holistic lifestyle

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In this podcast I’ll be exploring once again my favourite topic Real Food:

• I’ll share which fake processed pretend food-like products you should never eat… ever
• I’ll be offering a master list of real foods that you should be eating plenty of on a regular basis
• Finally, I’ll explain how to best use this real food manifesto for your individual goals

CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN

Remember the definition I gave in the previous podcast describing what real food is.

“Real food is any organic and natural plant or animal that fuels and nourishes the human body with energy and nutrition.”

Well the first group of foods I’m about to share now are the exact opposite because they are not food, but are marketed to you as being food. You should never and I mean ever intentionally buy, store at home or work, eat or even think about including these fake processed pretend food-like products in your diet and your life. No human, no mammal, no animal, no plant on this planet should be consuming these products.

That’s not to say that you won’t ever be exposed to these pseudo-foods these fake foods, but you can at least minimise the damage they cause to your body and health by reframing how you look at these foods and changing your perspective from seeing foods to seeing crappy industrial commercial products instead that do nothing more than expand and fatten your waistline as well as the bottom-line of big corporations.

First pseudo-food are industrial seed oils also marketed as healthy vegetable oils.

• Canola — aka rapeseed
• Corn
• Soya
• Cottonseed
• Safflower
• Low-oleic sunflower
• Peanut and groundnut
• Rice bran
• Grape seed

 
These oils all come from seeds, grains, and legumes, not from vegetables. The way these oils have been manufactured, produced, processed, stored and packaged damages the delicate fatty acids in the oils making them go rancid. Rancid oil is off, it’s stale and dead and when you eat rancid oil you get turned off to life as well.

Ever wonder how they turn a liquid oil like canola into a solid? By using biochemical processes such as hydrogenation and transesterification companies can do amazing things. Too bad the end products are one molecule away from being plastic! So next time you see hydrogenated or transesterified on a label you run. Run literally like your life depends on it.

So do not eat industrial seed oils or any product made with them such as:

• Margarine and other buttery spreads
• Sauces
• Salad dressings
• Mayo
• Chips
• Baked goods
• Gluten-free foods

 
Virtually all processed food-like products have been made with these damaged rancid industrial seed oils. Also a lot of restaurants and food outlets fry and cook foods with these industrial seed oils because it’s cheaper and they believe they’re doing the right thing in terms of giving customers a healthier end product.

Now if you have a heart healthy program in your country you will see a lot of these fake foods with a heart healthy mark on them. Again don’t believe the hype and the marketing. In New Zealand where I live we have the the Heart Foundation Tick programme where over 1100 products (products!) in 62 food categories have purchased the right to proudly display the healthy red tick. Yes it’s a paid for service. Unfortunately most of the products use industrial seed oil as the main ingredient.

Be alert, be wary, but don’t be afraid because now that you know better you can do better.

Next pseudo-food is regular table salt. Table salt has been processed and stripped of its minerals and trace minerals meaning there’s no micronutrients in table salt as there is in naturally occurring salt leaving behind a very bright white powder. Also there are anti-caking agents and other chemical additives added to table salt to prevent it from sticking and clumping together.

Table salt, not natural sea salt, is associated with blood pressure issues. Your body requires natural salt for many bodily functions such as keeping your water, sodium, and potassium levels in balance.

Salt should not be a pure white colour. It should be grey, pink, red, any colour besides white. It should be of the ocean and earth it came from. It will be full of Earth minerals and trace minerals as well as Earth energy and information.

You’ll find table salt in extremely high amounts in processed and packaged fake food-like products, salted butter (unless it says sea salt on the label), in takeout and fast foods, and even restaurants use the cheaper salt.

I love my New Zealand sea salt and Celtic salt is another great sea salt. Rock salt like Himalayan salt is awesome too.

Instant coffee is pseudo-food number three. Instant coffee is to organic whole bean coffee as a McDonald’s Fillet ‘o Fish burger is to a baked fillet of wild-caught salmon served over mesclun salad drizzled with lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil.

Instant coffee is junk food. Usually the worst of the worst coffee beans, the bad, the ugly, the deformed are ground to make instant coffee. Also the way it’s processed and stored leads to a build-up of mould and microorganisms that create toxic products, which they happily leave behind in the powder. Personally I find instant coffee just tastes like crap.

Another thing to keep in mind for those with coeliac disease and non-coeliac gluten sensitivity is that instant coffee has high cross-reactivity with gluten meaning your body may process instant coffee the same way it processes gluten.

So instant coffee — don’t even go there.

