A simple healthy eating plan

Further to our column last week on the health pointers contained in the book of Dr. Max Sidorov and his colleagues at the International Council for the Truth in Medicine (ICTM), we’d just like to clarify that we’re not saying that canned and processed foods are totally unhealthy. But they’re not ideal also for our health and wellness.

The rawer the food is, particularly fruits and vegetables, the more nutritious they are. Processed foods are usually loaded with salt and other preservatives which can have deleterious effects on our health. In Japan, for example, they cut down the national incidence of strokes by simply cutting down their salt intake by 50 percent. The high salt intake was mainly coming from processed foods.

Many health experts including Dr. Sidorov’s group consider preservatives and additives as health culprits; and consumers must be more conscious of them rather than simply checking out the calories, fat or carbohydrate contents of the foods they buy from the supermarket. If we could do away with as much of these artificial foods and the additives they contain, the better outlook we have for our health.

Our digestive organs will also thank us for it. Dr. Sidorov explains that natural foods stimulate toxin removal, improve our body’s metabolism, enhance all organ function, activate fat burning, and promote cellular and tissue repair that can help cure various diseases and ailments naturally.

Speaking of toxin removal, it’s important that we drink enough water daily, and not replace it with soda. I know some people (even a few doctors) who can finish a 2-liter soft drink bottle daily, but hardly takes in any water, believing that the cola drink should be good enough as water.

Six to eight glasses of water daily, more during hot summer months, help our kidneys in eliminating all the toxins formed in the body. Our body is like a complex factory with nonstop operations 24/7. Just like any factory, there will be waste products, and these have to be eliminated properly by the liver and kidneys. Adequate hydration helps these two organs with this vital function of eliminating the body’s toxins.

Dr. Sidorov gives us in his book an example of a simple menu he follows.

For breakfast, he takes a large green smoothie with spinach, apple, bee pollen, hemp protein, and some coconut crystals or honey. Some experts would recommend that we take the green smoothie first thing in the morning when we wake up together with two glasses of water.

For his snacks throughout the day, he eats organic fruits and raw nuts without any limit. He doesn’t even count the calories of the foods he eats. He also drinks a liter or so of raw organic milk during the day.

For lunch, he may have a sprouted grain mix with whatever sprouted grains, together with a large salad full of leafy greens with some hemp oil, hemp seeds, and spices for flavor.

And for dinner, he eats another big serving of fruit and vegetable salad, plus another green smoothie.

“This is a very basic meal plan, but a raw food diet is extremely diverse, you can search on Google for raw food or vegetarian recipes and you will be amazed at the possibilities,” he advises in his book.

He assures us that if we get rid of all the junk in our diet,  we should see and feel changes in our bodies within the first few days.

He summarizes his basic eating plan as follows:

• At least 50 percent of our meals should be raw, like a salad with all meals and raw unprocessed nuts, fruits, dried fruits. Raw food bars may be eaten as snacks;
• Two or more green smoothies daily with hemp protein and a scoop of a whole food green powder;
• A teaspoon of unadulterated bee pollen which he places under the tongue and allowed to dissolve, before swallowing it; or it may be added to the smoothies, shakes or salads;
• At least 1.5-2 liters of clean filtered water daily with 500 ml or 16 oz of water (two glasses) taken in on waking up.

Well, that doesn’t seem to be a complicated dietary recommendation. But the health dividends it brings may be worth more than half a dozen pills we need to take daily, as a result of an unhealthy diet.