Scientists continue to study the effects of food on the body, and are often making new findings about the benefits of eating whole foods, all the time. Ancient Eastern healing practices like traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda (from India) observed the effects certain foods had on the body and drew conclusions about what people should eat. Some people feel that you need to choose one approach or the other (i.e.Western or Eastern medicine), but, in my opinion, it’s beneficial to be aware of all approaches. As Annemarie Colbin explains in Food and Healing, foods have energetic properties that are arranged into four categories to make up what she calls the “Table of Opposites.” Most healthful diets around the world balance all four (foods related to these properties are listed later in this section):
• Warming/Cooling: food’s temperature-related energy provided for body functioning.
• Expansive/Contractive: food which createsa “high” or “light” feeling; or sense of being grounded.
• Acidifying/Alkalinizing: food’s effect on thebody’s pH level.
• Build-up/Break-down: food that helps to build muscle and bone; or cleanse and detoxify.
This way of looking at foods is based on the idea that our bodies do best when they are balanced. Some situations or things that we do naturally lead to imbalances, like strenuous exercise on a hot summer day, giving a speech in front of a huge audience, going on a long road trip, or getting wasted on a Fridaynight. If we understand what is happeningin our body at these times, we can use food to help return us to a more balanced state. If your body is too warm or too cold, cooling or warming foods will help (i.e. eat warming foodin winter, cooling food in summer). If you feel weakened, building foods are required. If you have ingested too many toxins or wastes (i.e.junk food), foods that will help break them down and eliminate them from the body are needed. If you feel too jittery or scattered, contractive foods can help; too sluggish, try expansive foods. Too many acid-forming sweets consumed, you can balance your self with fruits and vegetables which metabolize with an alkalinizing effect. Our bodies seem to have an innate knowledge of how to balance themselves, but many of us have lost touch with it; I hope this section will help you get back in touch. And while some of us might do this intuitively, it is a skill to create a better balance in our daily diets.
This way of looking at foods is based on the idea that our bodies do best when they are balanced. Some situations or things that we do naturally lead to imbalances, like strenuous exercise on a hot summer day, giving a speech in front of a huge audience, going on a long road trip, or getting wasted on a Fridaynight. If we understand what is happeningin our body at these times, we can use food to help return us to a more balanced state. If your body is too warm or too cold, cooling or warming foods will help (i.e. eat warming foodin winter, cooling food in summer). If you feel weakened, building foods are required. If you have ingested too many toxins or wastes (i.e.junk food), foods that will help break them down and eliminate them from the body are needed. If you feel too jittery or scattered, contractive foods can help; too sluggish, try expansive foods. Too many acid-forming sweets consumed, you can balance your self with fruits and vegetables which metabolize with an alkalinizing effect. Our bodies seem to have an innate knowledge of how to balance themselves, but many of us have lost touch with it; I hope this section will help you get back in touch. And while some of us might do this intuitively, it is a skill to create a better balance in our daily diets.
We need to learn to build satisfying meals and understand how to nourish our bodies appropriately for various conditions and in various seasons. Discussions of “energy” can sound kind of kooky to some. The concept of energetic properties can’t always be substantiated in a “scientific proof” kind of way, but sometimes you’ve got to be willing to just go with it, use your inner wisdom, and see if you can draw any parallels to what exists in nature, but when I say you should “eat with the seasons,” I’m asking you to include the produce in your diet that naturally grows in your climate at the particular time of year; stone fruits and melons are amazing in the summer and keep you feeling cool, but come falland winter, squash, onions, potatoes, and sweet potatoes can make you feel warm and grounded (it’s not surprising that these foods can be stored best over the winter months– nature designed them that way).
Tip Eating Fruit
Eating fruit is very beneficial. The fiber found in fruit helps regulate digestion, and fruits’ vitamins and antioxidants boost our immune system. In red fruits, the phytonutrients act as powerful antioxidants that promote good health and slow the effects of aging. As an encouragement and reminder, keep a bowl of fruit on your desk at work. Set a goal of trying one new fruit every week.
Read more about Healing Foods for Healthy Balance your life
Read more about Healing Foods for Healthy Balance your life
In Food Energetics, Steve Gagné shows how to revitalize our connection to food and remedy our physical and psychic imbalances with the wisdom of food energetics. He provides a comprehensive catalog of foods and their corresponding energetic properties and explains how each food affects us at the deepest spiritual level. By demonstrating how to plan meals that incorporate both dominant and compliant foods, he shows how to provide truly healthy cuisine that nourishes the body and the soul.
Healing with Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition
"Healing with Whole Foods contains a wealth of information on health, diet, alternative medicine, natural food presentation, and recipes, researched by an expert in the field. Readers will learn how to apply Chinese medicine and the five-element theory to a contemporary diet; treat illness and nervous disorders through diet; and make the transition to whole vegetable foods. The most detailed source book yet published on preparing food and eating consciously, Healing with Whole Foods includes complete sections on Ayurvedic principles of food-combining; the treatment of disease conditions through meals; transition from animal products to whole vegetable foods; micro-algae; selection of waters and salts; the extremely complex varieties of oils, sugars, and condiments; vitamins and minerals; fasting and purification; food for children, food presentation and proportions; vibrational cooking; the physiology of nourishment; color diagnosis and therapy; consciousness in diet changes; plus descriptions of the nature and uses of various grains, legumes, miso, tempeh, tofu, seaweeds, nuts and seeds, sprouts, and fruits.
Superfoods are vibrant, nutritionally dense foods that have recently become widely available and which offer tremendous dietary and healing potential. In this lively, illustrated overview, well-known raw-foods guru David Wolfe profiles delicious and incredibly nutritious plant products such as goji berries, hempseed, cacao beans (raw chocolate), maca, spirulina, bee products, and a host of others. As powerful sources of clean protein, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antioxidants, good fats and oils, essential fatty and amino acids, and other nutrients, they represent a uniquely promising piece of the nutritional puzzle. Each superfood is described in detail, accompanied by easy and delicious recipes. This accessible guide presents persuasive arguments, based on sound science, for the pivotal role of superfoods in promoting nutritional excellence, health and well-being, beauty enhancement, sustainable agriculture, and the transformation of diet, lifestyle, and planet.
Kristina is part of a small group of rurally-based cooks (I would include Meredith McCarty and Edward Espe Brown in this company), who've been guided to bring all of us back to a deep appreciation of the art and joy of wholesome home cooking and the sharing of simple food as a unifying ritual in our lives....What I love most about this book is that Kristina dares to be human. She understands the needs of old and young, heavy or thin, sad or angry....In her clear, loving and down-to-earth way she entices us to bring our hidden fears around food out of the pantry....she wants the reader to not only learn to cook but to passionately enjoy cooking, free of guilt, pain and blame.... Nobody, and we mean nobody, who is going through a healing crisis or shifting to a more natural lifestyle should go another day without The Self-Healing Cookbook.
"Ayurvedic cooking for healing is ancient, timeless, practical wisdom based upon taste, hot and cold energy and the post-digestive effect of food at the cellular level. A proper diet is good medicine. In the near future, medical professionals, instead of prescribing just drugs, will suggest proper, individualized balancing recipes to their patients. Dr. Yarema, Daniel Rhoda and Chef Brannigan’s profound work in the field of food as medicine, Eat Taste Heal, is a most timely and practical guide for people everywhere."
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