Fourth pseudo-food I believe that no life should be consuming is pasteurised milk. What is pasteurisation? Pasteurisation is the processes of heating a liquid to kill all the microorganisms in it. Well that’s actually marketing. That was a legitimate reason back in the day when cows were literally living in their own filth. But the reason pasteurisation of any food is still used today by the food industry is so that fake foods have a longer shelf-life meaning more sales, more money, and a new BMW or Audi for food company executives.

Now raw milk from any mammal is full of nutrition and energy and information that supports the growth of life. It’s full of naturally occurring macronutrients and micronutrients. It’s full of good microorgansims, the probiotics that keep the bad microorganisms, the pathogens from infecting and spoiling the milk. It’s also full of native enzymes that help digest and breakdown the milk.

Pasteurised milk that has been heated to kill the bad bugs has also killed the good bugs. So now you have a milk that’s lost its defence system and if pasteurised milk gets infiltrated by even a tiny amount of pathogens it spoils. It spoils quickly and it spoils hard because there’s no probiotics to protect the milk and fight off the bad guys.

Also the enzymes that would usually help you digest the milk have been destroyed and the macros and micros have all been modified and denatured to the point where a lot of people get sick drinking this stuff.

There’s no point to pasteurised milk it’s been killed, it’s a dead product.

Seriously raw milk is the only way to go.

Final pseudo-food to keep away from your life forever (forever ever?) forever is wheat. The wheat of today has been commercially purposefully hybridised and bred to be smaller and contain a lot more gluten compared to its distant ancestor that is associated as being the staff of life in biblical times.

Wheat producers have made wheat a lot smaller so that their industrial agricultural machinery can more easily harvest and process the grain. Plus they’ve dramatically increased the gluten content of wheat to make it a lot easier to bake with as gluten literally is the glue that makes baked products nice and doughy.

Problem is no mammal on this planet can fully breakdown and digest gluten. I will repeat no mammal on this planet can fully breakdown and digest gluten.

Gluten is a protein made up of a long chain of amino acids. So if you can imagine a pearl necklace as a protein molecule and each pearl being an amino acid gluten is a very long pearl necklace a very long protein molecule compared to proteins found in animal and other plant foods. Gluten will get partially broken down say to a smaller necklace, but our body only accepts individual pearls and extremely tiny necklaces and these larger protein molecules are what cause people with coeliac disease to digestively explode and for other people with non-coeliac gluten sensitivity to experience other non-digestive issues. For me my mind gets all screwy when I eat gluten.

Not only that, but many people are also allergic and sensitive to other components found in wheat.

So the wheat of today has broad health implications for humans due to the way it’s been modified and manufactured and farmed and is definitely not the same grain that was eaten by our pioneering agricultural ancestors.

As an alternative to wheat the best and highest quality grain you can eat is known as einkorn. It contains none of the many allergenic stuff you’ll find in wheat and yes while einkorn still has gluten in it, it is in a different form and in different proportions compared to the gluten in wheat meaning people who may not tolerate wheat or gluten may find einkorn doesn’t upset their body and mind so much. I haven’t tried einkorn as I’m gluten-free, but it’s on the horizon for me to try out to see if it works for me or not.

You can also eat barley, rye, oats, and spelt if you enjoy grain-based products.

Your mission if you choose to accept it is to make sure you don’t intentionally eat any of these five pseudo-foods. Chronic consistent everyday exposure to these fake foods will overwork your body to the point where one day it’ll finally give up. All because you haven’t been eating enough real food that would have the nutritional and energetic and informational resources to eliminate the fake foods from your body. If you eat plenty of real food on a regular basis then the nutrition and energy and information that you receive will make sure that any time you are accidentally exposed to fake pretend food-like products your body will have the resources to repair the damage caused by eating that crap.

I’m about to layout the real food manifesto, but first let me explain what a manifesto is.

A manifesto is a declaration of what you believe to be true.

A manifesto is also a platform and a base that one can use to build upon and improve any given situation.

This real food manifesto is what I use to heal myself and what I also use to help others reach their health goals. It’s not the be all and end all of healthy food recommendations as I’ll talk about later in the show, but it’s a great starting point for anyone who is just starting out on their health journey or is confused on where to go next.

Remember as I stated in the previous podcast on real food quality absolutely matters. You want real food that has lived by the laws of Mother Nature in its natural environment eating a species appropriate diet without added industrial toxic chemicals and with no genetic modifications.

Let me now list all the real foods you should be eating in order to get the nutrition and energy and information you need for your body, your mind, and for an awesome life.

