Healthy Diet Principles

For many people it is best to adopt your healthy diet gradually. It is better to improve one aspect of the diet at a time and persist, than to overhaul the diet completely - only to become overwhelmed and fall back into previous bad habits.

The healthy diet presented here:

• Has strong and simple rules to help you decide what to include in your healthy diet
• Includes a large amount of food in its healthy natural or near natural state
• Can be used to prepare quick, convenient, healthy meals without having to rely so much on manufactured foods
• Actively promotes good health
• Appeals to common sense
• Need not be high cost

Here is a summary of the main principles of this healthy diet.

1. Fruit and (non-starchy) vegetables are a large proportion of this healthy diet - 50-80% (half to four fifths). (Starchy vegetables - mainly potatoes in the West - are fine, but starches are included in the 'other part' of the diet.)
2. Starch and protein are a small proportion of the healthy diet - 20-50%. This includes potatoes, rice and bread (starchy foods); meat, fish, eggs, milk and cheese (we recommend you minimise these types of protein); and legumes (beans), nuts and seeds (moderate protein + starch).
3. Eat as much food raw as possible. Of the large proportion of fruit and non-starchy vegetables in the diet, cook as little as possible, because cooking destroys some of the life-giving qualities of these foods.
4. Reduce to a minimum foods which detract from health. These include meat (which putrefies in the intestines of humans, so favour a vegetarian diet), dairy foods, alcohol, tea and coffee, sugar, salt and food additives, which are common in manufactured foods.
5. Chew food well. Dr Christopher, reputed herbalist and naturopath, said; "Chew your solids until they are liquid, and chew your liquids as if they were solid," so as to mix saliva thoroughly with the food. (The liquids Dr Christopher was thinking of were fruit juices and vegetable juices.)
6. Stop eating just before feeling full. If completely full, there is not enough space in the stomach for food to digest.
7. Preserve teeth by cleaning them after every meal. Food particles remaining in the mouth provide nourishment for the oral bacteria which cause gum disease and weaken teeth. Ideally, brush after each meal and floss and irrigate once a day. See Tom Cornwell's site: www.mizar5.com for background information about dental health and a description of dental irrigation
8. 100% adherence to these healthy diet principles is not necessary; strictness can just add stress to life. If you are one of the few who can follow the diet principles completely, that is fine; but to follow the healthy diet by 90-95% is a worthy aim, and will make you healthy far beyond the average.

The main topics when considering a healthy diet are those of the low proportion of fruit and non-starchy vegetables which most people have in their diet and the high proportion of starch and protein which is really not healthy.

For this reason the following sections of 'Healthy Diet' cover

• The low proportion of fruit and vegetables - the nutrient rich foods - in most people's diet, and
• The high proportion of starch and protein - which is really not healthy, as these foods are not only low in many nutrients, but they produce acids when digested.

Your healthy diet will have a high proportion of fruit and non-starchy vegetables; and a low proportion of protein and starch (potatoes are a starchy vegetable and so included in the 'starch' category).

The next page considers Fruit and Vegetables.

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