Part 10 : The quality of food

PART 10:

Greetings my friends, my name is Sébastien Fèbvre, founder of the “Nourish Your Being” method. Here we are in the New Way of Nutrition, navigating through Part 10. Let’s have an important conversation about Food Quality.

 

CHAPTER 3

 

FOOD QUALITY: THE BEST VERSION OF FOOD

 

Quality of food is so often reflective of quality of life…

• This is one of the simplest and best nutritional strategies for overall health and well being

• This strategy improves your eating challenges and weight

• The more you improve the quality of your food, the more satisfied you’ll be with your meals, and the more you’ll feel safe.

• This decision will help reduce the frequency of binge eating.

• It’s a “can’t miss” strategy

• Food quality is about eating the highest-quality versions of whatever foods we already eat.

• Example:

 

Do you like chicken? Prefer whole organic or free range chicken to processed chicken products.

Do you like chocolate? Prefer quality 70% dark chocolate to chocolate candy bars

 

• High quality can mean any or some or all of the following:

Quality labels, real, organic, fresh, locally grown, natural, unprocessed, grown in accordance with nature, wildcrafted, home cooked, carefully grown/produced/prepared, farm raised, additive free, non GMO, etc…

 

Quality is everything.

 

• Quality Food = Quality Metabolism = Better mental health = Appetite regulation = Greater satiety = Better weight regulation = Quality Life

• Studies have compared the diets of industrialized nations—mostly consisting of ultra processed food— with the diets of traditional cultures—fresh, whole and locally cultivated

• They concluded that traditional diets, such as the Mediterranean diet, are dramatically better for improving your eating and weight challenges

• The poorer the quality of our food, the more quantity we’ll consume. Yes, poor quality food can lead to overeating. Overeating can lead to weight concerns.

• Why is that? Because poor quality food is nutrient deficient.

• It lacks the vitamins, minerals, enzymes and energies we need. The brain senses these deficiencies and wisely makes us eat more food.

• Choosing organic foods makes your diet more nutrient dense and your meals more satiating.

• That’s because organic foods have more vitamins and minerals than their inorganic and mass-produced counterparts.

• They also have fewer xenotoxins – man-made substances such as pesticides and herbicides that act as antinutrients and disease-causing agents that disrupt your hormonal system. Hormonal imbalance can cause food cravings and weight gain

• Organic simply means “real.” 

• Also, whenever possible, choose foods that have a certified quality label that guarantees the intrinsic attributes of a food, such as: colour, appearance, taste, smell, organic farming, environmental impact, place of origin and traditional know-how.

• Yes, quality food is more expensive. But the decision to invest in quality food is the real health insurance.

• A food that has been respected in the production process will respect your body.

• Where does the quality of food come from? Not so much from its chemical composition as from its energy and information.

• How does this happen? Food sends a specific message to our cells.

• For example, the caffeine in coffee tells your heart to beat faster, your blood pressure to rise, and your nervous system to speed up its functions.

• The fiber in your veggies actually tells your gut to feed its good bacteria, and has a side conversation with your liver, pancreas, and bloodstream, asking your LDL cholesterol to drop and your blood sugar to stabilize.

• The flavonoids in your berries tell your body to keep tiny blood vessels strong and supple, reduce cellular inflammation, and slow the aging process of specific tissues like the macula of your eyes.

• Food talks to your body, and your body talks back. It’s a bio – psycho conversation.

• Low-quality foods don’t do this because your body doesn’t understand a nutrient-poor food, so it can’t communicate with it, it can’t absorb it, it can’t assimilate it. As a result, it may store it as fat.

• And the food that provides information to the body also has a memory.

• For example, the tomato. If the soil it grows in is depleted, then the tomato has measurably low mineral content, less natural sugar, and more acids, which means it will be tough, tasteless, and nutritionally inferior.

• If it is sprayed with pesticides and herbicides, it will carry instructional messages to your body that are carcinogenic, mutagenic, and neurotoxic.

