Modern Nutrition

What are we doing wrong?

Throughout the world people are eating “too much, almost everything—too much fat, too much cholesterol, and too much calories- too often.” These have lead to coronary heart diseases, stokes, high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes, obesity and various cancers. Disease is an effort of nature to free the system from conditions that result from a violation of the laws of health.  In case of sickness, the cause should be ascertained. Unhealthful conditions should be changed, wrong habits corrected. Then nature is to be assisted in her effort to expel impurities and to re-establish right conditions in the system.

The symptoms of disease (e.g. pain, fever, and inflammation) are nature’s effort to get better. Disease comes from violating physical laws. Disease is not a negative condition which should be combated and stopped but a self-defensive, protective effort of the body to restore health. Pain is our body’s way of telling us that something is wrong.

Inflammation is a re-constructive process and should not be suppressed. Every acute disease is an effort of nature to cleanse and heal. When suppressed, it becomes subacute, and then, with time, chronic and degenerative. Medicine suggests that we are victims of sickness, attacked by a bad organism, having a bad organ, cursed by bad genes, etc. that may weigh evident, however; illness is most often a result of our own choices and not that dependent on uncontrollable factors.

Disease-causing organisms are scavengers; they cannot find a home in a healthy body with a strong immune system. Bacteria, virus, or parasitic infection is not the primary cause of disease but rather its result. Even the father of the germ theory, Pasteur, began to understand the true relationship of germs to disease late in his life, when he stated: “The germ is nothing, the soil [the condition of the body] is everything,” meaning that a germ can only thrive in a suitable environment.

Diseases from food? There are several culprits:

Refined foods—in previous years it used to be known that brown bread and other unrefined carbohydrates are 'poor man's food', most people have been led to believe that refined foods are better because all the unnecessary roughage has been taken out. While the main reason why food is refined is to maintain a long shelf life. 

In the refining process, some essential elements like Vitamin A, E, C, niacin, riboflavin, thiamine, inositol, folic acid, biotin, Vitamin B6 among others are removed and what is left is not enough to meet the body's energy needs and maintaining a good healthy body. Medical science reveals that fiber roughage protects us from certain cancers (colon cancer), stabilizes our blood sugar levels, controls weight and prevents gastrointestinal problems like constipation and gallstones.

Refined foods have also been linked to a condition called Beriberi (berry berry), this disease affects the nervous system due to a deficiency of Vit. B1. Because polished food like white rice for instance, have a low thiamine content due to the refining process which removes the thiamine-bearing husk, the body does not get enough of this very important vitamin. Symptoms of Beriberi include weight loss, emotional disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weakness and pain in the limbs, heart failure by weakening the capillary walls and paralysis. Thiamine occurs naturally in unrefined food like brown rice, whole wheat pasta, legumes, green vegetables and fruit.

There are countless campaigns against the cruelty of animals, as well as various kinds of human abuse; however it is strange that none has ever protested about the abuse that human stomachs have to bear. Many individuals are more concerned about filling up their gas/petrol tanks in fear that their cars might stop moving without the fuel, but few realize that the human body has the same uncompromising energy requirements. Refined food is non-nutritive and forms a paste inside the stomach, it (the refined food) may last longer on the shelf, but it is destroying our immune systems.

Sugar—carbohydrates are important nutrients that not only play an important role in metabolism, but also play an important role in the digestive process. Carbohydrates are manufactured in plants and are composed of simple sugars known as monosaccharides of which glucose plays a principal role. Fructose is another type of sugar found mainly in fruits and some other plant sources, galactose, a component of lactose (disaccharide found in milk) is found in some storage carbohydrates of legumes and other seeds.

Sugar is a di-saccharide meaning a combination of two simple sugars (fructose and glucose). According to researchers, the body needs a constant supply of glucose, not only because it is an important energy source, but the main reason being that organs such as the brain and nerves cannot function without it.

Furthermore research indicates that monosaccharides such as glucose, fructose and galactose require no digestion and are absorbed as is. The disaccharides such as sugar (sucrose) on the other hand, are rapidly converted by the glycosidases in the intestine and it is thus easy to fill the system with glucose if refined foods are consumed.

The glucose surge thus created, leads to increased insulin production, and because the glucose is then converted to fat and glycogen, the blood sugar levels go lower than normal, thus leading to what is known as hypoglycemia  Because when God created man, He made every fiber to be interlinked with others, the system goes into sympathetic mode as the brain sends a message to the sympathetic nervous system to release adrenalin and other hormones so as to counteract this.

Likewise with redemption, God had already had a plan for man's salvation even before man could fall into sin. So then we, not knowing what the body had to go through in counteracting the problem, interpret it as an energy boost due to the tea, coffee or energy drink that we have just had, and we place a continuous burden on the system.

