Meats, cakes, pies French fries, pizzas, and other fast foods; they are mouth watering and scrumptiously delicious! However, these same foods high in fat, protein, and cholesterol and low in fiber, vitamins and minerals are the very foods that tend to promote diseases such as obesity, cancer, diabetes, heart attacks and strokes.

Give yourself a food check-up. What are you really eating for the most part? Are you and your family eating real food or subsisting on different types of convenient, processed, and refined packages that we call food. Look in your cupboards and your refrigerator. What is in your shopping cart? Do you have real fruit or juice, vegetables, nuts, grains, beans, and peas in your cart, or do you have colorful drinks and sodas, cookies, potato chips, white flour, white sugar, sugar loops and pops? If you are guilty of carting goods from the last listing, you need to take stock of yourself.

Disease starts at the cell level. You are as healthy as your cells. Poor food builds poor cells. Poor cells build a weak body and a poor immune system that easily succumbs to disease. You are what you eat!

Whole foods are loaded with plant chemicals such as beta-carotene, lycopene, antioxidants, and fiber that protect your body from disease. Fiber is found abundantly in unprocessed plants foods such as whole wheat bread, brown rice, island grits, beans, peas, fruits, and vegetables. These are the foods God provided for our sustenance from the very beginning. Of these we may freely eat. They are also high in vitamins and minerals, while low in fats.

Fiber is the non-digestible portion of whole foods that acts like a broom to keep the walls of our colon clean and helps in the transit time of waste flowing through our colon. It is when we’re clogged up and impurities sit in the colon for long periods of time that bacteria grows and disease increase. Fiber along with the drinking of sufficient water, aid in the prevention of constipation, diverticulitis, and colon cancer.

Research has also found that foods high in fiber help in controlling the blood sugar for those who have diabetes. It is the soluble fiber in certain foods like oatmeal and flax seeds that help the body to excrete cholesterol. The following are some tips on how you can increase your fiber intake:

1. Add more vegetables to meals.
2. Eat fruit for dessert.
3. Choose whole grain bread or rice.
4. Read food labels for foods with 3 or more grams. of fiber per serving.
5. Eat high fiber cereal e.g., 7-grain cereal, oatmeal cereal.
6. Eat beans. Beans have 16grams of fiber/cup.

If your food check-up tells you that you need to make some serious changes, determine to do it today! Your life and the lives of your family may depend on it!

--Wise counsel from your dietitian: Idamae Hanna M.P.H.,R.D.
Call me at: 242-323-5473
Better Living Health Center.