Nourishment of Quality

Article written by Daniel Max, Holistic Health Counselor, Yoga Instructor, Shiatsu Practitioner, owner of Sense of Self

No matter what you eat, choose the highest quality of that food

Eating quality foods is the best strategy we can use to improve our health and lives as well as the health of our planet.

Endless nutritional studies have proven that the diets of cultures that keep traditional diets of fresh, whole, & local foods are dramatically healthier than diets of cultures relying on mostly refined or mass produced foods.
Quality can mean: fresh, organic, lovingly made, homemade, locally produced, free of pesticides and herbicides (these are anti-nutrients and disease agents), free of antibiotics and growth hormones, heirloom varieties, nutrient dense, free of artificial ingredients.

Higher quality food means greater nutritional value. Food provides your body with energy and information. When you eat a carrot, the Beta-carotene in the carrot tells the body how to see better at night, the antioxidants in blueberries demonstrate how to keep your blood healthy and flowing, the B vitamins in brown rice chat with the nervous system on how to relieve depression.

So if your food is telling you its story, don’t you want to hear a happy one? If your tomato was grown in depleted soils, it doesn’t have much to tell about minerals and vitamins. Through its taste you learn the tale of high acidity rather than natural sweetness, and if it was sprayed with pesticides and herbicides, your body ingests carcinogenic information.

There is more than just nutritional value in your food. There is life experience. If the chicken you eat was conventionally raised, she probably never saw sunlight, never stood up straight because her cage was too small and crowded, was never healthy enough to grow feathers, was heavily fed with antibiotics and growth hormones so that she could survive long enough, and was then killed in the most inhumane conditions. We all know what it feels like to hold stress and fear in our own bodies… so how much energy of stress, tension and fear do you think you will be digesting in that meal?! As best as you can, replace poor quality meats with ones labeled free range, organic, grass fed, antibiotic and hormone free.

If your tomato was mass produced, picked and packed by underpaid workers, chopped in a machine with a thousand other tomatoes and slapped onto your fast food bun, the cellular information it contains will not be too different form that of our poor chicken. All this information lives inside your food just as surely as you live inside your body.

If your food could verbalize a story about its journey from the seed to your palate, let it be as fairytale-like as possible, filled with care and consciousness.

Upgrade any way you can: whether through choosing higher quality, through adding some Vitamin L (love) to it by preparing the meal for you and your loved ones or by simply expressing gratitude by saying grace before you chow down.

If you want your food to help you feel healthy and happy, you have to start creating it in that image.

Food Focus: Sea Vegetables
Sea vegetables (or seaweeds) provide a wide and abundant variety of minerals and vitamins, including calcium, iron and iodine, and can help balance hormone and thyroid levels in the body. Studies have documented sea vegetables to reduce blood cholesterol, remove metallic and radioactive elements from the body, counteract obesity, strengthen bones and teeth, aid nerve transmission, improve digestion, and soften hard masses and tumors. Eating too many processed foods or foods grown in mineral-depleted soil can result in a lack of minerals in the body, leading to cravings for salty or sugary foods. Adding sea vegetables to your diet can help balance your energy levels and alleviate cravings.