cigarette and asphalt, asbestos from car brakes, unburnt carbon from tires, and old and faulty engines, metal particles in factories, silica from cereal mills. The worst particulate today in alarming global scale is microplastic.  Plastic does not decompose, unlike natural substances that  return into elements ready for the next cycle to form new life or stored for future use by living things.  Microplastic is non biodegradable, and therefore remains foreign to nature. 

Rule 6 - Avoid synthetic food and additives, they are harmful, and affect mainly the nervous system and senses.  The Number One food additive to avoid is Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) or Vetsin. It is the cause of Chinese Food Syndrome. A friend of mine died of vetsin overdose. It is also used in dognapping by simply throwing a piece of bread saturated with vetsin. Avoid sweeteners - NutraSweet, saccharin, aspartame and other concealed brand names. Another is Olestra - fatless fat.  The fat molecules are so large the villi cannot absorb them. So the unbroken fat simply leaks and causes discomfort - and quite often, embarrassment. Go natural, like brewed rather that decaffeinated coffee.

Rule 7 - Beware of the invisible poison: radiation.   The worst kind of radiation is from fallout following a nuclear explosion (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945), and nuclear plant meltdown (Three-Mile Island in the US, Chernobyl in Russia in the seventies, and Fukoshima Japan following a massive tsunami in 2011).  Radioactive decay slowly takes hundreds of years, thus it can cause harm to the members of the food chain. (grass to cow to milk to baby, back to the same or similar cycle). Radiation from high voltage lines, transmission towers, electronic gadgets may get into the food we eat. So with hospital waste containing radioisotopes. The innocent looking microwave oven is now being phased out in many countries. 

Rule 8 - Beware of Frankenfood from Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). Frankenfood is named after the creator of the monster in Mary Shelley's novel – Frankenstein. Examples are Bacillus thuringiensis Corn (Bt Corn), Bt Eggplant (Bt Talong), GM potato, GM soybean, SavrFlavr tomato, and golden rice which contains the yellow pigment gene of daffodil. Pharmed food has built-in medicine or drug. An increasing number of food grown in the laboratory includes in vitro stem cell burger which is dubbed lab meat.  (In what is regarded as a historic move, the Supreme Court of the Philippines in December 2015 ordered a permanent ban on the field testing of GM (genetically modified) eggplant and a temporary halt to all applications for contain use, import, propagation and commercialization of GM crops and products. However, there was a twist in 2022. Corn, Golden Rice, and Bt Eggplant are GE crops were  allowed for commercial propagation. The biosafety permit for commercial propagation of Bt Eggplant was signed on October 18, 2022.)

Rule 9 - Drink natural instead of distilled water. Manufacturers call bottled water as mineral water because the process did not take away the naturally occurring minerals which are removed through distillation. But why buy mineral water when you can make your own at home with seeds of malunggay (Moringa oleifera), and through simple water treatment?

Rule 10 - Don't overeat.  Eat the right food with the proper nutritional value.  Eat more fruits and vegetables and less of meat and meat products. It is best to grow or procure your food, cook at home and serve it yourself to your family. The family that eats together stays together happy and healthy. Food indeed is santa gracia. ~