to health
Try this exercise. It is interesting to do and if you have children or grandchildren take them with and they will have fun too. You might want to take a notebook.
Make three columns, ‘fruits’, ‘vegetables’, ‘herbs’, and then write down in each column the things that you see. We all buy potatoes, carrots and cabbage or apples and oranges, but look at the things that you do not usually notice or buy. Find out their names too. Put a star by the ones with dark green leaves.
In the supermarket you will find a shelf with different herbs, fresh and dried.
On the local market stalls you may find other plants that have been imported from different countries and your list will be even longer. Even in the winter months we have a large variety to choose from.
This prescription is for – more energy, a sense of well being, mood stability, reversing some of the damage you have already done in your body, strengthening the immune system, reducing allergies, losing weight, and having a clearer understanding of life. And it may even reduce your housekeeping costs.
THE TWO WAYS
The supermarkets and green grocers sell most of the ingredients we need for our prescription. Do we use them fresh and keep the meals and foods simple and in their whole state; OR do we buy them already processed in a food factory, or perhaps buy the ingredients and then use recipes that fry them or make them richer by adding sugars, oil, cream or spices, but which clog and poison and acidify the system?
A field of grain grows in the open field blown in the wind and warmed in the sun. The rain waters it. It grows to ripeness but we cannot make it happen or explain how. Then we have a choice – how do we use that grain? It can be in packaged cereals, which have been treated, processed, coated with sugar, bleached to make white bread, with the wheat germ and the bran taken away, but then with synthetic vitamins added to it to enrich it. The other choice is to have whole wheat and oat cereals, with nothing more added than a little salt, and to have the nutty flavour of wholemeal bread with everything still intact, nothing added, nor taken away, nor artificially enriched to make it more attractive.
LET’S MAKE A START
The simplest way to learn good nutrition is to look at the three meals we have each day and consider healthy options for these, using plant foods and simple methods.
Breakfast. Try to make this the biggest meal. It will set you up for the day. Begin with fresh fruit, either 2 or 3 individual pieces, or a mixed salad (and if you did the project, you now have a long list to choose from – crunchy ones, colourful ones, fruits with coats on and more.) Beginning with raw fruit prepares the stomach to digest what follows and boosts the liver into action. Then from the recipe sheets/book choose a cereal, simple oat porridge or muesli. What milk comes from plants? In the supermarkets/health food shops there are a variety of soya milks, oat milk, or rice milk. To begin with, try one sweetened with apple juice, then change to plain later. As an extra dish 2T wheat germ, untoasted, mixed with some soya milk and a little maple syrup, makes a nerve calming addition to breakfast. Wholemeal toast with sugar free orange or fruit spread is satisfying or rye crisp bread with a nut butter. Try cashew, hazel or peanut butter - but only thinly.
We all like ‘nibbles’. You can serve a bowl of nuts - cashews, almonds, walnuts, and others (but not salted or roasted.) with dried fruits, raisins, apricots, sultanas, dates, and bananas.
This breakfast is ALL from plants and will give you fibre, vitamins, minerals, in almost their natural form.
You will find that it lasts you to lunch time. This is the meal to learn to change first before starting to think of the others. Have plenty and make it colourful. And why not put some simple flowers on the table or tray too? |
