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Traditional Medical Herbalist, Sheffield

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General Dietary Guidelines

The average British diet is very poor and adapting some or all of the recommendations here will bring long term health benefits. The basic rules of a good diet are:

• Eat Wholefoods
• Eat organic foods
• Avoid sugar
• Avoid E-numbers, additives, preservatives, colours
• Be aware of fat consumption
• Don't eat meat every day

Eat Wholefoods

If we eat refined foods such as white flour and sugar, we are missing out on important vitamins, minerals and fibre. If, on the other hand we eat wholefoods, we are getting our food with all the goodness still in it. Wholefoods include brown rice and other whole grains such as oats and barley, and a wide variety of beans and pulses in dried form - chickpeas, lentils etc. Food in this form retains its freshness longer than when it has been processed into other foods and it is also cheaper. There is a paradox here, in that the less refined a food is, the greater the amount of pesticide residues it is likely to contain (this is especially true of wholemeal bread compared to white). Therefore:

Eat Organic

There are two important reasons for eating organic food:

1. To avoid eating poisonous pesticides, fertilisers, additives and possibly dangerous genetically modified food.
2. To get food that is actually worth eating. Over the last 100 years the nutritional value of food has fallen drastically. Whilst an apple a day might have kept the doctor away in 1900, today you would have to eat about 25 (non organic) apples to provide the same level of vitamins and minerals. As the soil has become depleted by modern farming methods, crops are raised by adding fertilisers to the land. But because only a limited number of minerals are added the food we eat is devoid of many of the chemicals that we need in small amounts. In organic farming the soil is better cared for and foods so produced have higher nutritional value.
   Most big supermarkets now stock organic foods and whilst it is good that the availability has increased, to some extent quality has gone down. Also there seem to be more and more organic junk foods available - organic sugar is no better for us than non organic.

Avoid sugar

Sugar not only causes tooth decay - it also has many other detrimental effects on the body. Eating refined sugar suppresses the immune system, reduces the body's ability to absorb calcium and magnesium, depletes the bones of minerals and adversely affects fat metabolism, increasing levels of fats in the blood. Sugary food also satisfies our hunger without us having eaten anything of nutritional value.
Apart from sugar that we add to our food it is already included in our diet as an ingredient in many processed foods, from tinned vegetables to soft drinks. (Ingredients ending in -ose tend to be sugars such as sucrose, glucose, fructose, lactose etc).
Avoid refined sugar as much as possible. Satisfy craving for sweet foods by eating sweet vegetables (carrots, parsnips, cooked onions, sweet potatoes etc) and fruit.
Artificial sweeteners are detrimental to health....
Honey is not particularly a healthy food - it is about 86% sugar. It contains some trace nutrients and may be better tolerated by the body but save it for special occasions.
If you wish to add a sweetener to your food use blackstrap molasses. This is a side product from sugar production that contains a concentrated form of all the minerals from the sugar cane plant - making it one of the best and cheapest (£1/jar organic) sources of mineral supplementation.
Concentrated fruit juices can also be used as sweeteners.

Avoid E numbers/additives etc

Some additives in food are harmless but many others are poisons. Either buy a book to decode what your food contains or more simply avoid all E numbers!

Be aware of fat consumption

Our diets are not necessarily too fatty, but we tend to eat the wrong sort of fat. Margarine may be the worst sort of fat to consume, and that is as true of low fat "healthy" (including vegan) spreads as any other. The problem with margarine comes from trying to make liquid vegetable fats solid - the hydrogenation process generates trans-fatty acids which are alien to the human body. Butter may cause problems for people with a reaction to dairy produce but is generally a healthier option than margarine. Buy organic butter and spread it thin! Having said that, if you want something oily on your bread, then the most nutritious option is olive oil. Because of its positive effects on the heart and circulation olive oil has received lots of favourable publicity in recent years as part of the "Mediterranean" diet. Buy good quality "extra virgin" cold pressed oil. Use olive oil in salad dressings and for cooking.
If you use other vegetable or seed oils use cold pressed unrefined brands which have a high vitamin content. Refined vegetable oils tend to go rancid quickly and to metabolise them we have to strip bones and tissues of minerals. Linseeds and hemp seeds are good sources of essential fatty acids.
Fry as little food as possible. If you do fry food at high temperatures the best oil to use is clarified butter or ghee - you can make your own by heating butter and skimming the froth off of the top and allowing the remainder to cool for future use. Otherwise you can buy ghee in Asian grocers and large supermarkets. Fat in meat is not a problem as long as not much meat is eaten! (See below.) Lard should be avoided.

