Whole Foods For Your Whole Body
Whole Foods
By simply eating foods as nature intended, unprocessed and unrefined, you can greatly reduce your risk of all of these diseases and more. Understanding the benefits of adding whole foods to your meal regimen will motivate you to begin making some changes to your food choices.
A whole foods diet consists of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, unprocessed meat, poultry and fish and non-homogenized milk. The foods contain nothing more than the naturally occurring nutrients inherent to the original plant or animal that they were derived from.
You can get these essential nutrients into your body at their highest levels and natural, unchanged state when you eat whole foods. When foods are processed, the nutrients are often destroyed or changed. Whole foods also contain phytonutrients which are not essential nutrients for your body, but they are still excellent for you and help reduce the risk of many diseases, such as cancer. The substances added are not usually derived from food and are sometimes made from starting materials like coal-tar or other non-food chemicals. Whole foods also provide our bodies protection in the form of antioxidants like Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Selenium, Zinc, Flavonoids and Carotenoids. The antioxidants in foods work together as a team, so to reap the benefits your body needs the full spectrum that is provided by a varied whole foods diet, not just high amounts of one like vitamin C.
Essential nutrients, Vitamins C and E are two important antioxidants that are readily available in many whole foods. One of the key nutrients in fruits and vegetables that protects against cancer, it is also thought to decrease the risk of strokes and heart disease and can counteract or protect against colds and some infectious diseases. It functions as part of a nutrient team with Vitamin E and Carotenoids which are not usually present at all in processed foods. You can also greatly increase your fiber intake by adding whole foods to your diet; fruits and whole grains are some of the best sources. It also provides protection from heart disease, lowers total cholesterol and blood sugar levels, and decreases the risk for breast cancer. Whole grains are a great concentrated source of insoluble fiber and fruit skins have high amounts of soluble fiber.
Switching to whole grains is one of the easiest changes to make for a beginner to a whole foods diet. If it only states wheat flour, it is not a whole grain. Whole grains provide high levels of minerals as well as a range of vitamins and essential fats. When it is processed, the grain loses its bran where most of the fiber, minerals and B vitamins are stored. Processing also removes the germ which contains the essential fats and the family of Vitamin E nutrients. This leaves a grain with a large amount of simple carbohydrates and starch, a bit of protein and only a few vitamins from a food that started out with thousands of healthy nutrients and a wide variety of vitamins.
Whole Food Multivitamin Ingredients You Need to Know
We are not eating the foods for good nutrition so we are nutrient deficient. You need food not synthetic chemicals to fill the gaps for poor diet choices.
The best multivitamin has real food sources such as vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices that still have all the nutrients in the real food – not just a blend of vitamins and minerals. But, taking whole food source vitamins is NOT the same as actually eating the vegetable or fruit. The vitamin should be whole raw alive food sourced. The ingredients chosen for a whole food multivitamin should ideally all work together to give the supplement a whole body health benefit. Don’t pay for fiber in your whole food multi because fiber takes valuable space away from the whole food sources. Read the label for anything synthetic such as food coloring (made from coal tar) glucose, sucrose, starch, Polysorbate 80, sodium benzoate or nitrites. Synthetic ingredients are not going to give the same healthy benefits as the whole food ingredients. Many vitamin labels will start out like this Calcium Carbonate, Calcium Phosphate, Magnesium Oxide, all synthetic lab or man created chemicals.
Whole food multivitamin ingredients are very easy to read, no science degree needed. Whole food multivitamins will list most of the ingredients with the names of the real whole fruit or vegetable, like broccoli or pineapple.
The best whole food vitamins will have enzymes, prebiotics, probiotics, raw whole fruits, raw whole vegetables, spices and herbs.
So many supplements that are called whole food vitamins are not really 100% real whole food sourced. By the way, natural flavors are not really natural. If they were truly natural, the actually food flavor be listed instead of natural flavors.
