I recently purchased Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford
by Paul Pitchford, which is a great book that uses eastern (and modern western) nutrition strategies for health. The general idea is that if you eat correctly, you shouldn't have health issues. In that sense the food IS the medicine. It is a mammoth of a book with many sections and at this point, I have only brushed the surface. I have made a few changes to my diet already though (mentioned below).According to the book, for health and wellness, the main staples of our diet should be vegetables, complex grains (kamut, spelt, millet, quinoa, etc), legumes (beans, seeds), fruits, seaweeds, seed and grain sprouts, and occasionally protein sources such as fish/meat/dairy. The standard american diet is high in simple fast-digesting carbs (white flour, refined sugars) and heavy/high protein sources (dairy and meat), so the book's ideas are a sharp contrast to what most people eat.
My main problem is that I eat way too much sugar and snack too much on chips, crackers, etc. My goal lately has been to incorporate more of the slow-digesting complex grains and legumes into my diet in place of snack foods. Many of the grains mentioned in the book I have never bought or cooked before, so I decided to purchase millet, quinoa, spelt, kamut, adzuki beans, and split peas. I shopped around online, but ended up buying from Nuts Online. The prices weren't too bad, but I am going to continue to keep my eye our for better prices (if they exist). I imagine buying in bulk is my only option for purchasing high quality organic grains and legumes.
Anyway, I am happy to report that I have already been cooking with my new purchases and they have been delicious. On Friday night I made quinoa and spinach which tasted great! Last night I made millet (cooked with vegetarian bouillon instead of water) and adzuki beans (with garlic, cumin, chili powder, and cilantro) and both were fantastic. The beans were so good they are all gone and I am currently making more now as I type.
Changing your diet is probably one of the hardest things to do. In modern society, food is no longer just sustenance or required fuel, but tied in with our emotions. While I feel that the mind and body are not separate, I feel that there is a healthier way to eat, where choices are not driven by (often negative) emotions. The fact that when I come home, I don't feel fulfilled until I eat a large amount of sugar/chocolate, is not a good thing :). I think that we can retrain our minds and bodies though to have a correct sense of what we need. Food addictions and emotional food cravings trump our body's natural food desires, so we end up having a false sense of what we need to eat. Instead, we end up eating heavy and/or sugary foods because we no longer have the ability to sense what we SHOULD be eating.
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