Healthy Eating Out

Green Gourmet, Vegetarian Chinese Restaurant. 115 King St, Newtown NSW 2042: (02) 9519 5330; greengourmet.com.au.
Green Palace, Pure Vegetarian Thai Restaurant. 182 King St, Newtown NSW 2042: (02) 9550 5234; greenpalace.
Marque Restaurant. Ask for the Reiki degustation: 9 courses for $145; marquerestaurant.com.au.
Mother Chu’s. 367 Pitt St, Sydney NSW: (02) 9283 2828; motherchusvegetarian.com.au.
Vina, Vietnamese Vegetarian Restaurant. 395 King St, Newtown 2042: (02) 9557 0456; vina.

The Health Benefits of Plant Foods

Since food is the most substantial external agent that we are in contact with each day, your food choices have a huge effect on your health.

People have to realize that, if one eats fast foods and sweets every day, one cannot expect health to improve with the addition of drugs in an attempt to relieve the symptoms that arise from the daily abuses placed on the body. Even most herbal remedies, because their primary mode of action is via toxic effects, just add to the toxic load the body must deal with.

The way to achieve a long healthy life, free of chronic diseases, is to base your diet on fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains. Merely adding supplements to an inadequate diet will never suffice. We can only get adequate amounts of beneficial nutrients by eating an abundance of unprocessed natural plant foods. A diet composed primarily of fresh fruits and vegetables is high in nutrients such as vitamins A, C and E and selenium, which function as scavengers of toxins. All animal products, in contrast, are low or completely lacking in the nutrients that protect us against disease: antioxidants, fibre and phytochemicals. And they are high in substances that science has shown to be associated with disease: cholesterol, saturated fat and animal protein.

Those who eat meat, including poultry and fish, have been found to be twice as likely of developing dementia than vegetarians. A diet loaded with animal products, can cause not only heart disease and cancer, but also almost every other major disease. Lung cancer rates, for example, are considerably lower (about one-fifth) in countries that have a high vegetable consumption, even though they may smoke excessively.

One reason animal foods are so harmful is because of their high levels of fat. Comparing various populations around the world, the death rates of most cancers – especially breast, colon and prostate – are directly proportional to dietary fat intake. Excess fat in a diet hinders and impairs the immune system, which is then responsible for the high rates of cancer and autoimmune disease. While in populations that consume natural diets of mostly unprocessed plant foods, autoimmune diseases are almost nonexistent.

Another reason animal products are harmful is because they contain much higher levels of pesticides than plant foods. Animals are also fed antibiotics and other drugs, such as growth hormones, which are transmitted to humans when animal products are eaten. And animal foods, including dairy products, can also transmit animal-borne infections, such as mad cow disease and bird flu.

Animal foods cause problems because they impair the underlying systems of the human body. For example, it is the task of the arteries to carry nutrients via the blood to all parts of the body, so hardening of the arteries due to high cholesterol levels diminishes the body’s ability to nourish itself. By eliminating animal foods, which are the only source of dietary cholesterol, from your diet you automatically lower blood cholesterol and improve the overall availability of nutrients to the entire body.

Nutritionists have only recently become aware of the fact that eating saturated fats and trans fatty acids increases blood cholesterol more than eating cholesterol itself. Saturated fats are fats that are solid at room temperature and are found mainly in meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products. Coconut and palm oils are mainly saturated and are also undesirable in excessive amounts. Hydrogenated fats, which also known as trans fatty acids, are produced by adding hydrogen to unsaturated fats to turn fats that are liquid at room temperature (e.g. vegetable oils) into harder, more saturated fats (e.g. margarine). Hydrogenated fats act like saturated fats, so are also a significant cause of both heart disease and cancer.

Only recently has it been revealed that the effect of protein on blood cholesterol is more significant than even the effect of saturated fats. It is therefore pointless to switch from eating beef to skinless chicken and other animal foods to reduce one’s fat intake to lower blood cholesterol when animal protein has an even more harmful effect in this regard.

Furthermore, when one eats a diet with servings of high-protein animal foods at each meal, the capacity to digest this food is strained. Unlike true carnivorous animals, which can secrete large quantities of digestive acids and huge amounts of protein enzymes to aid digestion, humans cannot. As a result more bacteria species overgrow in the intestines, which can create inflammation.

