What Are Whole Foods?

Whole foods are unprocessed, unrefined, traditional foods without ingredients. They are superior in nutrition and taste to processed foods, are nonaddictive, and exist in tremendous variety.

List of Whole Foods

Fresh fruit
Fresh vegetables

Whole grains
Beans and other legumes
Nuts and seeds
Seaweed (sea vegetables)

Unprocessed meat without additives
Organ meat without additives
Fish and shellfish without additives
Raw milk
Eggs

Characteristics

• Unprocessed and unrefined

• No ingredients

• No additives: nothing has been mixed in, cooked in, baked in, sprinkled on, or injected

• Not in boxes, bags, jars, or cans

Nutrition

No nutrients have been lost to processing. The food contains all its original protein, fiber, healthy fat, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and unique nutrients.

The "complete package" enables us to absorb the food's entire nutritional value. Fiber, for example, helps the body to process the food's sugars without an insulin spike. The food is greater than the sum of its parts; its unique mix of nutrients increases the nutritional value of all its components. This is called food synergy.

Here is a somewhat technical journal article, Nutrients, Foods, and Dietary Patterns, about the synergy within foods and within the entire diet. It reports that whole foods, and traditionally-inspired whole-food diets, contribute more to health than the sum of the individual foods do.

Taste

The taste is full, distinct, and unique to itself. In addition, the taste represents the nutrition that is in the food.

In contrast, we've all had the experience of eating candy or cake and spoiling our dinner. Processed foods suppress taste and over time spoil our sense of taste.

When you eat whole, healthy foods, your sense of taste is enhanced.

Nonaddictive

You know when you are full when you eat whole, healthy foods. They are naturally filling and pleasing. For this reason, it is difficult to overeat foods that have their original fiber, vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats.

It may be that we overeat processed foods because our bodies are trying and failing to find the missing nutrients. In any case, processed foods are engineered with sugar and additives to trigger overeating. They fool both the senses and the appetite "thermostat."

Variety and Choice

Historically, many thousands of edible species have served us as food.

This variety represents true choice and an opportunity to develop wider tastes and taste discrimination.

Whole, healthy foods are endlessly customizable, as shown by the many cuisines throughout history and around the world.

Benefits Of A Healthy Diet

The benefits of a healthy diet are many. Here are just a few benefits of a whole food diet.

1. Enjoying what you eat. I can't even believe how much I enjoy everything that I eat! Anyone who avoids processed food will say the same. Processed food dulls and warps your sense of taste (and has other unpleasant side effects.)

2. Feeling good after eating. Healthy meals provide sustenance and energy, as meals should. Unhealthy meals provoke post-meal problems: falling asleep, having to lie down, feeling sick, being nauseous, having diarrhea, being desperate for dessert or more food, becoming irritable or argumentative, etc.

3. Feeling good before eating. When meals and snacks aren't all about getting the next addictive fix (or what feels like energy), you have the ambition to actually prepare the food, or else to use your time before the meal wisely. You're not jittery, dizzy, whiny, exhausted, or sick; nor does waiting for the food to arrive somehow take your full attention.

4. Never needing sugar or caffeine to stay awake.

5. Having normal gut function. No more irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, diarrhea.

6. Having the ability to relax. Always on? With a healthy diet, your body relearns to relax. You are no longer on the rush / crash cycle and the jitters / sluggishness cycle.

7. Feeling (and acting) calm and emotionally stable.

8. Becoming well nourished. The typical unhealthy American diet results in being overfed and undernourished. With proper nourishment, you can overcome health challenges, including obesity. If you are malnourished, your body won't let you lose weight.

9. Freedom from addiction. A whole food diet and a sugar free diet can free you from addictions to sugar, artificial sweeteners, food additives, even foods. Healthy eating frees you from the obsessions, tantrums, and collapses that go along with these addictions. A healthy diet and correction of malnutrition is also the basis for overcoming addictions to caffeine, alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs.

10. Aging gracefully. One of the long-term benefits of a healthy diet: the expectation of a higher quality of life.

Health Benefits Of Vegetables

Health Benefits Of Vegetables

Many studies show that a diet of whole grains, fruit, vegetables, and fish prevents common chronic diseases. One review study identified these preventable diseases as including coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cancer.

A diet based on fruit and vegetables can even reverse common chronic diseases in the studies discussed in the review. In a more recent study, a three-month change in diet, with other lifestyle changes, for men with early prostate cancer, controlled the expression of some 500 genes related to cancer: cancer-promoting genes turned off, cancer-fighting genes turned on. Other studies have measured improvement in heart disease and diabetes.

Eating fruit and vegetables improves enzyme and antioxidant activity in the body. A major study on this is known as the 6-a-day Study from the campaign by the Danish government to promote six servings of fruit and vegetables per day. The study showed that eating fruit and vegetables is superior to taking the isolated vitamins and minerals contained in the same amount of fruit and vegetables.

Vegetables help detoxify the body. Paul Pitchford writes in Healing With Whole Foods that the "toxin neutralizers" of Chinese medicine include Swiss chard, radishes, and turnips (all cruciferous vegetables) and the following legumes: tofu, mung beans, aduki beans, black soybeans. Many studies have been done about Brassica vegetables and their ability to increase and improve the detoxification of carcinogens and other toxins.

Vegetables can be medicinal. Just a few examples: Some vegetables, like garlic and onion, are antibiotic, antiviral, and antifungal. Cabbage juice is used to heal stomach ulcers. Onions have an antihistamine property that can suppress allergic reactions. Many books are available about the healing uses of vegetables.

Why Vegetables?

Vegetables can be enjoyed both for their own sake and as a component of a healthy lifestyle. Can healthy vegetables as part of a lifestyle change add up to disease remission? Yes!

But studies show that benefits of vegetables also result from just a few small servings a day. Go ahead and take advantage of all that healthy vegetables can offer you!