Food — The Key To Our Wellness

As science improves in coping with more and more complicated diseases and illnesses, our life perspective is successfully shifted from the basic existential principles: we all have the tools and means required to our wellness — to live a healthy, sustainable life and be active and productive until our last day.

The tool I’m talking about is called food, you know, the stuff you pick up three-four (or more) times a day and put in your mouth. I’m not trying to depreciate the success medical science has in managing trauma and epidemics (we all witnessed a recent one), but I’d like to emphasize the importance of our daily food choice.

My observations at work with clients who embrace this concept are very promising, and from what I see as shared experience from colleagues, I truly believe we have reasons to turn back to basic, which I’ll lay down below. Or in other words: what is the negative effect of meat, sugar, refined food, domestic drugs, and supplements, and how we prepare our food? How can we benefit from fresh, organic, homemade food?

Meat

Meat has come into the life of humans and is a prime source of protein that builds our muscles. There are many reasons to believe that it helped us to become what we are as species. The meat our predecessors consumed was from wild animals and extremely poor in fat content.

Nowadays, it happens in chasing the need to eat meat is that we have industrialized its production (as we did with our entire food supply chain) to the point animals are fed beyond their healthy themselves and become morbidly obese and barely able to walk their way to the slaughterhouse.

Here's the catch — the animal flesh is very high in fat, which is an inhibitor of protein absorption. So, in other words, the animals we kill for meat as a protein source are too fat to utilize them. I always bring that up to the knowledge of the carnivores.

Bonus catch — as we industrialized animal farming (poultry, cattle, and fish alike), we modified their food intake. One example is the farmed salmon in Norway. Naturally occurring salmon would grow by consuming a lot of krill, thanks to which its flesh turns the pinky-orange we are all familiar with. Unfortunately, the fish farms don’t have the luxury to let salmon grow slowly and feed the fish with anything but that. As a result, its flesh turns grayish — the familiar tint of other fish. And since it’s not good for the business, farmed salmon is fed with artificial dye to have the familiar color of its flesh.

My food for thought #1: Do you consider the meat of an industrial-grown animal safe for human consumption? A tip: You are what your food eats.

Sugar

In the dawn of human civilization, sugar was very scarce. It consisted mainly of sweet-sour fruit and occasional bee honey. It was, however, known for its properties, which are still valid today. The fundamental difference is its abundance nowadays and its complete lack of other micro- and macronutrients it.

When refined sugar was invented, it was so expensive that it was available only for royals. Queen Victoria is the first documented case study of tooth decay due to excessive sugar consumption. We owe this to an evolutionary link our brain established between sugar and pleasure. Our body also knows that sugar (carbs) is a powerful source of energy, but most people cling to the side of comfort and pleasure.

In the 21st century, sugar is available in many forms and shapes. It is the most potent drug known to the market. By their seventh year, today’s kids have consumed more sugar than adults for their entire lives 100 years ago. The MRI brain scanners reveal the shocking similarities in brain response to cocaine and to sugar. And to make things worse, sugar is everywhere. Even foods that taste salty (salad dressings, ketchup, mayonnaise, etc.) have sugar content to bring us back to the shelves to buy more. And last but not least, many of them are sold in red packages and on the eye level of the kids, which makes them even more attractive and desired by them to a point — as acknowledged by WHO — we have a generation growing that will be outlived by its parents.

Food for thought #2: Do you like sweet and/or salty food? A tip: Health is a balance within.

Refined Foods

If the quest for extending the shelf life of food, the industry has turned to scientists to solve the puzzle of how to do it. Thus, refined foods came to the scene. I'll take the wheat grain to describe what makes a naturally occurring food refined.

Once, the bread was made from wheat, and we used to utilize it in its entirety. Throughout our evolution as humans, we cultivate it and select the best kinds to have better taste and softer texture. The white color was also a key goal, and it was a matter of reputation to have whiter bread since it meant a lack of impurities and contaminants, therefore— status.

