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[Home] [Foundations] [Nutrition] Health Foundation # 2:  Nutrition  Eating a wide variety of nutrient-dense food is the best way to ensure that the cellular repair tools needed in the body are actually available. Nutrients are the building blocks or tools the body needs to maintaining its physical integrity or capability of operating correctly. Nutrient dense foods means mineral, vitamin, phytonutrient, protein and oil rich foods that are prepared in ways that don’t damage the nutrients and don’t introduce toxifying elements into the body. You are WHAT YOU EAT!     We Are What We Eat ,Food is essential to life, but, paradoxically, the seeds of our death are in the daily food we eat. We need to choose wisely what we put into our mouths. The longest lived people we know of eat large amounts of raw seeds and vegetables and a very little of animal, fowl or fish foods as well. We Obtain Three Useful Things From Food: Water. Fuel - from which we get energy. Nutrients - building blocks by which our cells can maintain themselves. Our focus in this section will be in regard to the nutrient tools (#3 above). Fuel, a key element of health, is discussed elsewhere. The Three Most Desirable Categories of Nutrient Dense Food Fatty acid rich foods (sprouts, seeds, seed oils, wild-game and fish) Photonutrient, vitamin, antioxidant, functional sugar and amino-acid rich foods (sprouts, vegetables and fruits ) Mineral rich foods (wild-game and fish, sprouts, seeds, vegetables and grains) The above three types of food have been proven many times over to help prevent the onset of degenerative disease conditions. Conversely, because they don’t provide many nutrients, we recommend against most breads, pastas, cereals, and other starchy foods, and virtually all processed foods. Low Insulin/Leptin Levels are Keys to Longevity To push against the envelope of maximum life span, there is only one guaranteed method — it is to maintain low insulin and leptin levels in the blood. Low leptin levels are the result of eating, as little food as possible, while still getting adequate nutrition. To do so, it is necessary to eat nutrient dense food. Low leptin levels means low levels of fat in the body meaning, also, that we need to be in fat burning mode as opposed to sugar-burning mode. General Principles Regarding Eat Nutrient Dense Food We should choose to primarily eat vegetables, legumes, seeds, wild game, wild-fish. These have the highest density of useable nutrition, or in other words, the ratio of useable nutrients to calories is highest. Excessive cooking or processing of food destroy nutrients. As nutrient value goes down because of cooking or processing, the value of eating that food diminishes. Uncooked, essential fatty acid containing foods are the best foods of all. Especially, seeds and fish are some of the best foods one can eat in terms of longevity and health because they don’t raise insulin levels and the body needs healthy fats for correct functioning of all cellular membranes. Variety is part of wise eating. Each particular kind of food contains some nutrients that another food doesn’t contain. So, don’t eat the same foods daily. Mix it up. We should limit fruit intake because fruit, although it is high in both minerals, antioxidants and calories, is high in calories.  Fruits are best limited to only one or two servings per day. Eating slowly and chewing food completely releases makes the nutrients in food more likely to be assimilated and also helps prevent overeating (which would raise insulin levels). A solution for people who are too busy to prepare and eat per the above principles: Nutritional beverage drinks can be an excellent way to get concentrated food nutrients with few calories. One such food product that you might consider incorporating into your daily regimen is called Seven Essentials or Essential Seven or E7. It provides the equivalent antioxidants of 42 servings of vegetables (an ORAC rating of 21,010) in a single serving of food powder (tastes delicious) and has only 60 calories per serving. It contains seven types of concentrated, antioxidant rich foods. To learn more about Seven Essentials, click here.   To continue to learn more about eating antioxidant, EFA and other nutritionally rich foods, click here. Back to Top