Fats

• Egg yolks
• Ghee
• Clarified butter
• Butter
• Lard
• Bacon fat
• Tallow — beef and lamb fat
• Duck fat
• Coconut oil
• Palm oil
• Cacao butter
• Macadamia oil
• Extra-virgin avocado oil
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Sesame oil
• Raw nuts and seeds

 
Proteins

• Organ meats — liver, heart, kidney, brain, pancreas etc
• Fish
• Seafood
• Eggs
• Wild game
• Lamb
• Beef
• Fowl
• Pork

 
Carbohydrates

• Sea vegetables
• Land vegetables
• Fruits
• Dates and dried fruits
• Raw honey — local
• Maple syrup — 100%
• Natural sweeteners — stevia herb, lo han guo, erythritol, xylitol
• Refined sugars — molasses, rice and pure glucose syrups

 
Grains (carbs)

• Organic white rice
• Non-GMO organic corn
• Pseudo-grains — actually seeds like quinoa, buckwheat, millet
• Whole grains — einkorn being the preferred choice

 
Legumes

• Green beans
• Peas
• Organic peanuts
• Fermented organic soy — natto, miso, gluten-free soy sauce, tempeh
• Other beans

 
Fermented foods (include but not limited to)

• Fermented cod-liver oil
• Sauerkraut
• Kimchi
• Kombucha
• Amasai
• Kefir
• Soy sauce — gluten free
• Tempeh
• Miso

 
Dairy

• Amasai
• Kefir
• Yoghurt — fermented for at least 18 hours
• Goat
• Sheep
• Buffalo
• Camel
• Cow
• Ghee, clarified butter, and butter oil — 99.99% fat
• Butter — unsalted, 80% fat
• Cream —  35-50%
• Cheese — 4-40%
• Yoghurt — 4-10%
• Milk — 4% fat

 
Salt

• New Zealand kelp salt — sea salt with added kelp
• Celtic sea salt
• Himalayan crystal salt

 
Herbs and spices (include but not limited to)

• Parsley
• Oregano
• Rosemary
• Basil
• Thyme
• Garlic
• Turmeric
• Ginger
• Cinnamon
• Cumin
• Nutmeg
• Raw unsweetened cacao powder — my personal favourite spice

 
Water

• Spring and artesian well water
• Filtered water — chlorine and fluoride filters or reverse osmosis, but you must add back minerals to RO water
• Bottled water — glass and stainless steel
• Coconut water — full of electrolytes

 
Phew! I will put this manifesto into a PDF document that you can download in the show notes for this episode. You can find that at wholeguidance.com/blog.

Everyone is different, we are all different. The way we think, the way we feel, the way we live our lives and also the way our bodies digest, absorb and assimilate, metabolise and detoxify, and finally eliminate the food that we eat. We all do it differently.

So while this real food manifesto is a great starting point for you on your health journey you have to listen to your body, read the signs and symptoms and go where it flows.

For example I said pasteurised milk is fake food and raw milk is real food, but if you find when you drink fresh raw milk you get skin outbreaks or gas or mucus building up in your body, don’t drink it. Maybe you’ll do better with higher fat dairy products such as cream or butter and if you can’t even do butter you may find you do just fine with high quality ghee or clarified butter which are virtually 100% fat with extremely low-to-no dairy proteins present.

Other examples are maybe you don’t tolerate cooked eggs and figure out you can eat raw egg yolks without any problems (that’s me!). Maybe you can’t do beef right now, stick to lamb or fish. Maybe seafood isn’t for you.

Another thing is macro ratios and serving size. You may find you do better on a higher carb diet due to the high-intensity exercises you perform on a daily basis. Perhaps high fat low carb works for you because you’re doing more low-intensity and more endurance based activities and you find eating this way gives you better clarity of thought and you’re able to focus on tasks longer without being distracted.

“There’s so much individuality when it comes to diet.”

One way to find out which foods and in what proportions work and don’t work for you is to listen to your body and take note of your body language.

Are you able to isolate any health symptoms you’re currently experiencing like acne, constipation, back pain, and migraines and blame it on a particular food or food group? For example I know that when I eat gluten while I don’t get any obvious digestive symptoms I do get pretty moody and my ability to think straight and focus goes down the toilet. Stinkin’ thinkin’ begins to brew and if I were to continue to eat gluten on a regular basis and become a chronic consumer of the stuff dark thoughts start to creep back into my life. I basically become a lifeless zombie with a foggy brain.

The elimination diet is the best tool around to help you figure out which foods promote your well-being and which foods turn you into the walking dead. Best book on this topic is The Elimination Diet by Tom Malterre and Alissa Segersten.

Okay so for macro ratios if you find yourself tired, feeling full yet hungry, and with sugar cravings after a meal you probably ate too much fats and protein. If you get a headache, don’t feel full and get hungry quickly, feel tired but wired you know like the jitters, with up and down mood swings you may have eaten too many carbs.

