A diet for an increasingly toxic planet
Image: recipeler.com
Today’s Menu: Eating the colors of the planet
By Larry Plesent
In the April 2018 issue of Green Energy Times, we talked about the North Hollow Diet. The discussion focused on how super nutrition combined with a reduction in exposure to dangerous chemicals is the only real answer to the daily war going on between our very much organic bodies and the unintended consequences of our modern convenience lifestyle.
We spoke about paying attention to engine exhaust and not standing in it or letting children play around it. We also talked about reducing food and liquid that is sold in clear plastic packaging, and how HDPE #2 plastic is the safest plastic commonly used by people.
We discussed the importance of eliminating plastic-packaged sodas and drinks, and how, if you only change one thing in your life, this is the biggie to change.
In this month’s article, we will explore the world of colors and nutrition. That is not a typo. Think about a bright red, juicy, fully ripe garden tomato. Yum! Now think about a pink, unripe and nearly tasteless mid-winter food service tomato. Yuck!
Brightly colored fresh vegetables, fruits, meats and seafood are intuitively attractive to us. That’s why companies spend billions to dye your food, to make it look fresher and more nutritious than it really is!
Over 5000 plants synthesize bioflavonoids aka flavonoids. These substances are responsible for the palette of colors and many of the tastes found in nature. One would imagine that our vast international society with its millions of scientists would know all about flavonoids, and their myriad effects on mammal health. But alas, this is not to be the case. And so I am not going to make any health claims about them. We can only hope that profit-based science will take an interest in these little wonders soon!
Combined with another class of plant molecules called polyphenols (that they are often found with or near), flavonoids are known to be anti-oxidant to humans. This means that they scavenge the byproducts of normal cell metabolism — all of which might possibly help keep you feeling clear headed and less run down, for example.
Some believe that a diet high in flavonoids and polyphenols helps keep the ends of their DNA from degrading. If this turns out to be true, then newly made cells from less than newly made people would have fewer mistakes. Fewer mistakes means the possibility of a longer, healthier life.
Others tout flavonoids and polyphenols as being cancer protective. While this may well be true, there is not enough hard evidence (read double-blind replicable studies) to state this as fact.
I promised to give you one thing to stop using with every article on this theme. However, having already asked you to give up plastic water, sweetened drinks, plastic processed foods and also to stay out of the way (at very least) of engine exhaust — I think you dear reader already have your work cut out for you!
And so instead, here is a recommendation to live your time here as a lifelong learning proposition: learn to cook or improve your current skill set! Even master chefs and bakers take courses. Choose the types of food that feel right to you. The ones you dream about, think about or crave – as long as they are natural! The better you cook, the better you live.
It is dangerous and misleading to make broad health claims based on food. I am not going to tell you that eating a diet rich in colorful herbs and vegetable plants and fungi and therefore rich in vitamins, minerals, flavonoids and polyphenols will help you live a moment longer than you would on a diet of ultra-processed, wrapped and frozen, microwave-ready food products in single-use, heat tolerant plastic packaging would.
But I am saying that if you do switch to a diet closer to nature, you will enjoy a feast of color and flavor that might just extend your healthy time here. And if it turns out not to be so, you will have lived that much better for it. This is the secret of natural medicine. Above all else, do no harm.
This is the Soapman asking everyone to visualize a more natural sustainable and colorful future.
Larry Plesent is a writer, philosopher and soap maker living and working in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Learn more at www.vermontsoap.com, www.reactivebody.org, and www.cancereraser.org.
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