• These chemicals can deregulate your hormonal system, including your appetite levels, which can lead to overeating and weight gain.

• If it is grown on an impersonal factory farm by underpaid workers, the tomato will be lifeless and devoid of integrity. 

• If it is chopped by machine along with thousands of other tomatoes, delivered to a fast-food joint, and slapped together with a bun and meat from a cow who suffered even worse traumas, then our tomato is now “suicidal” because it has lost its soul.

• It may sound a bit esoteric, but ancient healing disciplines such as Ayurveda and Chinese medicine have long recognized the energetic nature of food.

• They see earth, water, wood, fire, and metal – kapha, pitta, and vata – yin and yang – in food as they do in our character. Yin and yang are as real to the Chinese as proteins and fats are to us.

• So the true value of a food dwells as much in its energy as it is in its label. Yes, it includes vitamin, mineral, protein, fiber, and fat content.

• But it also means how the food was grown, handled, transported, manufactured, promoted, cooked, served, and eaten. All of this information lives inside a food as surely as you live inside your body.

• So if we really want to stop the rise of eating issues, it’s time to look at how we create food, how we eat it, to slow down and rethink the manic way we manufacture our food.

• People recovering from binge eating want peace with food. Well, let’s start creating it in that image. When the energies of peace are cultivated in food, we’ll cultivate peace in our relationship with food.

• The food we consume contains anti-nutrients which are compounds that reduce the body’s ability to absorb essential nutrients.

• They literally break down at the cellular level and dysregulates our metabolism, which can cause eating and weight concerns.

• So it’s just as important to reduce antinutrients foods as it is to include quality foods.

• The most powerful anti nutrients to limit (or cut out) are:

 

1. POOR-QUALITY FATS

 

• Poor-quality fat means any food that contains hydrogenated oil, partially hydrogenated oil, hydrogenated palm kernel oil, canola oil, soy oil, copra oil and coconut oil (most are over processed oils), margarine and any margarine-like spreads with hydrogenated oil, cottonseed oil, Olestra (a synthetic fat), and most commercial supermarket-bought cooking oils. Poor quality fat also includes most fried foods – french fries, chicken, chips …

• Hydrogenated oils are found in many mass-produced food products, including potato chips, corn chips, crackers, cookies, prepared foods, frozen foods, baked goods, snacks, and others.

• Most of the oils you find in a supermarket are highly processed – heated at high temperatures and stripped of their sensitive essential fats and other nutrients.

• As best as you can, replace poor-quality fat-containing products with quality oils and quality-fat foods.

• These would include olive oil, rapeseed oil, sesame oil, all of these oils are great for cooking. Other oils to use for dressings and dips include sunflower, flaxseed, hazelnut, pistachio, hempseed, and macadamia nut oils.

• Use as much as possible of organic, unrefined, first cold pressed, virgin oils. – these can generally be found at a health food store.

• Use real butter rather than margarine—the best choices are hormone free and farm fresh or organic. Butter made from raw and unpasteurized milk is best.

• Other preferred sources of health-giving fats include:

– Avocado, olives

– Fresh fish, especially those that are ocean or stream caught and not farm raised

– Nuts and seeds, organic is always best

– Nut butter, peanut butter, almond butter, sesame butter

– Free-range eggs, coming from a chicken running around a farm eating real food

– Organic dairy products, produced from raw unpasteurized milk from grass-fed animals, including yogurt, cheese, and milk

 

• In small quantities, poor-quality fats are harmless to most people. But when poor-quality fats become part of our staple fare, day in and day out, our mental health, eating habits and weight can suffer.

• These fats are chemically different from the quality kind. The result is that they affect our cells, which become more rigid, susceptible to oxidation (rusting or ageing), and less intelligent—it loses its ability to make smart choices about what goes in and what comes out. 

• This is a special concern when it comes to the brain, which is largely composed of essential Omega-3 fat. When poor-quality fat is incorporated into its structure, brain tissue is more easily oxidized and becomes biologically stiff (and thus stupid).

