Mindful Nutrition

We all know that good nutrition is at the center of optimum health and wellness. In our modern culture, the spectrum of diets is broad: from a steady diet of fast-food, to people who only eat locally-grown organic foods. Most of us fall somewhere in between: eating well when we can, cheating sometimes when we are pressed for time, dining out, on vacation or during the holidays.

At some point, many of us decided to take dietary supplements as an added 'insurance' to make sure we are at least meeting our minimum nutritional needs. Then we mindlessly take these, and read articles with opposing view-points: some say supplements are a great way to improve health, others say supplements are a waste of money. And we become confused.

At the heart of the problem, is the lack of awareness or connection to what we are putting in our bodies. We feel a cold coming on, so we pop a Vitamin C because we read that it helps to fight colds. We don't necessarily do this because taking the supplement makes us feel better, and some of us are not even aware of the quality of the Vitamin C that we take, or whether other nutrients might be better for our cold.

Most of us think we know what we are eating. We may be eating a cracker with cheese, or a hamburger, or a salad, and we check it off the list of categories like: dairy, or meat, or vegetable.

The reality is that our food is much more than the generic category that it falls under. Cheese may contain additives or emulsifiers to keep it from separating when cooked. Sometimes it is so far off, that it can't even be labeled 'cheese', it has to be labeled 'cheese product'. The beef in your hamburger may be fed gmo-corn and treated with antibiotics and hormones to increase yield, or it may be a healthier, more nutritious grass-fed beef. Even the tomatoes in your salad may be coated with a food-grade petroleum-based wax.

I personally don't like the idea of eating petroleum anything.

As you eat, be mindful of where your food came from. Be mindful of what else is in your food. Be mindful of what may be sprayed on your food.

As you develop an awareness of the source, quality and additives in your food, you will naturally begin to shift away from the synthetic and processed foods, and move toward the more nutrient-dense whole foods.

The debate over supplements and vitamins is never ending.

The general consensus is that it is best to get your nutrients from your food. The reason for this is that real, whole, raw foods contain enzymes and phytonutrients that enhance the body's ability to absorb and use the vitamin efficiently. An isolated vitamin, in pill form, may not have the health benefits that we expect from that vitamin.

So, we decide to eat salad and get our nutrients directly from food. But as we look at the tasteless, iceberg lettuce that has been sitting out for hours in our office cafeteria, we begin to wonder if it is really meeting our nutritional needs.

Just to be sure we take a supplement with all the antioxidants, and reassure ourselves that at least the lettuce is providing some fiber.

Then again, not all supplements are created equal. For example, a generic vitamin tablet may contain additives like coloring and flavoring and various binders. By contrast, a whole food supplement will include parts of the fruit, peel, plant or root (depending on the vitamin) to provide more complete nutrition. Whole food supplements may contain other ingredients (algae, mushrooms, herbs) to enhance the benefit. They say that 90% of a fruit's antioxidant strength is in the peel or just below the skin. Getting complete nutrition, and better absorption, means you don't need as much of it to maintain health.

So, even as we consider taking vitamins, we want to do so mindfully. Think about what our nutrition needs are, and make sure we take a Whole Food Supplement that will nourish our body more completely.

It's not a bad idea to take quality supplements to make sure you are getting quality nutrition, but be careful that it does not become a substitute for eating quality foods.

This isn't to say that you can not sometimes enjoy a decadent dessert, or those yummy fries, but even good quality supplements are not a substitute for eating good healthy food. A diet loaded with lots of fats, processed foods, and chemicals will not absorb vitamins well. While eating lots of healthy, clean foods will keep your liver clean, your digestive system working efficiently, and you will get more out of the supplements you do take.

In other words, use supplements mindfully to 'complement' your healthy diet and support your health goals.

Often, therapeutic levels of nutritional supplements are prescribed to support the body in healing from disease. For example, a Naturopathic Oncologist may use immunotherapy to enhance the effectiveness of conventional cancer treatments.

This is a different sort of supplementation that is not part of our dietary goals, but rather taken in place of, or alongside medical treatment, so it should be considered for it's medicinal purpose rather than compensating for a nutritional deficiency.

We are getting more than vitamins, nutrients, and proteins from our food. New research is revealing that our body is also collecting miRNA from the food we eat, and these can have an effect on our human cell function. We are not just consuming nutrients, we are consuming gene regulators.

This new information has some interesting implications for the role foods play in diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes. It also has some interesting implications for the need to do further research on Genetically Modified Foods. If the DNA of the foods we eat is surviving digestion, and interacting at the cellular level, then the claim for 'substantial equivalence' in GMOs may not bear out.

Think of the interactions of rBGH hormones in milk. It took a while before we discovered that this is connected with breast cancer. Now most milk is labeled 'no growth hormones'.

As humans, we evolved as omnivores to consume a varied diet of whole naturally occurring foods. The closer we stay to this, the better our body functions. As we move away from it, to packaged foods, genetically altered foods, fast foods, preservatives, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and chemical fertilizers to compensate for poor soil... the more detached we are from the source, the greater the risk to our health.

Food is not grown, or raised sustainably, it is manufactured. We have convinced ourselves that we are eating real food because it looks like food, but we take nutritional supplements because on some level we don't trust that. It's a cycle that our mind is aware of, so we disconnect and try not to worry about it.

Then chronic health issues go up, in spite of the fitness boom, diet programs, and medical advances.

But consider this:

Eat mindfully. Think of everything you put in your body, and it's source. Eat a diverse diet, with a variety of nutrient dense foods. Eat locally grown foods. Feel good about the food you eat.

You will begin to crave healthy food, and get a little creeped out by highly processed frankenfood.

There is a saying: "You are what you eat."

Think about this whenever you eat.

I would rather be a Fresh Strawberry picked from the vine, than a grease-laden Chicken McNugget.