Sugar is hence a pure chemical ('and like heroin') through refining it has lost all its natural nutrition that it originally had in the plant. The reason that sugar is more harmful than any other drug or poison is that it is often treated as food and thus is consumed even more than proper food.

Refined sugar causes an imbalance to the endocrine system and destroys the adrenal glands, pancreas, as well as the liver, because it causes the blood sugar levels to rise and to fall. Sugar is also said to weaken and kill leukocytes (white blood cells) in our bodies. What's most dangerous is the common practice of the combination of sugar and milk (especially in ice cream, tea etc.) which induces phlegm and destroys calcium.

Salt—most individuals consume 10-20g (2-4 teaspoons) salt per day which is more than the body needs. Sodium and Phosphate when excessively taken in the body leads to high blood pressure, heart failure, strokes and kidney diseases and other problems related to fluid retention. Pretzels and chips among others have a high salt content.

Salt has two composites, sodium and chloride, sodium is important since every cell in the body contains sodium, however; though it is essential, it can be troublesome. Fluid retention occurs when too much salt is taken and the sodium in the salt in turn stores extra water which causes swelling and as a result raises the blood pressure which puts pressure on the heart.

Other foods high in sodium are baking soda, baking powder, MSG (mono sodium glutamate), salty snacks and crackers and pickles. It is really carrying things to excess that makes them harmful to our health, it is thus important to maintain a balance, avoid an undue amount of salt.

Fat—an excessive amount of fat, has been linked to the increase in degenerative diseases like cancer and cardiovascular (heart-related) diseases which are prevalent in our day. The quantity of fat intake is not the only problem, but the type of fat that is used as well. Studies conducted on Japanese communities who use considerably low amounts of fat, indicated that they had fewer cases of cardiovascular or cancerous diseases, whereas Japanese communities that had adopted the Western lifestyle suffered from the same diseases that are prevalent in these (Western) countries. Furthermore, international correlation studies show that countries like South Africa, Denmark, the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands have some of the worlds richest diets and as a result have high breast and pancreatic cancers.

Certain oils which are in the market, have been refined or extracted and are normally labeled extra or triple refined or filtered oil. The oil may look clear and clean, but it undergoes a series of steps which affect its nutritional value. These types of oils are normally used in deep-frying and frying food in general which has toxic effects. Olive oil, for instance is a healthy alternative, but be ware of cheap imitations which do not have the same nutritional value. The texture and the smell of the oil should tell you whether it is worth the purchase.

Saturated (bad) and hydrogenated (rancid/stale) fats like margarine though coming from plants, have had their molecular structures changed and when used, debilitate the body because the body can only take a few calories per day. More fat than the body can handle settles in and clogs up the arteries (blood vessels carrying blood containing fresh oxygen supplies from the heart to the tissues) “impotence sets in, and the heart as well as the brain suffer” this clogging of the arteries leads to diseases such as arthritis, strokes, heart and kidney problems.

Experiment: thickly smear butter on a clean plate and leave it on the kitchen counter for 10 minutes, when you come back what do you find? Thickly smeared butter still on the clean plate! Now try washing the plate with your hands, but using cold water, what do you think will happen? Will the plate eventually be clean? Of course not! Some of the butter will be removed from the pate, but it will be impossible to remove the fat with your hands using cold water.

Now imagine using that very same plate day in and day out, what eventually happens to the plate? It accumulates more fat and eventually you feel disgusted and decide you want a new one, and you discard that old one. That is how the process of arteriosclerosis (a thickening of the artery walls, hindering blood circulation) begins.

Now to bring it home, take it that the plate is your artery/arteries, and the butter is the fat of course  and each day you use the plate, would be each day you eat fatty food like doughnuts, take-aways etc. and every day the fat gets piled up in your arteries and you keep using your arteries, because you cannot take them out. So every day, every month, every year, you eat fatty food and eventually you reach your mid 20's and discover that you have rheumatoid arthritis, or perhaps in your 30's, 40's or 50's a stroke hits you, or rather your heart fails to pump properly, because now the artery walls have thickened and there is not enough blood circulation, then the doctors tell you, “we are sorry you have a few months to live” or “we have to perform an urgent operation to widen your arteries, by inserting pipes in order to prolong your life.”

Now this need not be you, and if you already have experienced some of the above or suspect that you have symptoms, you can still reverse the situation by adopting a healthy lifestyle. Unlike drugs and medicines, which give a “quick fix” without really dealing with the cause, nature on the other hand takes time, it may take a year, 2, 3 or more, but a difference will be seen and felt in health. This should not be misunderstood to mean that if you have a medical condition that needs immediate attention, and medication you should leave your medication, not so, however; it would help to prevent now what might need a cure later if it doesn't lead to death.

