Gourmet Without Guilt

Appearances are deceiving. It seems that the mean lifespan today is getting longer and longer, but in fact the trend has turned and now it is getting shorter.  The reality is, unless you make changes to what and how you eat  you will die at a younger age than your parents. Also, your children will die at a younger age than you.   

Obesity and degenerative illness, especially diabetes, are rising at a shocking rate and this does not bode well for the future.  Public health authorities reckon that today’s youth will die five years earlier than the older generation.  

Unless we start making health our priority, I think it will get even worse.  The projection for the U.S. in 2050 is that a third of the population will be diabetic.  No nation can bear such a burden of widespread ill health.  

Cancer in children is increasing at the rate of 1% per year. This goes against the prevailing theory that the rising rate of illness today comes from more people living to old age. The outlook is bleak for the youth of today, if this goes on.  

A new focus on health and nutrition will give them a brighter future with food that the body thrives on, daily physical activity that keeps the body from stagnating and last not least the striving for greater harmony in the mind and emotions.

So what can we do to live longer?

When most people concern themselves about health they focus on what they eat. How much we eat also affects health. Digestion puts stress on the body, so eating a modest amount of food keeps the stress level modest.  This slows the aging process and who wouldn’t like that?  

Studies on animals from primitive life forms all the way to apes have shown that restricting calories greatly lengthens life expectancy.  Dr. Roy Walford, author of The 120 Year Old Diet, was among the first to promote calorie restriction as a way to live longer.  

Calorie restriction is the eating of nutrient-dense food that provides all the body needs, as well as staying away from empty calories that it must digest without getting much for the effort.

Counting calories does not work, since the quality of those calories hardly gets any attention.  If limiting calories were the whole story, sickly anorexics would be the healthiest people around. Nutritional deficiencies are a common factor behind health disorders, so need to eat plenty of nutrient-dense foods.

Here is a list of foods you should consider as part of a longevity diet.  

Foods you should eat:

•     leafy green vegetables
•     beans
•     seaweed
•     blueberries

At the same time, don’t consume products that block or rob the body of nutrients.
The top three are;

•     caffeine
•     sugar
•     white flour products  

Also, avoid rancid oil that damages the body with a load of free radicals.  This means the highly processed oil in commercial food products.