Keep a track of how you look and feel after every meal for 7 days and you may see a pattern emerging. The longer you keep track of this stuff and the more data and information you gather the better off you will be long-term as you can now make more well-informed food choices.

With this manifesto you could still blindly eat all the real foods on this list and not listen to your body and while you may experience some issues with your health you will not get anywhere near as sick as you would have if you were to eat foods according to some other recommendations, e.g. the Cookie Diet or the United States Department of Agriculture’s food pyramid.

Okay so this real food manifesto I hope will provide you with a clearer picture on what real food really is and what fake pretend food-like products you should never touch again.

Remember to listen to your body and eat what works for you in the proportions that fit your current lifestyle requirements and don’t eat what doesn’t work.

Hippocrates said:

“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”

Have you had your medicine today?

I would like to build upon that quote and say:

“Let real food be your guide and let your guide be real food.”

If you’re feeling lost in life try a morsel of real food. It will light up the path, your life purpose, that has been hidden from your view.

Real food has definitely enlightened my life.

Links and Resources

• Real Food Manifesto PDF
• The Elimination Diet — Tom Malterre, Alissa Segersten

 
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring my favourite topic Real Food:

• I’ll explain what real food really is and its different nutritional components
• I’ll talk about how eating real food and fake food affect your health
• Finally, I’ll share how to recognise real food and simple ways to make it a part of your holistic healthy and happy lifestyle

CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN

What is real food? If I were to sum it up in one word — QUALITY. Quality food makes for quality humans, which makes for a quality planet, which makes for quality soil, which makes for quality plants, which makes for quality animals, which makes for more real quality food and here we have the circle of life.

If I were to use a few more words real food is any organic and natural plant or animal that fuels and nourishes the human body with energy and nutrition.

Now if I were to use some poetic words to define real food it’ll go a little something like this:

Real Food
Lived on the Earth
In the Sky
Under the Sun

Real Food
Is fished from pristine Oceans
Harvested from organic Soils
Plucked from vibrant Trees

Real Food
Has abundant Nutrition
Limitless amounts of Energy
Universal intelligence and Information

Real Food
Is loved by Mother Nature
Lives giving Love
Dies receiving Love

Real Food
Eats
Real Food

So hopefully by now you’re getting the idea that real food isn’t invented, created, and made-up in a lab by Father Industry.

Real food is birthed, grown, and raised by Mother Nature. Real food comes from the land, the sea, the sky, and is lovingly cared for, cherished, and blessed before it’s harvested from the bosom of Mother Nature. Real food is of the Earth not of the petridish or chemistry set or factory line or a corporation’s bottom-line.

Real food is the highest quality of nutrition, energy, and information infused with the life force of Mother Nature herself.

Let’s talk about real food nutrition and here I’m talking about macronutrients (macros) and micronutrients (micros).

Macros include fats broken down in the body and used as fatty acids. Proteins broken down in the body and used as amino acids. Carbohydrates broken down in the body and used as saccharides (sugar). Fibre a form of carbohydrate is not broken down and used by our body and mainly comes in two forms. One form is broken down and used as food by your gut microbiota (that’s all the microorganisms that live in your gastrointestinal tract) and this fibre is called a prebiotic. The other form of fibre isn’t digested by your body or your gut microbiome and is eliminated. Last macro and possibly most important is water. Water is a massive component of real food and the quality of the water in real food depends on how the food was grown and raised.

Micros is where we get into the teeny tiny small world of nutrition. However, micros have a far bigger impact on your health than macros ever will. What real food really gives you in terms of happiness and health are these micros in huge amounts.

Micronutrients include vitamins. There are fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamins A, D, K, and E (sidenote vitamin D is actually a hormone), and water soluble vitamins the B complexes and the most well known vitamin of them all vitamin C.

Another group of micronutrients found in real food are minerals such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, and sulphur, and trace minerals like zinc, iron, copper, manganese, selenium, and cobalt.

Phytonutrients are another group of micros. Phyto comes from the Greek word for plants so these nutrients are found in plants, but they can be passed on to animals that you eat as well. The list of phytonutrients goes on for days and includes polyphenols, carotenoids, flavonoids, isoflavonoids, indoles, lignans, anthocyanidins, proanthocyanidins, catechins, thiocyanates, isothiocyanates, etc etc.

You can think of macros as providing the basic building blocks of the body giving the body its physical structure. But what’s holding these building blocks together? What’s the glue, what’s the cement, what’s the duct tape that keeps the fats, proteins, carbs, fibre, and water all working together are the micros.

