The pharm tech I have known for 10 years asked me about losing weight. I had mentioned to her that pharmacy cured very few and charged a fortune. In contrast, good nutrition avoids and cures most diseases, the most dominant being cardio-vascular, diabetes, and cancer.
These are a few basics, derived from the beginning of time, when the Lord of Creation fashioned our little world to benefit us in every possible way. Only recently have people examined the major sources of nutrition and their value. Ignore the money-based industry propaganda. Processed food is very expensive and often has almost no nutritional value: too much salt, too much fat, too much sugar.
It's easy to say - Don't eat pizza, ice cream, cookies, donuts, candy, and fast food. All of us have heard or read that - and acted upon it - for several weeks or days. Or in our plans for the future.
The alternative is best, because the results are so good. Let's make it the three major categories.
Chopped Greens
Greens are incredibly powerful for providing and abundance of nutrition and almost no calories or fat. Moreover, they provide fiber, which by itself is very good. More importantly, fiber allows our complex bodies to break down and re-arrange the chemistry of foods and bacteria. We are mostly beneficial bacteria; fiber allows the body to be a vast chemistry set (stomach, liver, intestines, etc).
If you take greens (kale, spinach, collards, turnip greens) seriously, you will eat them every day - and you will feel satisfied and healthier immediately. That is my first stop, after produce, where I get blueberries, apples, oranges, pineapples, and bananas.
Fresh Fruit
This right here - or ri-cheer - is a great weapon against desserts. Someone can easily eat four fruits a day and eliminate the hunger for desserts, candy, gum, and ice cream. Only one apple is an insult to the body, a cheap shot. People should enjoy the wonder-drug of apples with their skins on. There must be 10 apple varieties at any large grocery store. Why not have two to four apples a day? I can eat two giant Crisp apples, which is more like four apples. For anything on this delightful Big Three menu, google "The nutritional value of..." The numbers are astonishing.
Apples seem to benefit the exquisite value of blueberries. Every fruit has special benefits, and whole fruits are good, but juice is just another from of sugar. Fiber in fruit keeps us from pumping up the sugar fast in our blood.
Vegetables
I favor frozen vegetables, but I buy cans of chick peas (Cicero beans) by the dozen. I was shopping around for beans, but chick peas are loaded with nutrition, protein, fiber, quite an array for such a humble plant. Check labels for salt. Canned beans can vary by 800% in salt.
Vegetables I enjoy are peas, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, lima beans, chick peas, asparagus, broccoli, etc.
The other groups are nuts and seeds, with very large nutritional value. Ground flax seed is dirt cheap and recommended against cholesterol. People can buy questionable statin drugs (for cholesterol fees from the happy doctors and pharmacies). A handful of walnuts will clear up the extra bad cholesterol for peanuts.
My vegetable consultant has discussed a lot of these issues with me, and I have learned a lot. I switched over to tea, also, then to loose tea - lots to learn.
Bad food habits are hard to break, but so are good food habits.