Protein—proteins play an important part in any living organism (a living being) and has thus been made of prime importance in any health related topic. Plants are the primary source of proteins for all heterotrophic animals, and plant proteins have hence been termed primary proteins. These proteins are easily broken down (digested) into their little components (amino-acids), these little components are then absorbed to form various proteins needed by an organism.

Animal proteins are called secondary proteins since they must first be broken down by the body into primary proteins, then only can they be broken down to little components which could be used by the body. It has always been a known 'theory' that a high-protein diet is more beneficial than one low in protein, especially when issues of strength and stamina are involved; however scientific evidence also indicates that a diet which is mainly of animal protein (meat, eggs, cheese, milk etc.) provides the body with more protein, fat and cholesterol than is needed.

Furthermore, organ specialists have proven high-protein diets to be associated with cases of kidney stones and the deterioration of renal (of the kidneys) function, and diets which are deficient in protein can lead to bladder stones. High-protein diets especially flesh diets contain high amounts of sulphur which increases the acidity of the urine, this results in an increased loss of calcium in the urine which directly links with an increased loss of calcium from the bones hence gives rise to osteoporosis. A diet containing less protein (especially animal) and less fat as well as cholesterol is essential for improved health and longevity.

The worlds wonder-foods (milk and other dairy products) have been perceived as the ultimate solution to all the nutritional requirements, especially when a child is in their early years and an elderly person is in their old-age, because it helps keep the bones strong right? While it is true that dairy products are packed with nutrients, it does not mean those nutrients are suited for human consumption.

When a baby is born, the mother starts to lactate, because the body has made provision for the arrival of the bundle of joy. On the contrary, dairy contains lactose (a type of sugar found in milk) and the protein casein. When dairy products are ingested, lactose has to be broken down by the enzyme (a protein formed in living cells which helps with the chemical processes) lactase into galactose and glucose. Lactose is present in all mammals lactating like a mother and the amount of this sugar is only suited to the particular species, in this case a human child and with it is the good bacterium that helps with the digestion of the lactose.

It is a different case altogether when cow's milk is fed to a human child, since the cow's milk contains less carbohydrates and more protein than does mother's milk and since this is well suited for a calf, a baby thus fed cows milk will grow considerably bigger than normal, because the growth rates between the calf and a human baby differ, which is why mother's milk is suited for the human baby and would not be suited for the calf.

Note: if mother cannot feed the calf her milk because it does not have the sufficient nutrients needed by the calf except for the baby, why then do mothers neglect nursing their children only to give them that which is sufficient for a calf and not their babies? Humans are the only mammals that drink the milk of other mammals, a cat will never drink the milk of a dog.

Beverages—in today's world, more people seldom drink water, but would rather drink coffee, tea, acidic, or sweet fizzy drinks. These may look pleasing to the eye but they have a long term effect on our bodies. Most of these contain sugar, alcohol, and cocoa which elevates (rises) and de-elevates (lowers) blood sugar levels. Caffeine, phosphates and other chemicals found in beverages place a huge risk to our health.

There are three compounds found in tea, coffee and cocoa  namely theobromine, caffeine, and theophylline respectively. These compounds have toxic effects on the system and are thus not good for consumption. Not even caffeine-free or de-caffeinated are actually free from caffeine.

Many individuals would argue that alcohol is good for the heart once in a while, and it is has certainly been acknowledged for it's adverse effects on the cardiovascular system; however it impairs glucose homeostasis, can affect insulin release therefore leading to glucose intolerance, increases uric acid levels, injures the small intestine and stomach, may cause lesions in the duodenum and impair the absorption of nutrients, it lays a heavy load on the liver and most importantly destroys lives and homes.

Medical doctors prove that alcohol taken in the body even in small amounts damages brain cells, some eventually die while others are altered. Is it not interesting that alcohol is closely linked with anything negative in society? Domestic violence, sexual abuse, suicide, birth defects, teen pregnancy, accidents and many other social ills. Alcohol also damages the heart and increases chances of hypertension.

In men, alcohol is said to damage cells in the testes causing impotence, and sterility while in women it causes a disturbance in the functioning of the ovaries. The liver then has to bear the heavy burden of trying to filter the alcohol from the blood as well as other toxins from the body, giving it a double duty.

Snacks—everyday in Universities, schools, day-care centers  at the workplace and even in hospitals, snacks reign supreme. “snack attacks” which are commonly enjoyed disrupt the digestive process, over burden the stomach and are a frequent cause of bloating, constipation and indigestion.

Most snacks contain food additives (substances added to enhance flavour, keep quality and texture, to preserve like tartrazine, MSG, sulphur dioxide, EDTA, stabilizers, E-codes etc.). It is an established fact that children who eat sweets and food with additives mostly have hyperactive disorders, blurred vision, tummy upsets, poor perceptual-motor performance and hence poor learning ability, short concentration spans, love whining and throwing tantrums.

“He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity” Proverbs 21:23