All cellular functions and metabolic processes in your body require assistant molecules called cofactors and micros are these cofactors. If you’re eating macro-rich yet micro-poor foods your body turns into a house of cards where any second now, any minute, any day, month or year it’s going to break down and fall apart. Without the micros the macros you consume are like a classroom full of unsupervised misbehaving teenagers up to no good. No good at all.

Macros and micros are present in all real foods, but in different ratios. Vegetables and fruit from the same garden or tree for example can have very different levels to each other due to environmental factors such as the angle of the sun, temperature differences, and water availability.

The last nutrient I’ll talk about when it comes to real food is difficult to measure in a lab, but exists nonetheless — Energy and Information. This energy is the vital life force that comes from Mother Nature and the planet and the information is linked with the universal intelligence that lives inside all matter. Yeah yeah sounds woo-woo hairy-fairy, but do you think that’s you that’s breathing you now?

Anyhoo…

Real food contains quality energy and information and the quality depends on how the food was grown and raised. Was it in sick soil? Was it sprayed with chemicals? Was it given growth hormone or antibiotics? Was it genetically modified? How fresh is it and how long has it been sitting out?

“Sick food makes for sick humans, makes for a sick planet, makes for sick soil, makes for sick plants, makes for sick animals, makes for more sick food and here we have the wheel of death!”

If you had an apple freshly picked from an apple tree in your backyard and another apple that was imported and flown in from halfway around the world or local and sprayed with chemicals and you took a huge bite out of each apple, now I’m not talking about flavour, taste, texture, macros or micros I’m talking about energy and information, you will feel, you will sense, and you will receive more abundant energy and information from your backyard apple compared to the journeyman drugged apple.

The food you’re eating may look real on the outside, but in fact could be empty of energy and information and be close to dying on the inside and you wouldn’t even know it because it’s been waxed or coloured and injected with preservatives. Fake food is stripped of Mother Nature’s life force and is full of mucked up scrambled information because of the way Father Industry has treated that food.

Energy and information transcends appearance.

I know people who others would say look a bit rundown and a little bit dodgy, but when you actually take the time to sit down and have a chat with them their attitude, their vitality, the vibration that they give off you totally receive it and then you get infused and inspired by that same attitude and energy and information they’ve shared with you. Then there’s the other type of people I call fit-sick people and I used to be one of them. Fit on the outside, but sick on the inside. These guys can look like Greek gods and goddesses, but being around them just drains the living life force out of you and that’s the same with food.

There are some foods that are so sick on the inside they draw energy and information out of you when you eat them.

Then there’s food that’s so chock-full of energy and information you get inspired by them. For me I love blueberries especially the teeny tiny small ones, they’re so tart and sometimes surprisingly sweet. They have a lower flesh to skin ratio compared to larger berries meaning less sugar and a whole lot more phytonutrients and antioxidants from the skin. For some reason I can eat a whole bowl of big berries and feel ‘oh, that was nice’, but when I eat a whole bowl of little teeny tiny berries I feel a whole lot more vibrant, vital, energised, inspired, and happy!

So when you go on nutrition websites or use nutrition apps and look for the fats, proteins, carbs, fibre, water, vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, and phytonutrient contents of a food there’s one last thing you need to keep in mind. Don’t forget that there’s energy and information, life force energy of the planet and universal intelligence that you’re downloading into you when you eat food and uploading into your brain as you absorb and assimilate that food. You really are what you eat. Your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, and your results are hugely, significantly, massively impacted by what you eat.

Eat low energy low information low intelligent food and you will feel the exact same way.

Now the health impacts of eating real healthy food compared to eating fake sick food.

I’m going to focus on three areas of your health.

The most important health aspect of them all is your immune system and your gut microbiota or more specifically the probiotics in your gut. Pro meaning for and bio meaning life so probiotics are the good bugs in your gut. Okay so what’s the link between your immune system, probiotics, your gut, and your health.

There’s a few ways foreign objects can get into your bloodstream. Your skin, your lungs, your mouth hole and your south hole. Guess where more than 80% of your immune system and most of the microorganisms are located in the body? In your gut. Believe it or not, but from mouth to south, the enteron, the alimentary canal, your digestive tube is actually technically outside of your body. Now you ingest foreign objects via the mouth 3-6 times a day and that stuff goes down your oesophagus your throat into your stomach and then your small intestines to your large intestines where any leftovers and other bodily waste products are eliminated. This is why almost all of your immune system and microorganisms in your body live in your gut as they deal with a lot of foreign stuff coming down the pipe.

The immune system works side-by-side with your gut probiotics. They’re besties, tight, friends for life. Always liking and sharing each other’s Facebook posts and Snapchatting non-stop. Your immune system and probiotics are essentially linked together fighting the good fight on your behalf. Together they decide who and what can stay. They decide what can be absorbed and assimilated through your gut wall and allowed to enter inside your body and they decide who and what must go.

