The most
important consideration in constructing a healthy diet: Eat whole
food with minimal processing. These 12 foods do the trick.
Vegetarian? Vegan? High-protein? Low-fat? Dairy-Free?
Hold on to your
shopping carts: There is no perfect diet for human beings. At least
not one that's based on how much protein, fat or carbohydrates
you eat.
In
Depth: The Healthiest Foods On
Earth
People have lived and thrived on
high-protein, high-fat diets (the Inuit of Greenland); on
low-protein, high-carb diets (the indigenous peoples of southern
Africa); on diets high in raw milk and cream (the people of the
Loetschental Valley in Switzerland); diets high in saturated fat
(the Trobriand Islanders) and even on diets in which animal blood
is considered a staple (the Massai of Kenya and Tanzania). And
folks have thrived on these diets without the ravages of
degenerative diseases that are so epidemic in modern life--heart
disease, diabetes, obesity, neurodegenerative diseases,
osteoporosis and cancer.
The only thing these diets
have in common is that they're all based on whole foods with
minimum processing. Nuts, berries, beans, raw milk, grass-fed meat.
Whole, real, unprocessed food is almost always healthy, regardless
of how many grams of carbs, protein or fat it contains.
All these healthy diets
have in common the fact that they are absent foods with bar codes.
They are also extremely low in sugar. In fact, the number of modern
or ancient societies known for health and longevity that have
consumed a diet high in sugar would be ... let's see ...
zero.
Truth be told, what you eat
probably matters less than how much processing it's undergone.
Real food--whole food with minimal processing--contains a virtual
pharmacy of nutrients, phytochemicals, enzymes, vitamins, minerals,
antioxidants, anti-inflammatories and healthful fats, and can
easily keep you alive and thriving into your 10th decade.
Protein--the word comes
from a Greek word meaning "of prime importance"--is a
feature of every healthy diet ever studied. Meat , contrary to its
terrible reputation, can be a health food if--and this is a big
if--the meat comes from animals that have been raised on pasture
land, have never seen the inside of a feedlot farm and have never
been shot full of antibiotics and hormones.
Ditto for raw milk,
generally believed to be one of the healthiest beverages on the
planet by countless devotees who often go to great expense and
inconvenience to obtain it from small, sustainable farms. Wild
salmon, whose omega-3 content is consistently higher than its
less-fortunate farm-raised brethren, gets its red color from a
powerful antioxidant called astaxathin. The combination of protein,
omega-3s and antioxidants makes wild salmon a contender for
anyone's list of great foods.
Another great food:
eggs--one of nature's most perfect creations, especially if you
don't throw out the all-important yolk. (Remember
"whole" foods means exactly that--foods in their original
form. Our robust ancestors did not eat "low-fat" caribou;
we don't need to eat "egg-white" omelets.)
In the fruit kingdom,
apples totally deserve their reputation as doctor-repellants:
they're loaded with fiber, minerals (like bone-building boron)
and phytochemicals (like quercetin, which is known to be a powerful
anti-inflammatory and to have anti-cancer properties). Some
exciting new research suggests that pomegranate juice slows the
progression of certain cancers. Other research shows it lowers
blood pressure and may even act as a "natural
Viagra."
Tea deserves special
mention on any list of the world's healthiest foods. The second
most widely consumed beverage in the world (after water), all forms
of tea (black, oolong, white, green and the newer Yerba Matte) are
loaded with antioxidants and anti-inflammatories. Some types (green
tea, for example) contain plant chemicals called catechins which
have decided anti-cancer activity.
Finally, let's not
forget members of the Alliaceae family of plants--onions, garlic
and shallots. Garlic has been used for thousands of years for its
medicinal properties; hundreds of published studies support its
antimicrobial effects as well as its ability to lower the risk of
heart disease. A number of studies have shown an inverse
relationship between onion consumption and certain types of
cancer.
A healthy diet doesn't
have to contain every one of the "healthiest foods on
earth," but you can't go wrong putting as many of the
above mentioned foods in heavy rotation on your personal eating
plan.
In Depth: The Healthiest Foods On
Earth
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