In less than a century, the food industry went even further. It stripped the wheat grain from everything beneficial to our digestion (fibers, vitamins, micronutrients) and left what’s good for the ultimate goal — whiter, fluffier, longer-lasting bread (glue, a.k.a. gluten). The way processed foods are dangerous is not only in the means of all chemicals and toxins occurring within but by the lack of what naturally should have occurred. This is the key: when we eat that kind of food, we bombard ourselves with a cocktail of poisons (bleach is commonly used to whiten the flour), and we deprive ourselves of key nutrients, vitamins, and fibers for the sake of a resentful food product.

Food for thought #3: Do you consider the supermarket your best food source? A tip: Somewhere around the world, supermarkets don’t exist.

Domestic Drugs

Since the dawn of time, human entertainment has gone hand in hand with domestic drugs like cigarettes, alcohol, coffee, and, more recently, energy drinks, vaping, and certain chemical substances. Different scholars have various opinions on the magnitude of what endangers our well-being. They, however, rarely reveal the interests they serve and, therefore, the validity of their claims.

They don’t belong to our systems since the damages they cause vastly outnumber the alleged benefits, which in some cases, sound ridiculous. To name a few, the vine is a good source of flavonoids, and coffee boosts the energy of a man in the morning. With time, as the industry grows, those drugs are far away from the original benefits claimed and closed to purely profiting at the expense of the consumers.

Food for thought #4: Do you find coffee necessary for waking up in the morning? A tip: My grandparents used to wake up early, by dawn, after a good night's sleep.

Supplements

As a result of the Great Depression, the male population eligible for military service was undernourished and unfit for duty. Thus, the supplements came in use to be soon after forgotten until the space age, when the need to supplement nutrition to those deprived of natural sources of food being in outer space in weightlessness and other conditions untypical for humans.

Cleverly they were reintroduced in a new light in the late 20th century among wellness practitioners. Their claims rested on the belief that the food we ate was poor in nutrients, and the only way to compensate for that was to introduce to the body easy-to-use supplements. Thus, a multi-billion dollar industry was born. Some people come to a point they’d rather skip a meal to have a magical pill, shake, or smoothie.

Little to no independent evidence exists to prove they work, which doesn’t stop the inventive mind from finding ways to introduce new chemicals to man's diet, claiming miracles that sound impossible. To put it into perspective, it took evolution millions of years to develop a way to digest and break down our food. I wonder how digestion could figure its way around those powders and break them down to something our body could contribute from. I can’t possibly put my finger on it.

To make things worse, every new product (over the counter) is not required to have thorough evidence-based research and evaluation — such as the medicine products — to claim what they claim before being introduced to the market. It is impossible to comprehend how little it takes to take a pill for slimming, muscle growth, etc., just by believing what the label claims.

The plant-based or natural are no better than synthetic. They have an impressive list of beneficial nutrients (which we don’t have ways to evaluate — test, texture, smell), but they are deprived of fibers that make things go through our digestion.

Food for thought #5: Do you believe we’re well off the Earth? A tip: Astronauts need support once they touch down.

How We Prepare Our Food

For ages, we’ve developed a simple and effective way to eat. We drew our food, we cooked it, and we ate it. Due to certain reasons, not everyone was involved directly with all those steps at that time, but since the industrial revolution and especially in the 21st century, we gave up everything but the very eating. The food industry took gladly over, and, to no surprise, we are as detached from the food sources nowadays no wonder kids believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

The process of eating starts the moment we choose our food — the raw ingredients of it: fruits, veggies, oil, etc. The process of cooking the food is also part of the eating. Once the meal is served by purely devouring it for mere minutes, we do a lot of harm to us. If we recall again our evolution, we’ll see how involved in all this we once were. Hunting and root gathering used to be occupations. What has changed for 10-15 thousand years in our biology? Nothing. By seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting our food, we prepare our digestion to do the magic science has no one opinion about.

The more time we have to set up the stage for breaking down the carbs, the fats, and the protein comprising our food, the more likely it is our body does it right with less effort and with better results. Therefore the quantity required to let our brain know we’re full is far less than the one we could have stuffed ourselves with.

