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Healthy Whole Foods Eating - The Basics

I encourage my patients to live in a way that supports life. To that end I advocate a “whole food, clean food” diet. The general principles are quite simple. Our food needs to be minimally processed, and free of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, flavor enhancers and other additives.

Here are some questions to ask to tell if a food is whole or not (with help from Cynthia Lair, author of Feeding the Whole Family):

• Does the food look like it once lived on this planet? Lettuce, eggs, yes. Marshmallows, NutraSweet, no.

• How many ingredients does it have? Whole foods have one ingredient—itself.

• What has been done to the food since it was harvested? Read the label. If the label reads more like chemistry, don’t eat it.

• Is this product “part” of a food or the “whole” food? Juice is only part of a fruit. Oil is only part of the olive. When you eat partial foods, your body craves the part it didn’t get, because for millennia, the whole food has been the only food it has known.

The cleanest food is organic food, period. We all need to eat organic whenever possible. But start with the three dirtiest foods: water, meat/fish and cow’s milk.

• Cleaning up water is easy. Buy reverse osmosis or distilled water, or get a purifier using one of these methods for your home. Spring water is just someone else’s tap water.

• Eat pasture fed and finished, antibiotic and hormone free meat and eggs. Add plant protein sources to your diet, such as tempeh or beans to offset the cost. Most of us are eating way too much meat anyway.

• Eat only ocean fish. Farm raised fish are the dirtiest. The Environmental Working Group keeps an up-to-date list of fish to avoid.

• Cow’s milk products, including yoghurt, cheese, and ice cream must be avoided altogether with the exception of small amounts of organic butter or ghee. However, stopping all at once will cause uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms. Take at least two weeks, working meal by meal.

After these foods have been cleaned up, then start with fruits and vegetables. Soft thin skins absorb pesticides best. Buy these organic next. Always wash fruits and vegetables, even organic ones, in vegetable soap and water. By now, the difference between organic and conventional will be very clear, and you will be seeking out organic food whenever possible. In Kansas City where I live, we are fortunate to have the Kansas City Food Circle. They keep a directory of local organic and natural food producers. Look for a similar organization near you.

Don’t dirty up clean food by cooking it in aluminum or plastic cookware. Aluminum, a known brain toxin, leaches into the food from the cookware. Plastic leaches hormone-like compounds into our food. Use cast iron, stainless steel, glass, ceramic or clay instead.

Bethany Klug, DO specializes in holistic medicine at the Kansas City Holistic Centre. She is a member of Lieurance Group, a freelance writers cooperative and authors the monthly column "The Doctor Cooks" for the Kansas City Wellness Magazine. She would be delighted to write a column or series for you.