When your immune system and probiotics aren’t working together as they should your immune system begins to weaken meaning you get sick a lot easier than usual. Also one of the main roles of probiotics is to keep the peace within your gut microbiome meaning no pathogenic microorganisms take over the joint. Patho means disease and genic means to create so pathogens are the bad bugs. So if your probiotic population gets upset and begins to shrink you increase your chances of getting a parasite, fungal, or bacterial infection in your gut.

When you’re eating real food guess what happens to the probiotic population in your gut? They thrive. Probiotics love fibre, they love prebiotics. It’s their real food.

Your immune system and the processes that depend on it loves macros and micros. However, if you’re eating cookies, if you’re eating pastries, if you’re eating kids cereals, if you’re drinking pasteurised skim milk or juices, not only do these foods have denatured damaged macros and micros in very small amounts, but the sugars from the highly processed and refined modified carbs feed the bad bugs, the pathogens. At the same time you’re starving the probiotics of fibre of prebiotics of their food because processed fake foods have no fibre.

Eating fake foods grows the population of pathogens and shrinks the population of probiotics and then your immune system no longer has the support of the good guys to do its job properly and becomes weak. Then the pathogens continue to grow getting stronger and they start fighting your immune system, oh the horror! This is what happens when you don’t give the body what it needs.

Another area of your health I’ll talk about is epigenetics.

Most people know about genetics, genes, and DNA and how they influence your eye colour and hair type etc and how they come from your parents.

So what is epigenetics? Well epi means above so epigenetics is above the genes and it’s all about how external environmental lifestyle factors control genetic expression. That is how the way you live your life can turn certain genes on and off. Epigenetics is telling you that your environment, your thoughts, your feelings, who you interact with, how you respond to events in your life, what you eat and drink, how you move, the type of sleep you’re getting, how much time you spend with Mother Nature, and your toxin exposure all of these affect your genes!

Let’s say for example you have a gene for breast cancer. Well just because you have the gene for breast cancer doesn’t mean you’ll get breast cancer. What it means is depending on your epigenetics how you live your life will determine whether this gene turns on or off.

Epigenetics gives you control of your genes. Now you won’t be able to change your eye colour or hair type (well the jury’s still out on that one actually), but you can turn genes on and off based on how you live.

In terms of food eating real food, again with natural forms of macros and micros along with plenty of energy and information this tells your body one thing — this person is in an environment of abundance therefore I’m going to turn on all my happy genes. All genes that make me feel good, that fulfill me, that provide me with vitality because in this moment life is good.

But when you’re eating fake food without the cofactors, without the nutrition, lacking the energy and information that your genes require change of plans people. Now your body thinks you’re living in a place of scarcity. It’s saying to itself, ‘this person is starving, they’re eating too much crap, they’re overfed, but undernourished so we need to make sure that we can keep their body running because they’re killing us right now.’ So your body starts putting all these backup survival plans into action and starts turning off health affirming genes and turning on disease affirming genes at different intensities in order to keep it alive. Yes, disease is your body’s attempt to survive.

As an analogy I’ll use what the USA use for determining alertness and readiness levels in their military. First up:

• Defcon 5 — Shut down digestion, growth, and sex hormones; switch on stress hormones.
• Defcon 4 — Shut down energy production; switch on pain genes.
• Defcon 3 — Shut down health genes; switch on disease genes.
• Defcon 2 — Shut down immune system; switch on auto-cell destruction.
• Defcon 1 — Shut down tumour destruction; switch on cancer production.

 
I’m talking about end of the world stuff happening in your body and while the end result is the same for everyone, death, the path to get there is very individual based off your own genetics. For some people their body will turn on the fat gene the obesity gene. For other people they’ll turn on the diabetes gene or both the fat and the diabetes gene (ever heard of diabesity). But as there’s a 1 in 2 chance for women and a 1 in 3 chance for men getting cancer today guess what most genes are getting switched on when you’re not eating and living a holistic, healthy, and happy life? Yeah, cancer genes.

Your body and your genes have worked for so long with so little that they’ve enough. They’ve broken the emergency glass to grab the key of last resort and then they’ve inserted that key into your control centre and turned it in order to enable and uncover the button of last resort and finally your body and your genes who are sick and tired of being starved and mistreated look you in the eye, give you the finger, and say ‘freak you south-hole!’ as they hit that self-destruct button.

You cannot run a fully booked 100 seat restaurant with one chef, one server, and no manager. You cannot run a hospital on generator power with half the usual staff.

You cannot run your body on the wrong nutrition for it won’t be too long before it breaks down and falls to pieces.