 

2. POOR-QUALITY SUGAR

 

• Poor-quality sugar refers to any food that contains fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, white sugar, glucose, Florida Crystals, or any artificial sweetener.

• Read product labels to reveal these ingredients. The various forms of corn syrup are commonly found in soft drinks, juice drinks, sweet candies, and packaged snack foods and cookies, and even in the so-called “healthy” protein bars.

• As best you can, eliminate products with these ingredients from your home. Let them be an exception on your menu rather than the rule.

• Replace commercial sodas and soft drinks with water, herbal teas or homemade juices. Use fresh fruit ; drained canned fruits ; organic jams; homemade LGI cakes, cookies, muffins, pies ; organic ice creams and sorbets.

• Replace all “reward foods” with higher quality health-food-store versions that use quality sweeteners such as the following:

– Fruits: Choose (chopped) fruits for its natural sweetness, vitamins, minerals, water and fiber, which help slow blood sugar levels.

– Raw honey: it is high in enzymes and phytochemicals related to plants and their pollen. It is traditionally used as both food and medicine. Raw honey is not suitable for infants.

– Maple syrup: High in minerals and phytochemicals. Organic varieties of maple syrup are free of the formaldehyde used in most mass-produced products.

– Barley malt: Less sweet than other sweeteners; good for baking. 

– Stevia: A noncaloric all-natural herbal sweetener with medicinal properties. A small amount can sweeten your beverage or tea.

 

• Because nutritional science says that all sweeteners are chemically the same, diet culture encourages an overabundance of poor-quality sweeteners, resulting in eating concerns, weight gain, heart disease, and diabetes.

• The culture says that diet sodas and artificial sweeteners will help us lose weight because they have no calories and no sugar to spike insulin. But that’s not really the case.

• After forty years of exposure to fake chemical sweeteners, not a single study has ever shown a remotely convincing link between sugar substitutes and weight loss.

• Instead, researchers are now discovering that artificial sweeteners fake pleasure and may actually cause us to gain weight.

• The artificial sweetener molecule is so clever that it tricks the brain into thinking it’s real sugar, causing the body to release insulin to help metabolize the artificial sugar.

• Since there is no real sugar present, the excess insulin, with nothing to do, does its other evolutionary job of signalling the body to store fat.

• In addition, there is mounting evidence that aspartame is a significant neurotoxin. So if you have any synthetically sweetened foods in your home, throw them out.

 

3. POOR-QUALITY WHITE FLOUR

 

• Poor-quality white flour means products such as mass-produced pastas, dough, breads, cookies, muffins, and bagels; crackers; cold breakfast cereals; sugar-sweetened oatmeal products; commercial granola bars; pretzels, pastries, and donuts.

• It is only in the last century that our diet has included such a large amount of refined and highly processed carbohydrates – white flour products, breads, cookies, doughnuts, chips, pretzels, cereals, crackers, pasta, candy, and so on.

• Today, the annual global flour consumption per person is 65 kg!

• Our ancestors ate carbohydrate foods in their unprocessed state. When we consume these foods, which have been stripped of most of their vitamins and minerals, our insulin levels spike, signalling the body to store weight and fat.

• Excess insulin also causes the body to crave more sugar and more carbohydrate foods. Eating disorders such as emotional eating, overeating, and binge eating can follow.

• Too much refined carbohydrate in our diet is problematic. You can still find out the exact amount of carbohydrate your body scientifically needs by referring to the Macronutrient Balance chart above.

• And you can also begin your exploration of quality by including those carbohydrates that have a quality story to tell and limiting or eliminating as best you can those that don’t.

• This alone will begin to curb carbohydrate cravings and greatly assist you in discovering your body’s natural intelligence in determining portions, percentages, and amounts.

• Replace poor-quality white-flour products with quality carbohydrate foods.

