How do you really want to live?
Given the choice, would you prefer to eat well every day,
to exercise, to breathe clean air as often as possible, to drink a reasonable amount of water in order to keep your bloodstream clean and
able to wash out toxins? This choice is available to all of us, but to
exercise it we need to understand the impact on our well-being of
different foods and learn from direct experience what kind of eating
pattern best suits our lifestyle. Whole body nutrition requires us to
acknowledge that we are body, soul, mind, and emotion. Accordingly, it
incorporates all these aspects of our lives, with the objective of
maintaining a healthy mind and soul as well as a healthy body,
developing an open-minded outlook and a positive attitude to ourselves,
and learning to see any causes of stress in our lives as challenges
rather than threats. We need to ask ourselves daily questions like: What
is my physical health like today? Do I have a sense of well-being? Do I
have plenty of energy? Do I sleep and eat well? How we feel each day is
built upon our past actions, our past dietary practices, whether we
have had physical exercise, whether we have been mentally active, and
our general attitude towards life.
Nutrition is not just about eating different types of food — it is also about increasing your awareness of how you eat, where the food you eat comes from, how you store and prepare it, and how you perceive yourself and your place in the web of life. The benefits of nutritional therapy are sometimes immediate, but its study is timeless and its effects can bring about long-lasting changes in your attitude to life. We need to develop a sense of control over our health and over the quality of our lives, because the way we live — as well as the way we eat — are part of the way we nourish ourselves. All of us must take responsibility of our own health. Nutritional therapy helps us consider our human immunity in the context of a rapidly changing environment by deepening our understanding of the constant flow between ourselves and our outer world. Our immunity is part of the entire picture a relationship between our own evolution and our world. What are the characteristics of a bad diet?
• Primarily consists of processed foods (milled, bleached, etc.) • Lacks large quantities of fresh, living fruits and vegetables. • Avoids adequate water hydration (and focuses on manufactured beverages). • Very high in processed sugars and processed carbohydrates. • Contains genetically-modified foods such as corn, soy or sugar from GM sugar beets. • Includes a large amount of processed, pasteurized dairy products such as cow's milk. • Is made with hundreds of different chemical food additives from MSG and aspartame to chemical preservatives. • Is packaged in toxic food containers, including plastics and epoxy resins that contaminate the food with BPA. • Primarily consists of conventionally-grown, pesticide- contaminated foods. • Contains a large quantity of unhealthy oils such as corn oil, soy oil or partially-hydrogenated oils. • Consists of a large number of fried foods or foods cooked at very high temperatures that destroy nutrients while creating carcinogenic compounds. • Is made with many modified, unnatural ingredients such hydrogenated oils, refined sugar (which removes the minerals), homogenized milk fats, and so on. • Consists of a large quantity of animal products. 
What are the Consequences?
Personal Health: This diet causes rapid aging and the aggressive development of degenerative disease: cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, alzheimer's disease, etc. The population also remains highly susceptible to infectious disease. Health Care Costs: In a nation that follows a bad diet, health care costs spiral out of control, eventually consuming a quarter (or more) of the GDP, driving the nation into bankruptcy. Education: Growing up on this bad diet, children suffer severe cognitive impairment and are unable to learn in school. In time, academic achievement of the nation falls sharply, and the great "dumbing down" of the population accelerates. Employment & Economy: A sick, diseased population is very expensive and effects the economy and employment. Poisoned by processed food diets, workers suffer from repeated sick days and poor cognitive performance at work (inability to focus, failure to learn, failure to create new ideas, etc.), all of which make the workforce increasingly expensive for corporations to maintain. Not surprisingly, this causes yet a further shift of jobs to other nations where workers are more productive, healthier and less expensive. Violent Crime: With their brains fueled by junk foods and with failed education giving them few options for earning an honest living, more people turn to crime. In time, the prisons become filled with people incarcerated for behavior that could have been at least partially prevented with proper nutrition. Happiness: With disease rates skyrocketing, violent crime on the rise, education failures rampant and health care costs bankrupting families, happiness plummets to all-time lows. Genetic Integrity: As junk food consumption continues through multiple generations, the genetic integrity of the population erodes. Birth defects increase while fertility rates plummet. The population increasingly becomes haunted with unhealthy genetic mutations