All that to say, that’s what happens to your genes when you eat fake food.

Last thing I’ll about when it comes to how food impacts your health is aging.

Aging I’d like to reframe as dying. You are living and dying at the same time. Every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take is bringing oxygen into the body and every time that oxygen is used by the cells it produces waste products and this waste causes rust and damage to your body. Every time your immune system has to switch on and get into action and clear out the bugs there’s a little damage left behind. Luckily your body has mechanisms and processes in place to clean up that rust and repair damage such as the use of antioxidants that cleanup the rust and heat shock proteins that repair the damage.

But no matter how many antioxidants you take you will continue to age and eventually die. That’s the natural process of life.

Now real food provides plenty of antioxidants, provides plenty of protein, provides plenty of energy and information for your cells and genes to do their job as well as clean up after themselves. There will still be a little mess lying around, but not as much as compared to eating fake food where your cells don’t have the necessary materials and aren’t given the correct energy and information and where your repair genes stay switched off and don’t get turned on leaving a lot of rust and mess and damage to build up in your body, which makes you age quicker and die faster. Age quicker die faster sounds like a Hollywood movie. ‘Age quicker die faster coming to a theatre near you.’

Anyway…

So if you want to live not just longer, not just in a wheelchair, not with dementia, not being able to look after yourself, if you want to live a long quality life full of vim and vigour and vitality give your cells and your genes what they need in order to clean up after themselves and repair the damage. Cell and DNA dam-age will age you. You see what I did there? That’s right damaging is aging.

Alright so how do you recognise real food?!

One simple test. If it has an ingredients list it’s probably not real food because real food is an ingredient. A real food is a single whole food ingredient. There is no list of ingredients.

Second real food tip. Would your great grandparents recognise it and have called it food or would they have asked you ‘what is this concoction?’

“If it wasn’t around 150 years ago and if it’ll sit on the shelf for another 150 years there’s a good chance you shouldn’t be eating it!”

Another real food tip. If the food you’re looking at is a bit processed and does have an ingredients list how do you know whether you’re getting enough nutrition and energy and information. Well can you pronounce the list of ingredients, do you understand that list, do you know the meaning and what those ingredients are? I mean there’s things like sodium sorbate, potassium bromate, monosodium glutamate, and polyvinylpyrrolidone, blah blah blah. If there are all these chemical compounds in the ingredients list, definitely not a real food. Now can you say chick-en or broc-co-li. Pretty simple right. Real food is simple too. If there’s less science and more life in the ingredients list then you’ve got yourself a better choice of food.

Now there are a lot of pretend fake food-like products out there that have been pumped full of artificial colourings, preservatives, additives, thickeners, emulsifiers, bulking agents, flavourings, texturants, and synthetic vitamins. Fake foods have also had their genes modified also known as GMO foods. These fake foods have been modified and treated to the point where your body, your digestive system, your immune cells, your gut probiotics, and your genes they don’t recognise it as a food and this causes a whole bunch of fuss and confusion. It’s like showing up to a fancy party without an invite or forgetting to RSVP. It causes a lot of trouble and you might get in or you might get kicked the freak out, but either way it creates an issue for all involved. So in terms of food labellings look for non-GMO foods with no added chemicals.

Along these lines look for foods that are certified organic or biodynamic. Certified organic means that food is non-GMO and not sprayed or treated with pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, paracides, bactericides, rodenticides, antibiotics, and hormones. Biodynamic means the same as organic, but with a stronger emphasis on the sustainability and regenerability of the environment.

Spray-free is another label you may see and I see this alot in farmers markets and it means the same as organic, but it’s not certified as organic. You have to pay and follow strict guidelines for three years to have the right to say your food is organic and many farmers just can’t be bothered with the cost and the time, so while they may not have the fancy certification their spray-free food is just as good.

So you want to make sure that your food was grown by the laws of nature and ate real food having had a diet that was appropriate for its species. Was that plant grown in soil with plenty of nutrition and energy and information? Was that animal raised in its natural habitat eating the food it was designed to eat? This goes back to either the circle of life or the wheel of death depending on the health of the soil, plant, and animal.

Pigs can eat just about anything. Chickens, they’re omnivorous as well and will eat bugs, they eat insects, and they also eat grass and plants. Sheep, goats, cows — grasses, shrubs, and other plants is what they eat. Animals should not be eating anything, but what they’re evolved to eat.

In CAFOs or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, which are massive factory farms, you find cows eating grains — GMO grains. Now why do you think they give grains to cows? Because it fattens them up quicker! Even then greedy meat producers aren’t satisfied and inject cattle with growth hormones or better yet GMO growth hormones. Now because the cows are getting bigger faster than they would naturally a lot of them get sick and are injected with antibiotics.