– These include organic varieties of brown rice, beans, quinoa, barley, corn, amaranth, oats, oatmeal, lentils, chickpeas, millet (grains and beans are best soaked before cooking); organic and/or freshly made pastas; sourdough or sprouted or fresh whole wheat breads; 

– Rye crackers; crackers without hydrogenated oils; organic chips (corn, potato, and rice chips without oil or made with olive oil); organic vegetables, including squash, sweet potatoes, yams, root vegetables, potatoes; organic fruit. Variety is the key.

• If you’re looking to cut back on carbohydrates, focus on the refined, mass-produced kind. And it’s a good idea to consider limiting the amount of gluten in your diet, which is primarily found in any product that contains wheat.

• Vegetables are fine. High starch vegetables are fine too, just go easy on them.

• Fruits are great, too – just make sure you get variety and don’t limit yourself to pineapple, grapes, bananas, and dried fruit, as these can be quite high in natural sugars.

• Whole grains like brown rice are preferable to their white cousins, but it’s no big deal to have white rice or white bread once in a while. As long as these are not major staples in your diet, you will not die from their occasional consumption 🙂

 

4. POOR-QUALITY DAIRY

 

• Poor-quality dairy means mass-produced, nonorganic, hormone-containing cheese, milk, yogurt, cream cheese, cottage cheese, flavoured milks, and snack foods with cheese by-products.

• Dairy products are an excellent source of absorbable calcium. 70% of our calcium intake comes from milk and cheese.

• Smaller amounts of bioavailable calcium can also be found in leafy greens, nuts and seeds, and mineral water.

• Dairy products are controversial in nutritional science because of lactose intolerance (an inability to metabolize lactose).

• Many people are sensitive or allergic to the protein in milk without realizing it. When the protein in milk is heated at high temperatures, as it is during pasteurization, the complex milk protein molecule – casein – is radically altered and can become cytotoxic and neurotoxic. 

• This can cause bloating and weight gain. If you have any symptoms, try a dairy-free diet for at least two weeks and see how the change affects you.

• If you can tolerate dairy, you will benefit from its appetite regulating effects, which will help reduce eating challenges.

• When you do use dairy products, replace mass-produced, poor-quality varieties with the following:

– Milk: Raw, organic, and unpasteurized is best. Locally produced with no hormones is a plus.

– Cheese: Organic, or any high-quality locally produced or imported varieties made from raw and unpasteurized milk.

– Yogurt: Full fat, organic, or locally produced when possible.

– Cottage cheese: Full fat, organic, and fresh is best.

– Butter: Local varieties, organic, raw milk, and European imports are generally the highest quality.

You can also use rice milk, almond milk, soy yogurt, rice yogurt, and soy-and rice-based ice creams as dairy-free substitutes. Please note that soy is controversial.

 

5. POOR-QUALITY MEATS

 

• Poor-quality meat refers to all fast-food meats; processed meats such as packaged cold cuts and commercially produced hot dogs; meats in frozen prepared foods and ready meals; any fresh or frozen meat that isn’t free range, hormone free, and fed real food; any meat produced from animals that are not raised and slaughtered with care and humanity.

• If you can, choose meat from farms that respect the welfare of animals and spare them suffering.

• Replace these poor-quality meats with any chicken, turkey, beef, pork, lamb, or other meat or poultry that is labeled free range, organic, grass fed, or hormone free.

 

– Many such products can be found fresh at your supermarket or deli.

– You can also find organically produced hamburgers, chicken soups, sausages, and other popular frozen and prepared meat items at a well-stocked health food store. 

– Free-range eggs (sometimes called omega eggs) are the preferred quality choice.

– You can also replace some or all of the meat in your diet with fresh or smoked fish or vegetarian sources of protein such as tofu, tempeh, and nut butters.

 

• We need to get real about our meat eating. Humankind owes its survival, in great part, to the animals we’ve eaten. To argue that meat eating is wrong negates the sustenance that has enabled us to be here so we could have something to argue about in the first place.

• And yet our overreliance on animal foods is clearly imbalanced and our relation to the animal kingdom is killing us. Our drive to mass produce meat is dramatically polluting our environment and stealing away valuable land and water from developing nations.

