Body

You can spend an eternity studying the health benefits of various foodstuffs and worry yourself silly about all the harm some things are supposed to do. Balance is everything. If you are already eating a good variety, by that we mean not too much or too little of the same foodstuffs then you can skip this chapter. There is rarely any need for supplementary pills as many won’t be absorbed by the body in the same way as food anyway. You need not concern yourself with the ins and outs of eating what some may call junk food so long as you avoid getting such meals from the same place more than once a week. Junk food is not always bad per se for what it contains, but for what it doesn’t contain.

The ills of too little: Make no mistake about it, plants do not grow as tall, have yellowing leaves and look rather listless if even one essential mineral is not available in their plot. People have come close to death self-experimenting, where they denied themselves vital-amines. So simple logic will tell us that the greater the variety in our diet the more chance we have of getting all the nutrients that we need to maintain our bodies. The beautiful thing about this broad-varied-diet approach is that you do not need to spend any time analysing what you eat. Even munching a small amount of salad, vegetables, fruit, and other things that doesn’t taste too great can make the world of difference with little pain. We tend to follow the habits of our parents and can pass some failings down the generations. You might need to find the gall to stop rejecting foods that are actually quite palatable. There will be things you do not like, but there will be plenty of alternatives that provide the right mix. It unlikely that every green item is ‘disgusting’. Young children will quite happily eat chocolate turds but look at them as being revolting a few years later as they adopt the same disgusts as their parents. Eat for you and your longevity. I do not like the taste of carrots, not at all, but I always eat a few chunks. Get them down and be done with it.

The damage of too much: Eating too much of something can wreak havoc to essential parts of our body. We can tolerate a certain amount of toxicity but go over the limit and we are liable to do some permanent damage. We will rarely eat enough of one poison to get a lethal dose at the one sitting. However, a few μg consumed over and over can build up if your body doesn’t get the time to deal with it and can’t flush it out faster than it is streaming in. Hence eating anything over and over ends up being disastrous for our health and well-being. People have died eating too many carrots or drinking too much water, items that are generally considered to be good for you.

A variety reduces the probability of damaging your organs through overdose. It gets as close as possible to guaranteeing that you get enough of what you need. The simplicity of the diverse diet allows for a few wayward habits, after all there is a claim that happier people live longer than miserable ones. You can compensate by sticking to buying more natural foods like real bread, brown rather than blanched white and less processed foods. Don’t be a cheapskate, food is medicine buy the best where you can. A life free of illness is priceless. Particular attention to what you eat must be made during pregnancy if you want your offspring to live longer. They will be much less hassle to you if built near as possible to the intended design. Anything you make without the essential ingredients becomes a bodge job.

There may well be more nutrition in the cereal box than the cereal inside. The cereal has the husk and wheatgerm removed. The fibre and much of the nutrients are stolen. This spurs the idea of eating the whole. If you apply this wisdom to eating apples and rhubarb you may encounter some toxicity though. Rhubarb has poisonous leaves, and the core of an apple may not be as well received as the flesh. If you decide to eat the said cereal box, you may be unhappy to discover that since we began all the virtuous recycling, over and over, the levels of noxious chemicals have steadily increased. Most unpleasant as they leach from the box through the bag into the food inside. When we think we are doing some good we always disregard the downsides.

Where do you draw the line when it comes to avoiding the problems with food? Some wash rice with boiling water after it is cooked to rinse out more of the arsenic. I am sure you could make a list of countless dangers, so once again the not too much, not too often comes into play again.

Regular meetings in a group can provide the impetus to stay on course with eating less. We may shed a small amount quite quickly but keeping it off is no mean feat. Regular exercise is vital for our fitness, but also to alleviate boredom. We become trapped in a vicious circle. The heavier we become the more effort it is to move about, resulting in us doing less. The more we sit about the more we are tempted to indulge. I will make this simple. You do not have to read a single further guide. This is common sense, easy to understand and as basic as it can be. Eat less. If you are twice the size of a normal person, eat half as much as you are now.

The body has a certain amount of elasticity with fat cells filling up like a balloon. When over stretched, they split into two and the body’s capacity rises. You then have more fat cells to manage, making you liable to move up to the next weight bracket, staying there unless serious intervention is taken. Hence all the thin people will tell you to avoid getting fat in the first place. How large you have become is usually your concern and yours alone, but overweight people place a heavy burden on the rest. The one advantage of not being overweight can be summed up in one word: Agility. And agility is a huge positive. There is nothing good about getting old, nor is there anything positive about being fat.

Variety is paramount but note; Two groups of people. One group had a selection of sandwiches. A large range. Many different fillings on offer. The other group had just one option. The group with the variety ate twice as many as those with no variety. The bigger the buffet with more options on offer, the more trying it is for those inclined to obesity. Use smaller plates. Make sure people have to get up and walk for more. It is no use having a minuscule plate if there is a mound of food on the table to easily top it up with. Sensible amounts of a variety is the aim.


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