An organic cream soup for $9,99 sucked in one go through a biodegradable straw is of no benefit to us since our senses have no time or chance to set up a proper stage for digestion. Let alone this soup was eaten as we stood up, walked, or, even worse, ran from one place to another. On the opposite side of the spectrum is mindful eating, which is the process that helps the magic take place.

I like to tell my clients that French President Emanuel Macron has 50 minutes for a lunch break. No matter how important or minuscule we are, remember that food takes time, and the more, the better. To eat mindfully means to have the time and the conditions to enjoy the food and share the moment with close ones. A simple, quiet conversation around the kitchen table is the only distraction acceptable to the eating process. No matter how good at multitasking you are, digestion is a process far more demanding and complex to hinder with breaking news, weather forecast, or soap opera. Only thus, you could allow the tiny voices of leptin and ghrelin to speak to your brain and let it know: you’ve had enough food, and it’s time to stop working through the leftovers or the huge dessert, to name a few.

Now that we highlighted the bad guys let’s see what goodies we could place on our table.

Fruits and Veggies

They keep the elements in a beautiful bouquet and various tastes, shapes, and textures. Abundant in vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients, they are an irreplaceable way to benefit your health and bring a radiant

Organic Produce

Countless are the researches proving that replacing our industrial/supermarket fruits and veggies boost our body and all its functions. The more time we rely on those, the more likely it is to cleanse our system completely to a point where it restarts its natural functions: to regenerate and rejuvenate.

Local Foods

We find local, organic food at the farmer's market with features that contribute to how our digestion works. Since we inherit the microbiome from our mother’s berth canal and breast milk, we also inherit how to break down food close to our birthplace. And the beauty in nature is that even if we go somewhere far—far away, the local food helps us adjust to the new environment through water vibration, and thus dealing with homesickness is as easy as pea soup.

Fermented Foods

During those chilling winter days, no food is good enough without some fermented product. Kimchi, yogurt, miso, sauerkraut, and many more are traditionally proven and scientifically confirmed ways to preserve food in its best way long after it’s no longer available in its original fresh form.

Nuts and Seeds

Always hidden in shells by the Creator, they are gentle in nature yet very potent in their power. Apart from the specie specific, they have common ground. They are very rich in quality fats and oils, fibers, and vitamins. Thus, they boost the brain's work and complement the cardiovascular and digestive systems.

Homemade Foods

We have become victims of our success by detaching from our cooking habits and letting someone else do the job for us. For the food industry, it was an opportunity gap but for us, is a bluntly missed chance to participate in, control, and manage our food turning from raw produce to a delicious meal. I’m far from being a control freak, but rather gently and gracefully make the connection between the earth and us. Then, share the experience with the close ones mindfully.

Bottom Line

TV interviews or blog posts always have to come down to a simple recommendation. Given those mentioned above, I’d wrap it up like this: Eat food mindfully and in moderation, mainly plant-based, with minimum — if not at all — processed ingredients or domestic drugs.

If you find this concept appealing, find my listing here and book your pitch session or a program to unleash the power within you.

About The Author

Nick Souckov-Baulot is a Well Me Right Wellness Expert and a nutrition health coach. Together he works with you in returning you the joy of eating to live the life of your dreams in a healthier & more beautiful way. With easy, personalized steps, Nick will help you get more energy and improved beauty to help meet your needs, preferences, goals, and lifestyle. Nick is a former merchant marine, and — while sailing over the world — Nick experimented with different foods and fasting in many different ways, only to find out there’s a better way. Nick later received formal training at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, where he studied innovative coaching methods, practical lifestyle management techniques, and over 100 dietary theories -- from Ayurveda, gluten-free, and Paleo to raw, vegan, and macrobiotics and everything in between. Nick can help you co-create completely personalized actions based on your goals to move you toward your ideal vision of health within your unique body, lifestyle, preferences, and resources.

Book a Wellness Expert session offered by Nick on Well Me Right.

Article References

Joshua Rosenthal, Integrative Nutrition, Feed Your Hunger for Health & Happiness; Charlotte Gerson, Healing the Gerson Way: Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases; Food Matters