Body

People have travelled the globe to meet pockets of long living people. They wanted to know what they were eating, what were they avoiding, what is it about their diet that gives them such longevity. What makes the Mediterranean, Korean, Japanese, South American diets so good? People have come up with many theories. All of which were right and wrong. They never made the connection. They never saw what is plain to see. Each of these diets have one thing in common. Variety. Plain and simple variety. Longevity is aided by a diet that is varied. Truly varied. Not too much, not too little. Eat lots of vegetables. Eat spices. Eat herbs. Eat wholefoods. Eat delights. Those on this varied diet might not need to take supplementary pills, besides whilst many proclaim their wonderful positive effects, many are not absorbed well by our bodies in the same way as food anyway. The varied diet, the best diet on earth bar none.

Some food on offer is produced in bulk. It is sieved and strained removing things that are good for our bodies. Items are added to stop it congealing, flaking, or separating. Items are added to make it addictively tasty. Eat you may with little ill effect - so long as you do not overindulge. This type of food, junk food, is not always bad per se for what it contains, but for what it doesn’t contain. Avoid getting these delicious, fabulous foodstuffs from the same place too often. Once a week is fine. Lots of different food is the key.

If one mineral is lacking in the soil, plants do not grow as tall. Leaves ought to be glowing green, but the lack of nutrients makes them dismally yellow. Plants will look feeble and listless if they can’t get what the need to grow. Vital does not mean optional, nor preferable. It means needed for proper function, hence the name vital-amines. People have proved how vital certain vital things are through self-experimentation. They washed out key minerals from their meals and in short order came close to death. The greater the variety in our diet, the more chance we have of getting all the nutrients that we need to maintain our bodies.

You can do an in-depth study of what you are eating. Alternatively, you can relax and let the varied diet take good care of you. Simply seek out variety. Make it broad, eat a wide range of foodstuffs. Lots of small portions rather than big heaps of one thing.

Some foodstuffs provide what we need but may not align with our taste buds. This invites a change in behaviour. You might need to find the gall to stop rejecting foods based on their taste or lack of. These less pleasant foods can help your body repair itself and help you stay in good shape. Rather than rejecting food that is beneficial, consume a little, get it down your gullet and be done with it. Even munching a small amount of salad, vegetables, fruit, and such like, gives your body a chance of getting what it needs. Some is much better than none by far. Some foods are disgusting say you. Disgust is a thing most often learnt from our parents. Did you find it disgusting by trying it for yourself. We can shape chocolate into squares, balls, bells, or cute animals. We can also shape chocolate in such a way that it closely resembles a dog turd. Children will happily pick it up and eat it. However, at a certain age they will shy away and declare a chocolate turd to be disgusting. Why, because they copied others. Eat a variety. Eat a little of that which you are not fond of. Eat some drab alongside the gorgeous.

The varied diet requires moderation to work well. That means avoiding the damage caused by too much. Eating too much of something can wreak havoc to essential parts of our body. We can tolerate a certain amount of toxicity. However, if we consume too much of one thing, we are liable to do some permanent damage. People have died eating too many carrots or drinking too much water, items that are generally considered to be good for you. Some toxins build up. A few μg here, some there, and before long, our organs are overwhelmed. If you vary what you eat you lower the probability of that happening. Eating the same thing over and over ends up being disastrous for our health.

A variety reduces the probability of damaging your organs through overdose. A valid variety guarantees that you get enough of what you need. The simplicity of the diverse diet allows for a few wayward habits, which is fine. After all there is a claim that happier people live longer than miserable ones. You can compensate for your wayward habits by including more natural foods, real bread, brown rather than blanched white and less factory foods. Don’t be a cheapskate, food is medicine, buy the best where you can. A life free of illness is priceless.

We are selfish souls. What is good for another can be good for us too though. Co-considerational selfishness plays a part in what we eat during pregnancy. If we eat well, our baby will develop well. A child that has been allotted the required building blocks will behave better, be better and less often ill. So, they will be less trouble to you. Anything you make without the essential ingredients becomes a bodge job, and a problem to you later on. Maximise that variety before, during and after you get pregnant.

There may well be more nutrition in the cereal box than the cereal contained within. 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 level of noxious chemicals in food packaging has steadily increased. Most unpleasant as they leach from the box through the bag into the food inside. Doing good is a belief, with flaws and unpleasant trade-offs.

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. Buy different types of rice.

Variety is paramount but note; People were split into two groups. 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, the more options on offer, the more tempting it is to eat more. Use smaller plates. Use the power of inconvenience. If people have to get up and move across the room to add more to their plate they may eat less. Much less than if there is a mound of food in easy reach on the table. Sensible amounts of a variety is the aim.

If you want to reduce your body weight you could attend meetings once a week. You could change what you eat. You could change the time of day that you eat. You could be conned into believing that a miracle diet scheme will solve the problem. Alternatively, you could eat less. Eat half what you habitually eat. Same variety, just much less of it. That will work for sure. Less is easy. Less is safe. Less is cheap. Less is best. Less is easy to gauge. Show me one picture of an overweight person held in a wartime prison camp. If you can show me one, then I will show you a thousand people unsettlingly thin. They ate less than usual and shed weight rapidly.

The body has a certain amount of elasticity. Fat cells fill up like balloons. When over stretched, they split into two and the body’s capacity to hold fat 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.

The bigger we become the less inclined we are to get up and do. Fat and lazy have a direct correlation. There is very little correlation between more exercise and weight loss, aside from it giving your less time to eat snacks. Exercise will make you fitter and stronger – nothing else. If you want to be fitter, go for a walk or jog around the park. If you want to lose weight, eat less.