Healing with Nature

Which is correct? Is all sugar the same? Is all fat the same? There are really two communities who have an opinion on these. One is the popular gourmet, sprouting, green smoothies and nut milk community who use toxic condiments and attempt to reproduce every type of cooked food in it’s raw equivalent form. The other is the natural hygiene community who prefer to eat ripe, raw, fresh, organic and whole foods as close to the original way they were found in nature as possible.

I will call the first community the gourmet raw group and the second the natural hygiene group. The gourmet raw group believe in the first part of the title, they believe that sugar is sugar. They feel that the man made refined table sugar that was over-processed and heated as well as bleached and polished is exactly the same as the sugars found in a ripe, raw, fresh and organic whole fruit.

Ok, I have to agree that both are sugars. They both do taste similar to each other. Both are definitely sweet to the tongue. Both of them are carbohydrates and are high in energy or more specifically, calories.

That’s about the end of the similarities of these two sugars. The refined sugar contains just one chemical substance which is also known as sucrose. It is about 99.8% sucrose. Sucrose is a disaccharide (a fancy word meaning composed of 2 sugars) made up of fructose and glucose. Glucose is the exact kind of sugar that is found floating around in our blood stream. It is the fuel for our body. Fructose on the other hand needs to go into the liver for further processing before it can be used as fuel.

Fruit has several types of sugars depending on the kind of fruit. Some contain mainly sucrose, some mainly fructose, some mainly glucose, some have galactose and some have maltose. These are the sugars that are found in nearly all fruits. Besides the sugars, fruits all contain water when in their fresh and ripe state as well as a large number of vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

The sugars in fruit are always attached to the vitamins, minerals and fibers in such a way that when the body breaks down the sugars these vitamins, minerals and fibers become available to the body. The sugars work synergistically with the fiber and other nutrients to help with digestion and intake of the sugars. Nature has created these wonderful foods to keep us in the best possible state of health. They feed us while we spread their seed to allow them to expand their growth area.

In a healthy person the body will be able to use all of these vitamins, minerals, and sugars to increase vitality. The sugars will be absorbed along with the vitamins and minerals. The fiber is there to slow the absorbtion of the sugars so that there is no spike in insulin which can cause some people problems. This fiber is also useful to help carry waste through the digestive system after it has served it’s buffering duty.

So the answer to the first part of the question, contrary to the gourmet raw group’s opinion is that sugar is not sugar as the sugar in fruit is used very differently by the body as the refined table sugar.

The second part of the question is whether fat is fat? What this means is if all fat is alike? The gourmet raw food group wants people to believe that not all fat is alike. It is very interesting that they believe that all sugar is alike even if it is in a form that allows a smooth ingestion such as in fruit but refuse to believe that all fat is alike.

These gourmet raw fooders believe that cooked fats are different from raw fats. To a certain extent this is correct. Cooked fats in nearly all cases have carcinogenic and mutagenic properties. Cooked fats generally have trans-fat properties, which means that they are not recognized even as fats by the body and are therefore not able to be assimilated into the tissues of the body.

Other than the above two differences, all of the other properties of fats are equal whether cooked or raw. Fat will still be very difficult to digest, especially when it is digested with certain foods such as sweet fruits. Fat will always coat everything it comes in contact with no matter whether it is cooked or raw. Fat will never mix with water based liquids and will always float on water, when cooked or when raw. Fat is always an insulator when cooked or raw. Fat will always be stored in the body when it is digested until the level of sugar in the blood is so low that the body is forced to convert fat to sugar, even as a raw fat.

What is so special about raw fats that they can be eaten as often and as much as is wanted but sugars from fruits are extremely dangerous? The raw fat is the cause of the inability of the body to digest and absorb fruit sugars. It is not due to the fruit at all. This is similar to blaming the cars for automobile accidents and not seeing that there are other factors involved such as the driver, the driving conditions, etc.

In summary the real answers to both questions are yes, sugar is sugar but the sugar in fruit is bonded with nutrients and fibers that allows these sugars to digest easily and become absorbed readily as well as supply critical nutrients to the body and fat is fat no matter whether it is cooked or raw, it still can cause serious damage to the body when used in excess. It is actually nearly impossible to eat an excess amount of sugar when eating only raw, ripe, fresh, whole and organic fruits, but it sure is easy to eat an excess of fats even if it is eaten in the raw, ripe, fresh, whole and organic form.

Exercise is one of the most important aspects of natural hygiene. Following a clean and natural diet can only help so much and will not keep people in the best of health alone. Following an exercise regimen is a must.