that promote yet more disease in future generations. Economic Productivity: Poor nutrition leads to disastrous economic productivity. Powered by junk foods, the population becomes virtually useless as a workforce. Instead of producing new ideas, new products and new innovations that improve the world, people sit around eating chips and watching YouTube videos. Economic productivity plummets, and employers shift jobs to overseas markets where people often demonstrate much higher levels of productivity. World Leadership: With its population falling behind the world academically and economically, the nation loses its leadership position on the world stage and begins to lose its leverage for maintaining the dominance of its currency. Democracy & Freedom: When the voters subsist on a bad diet, their minds are clouded and child like. They are easily manipulated to vote for politicians who are essentially "entertainers" - people who look good on TV but have no real ability to improve the long-term situation for the country. Voters on junk foods elect the very people who continue to drive the nation into disease and disaster. More Disease: Medications used to treat one disease today end up causing more diseases in the future (virtually all medications cause some level of liver and kidney damage, and many promote brain and heart damage at the same time). For example, common over-the-counter painkillers cause the deaths of several thousand of people each year just from gastrointestinal bleeding . Environmental Destruction: After all those medications pass through the bodies of consumers, they end up in the sewage systems, where they are eventually dumped into rivers and other waterways. (Most drugs, such as HRT drugs, are not filtered out by water treatment systems.) These potent chemicals pose a huge threat to aquatic ecosystems and contribute to the destruction of coral reefs and ocean life. Do you see where all this is heading? Higher costs and lower productivity. Increased rates of disease and decreased economic productivity. Environmental destruction. It's not difficult to extrapolate this pattern and see where such a nation might be headed. One example of this is the accelerating downfall is in the United States of America. They are a textbook example of how a nation rapidly deteriorates under the influence of excessive medication and disease promoting processed foods. Health Resources
Superfoods
Superfoods are a special category of foods found in nature. By definition they are calorie sparse and nutrient dense meaning they pack a lot of punch for their weight as far as goodness goes. They are superior sources of anti-oxidants and essential nutrients - nutrients we need but cannot make ourselves. Learn More 
Supplements
Vitamin and mineral supplementation continues to be a contentious issue amongst health professionals. Learn about the importance of supplementation, wholefood vs synthetic supplements and about how to design your own supplement program. Nu Skin, Lifepak Nano http://www.goforyournumber.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=3&lang=en Video: http://youtu.be/mN9fA5fuOYE Learn More 
Organics
The world wide debate on the effects of conventional farming practices on soil fertility is getting a lot of attention. And so it should, as many start taking ecologists' warnings more serious and are discovering for themselves that maintenance of soil fertility is critical to the sustainability of our food supply. Learn More 
Detox & Weight Loss
In this section you will learn about the importance of Detoxification for Weight Loss and in assisting the body's immune system when suffering from chronic illness. Learn More 
Recommended Reading
In this section we have listed the books and authors which have influenced the creation of 'Food Matters'. All of these books are highly recommend. Learn More 
Juicer Buying Guide
There are a lot of different types of juicers on the market, with a wide range of designs and an even wider range of prices. This page gives an overview of the pros and cons of the different types of juicers available on the market today, with a list of links to online retailers. Learn More 
Practitioner Directory
Finding a good natural health care practitioner can often be like looking for a needle in a haystack. This page provides a list of links to holistic practitioner directories for countries around the world. Learn More 
Yoga and Meditation
Few exercise modalities offer such scope for health improvement as yoga. Yoga exquisitely blends techniques which promote muscle tone, flexibility, proper breathing, mental clarity, stress relief and peace. Whilst yoga was traditionally used as a path to spiritual enlightenment, yoga is valuable to people of all faiths and is practiced more commonly in western society for its physical benefits. Learn More 
Support & Fitness Groups
Finding help and connecting with like minded people is an essential part of the healing process. Being able to openly communicate with others and gain knowledge from others experience can be very beneficial. http://www.glocals.com/#/groups/lausanne-fit-and-fab-group.htm Learn More 
Online Resources
The internet can be a very helpful and at the same time very frightening place. We try our best to provide you with access to solid information. Here are some of the websites that we follow and value. Learn More |
