The Western Diet (From Fresh to Processed)
Americans are spending 40 percent of their food dollars eating out. Many Africans are developing similar habits. Food is processed, refined, concentrated, sugared, salted and chemically engineered to produce taste sensations high in calories and low in nutrients. And we are paying dearly for this advancements, while we eat to live, what we eat is killing us.
Yes! In 1900, fewer than 10 percent of deaths in America and Africa were attributed to coronary artery disease. Today it's close to 40 percent. Back then less than 6 percent died of cancer, while today the figures in America exceeds 25 percent
This isn't nature's way, we weren't meant to die in such numbers from heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and from cancer of the lungs, colon, breast and prostrate.
Significant cardiovascular disease began to emerge after World War I, it became rampant only after World War II, when people could afford diets rich in Animal products and when the food industry began producing highly processed foods crammed with calories and emptied of nutrition.
Rural populations in China and southeast Asia with little access to rich foods experience few heart attacks. Similarly, people in rural countries in Africa, and South and Central America have little fear of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In New Zealand, North America, Australia and in affluent countries in Europe, Asia and Africa were diets are rich in fat and cholesterol, heart disease and diabetes are epidemic.
The villains, low fibre, high fat, and cholesterol take their toll by damaging the body's vital oxygen carrying arteries and by upsetting important metabolic functions.
Because of disordered metabolisms from unbalanced lifestyles, obesity is epidemic and a new diabetic is diagnosed every 50 seconds.
What can be done?
Education is the key! As people learn that refinement robs food of most of its fibre and nutrients, and processing adds calories and chemical additives, many are willing to make changes.
By eating a simple, more traditional diet of "food as grown" and by walking at least 10,000 steps a day, you can have the same freedom from heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes. It is possible, but you need three essentials:
Desire: To modify a habit, you must want to change, to change your habits and lifestyle you need desire to energize yourself.
Knowledge: You also must know what to change and why you should change it.
Skill: Just knowing what to do isn't enough, you need to know how to do it.
Skills that promotes health include learning how to cook cholesterol-free, low fat meals, developing a program of regular exercise, reading food labels to avoid highly salted products, and becoming skilled at choosing more natural, traditional food outlets.
Try this experiment, eat one or two servings of fresh fruit every morning for the next three weeks. Eat as many different kinds as you can find.