Metabolically there is little difference between humans and the great apes, who are predominantly vegetarian. Like the ape, we are not biologically adapted to function optimally on diets that are high in protein and fat. Consequently, one suffers from disease when one consumes a diet ill-adapted to their basic constitution. Heart disease, colon cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension and obesity have all been linked with the consumption of animal fats and proteins.

Nutritionists in the past had suggested humans need to consume high-protein animal foods to promote more rapid, stronger growth. However, since then we have learned that growth acceleration promotes ageing and early death. Plant foods contain an abundance of protein without being excessive. How else could the gorilla get to be 800 pounds of muscle, eating largely fruit and leaves? It is ironic that the chief argument used to promote the use of animal foods – that they are high in protein – is the best reason to avoid them.

It is also best for your health to avoid processed and refined plant foods as much as possible. Refined plant foods are unhealthy because they are stripped of blood-sugar-regulating fiber and countless nutrients. Because they are largely composed of simple sugars, and therefore are broken down into blood sugar quickly after being eaten, the most common refined foods provoke blood sugar highs followed by blood sugar lows. Those blood sugar lows leave one with little energy and yearning for a quick sugar fix a few hours later.

Fruits and vegetables not only contain trace elements needed for the adequate metabolism of their contents, but also have their sugars bound in fiber, which causes the sugars to be absorbed into the bloodstream more slowly, giving sustained, constant energy. Therefore, by eating a lot of fruit and vegetables and avoiding high portions of refined foods in your diet you will naturally have more sustained energy.

As years of eating high-glycemic foods go on, the body produces high levels of insulin to control the blood sugar level and keep it in the normal range. If the pancreas is forced to produce high levels of insulin for too long, one of two problems can happen: body cells become less responsive to the action of insulin or the pancreas eventually becomes weak and stops producing adequate amounts of insulin. In either case, diabetic conditions manifest.

One cannot, however, simply avoid unhealthy foods to achieve perfect health. It is important that one eats a balanced combination of healthy foods so that all the body’s requirements are met. For more information visit health.org.au and www.drfuhrman.com.

The Harmful Effects of Garlic

Garlic is toxic to humans because its sulphone hydroxyl ions penetrate the blood-brain barrier and are poisonous to brain cells. (1)

As far back as the 1950s it was known that garlic reduced reaction time by two to three times when consumed by pilots taking flight tests. This is because the toxic effects of garlic desynchronize brain waves.

The Taoists realized thousands of years ago that plants of the alliaceous family were detrimental to humans. (2) They labeled this group of plants – onions, garlic, leeks, chives and spring onions – the ‘five spicy-scented plants.’ They noticed that onions are harmful to the lungs, garlic to the heart, leeks to the spleen, chives to the liver and spring onions to the kidneys. Hindus also avoid this group, which they have called the ‘five pungent plants.’ (3) As well as producing offensive breath and body odour, these plants induce aggravation, agitation, anxiety and aggression. Thus they are harmful physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

Even when garlic is used as food in Chinese culture it is considered harmful to the stomach, liver and eyes, and a cause of dizziness and scattered energy when consumed in immoderate amounts. (4) Nor is garlic always seen as having entirely beneficial properties in Western cooking and medicine. It is widely accepted among health care professionals that, as well as killing harmful bacteria, garlic also destroys beneficial bacteria, (5) which are essential to the proper functioning of the digestive system. Furthermore, Ken Bergeron, in Professional Vegetarian Cooking, p. 16, writes: “garlic in the raw state can carry harmful (potentially fatal) botulism bacteria.” Perhaps it is with an awareness of this that the Roman poet Horace wrote of garlic that it is “more harmful than hemlock.” (6)

In the practice of Reiki we have noticed that garlic and onions are among the first substances to be expelled from a person’s system – along with tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical medications. This makes it apparent that alliaceous plants have a negative effect on the human body and should be avoided for health reasons. Homeopathic medicine comes to the same conclusion when it recognizes that red onion produces a dry cough, watery eyes, sneezing, runny nose and other familiar cold-related symptoms when consumed. (7)

1. See www.karinya.com/garlic.
2. S.H. Lorna Wong, The Unfolding Truth of Man and the Universe, p. 43.
3. See www.hinduism.co.za/food.
4. See Francine Halvorsen, The Food and Cooking of China, p. 147, and Daniel Reid, A Handbook of Chinese     Healing Herbs, p. 106.
5. See, for example, Erica White, Beat Candida Cookbook, p. 28.
6. Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food, p. 331.
7. Richard Gerber, Vibrational Medicine, p. 86.