• It also makes our cows “crazy”. The inescapable truth is that eating a creature raised and sacrificed without care brings disease to humans.

• The most expensive and highly prized meat on Earth comes to us courtesy of the Kobe cows. These are quality bovines and their desirability has everything to do with lifestyle.

• In fact, if you’re ever needing to feel jealous toward a group of cows, these are the ones you should focus on. The Kobe cows live in Hawaii.

• They enjoy perfect weather and sunshine, they eat the healthiest, tastiest grass grown on nutrient-rich volcanic soil, they breathe fresh island air and have a beautiful ocean view, and they are blessed with plenty of time for socializing and quiet reflection.

• They’re living the dream. Is it any wonder they taste so good?

• The point is that these cows feed back to the eater exactly what was given to them: life, harmony, nourishment, regulation, nutrition.

• Of course, when we contrast this with the sad existence of factory-farmed animals it becomes apparent why the experts see such different results and draw so many contradictory conclusions about the relative health merits of meat.

• Research shows that countries with high per capita consumption of ultra-processed meat products, coupled with ultra refined carbohydrates, hydrogenated fats, and poor quality vegetable oils, have the highest levels of “meat-associated” compulsive eating, excess weight, and metabolic disease

• Whereas in traditional societies with no sugar, white flour products, or poor quality oils, but with high quality meat, there is no association between eating concerns and meat consumption.

 

WHAT IS THE MINDSET BEHIND QUALITY FOOD ON A DAILY BASIS?

• You now have the opportunity to do your best to purge the low-quality, mass-produced, unenlightened foods from your home and replace them with high-quality counterparts.

• It’s a time to focus on food that is fresh or home-cooked, organic, locally grown, and the best you can find, given whatever factors may be limiting you – time, convenience, money, or availability. During this time, let go of your need to know exactly what foods to eat and how much to eat.

• This is your primary task: Whenever and whatever you eat, make quality food choices 80 % of the time.

• This will ensure that you’re getting the nutrients you need to thrive, while eliminating the toxins that are polluting your eating habits and metabolic potential.

• This is a new beginning in how you value your body’s nourishment. Celebrate this new beginning by knowing that you’re raising the bar in how you honour the miracle of nourishment that connects us all.

• Say goodbye to the foods that do not reflect the quality, taste, peaceful eating and vitality you deserve, and welcome the ones that do.

• This doesn’t mean you can never have a donut or a muffin again. It simply means that the overall direction of your diet is quality, that you’re choosing to bring a higher level of food into the sanctuary of your home. Quality is the rule and everything else is the exception.

• Let’s be real. Most of us will stray from what we know is “healthy”. Eventually, we will eat the cake, the cookies, the pasta, and the junk. We will drink the alcohol, the sugary drinks.

• Or not. Depending on your level of consciousness.

• Let’s just make it a part of our dietary life instead of pretending it’s not. That’s the middle way and that’s the practical way for a lot of people.

• And in this day and age, it may be the healthiest way. Really. So don’t waste your energy trying to be and then demonize yourself when perfection inevitably fails.

• Again, if at least 80 % of the food that passes your lips is high quality, you’ll be doing well. Anything above that is a welcome bonus.

• This mindset goes beyond a simple list of “good foods” and “bad foods”

• When you wonder how much food you should eat, remember this: Start by elevating the quality of your food. This is the most practical nutritional improvement you can make.

• Once you harness food quality, then begin to adjust the quantity by using the Macronutrient Balance chart above and trusting your body’s wisdom.

• When it comes to recovering from eating and weight challenges, food quality supersedes quantity.

 

ASK YOURSELF:

• What does quality food mean to you?

• Is it important to you ?

• How does “Quality” show up elsewhere in your  life?

 

My friends, this is the end of Part 10 of The New Way of Nutrition. Part 11 will be next. As always, I appreciate your attention and energy. I sincerely hope this has been helpful. I’m glad we’re doing this together. There is more to come. See you on the other side.