People often ask me, "What are the best cancer-fighting foods? What foods should I eat often, even daily, for best health?"
Off the Vine
The simplest way to think about what foods are best for health, including for reducing cancer risk, is to look for items that are as close to their natural form as possible. If a food looks like it did when it came off the tree, out of the ground, or off the vine, then this is what you should be eating. Think vegetables, fruit, whole grains, legumes (beans), nuts, and seeds.
The Corn Example
A terrific example is corn. Consider corn on the cob. It is picked and then you husk it, boil it, and eat it. Other than husking and cooking, when corn on the cob lands on your plate, it looks almost exactly like it did when it was pulled off the plant in the field.
Now consider some of the corn based products in the supermarket such as flavored corn tortilla chips. To make this product, the corn is picked. Then it is dried and milled into corn flour. Additional ingredients, including flavorings, colorings, and oil are added to the corn flour as it is pressed into a tortilla chip. And the oil that has been added often is processed itself. Even the flavorings and colorings are artificial and contain manufactured dyes.
This all occurs before the chip is even baked. And by the time this chip reaches you, it certainly doesn't look anything like corn. This simple comparison gives a good idea about the best way to chose food that is best for health.
Natural is Healthy
The most important thing to keep in mind is that natural = healthy. Stay away from processed food. Focus on real food. This is the kind of food that looks like, well, FOOD.
Fighting for Health
It sounds simple, but often, it is not easy to do. At every turn we are confronted with food that is cheap, easy to prepare, and loaded with calories and fat. Commercials, billboards, fast food, and convenience stores assault us at every turn. How can you make good choices? It takes a little effort, but isn't your health worth it?
It's true, eating healthfully takes a little more time. But if you want to eat better for better health, you can make the time for it. How many hours of TV per day do you watch? How many hours on YouTube or surfing the web? What about all those cooking shows that are so popular? If we all spent just a fraction of the time on preparing and eating healthy food as we do on any one of these other activities, it would go a long way toward improving health.
You don't have to be a gourmet chef, you just have to be willing to spend a few minutes to prepare good food. For a snack, how about skipping the candy bar and trying a piece of fruit and a handful of nuts? It takes no more time, but will pay big dividends in better health and more energy. Or try some of the easy, tasty recipes right here on Caring4Cancer.com: http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/cancer/nutrition/wellness-nutrition/entres-main-dishes.htm. These are designed to deliver maximum taste and nutrition in a minimum amount of time.
Food Should Be Enjoyed
And remember, you don't have to eat this way 100% of the time. Anyone who knows me also knows that I'll be the first in line for dessert! Nobody eats "perfectly" all the time and nobody needs to for good health. These natural, whole, unprocessed foods should make up the majority of the calories that you eat. They don't need to make up every, single calorie.
If this is how you eat most of the time, those occasional treats really don't matter. In fact, I believe food should be enjoyed, so these "less than healthy" foods certainly deserve a place, a small place, in your diet.
The Gift of Health
I have no desire to be the food police and I don't think anyone should be. Rather, I believe that everyone deserves the gift of good health that comes with eating a healthy, delicious, whole food diet. Instead of focusing on what you "can't have" or "shouldn't eat", focus on all of the wonderfully healthy, tasty food you can have. Instead of focusing on deprivation, focus on the abundance that whole foods offer - an abundance of flavor and health.
When you shift your perspective from what you "shouldn't have" to what you "can enjoy", you'll be amazed at how much more you enjoy your food, and in turn, the improved health that comes with better food choices.
Label Reading
As a final note, I wanted to comment on another part of the healthy eating equation. I'm often asked, "What do you look for when you read labels and are trying to pick the best food?"
Label reading? Have you ever seen a label on an apple? The best foods don't have labels!
Posted
Jan 04 2008, 03:56 PM
by
SuzanneDixon