How Healing Foods Can Keep You Healthy
Goddess wisdom includes the knowledge of healing foods. Women have carried this knowledge through time. Herbs, cultured foods, and broths have been a part of wise woman healing for many centuries.
Awareness is growing around the quality of our food; how it's grown, and how the animals are kept and sustained. Therefore, people are becoming interested in the more traditional forms of food. These foods are from plants and animals that have been raised consciously, with regard for the planet and the well-being of the animals. These foods are minimally processed and prepared with care. Recipes for their preparation have been passed down for generations.
The components of a diet of healing foods are good fats, protein, and unrefined carbohydrates. Herbs also play a role in maintaining health and supporting healing. They also contain a myriad of medicinal properties and it serves us well to learn as much as we can about them. Healing foods have sustained us for thousands of years.
My advice is: throw away the food pyramid—it's nonsense. Think of a circle divided in thirds—one third is fats, one third is protein, and one third is carbohydrates. Forget what you have been taught by the mainstream media and our schools. Look to the foods that contributed to health and vitality at the turn of the century when heart disease was a medical rarity. Surprisingly, these are the very foods that are looked down upon by our culture today.
Examples of good protein sources are fish, poultry, red meat, and dairy—all of which are NOT produced in a factory. Eat fish from oceans—not fish farms. Meat, poultry, and dairy must come from organic farms. For plant protein, nuts and beans must be soaked overnight to release the phytates and aid in digestion and assimilation. Just so you know, soy is not a healthy source of protein. Read The Whole Soy Story by Dr. Kaayla T. Daniel.
For good fats, look to what we've consumed for thousands of years: butter, lard, fish oils, whole milk dairy products, chicken, goose and duck fat, beef and lamb tallow, coconut oil, nuts, avocados, and cold pressed oils like olive oil, grape seed, borage, and evening primrose oil. You will not gain weight eating good fats. You will gain weight eating refined carbohydrates and processed food.
A good fat enhances the immune system, aids the hormones in running properly, and assists every cell in the body by giving it the necessary stiffness and integrity. Good fats help the body utilize essential fatty acids and aid in the assimilation of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, which are only found in animal fats. Good fats feed the brain. Low-fat diets lead to poor immunity, depression, spaciness, irritability, and impaired hormonal function.
Eat healthy carbohydrates such as whole grains, prepared by soaking overnight to release the phytates. Include in your diet organically grown vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. Throw away anything made with white flour and sugar, which are unhealthy carbohydrates and are deleterious to our health and mid-section.
Cultured foods have been around since time began. Don't forget that refrigerators have only been around for less than one hundred years. Before that, foods had to be fermented in order to keep well. Examples are yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchee, beet kvaas, and a host of other delights. Cultured foods maintain colon health, which keeps a healthy balance of good bacteria and bad bacteria. Eighty percent of the immune system is in the stomach and colon. Cultured/fermented foods are vital for proper maintenance and health of the body.
Broth from fish, poultry, and meat should be a daily part of everyone's diet. Broth contains minerals in a form everyone can absorb easily. When cooled, it turns to gelatin, which isn't found in our diets anymore. Gelatin facilitates digestion, tonifies the blood, and assists the body in healing a variety of illness such as irritable bowel, leaky gut, ulcers, diabetes, and cancer.
For more information on healing foods, see RESOURCES.
