(This is Part 12 of a series. Go back to Part 11.)
Researchers have established that the single most crucial factor in the health of the body is to eat a healthful diet. Though exercise, moderate sunshine, rest, clean water, emotional poise and so on are all helpful, what is really important according to studies is the nature of one's diet.
Yes, we're all different. However, just as tigers need to eat meat and giraffes need to eat leaves, there may be general guidelines for us humans as well. So let's ask: What general dietary guidelines might best support the body's vitality and well-being?
1. Eat foods high in fiber.
This is probably the single most important thing we can do to eat a healthful diet. Why?
Fiber does a number of crucial things: First, it fills us up without being fattening. It provides the bulk that helps us to feel full after a meal.
Consider the following two meals, both of which contain the same number of calories: A large bowl of salad, 3 ears of corn, 2 sweet potatoes and a pound of ripe cherries; or a cup of ice cream.
The first choice will definitely satisfy our hunger (if we can even eat that much). It will fill us up and notify the
stretch receptors in the stomach that we have had enough.
The second choice is a calorie-dense food that will not fill us up and will leave us hungry. This kind of choice leads directly to overeating, excess calories and weight gain.
Fiber also absorbs water, thereby swelling the bolus (the digesting food) and keeping it moist as it moves through the intestinal tract. Without fiber, the bolus dries up and becomes difficult to move through the system—which can lead to a host of gastrointestinal problems including colic, constipation, appendicitis and so on.
Fiber also helps to steady blood-sugar, an important subject which we're going to cover below. By helping to naturally tame our appetite it prevents us from eating too many calories, something which often leads to weight-gain and/or a roller-coaster ride in both blood sugar and hormones.
Thus high-fiber foods help us to feel full, avoid feelings of hunger, avoid overeating, maintain proper weight, have good digestion, and maintain energetic and hormonal equilibrium. This is so even though we're eating as much as we like and not counting calories or food portions.
Here's the thing: All plant foods contain fiber. On the other hand, all animal foods are completely devoid of fiber. Thus the kind of diet in which our pleasure instincts function normally is one of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes.
A diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes is approximately the diet on which humanity—except for royalty—lived from the Agricultural Revolution (around 8500 BC) until the Industrial Revolution.
Why whole grains? Because refined foods have very little fiber; it is refined out of them. Thus whole-wheat bread and brown rice have good fiber while refined foods such as white bread, white rice, pasta, sugar and so on have little or none. In this respect refined foods are like animal foods in that both are fiber-deficient.
If we'd like to adopt an even more healthful diet we can go towards a raw food or fruitarian diet, similar to what we ate when we dwelled in the trees for millions of years. Of course, a fruitarian diet of fruits, nuts and greens will be very high in fiber.
The very important bottom line about fiber is this: If we're eating only high-fiber foods our pleasure instincts about food can be trusted again.
(This is the end of Part 12. Go to Part 13.)
—jim sloman, 9.27.04 for Sep 26
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