What’s enough
Enough in food circles seems to mean ‘not too much’ but your body requires a minimum amount of food in the form of nutrients (not just calories!) in order to function at it’s bare minimum. Then there’s what we need to do and let’s not forget what we want to do!
Get the basic foods before the super foods
Do we need superfoods? If your diet’s good, you should need nothing more to supplement your daily meals. But with soli depletion, our use of additives and the prevalence of sugar, refined carbs and rancid veggie oils, which all of us have invariably ingested, no one can really say their diet is perfect. And for those unwilling or unable to give up habits like caffeine, alcohol or smoking, a daily supply of superfoods could tip the balance a bit.
Research has shown that the ideal diet has a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and healthy animal products: if you’re interested in eating a healthier diet upgrade to the most nutritious whole foods, not processed, and as close to the form that they were planted and grown in. They’re nature’s superfoods!
Hidden hunger
We’re all micronutrient deficient. A chronic lack of vitamins and minerals is a leading cause of illness in our culture: we’re suffering from unidentified nutritional deficiencies, often due to consuming an overly processed diet. Because processed foods are stripped of nutrients our body needs, we’re eating a large number of empty calories, and can be overweight and malnourished at the same time. Also these empty calories need removing from your body so they cost nutrients to do so. In just three generations, a nutrient-deficient diet can lead to infertility: a lot of our diseases are actual nutrient deficiencies well out of hand.
A lot of people ask me next if I believe that dietary supplements - including vitamins and minerals - can help compensate for some of the damage our body incurs. yes, when high-quality nutrients are becoming less and less available in our soil, unless we insist on organic, biodynamic or sole food practices in our agriculture. But it can’t be wise to use supplements to justify a poor diet:
First that we need to look to food as nutrients, and secondly to our body’s ability to digest and assimilate them, realizing in a stressed world we need to take five and enhance those digestive processes. Bone broths, gelatin and organ meats are nature’s multi-mineral supplements. Get nutrient rich
Balanced blood sugar handling (by lowering consumption), allows for proper carb digestion and a properly functioning liver for sugar, digestive and detox function
enjoy your food! Food was meant to be enjoyed. Did you know that 70% of your body’s enjoyment sensors, your neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin, are made in your gut? They’re made from ingested, digested and assimilate nutrients, then transported to your brain via more nutrients in water. So feeling guilt or pleasure can affect the way you digest, as well as be affected by the way you digest!
Quality over Quantity
When we think about food macronutrients - carbs, fats, proteins – we mostly talk quantity, either as the calorie or gram amount or the percentage of the diet that they should each contribute for health each day. But these three classes are complex groups, each containing a variety of components, even multiple components of the different types (a steak isn’t just saturated fat, it’s also polyunsaturated and monounsaturated at the same time).
And then you can eat the same quantity of protein, carbohydrate and fat, but deliver very different nutrients to your body depending on the sources of these molecules. For example, both lard and olive oil are fats, but the information they provide to your cells is very different. Then think about the very bio-individual issues going on with YOU on top of that: what season you’re living in, whether you’ve a cold, a heart problem, cancer or other disease, that time of the month, you’re pregnant, or perhaps have hormone or digestive issues. Dare I say it’s not the size but what you do with it: it’s not just quantity that matters, but quality both in source and what’s best for you.
Enough then might better be defined as more if what you need when you need it. Basically a little bit of everything, necessarily various, rich in colours (nutrients) and enjoyment!