Don’t forget about the chickens and pigs in CAFOs. These poor animals have it even worse than the cows. At least the cows get some time outdoors on pasture with fresh air and sunlight. Chickens and pigs are not only eating fake foods and being injected with hormones and antibiotics, but they are stuck literally stuck they cannot move in their cages or even in massive barns because there’s just too much of them.

So the worst meat you could ever buy the sickest meat on the planet is from one of these CAFOs, factory farms.

Now I’m not going to talk about what happens when humans eat grains as I’ll leave you to meditate on that idea yourself.

You’ll see labels like natural and cage-free and free-range and grass-fed or grass-finished, but in all honesty it’s all marketing. Buy direct from the farmer who can answer any questions you may have about their food or pickup the phone and call the company selling the food. Ask them what do they mean by natural and free-range and are the cows on the farm 100% grass-fed throughout their lifetime or how long was it before they went back to eating grains to be fattened up for the kill.

If your food is not organic or biodynamic and was not raised as Mother Nature intended it’s not real food and it’s not going to fully nourish you.

Remember fake food is from Father Industry. It’s an unnatural man-made and lab manipulated food-like product just like a television, a watch, a shoe, or a mobile smart-device. It’s a product it’s not food. We as humans cannot fully digest these fake foods, which will have thousands of ingredients in them. It’s basically dead food. It’s been processed beyond life itself to the point where most of the nutrition is no longer present and the energy and information has been altered. You’ll know a fake food as it’ll usually come in a packet, but that’s not to say all packaged food is fake, but definitely processed and packaged foods are the lowest of the low.

So here’s a quick five step guide to real food:

1. It’s all natural — provided by Mother Nature herself
2. Food the human animal has evolved to eat
3. Single whole food ingredient
4. Still has its life giving properties of energy and information with minimal processing and packaging
5. No chemicals added

The best and most effective way to get real food into your life is by growing and raising it yourself. I’m not just talking a herb garden or vegetable garden or fruit trees. I’m talking about backyard chickens and also buying into a cow-share program where you get together with a bunch of people and buy a whole cow to be split up between you all when the time comes.

Next level down would be to eat local direct from the source. At farmers markets you can always ask the grower or farmer what they used to raise that food. Eating local isn’t just good for your health, it’s not just good for the farmer, it’s not just good for the local economy and community, but it’s awesome for the environment as a whole. There’s a very small carbon footprint when you buy locally. So vote with your dollars and save the planet as they say and it all starts by looking after and saving yourself.

Now if you can’t source anything local go certified organic or biodynamic even though it comes from out of town or overseas at least you’re certain it’s toxin free.

Eat seasonally. This is really important. Most people today only eat about 12 different foods on average — 12 foods! When you eat with the seasons you get a lot more variety in your diet

“Variety is the spice of life.”

Eating the same foods over and over causes your body to become resistant to that food and eventually sickness and disease show up. Even if you’re in a place that doesn’t have dramatic seasonal changes like the tropics you can still eat seasonally by rotating your food manually.

So eat local and eat seasonal for the best real food experience.

If you cannot find or afford high quality real food then relax. Don’t worry, be happy. Your food doesn’t have to be blessed by a one-armed Tibetan monk high up in the Himalayan mountains to be the best tasting and nutritious food in the universe giving you better health and happiness.

I understand not everyone has the ability to access local hormone-free, antibiotic-free, pasture-raised, free-range, grass-fed, organic animal foods or local pesticide-free, GMO-free, organically or biodynamically grown plant foods.

I’m not saying if you eat fake food you will die.

What I’m saying is the majority of food you eat throughout your lifetime will determine the quality of life you experience for the majority of your time.

A couple books I recommend reading to find out more about the different effects real food compared to fake food have on the health of the human animal is Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A Price and Deep Nutrition by Catherine and Luke Shanahan.

A couple cookbooks on how to eat real food. One of my favourite ancestral cookbooks is Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. My favourite recipe in this entire book is the vanilla ice cream. That’s on page 550. Best ice cream ever! Another awesome real food cookbook is Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo and my favourite recipe here is the lemon rosemary broiled salmon. Delicious.

Remember real food is about feeding your immune system and probiotics. It’s about telling the good genes to switch on and the bad genes to switch off. It’s about repairing the damage that’s happening inside your body every second so you can live happier for longer.

Links and Resources

• Nutrition and Physical Degeneration — Weston A Price
• Deep Nutrition — Catherine and Luke Shanahan
• Nourishing Traditions — Sally Fallon and Mary Enig
• Practical Paleo — Diane Sanfilippo

 
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