Meat

If you eat meat every day, then try cutting down. Eat less but better quality meat. Most of the animals farmed in this country are raised quickly - nutritional quality and taste are low. Animals are fed foods of dubious quality and origin and are routinely dosed with medicines such as antibiotics and hormones which we then eat in the meat. Try organic meat from large supermarkets or specialist butchers. Free range chicken and rabbit are healthy and relatively cheap meats. Organ meats such as liver can be a good source of nutrients for people who are run down.

Fish

Fresh fish can be a healthy addition to a diet - especially oily fish such as mackerel, sardines, salmon, trout and halibut. The oils in these fish can help inflammation in arthritic disease and inhibit the formation of blood clots.

Non-animal sources of protein

An adequate amount of protein can be obtained from vegetarian sources if a balanced diet of wholefoods is eaten. Seeds and nuts, which are often neglected in a modern diet, are good sources of nutrition. Tofu and tempeh are two traditional foods which provide soya protein in a very digestible form. The value of highly processed TVP (textured vegetable protein) and quorn is more debatable.

Drinks

We tend to not drink enough water, but to drink too much tea and coffee and alcohol. The problems associated with alcohol are familiar, but we tend to take intake of caffeine containing drugs for granted. At a time when many health problems are made worse by stress it seems crazy to drink tea and coffee which increase our stress response! Try herbal teas instead or decaffeinated beverages. Green tea is only mildly caffeinated and has some positive health effects.
Drink 6 - 8 glasses of water a day.

Salads

Expand the range of fresh vegetables in your diet by eating salad regularly - try adding herbs such as watercress, parsley, coriander, fennel, sorrel and rocket. Try bitter tasting lettuces and include chicory and endives. The varieties of ingredients that can be included is endless - here are some suggestions: fruit such as pears and apples, steamed broccoli or cauliflower, nuts and dried fruit, beetroot, finely chopped raw carrots or cabbage, fresh peas… The thing that makes salad interesting is the dressing - a basic recipe is 2/3 olive oil and 1/3 lemon juice or vinegar. Try adding honey, mustard, crushed garlic, as takes your fancy.

"Exotic" foods

There are several exotic foods that are worth incorporating into our everyday diets: Seaweeds were traditionally eaten in many parts of the world, and are available today in dried form from wholefood shops. They contain all the minerals that our bodies need, and in the correct proportions. Seaweeds can be added to home made soups and stews and used as flavourings. If you don't eat seaweeds it may be a good idea to buy a supply of Kelp tablets - they will help to bring your mineral balance back to what it should be. Herbs used as flavouring in salads and cooking are becoming more popular again. Used in this way and as herb teas they are another way of adding minerals to our diet.
Tahini is made from pulped sesame seeds, can be used like peanut butter (i.e. spread on bread and also to make sauces for cooking), and is a good source of calcium.

Making changes to your diet

1. Start with making healthy additions to your diet.
2. Make some substitutions of good foods for not so good - molasses instead of sugar, home-made soup instead of shop bought, wholemeal bread instead of white, organic vegetables instead of chemically grown ones....
3. Eliminate some unhealthy foods.
4. Keep a sense of humour! Once you start to look at food and the ingredients on packets it can seem depressingly hard to find things that are worth eating - especially since a lot of what we are sold as "healthy" food is not what it claims to be. Find a good wholefood shop and have some days where you eat whatever you want!