What To Eat- Part One

A few months back I told you about my new year’s resolution: to eat and live healthier.I promised you to research and give you the details about what could be reliable changes in our nutrition. I was sure that a week later, maximum two, I'll be able to write and tell you all about what to eat. Little did I know that I committed myself to reading a lot of studies about nutrition, and trying some of them so I can see how they affect me. I also had to let all this information sink in so I can find the theme/s that are in common. And here went by 6 months…

I would like to keep my promise to you. I’d like to share some of the methods that impressed me the most, tell you about new researches in nutrition- some of them are that largest and longest that were ever  held in the world and thus groundbreaking.
I think that I will dedicate each post for one method. That way you might be able to read about them and maybe try them out. I do not promise to tell you everything about each method.  My goal is to evoke your curiosity and maybe have you tell yourself if it makes sense to you or not.

I am not following any of these methods to the letter. I tried to derive from each one of them what made sense to me and what I thought that I can do in my own life.After I will tell you about these methods, I'll share with you what I am doing, what I am shooting for.I would love to hear from you if you have anything do comment, ask, or share.

When I started my journey (way before I even understood that I am embarking on one) I stumbled upon a book that later I found out was part of a method. The name of this book is: Green For Life by Victoria Butenko. To learn more about Butenko and her family: http://www.rawfamily.com/recipes
The importance of this book to me was that it it asked the question: What are human beings supposed to eat and hjow do we know it? Lets face it, we completely lost our natural instincts to just know what we should eat. We are the consumers of whatever we are told is good for us by parties with economic interests and by other confused humans with good intentions. What are we really supposed to eat? How much? How much of each nutrient?
Yes, we have science on our side, but shouldn’t we just know what’s good for us like every other animal knows? And if science is that great in this aspect, why do we still suffer from chronic diseases such as cholesterol, diabetes, not so shiny hair, not so strong nails when we hit our fifties? Yes, we live today until we’re almost a hundred years old, but in what condition? I am not so keen on sitting at the age of hundred on a wheelchair with some tubes coming out of me, thank you very much!
The author of the book, was just as confused as me. She decided to take a look at the diet of an animal that is genetically the closest one to humans, and compare it to what we eat. Certain African chimpanzees are 94% close to us genetically and their diet consists of: fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, green leaf, and some bark. Butenko was amazed by the amount of dark leafy greens that they ate, and by the way they chewed their food to a paste consistency. These observations led her to conclude that the human diet should consist of raw greens, fruit and vegetables. In order to mimic the paste texture, she created green smoothies with lots of green leafs such as spinach, kale, lettuce and mixed them with some fruit or vegetables so they will be fit to our modern taste. She is the “mother” of all green juices that even Whole Foods is selling today. Later, I found out that she was influenced by Dr. Ann Wigmore. Dr. Wigmore treated patients for 40 years and found out through experience that eating raw plants has an extraordinary effect on her patients’ health. You can read more about her: http://annwigmore.org/

Main pointers of these two methods combined:

1)      Green leafs are the most important diet change of all!- They are described as super foods, and one should eat as much as possible of them with emphasize on variety. Victoria Butenko sees them as a separate food group from vegetables. The green leafy vegetables should be eaten with fruit. In nature, you see that the chimpanzees roll fruit in leafs and eat them this way. The leafs help the fruit to be digested. More than that, Greens are a great source of protein that is easy to digest. Each leaf is a source of a single amino acid and therefore we should eat different kinds of greens. Greens also have lots of fiber and as such they help in digestion by absorbing poisons from our body and removing them out of it.
Regular western diet recommends 10 gram of fiber daily. Mrs Butenko recommends 70 grams daily. Sounds like too much? Chimpanzees eat an astonishing amount of 300 grams daily and they eat much less garbage than someone on a western diet, right?
Greens elevate the level of alkalinity in the body. Many studies tie high acidity to a array of illnesses among them cancer.
The big problem is that we are required to eat at least 2 pounds of leafs daily and that is how the green smoothies and the green juices come in to the picture- you can put a large amount of greens in them and just drink.
2)      Dr. Ann Wigmore based her diet not only on green juices but on wheat grass juice in particular. Wheat grass has the most amino acids and a lot of vitamins and if you drink a small amount of it, it counts as your daily amount of greens and vegetables. It’s supposed to be a superb cleaner of the digestive system which by her observation was the source of many serious illnesses when it doesn’t function as it should.It's really a magical plant and you can read about it: http://www.foodalive.org/articles/wheatgrass.htm
I drank it and It tastes horrible! It’s very acidic and when you start drinking it, you should drink one ounce.You can also mix it with other fruit.Even though it’s not tasty and never will be, it s so good for us that  I recommend having it whenever you can put your hands on this green!
3)      In a nutshell: Eat raw, eat plant based, sprout your grains, drink green juices and feel great.
4)      This method also puts emphasis on the connection between looking younger and healthier to what you eat.The claim is that when you eat raw only, you get rid real quickly of swelling, allergies, bad breath. It might be easy to laugh about this idea but to me it made a gut feeling sense:
Sure! My food affects my looks. Victoria Butenko even goes further and describes cases of people whose grey her changed back to dark hair, and she explains why pre mature aging is connected to eating too much animal protein.- An interesting concept in the age of no carb /protein is king diets.

That's it, boys and girls. You do not have to agree with Butenko and Wigmore's conclusions but you have to agree that their questions are valid. I wish you from the bottom of my heart to "have a wonderful think"!