The regimen need not be a very strenuous one. In fact the most important factor is not the intensity but the consistency. If you do not enjoy team sports for example then just do a sport like running or weight training. If you prefer a social sport then try tennis, racketball or squash. There is a sport or program right for just about everyone in the world.

Even people confined to a wheelchair can participate in some kind of exercise. If you don’t believe me, here is a YouTube video of a guy with no hands or legs who participates in wrestling. Find something that makes you smile and happy to leave the comfort of your bedroom and gets your muscles moving.

There is a regimen for young and old, fully able-bodied or handicapped. All that is needed is some research into what is available, what would be pleasurable to the individual, convenient and something that is within your economic means.

In nature we would all be climbing trees and picking fruit as well as walking vast distances. In today’s modern world we are blessed with many other activities.

Some of the benefits of exercising are:

1) The heart muscles become stronger and more efficient when they are exercised regularly.

2) The lungs become more efficient as they take in more oxygen when exercising.

3) Digestion and elimination become more efficient as exercise helps with the digestive system.

4) All of the muscles involved in the exercise are strengthened and become larger and more efficient at their job. They also will help with joint problems such as arthritis as there will be less stress on the joint when the muscles around the joint are stronger.

5) The skin pores will open and sweat glands will remove more toxins from the body. The skin will improve and the body will become less toxic.

6) The body temperature increases due to exercise which in turn helps remove more toxins.

The suggested minimum period of exercise is 30 minutes a day. If this is not convenient then an average of 30 minutes a day can work just as well. For example 60 minutes of exercise every other day is equivalent to 30 minutes a day.

Other ways to add exercise to your daily routine are to walk or bicycle to work, take the stairs at every opportunity instead of the elevator or escalator, walk to the market or convenience store instead of taking the car, do some leg or arm exercises while watching television or while at home and waiting for dinner or bedtime. Instead of taking a long lunch break and going to get fast food, pack a simple fruit lunch and eat it after walking around your place of work for 15 to 20 minutes.

Exercise is a key requirement for a healthy natural hygienic lifestyle. Even if your diet is not clean or you are still in transition to a healthy diet, exercise will still be a great value to you. Make it a priority in your life.

When someone brags that they can drink more alcohol than someone else, do they really have something to brag about? I hear people say that they can drink more than somebody else quite often. They seem to be bragging that this is something to be proud of. They seem to think like they have acheived something ‘good’.

What really have they ‘acheived’? What is alcohol anyway? The usual alcohol that is in most of the common beverages is also known as ethyl alcohol or ethanol.

When the blood alcohol level reaches 0.4% it is usually fatal. Ethanol is an extremely dangerous poison. When consumed in lower amounts it will cause many health problems. Ethanol breaks down into acetaldehyde after it is ingested which is more toxic than ethanol itself. It can cause liver cirrhosis, cancer and other health problems.

A healthy person who has never tasted alcohol before will have severe reactions to the ingestion of alcohol. They will find the taste revolting and after swallowing their body will react to the poison by causing nausea, headaches, trembling, vomiting, and possibly other severe reactions.

After someone forces their body to accept alcohol over a long period of time the body will no longer react to the poison with the same intensity. This change in reaction is called tolerance. The body accomodates the poison by accepting it without creating the obvious symptoms. Internally the same destruction is occuring as was on the first time the person consumed alcohol but the body just tolerates it by not causing the same reactions.

An analogy of this is someone who has no nerves or nerve damage in their hand. If they put their hand on a hot stove they can leave it there for a while and not even know that something is wrong. A normal person who puts her hand on a hot stove will immediately get a signal from her nerves that there is damage occuring to their hand and will in turn remove the hand from the hot stove. The person with the nerve damage’s body tolerates the damage but their hand still will get burned.

Would the former person with the nerve damage be considered healthier than the later one? Is it something to be proud of when your body tolerates damage? Why would someone want to turn off the warning mechanisms that we have that are there to prevent us from damaging ourselves?

The same is true for all of the toxic and tissue damaging foods and beverages that people consume every day. People eat many foods that are so toxic to their body that many of their internal organs are covered in hardened tissues that can no longer assimilate nutrients. A short list of these kinds of foods are vinegar, salt, spices, garlic, onions, all bitter tasting foods, and of course alcohol.

There is nothing to be proud of when your body tolerates poisons and toxins. It is never healthy to no longer have the appropriate responses to these damaging substances. The only way to maintain health is to remove these from your diet and allow your body to guage what foods and environmental toxins are harmful. This way you will avoid them when you come across them and maintain your health integrity.

