Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alon Biran is a certified nutrition consultant and graduate of the Global College of Natural Medicine. His lifelong passion for health and nutrition is founded on the idea that simplifying and going back to our roots, rather than calorie counting and stringent diets, is the way to go.

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What Are You Doing to Your Body?

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Acknowledgements..........................................................................viiIntroduction..............................................................................ixFirst Thing First.........................................................................xiiiChapter 1: Eat What Nature Intended.......................................................1Chapter 2: Refrain from Refined...........................................................11Chapter 3: The Art of Food Combining......................................................18Chapter 4: Exercise & Breathing: The Ultimate Maintenance Program.........................27Chapter 5: Detox: The Most Important Thing You Can Do for Your Health.....................37Chapter 6: To Dairy or Not to Dairy, That is the Question.................................45Chapter 7: Fats: The Good and the Bad.....................................................51Chapter 8: Supplementing for Life.........................................................57Chapter 9: It's All in the Elimination....................................................64Chapter 10: Minimize ACNFFPD Consumption..................................................68Chapter 11: Peace Within..................................................................74Chapter 12: Soul Food-Our Primary Nourishment.............................................80Chapter 13: The 90/10 Rule................................................................84Last Things Last..........................................................................89Resources.................................................................................91

Chapter One

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. -Albert Einstein

Let's take a step back from the daily rat race for a moment and look a little more closely at ourselves. Do you realize that we are really just upright apes with extremely developed brains? That's right, according to The American Museum of Natural History, genetically our DNA is a 98.8 percent match with chimpanzees! And what do these close cousins eat? Let's have a look:

1. Orangutan: Living in the treetops of the rainforest of Indonesia, this large, gentle red ape is one of our closest relatives, sharing 97 percent of the same DNA as humans. Their diet is made up of bark, leaves, flowers, a variety of insects, and most importantly, over three hundred kinds of fruit.

2. Gorilla: Gorillas are predominantly herbivores, eating mostly plant material. They forage for food in the forests during the day. They eat leaves, fruit, seeds, tree bark, plant bulbs, tender plant shoots, and flowers. They have been known to eat various parts of over two hundred different plant species. Occasionally, gorillas supplement their diet with termites and ants.

3. Chimpanzee: Chimpanzees are omnivores (eating plants and meat). They forage for food in the forests during the day, eating leaves, fruit, seeds, tree bark, plant bulbs, tender plant shoots, and flowers. They also eat termites, ants, and small animals (they have even been known to eat young monkeys).

A close look at these diets tells us that our closest relatives thrive predominantly on plants, roots, and fruits, supplementing occasionally with animal source protein in the form of prey or insects. It only makes sense that what is good for our closest relatives should be good for us.

Eat Fresh

Fresh fruits and vegetables are rich in living enzymes that are vital for proper digestion of food. In addition, they contain vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants essential to our health and longevity, as well as fiber that is crucial for intestine health. I can't stress enough the importance of eating at least one large serving of fresh fruits and/or vegetables every day.

Mother Nature has designed a perfect kitchen for us, one that offers the right food at the right season. However, in the United States and other Western countries some fruits and vegetables are available year-round thanks to globalization.

Nevertheless, choosing fruits and vegetables in season and locally grown can be extremely beneficial. With every day that elapses from the time a fruit or a vegetable is picked at the field or orchard, to the time it reaches your plate it loses its freshness and vitality. This means you receive fewer enzymes, vitamins, and minerals.

And where can you buy locally grown fruits and vegetables? At farmers' markets; most large cities now operate farmers' markets, and they are a great source for locally grown produce. If you can't get to a farmers' market, one way of knowing when fruits and vegetables are in season is watching their price; when the price drops you know the produce is in season. For example, the price of berries drops by almost half between end of April to end of June, and you should cash on it.

Other staples of the modern diet are grains and legumes (beans). These impose a challenge on modern-day diets for dietitians and nutritionists alike, as most of them endorse these foods as being super-foods and extremely beneficial to our health.

The reality, though, is that if you were dropped in a middle of a wheat or rice field without means of igniting fire, you would not be able to consume these foods. However, if you were extremely hungry, you would have been able to chew their sprouts. According to Dr. Joshua Rosenthal, head of The Integrative Institute of Nutrition in New York City, most legumes and grains are seeds and as such contain phytic acid in the outer layer of the barn, which makes them hard to digest. This is nature's way to protect these seeds from being eaten by animals before they had a chance to sprout.

However, once they sprout this phytic acid breaks down, and it becomes easier to digest these grains or legumes. The conclusion is that grains and legumes have to be consumed after they are sprouted, a process that occurs after they have been soaked in water for a few hours. If you were to examine the way traditional people eat legumes, you would realize that they always soak them in water for at least twelve hours, and even restaurants who serve legumes usually soak them for a few hours, which is good news. When it comes to grains, it is much harder to find sprouted products, although they do exist-mostly in health food stores.

My recommendation is that whenever you cook legumes such as beans, lentils, chickpeas, and green peas at home, you should soak them first for at least eight hours. You can do the same with many grains such as rice, oats, quinoa, barley, etc. As far as bread, it's best to avoid it unless you can find sprouted bread, which is available in health food stores and even in some supermarkets.

The Meat of It All

This brings me to one of the most controversial areas of nutrition today. The debate of whether we were supposed to eat meat or not has raged in the nutrition world for decades. My view in this respect is that biologically and structurally we were not designed to consume meat. Our jaw can...