Fill your body with the freshest organic fruits and vegetables available, with a strong emphasis on steamed, raw or juiced dark leafy greens, such as kale, collards, bok choy, pak choi, spinach, , swiss chard, or silverbeet. Enjoy broccoli, squash, tomatoes, avocados and all other seasonal produce options. Use lettuces of every color and shape to create salads of great variety and diversity. Eat generous quantities of both raw and lightly steamed vegetables and fresh salads every single day. Yams/sweet potato, or carrots should be included.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Excellent organic vegetarian protein sources include legumes; beans, especially red lentils, French green lentils, and black, aduki and mung beans. When preparing beans for best flavor and easy digestion, we recommend soaking overnight in purified water, draining and then rinsing the beans before cooking. Handful sized servings of soaked and rinsed nuts and seeds, such as hemp, pumpkin and sunflower seeds are especially beneficial. Flax seeds make great additions to banana smoothies, and also can be ground and dehydrated, or low-heat baked, into delicious crackers.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Complex Carbohydrates
For sustained energy, eat complex carbohydrates in the form of legumes, red potatoes, squash, yams, and whole grains such as brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat or millet. We suggest limiting your overall carbohydrate intake to 30 percent or less of the foods you eat at each meal. This means increasing your vegetables, legumes, and brown rice, to balance out the complex carbohydrates.
How to prepare and season your food
Steam vegetables in purified water until slightly tender, or lightly sauteed in coconut oil, or water and shoyu. Enjoy homemade soups.
Season veggies and whole cooked grains with fresh and dried herbs, sea salt, or organic soy sauce, also known as shoyu, or the wheat-free version, called tamari. Sea salt is an important addition to the diet, and should replace commercial or refined table salt.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- See http://www.mercola.com/ about salt. Additional seasonings include a wide variety of fresh or dried herbs, gomasio, powdered or chopped sea vegetables, such as dulse, as well as many other interesting powders and condiments found on health food store shelves. Garlic, ginger, cayenne pepper, chili peppers, and onions can be enjoyed regularly for their great flavor and immune-boosting properties.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The preferred oil for cooking and/or baking is raw, organic coconut oil. Extra virgin olive oil, high lignin flax seed oil, or hemp seed oil can be drizzled on steamed vegetables, cooked whole grains, and used as the base for homemade salad dressings. Many health stores carry a raw nut butter called tahini, which is made up of pureed sesame seeds; tahini is a delicious healthy plant fat, and makes a great base for salad dressings, dips or spreads.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nutritional Boosts
Live Cultured Foods
Live cultured foods are a delicious and valuable addition to your diet. Eat raw, live cultured vegetables such as unpasteurized sauerkraut, or kim chi.
Vegetable Juices
Freshly made vegetable juices add a powerful nutritional boost to your food plan. Juices made from a wide variety of seasonal vegetables are delicious, and essential to healing, and a great preventative tool when used as an ongoing supplement to any diet.
Sea Vegetables, Asian Foods and Broths
Asian foods such as miso, ume plum, and a wide array of sea vegetables are fantastic nutrient rich foods.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sea vegetables vary in flavor and texture, making them fun to experiment with; they also offer an abundance of natural iodine, which is of the utmost of importance to support our glandular systems, especially the thyroid. Miso makes a delicious flavoring in salad dressings, dips, sauces, spreads, and as the classic, miso soup.
Homemade vegetable broth is packed with delicious life-giving giving minerals and can be sipped like tea or eaten as soup. Make your own delicious broth simply by cooking down an abundance of fresh organic vegetables in purified water. Healing broths are easy to digest, making them especially valuable for any digestive problems.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Water
Throughout the day, drink plenty of pure, filtered water; drink at least 2 litres daily; more in warmer weather. Avoid drinking - as well as bathing and showering in - unfiltered tap water, as tap water contains heavy metals and pesticide residues that can settle in high concentrations in our organs. Only a reverse osmosis water filter will remove things like fluoride.
Allergy Testing
Undergo testing for potential food allergies and sensitivities, and avoid all foods to which you are allergic or sensitive. Common allergy-causing foods include milk and all dairy products (casein), soy, chocolate, corn, and wheat products, barley, and rye (gluten). Consider an elimination diet in order to further reduce the likelihood of food allergies, especially if you cannot get tested right away.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What to Avoid
Refined Sugar and Flour, Artificial Food, Soy Foods
Eliminate all refined sugar and sugar products, along with empty carbohydrate foods such as commercial white flour, found in white breads, bagels, muffins, pastries, cookies and pastas. Also consider omitting whole grain wheat and wheat byproducts from your diet for several months. Wheat is a highly allergic food, and can be the root cause of a wide variety of digestive troubles. As the weeks go by, notice if you feel better; if you find you are feeling better, consider eliminating wheat for a year, giving your aggravated digestion a long deserved break. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Choose to eat a minimum of processed soy products. By far, the best of all soy foods are fresh or frozen edame and tempeh, a fermented soy product that is less processed and easier to digest than other soy products. Stop eating all "junk" and commercially processed foods, as well as all foods containing artificial ingredients, additives, sweeteners, colorings, flavorings, and preservatives (such as MSG, or MonoSodium Glutamate, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, sodium nitrite, sulfites, saccharin, aspartame, and cyclamates).----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No Dairy, Caffeine or Alcohol, Hydrogenated Fats
Stay clear of inorganic milk and dairy products, including yogurt and cheese. Later, if you choose to continue consuming dairy, always choose organic dairy products and, if available, raw organic dairy products. Toxins are stored in fats, so choosing organic is especially important in the case of dairy and meat: keep this in mind for later on, when they are permitted foods.
Eliminate your intake of coffee and other caffeine based products, such as soda and soft drinks spiked with caffeine.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Avoid commercial non-herbal teas, and alcohol. Green or c(h)amomile tea is OK, with a little honey. Do not eat saturated, trans-, hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated fats and oils. Margarine and shortening are made from these and are to be eliminated. Take 4 Omega 3 fish oil supplements, daily; replace 2 of them with cod liver oil supplements for the winter months only! (or, as probably a better alternative to the 2 cod liver oil supplements: 1 teaspoonful of cod liver oil, with a little butter, to ensure its use; I take mine on sourdough rye bread, or toast, covered with fishpaste, and pepper, to mask the strong taste). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Consider having your doctor test your vitamin D levels, using the 25 Hydroxyvitamin D test. Optimal levels are 50 - 55 ng/ml (115 - 125 nmol / L). It should be above 32 ng/ml. Those people who receive adequate exposure to sunlight, daily, won't need the vitamin D from cod liver oil, but many people, particularly those in latitudes far from the equator, find this difficult to achieve. Enter "krill oil" in the searchbar at www.mercola.com