So you are interested in natural hygiene but you are in love with that recipe for raw lasagna that mister or miss super-raw has written. There must be more recipe books on the market than there are people in New York City. Why is this so?

For some reason the foods that are derived directly from nature are too boring or do not have enough texture, flavor, nutrition or ‘je ne sais pas’. One of the funniest jokes I heard as a teenager was the old one: “No ice? What happened? Lost the recipe?”

Even ice needs a recipe! It’s quite pathetic to see that most people can’t just sit down and have a meal of food that is exactly as it is created in nature. We always need to add the secret sauce, salt, pepper, sweeteners, thickeners, stabilizers, combinations of two or more tastes.

Out of the thousands and thousands of species on the planet we are the only ones who require these recipes. I have never heard of any animal finding food and then combining it with another food so that it wasn’t so boring, or to make it taste better. It seems to me that the animal actually relishes the food as it is derived from nature. They love it plain and simple as they should.

Obviously when humans first arrived here on planet earth they did the same as all other animal species and ate the food that was provided by nature in it’s original state. There were no recipes made. People probably relished their food as much as animals do today. Why then does almost every human on earth live on food that has been made from a recipe instead of from nature’s recipe?

This is an international phenomenon, it’s almost impossible to get away from. Go to any country in any part of the world and see if you can find a native food or dish that is as it is supplied by nature. Even if the food is uncooked or served raw such as gazpacho, a Spanish raw soup, there is a very complex recipe involved in making it.

The main reason why this is so is because food is no longer our fuel or subsistence, it is our entertainment. We are so addicted to being entertained that we require it even for our basic necessities such as eating. In fact most of the first world not only consumes food for entertainment, they often are being entertained while they eat.

There are televison sets in most every dining room. If the television is not in the dining room the room where the television is quickly and often becomes the dining room. Most restaurants have some sort of entertainment, McDonald’s have a playroom for the kids, as do many of it’s competitors, many have televisions, there are dinner shows with every sort of spectacle available from a play to a murder mystery to a medieval knight jousting competition.

What ever happened to the nutrition value of food? Have we as a society forgotten about the real reason why we are eating in the first place? Why does everything we do in life need to have a script, actors, and processed or commercial products included with it? In the case of a recipe the script includes the recipe, the chef and the servers with the bottles of processed condiments on the table in case the recipe is not according to the patron’s taste.

Even the popular ‘raw’ food enthusiasts who are so opposed to the ways of the average person’s diet almost never will sit down and enjoy a meal made exclusively from items directly from nature. This is hypocritical to me, they shun the so called processed and cooked foods just to try to emulate every single food that is included in their diet with raw food recipes.

It is close to impossible for someone to enjoy the true flavors of natural food when they never experience anything that is made without flavorings like salt, spices, vinegar, herbs, sweeteners and sauces.

If you have ever been to a typical buffet, take a look at what the majority of people have on their plates. Do you see mounds and mounds of salad without dressings? I doubt that there will be many plates with plain salads on them and nearly every plate will have the recipe foods on them. The beef stews, the roasted marinaded chicken, the cakes, cookies, pastas drenched in sauces, and the like.

These recipes might be great entertainment and excellent for discussions and theatrics but the quality and taste of them is so much lower than a good quality natural food. The problem is that most people never have the opportunity to even try a good natural food since they are so hard to find. All we ever see on television, on billboards, in magazines are compicated recipes of processed food.

Who are we to take the most perfect foods which are the very reason for our existence on this planet and turn them into recipes which in all cases are worse tasting and have lower nutritional value than the original components of the recipe? Try this for yourself, stop eating the most common taste bud destroying foods for a period of time. Probably 3 months would be a good start.

These foods are the ones listed above such as salt, spices, black and white pepper, vinegar, sweeteners, sauces, onions, garlic, etc. Remember to use the best quality natural foods that you can find to replace these recipes. You will find that after about 3 months of natural foods that your taste buds start to reverse the damage from the recipes and you will enjoy the distinct differences in tastes in natural foods.

Besides the new palate pleasing foods that you will start to enjoy once again you will see the tremendous positive changes to your health. Natural foods are the foods that our body was designed to consume and therefore give it the nutrients in the ratios and in the form that is most beneficial to our health.

You will be wondering what did nature do with the recipe for that wonderful fig. Nothing man can ever come up with will ever trump these foods in taste and nutrition, no matter how hard you try.