I am taking the time to address the issue of food in relation to our health in this month’s blog posts. Take a look at an excerpt on this issue from the NBC Website, further studies which show exactly how nutrition and exercise affect our overall health:

“Smoking and poor eating and exercise habits alone accounted for 700,000 premature deaths in 1990.
In 2004, a group of scientists at the CDC revisited this issue in JAMA and came to the same conclusion. This time, however, the toll from eating badly had gone up, due to obesity and diabetes.

Then, last summer, CDC scientists published a paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine analyzing records of more than 23,000 German adults enrolled in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study (EPIC) and investigated four behaviors: Are you eating well? Are you a healthy weight? Are you physically active? Do you smoke?
Those with four good answers (eating well, body mass index below 30, active, not smoking), compared with those with four bad answers (not eating well, BMI above 30, not active, and smoking), were 80 percent less likely to have any major chronic disease. (Imagine if a pill could reduce our risk of dying prematurely from any cause by 80 percent!)
You have doubtless heard of nature (genes) versus nurture (environment) — but this shows that lifestyle is so powerful, we can use it to nurture nature, or influence our genes. Various studies have shown this, but Dean Ornish, MD, and his colleagues have produced the most compelling results. Assigning men with prostate cancer to a “clean living” intervention that included a wholesome, plant-based diet; regular physical activity; and stress management, they demonstrated a marked reduction in the activity of genes that can promote prostate cancer growth and a significant increase in the genes that are able to control it.
That’s the power and promise in clean eating, so it helps to know what it means. Is it organic? Not necessarily. Food can be organic without being nutritious — think organic gummy bears — or nutritious without being organic, such as conventionally grown broccoli. Organic is a good thing, but it’s not a summary measure of “clean.”

Clean eating is more about the types of foods we put into our body. For me, the definition is this, green, leafy vegetables, colorful fruits and veggies, clean water, and natural cheeses and yogurt. The less meat we eat, its seems the better our bodies work. Processed food is not okay, but let’s face it, there are times when we want a little junk food. That’s okay, just so long as it’s not the only kind of food that we put into our bodies. Fresh air, long walks, swimming, QiGong and Tai Chi..and never forget to dance to your favorite songs. 

Valentina Boonstra